Game Development: Sniffing Glue

[Potjeh]

Battering rams shouldn't be damaged while moving too much, they should be damaged mostly from attacks against the wall they're trying to destroy. That way, the attack itself will take time. Players will build a ram nearby, giving the village time to locate it if they maintain a watch (A Watchtower or similar object with a bell that goes off every time someone not of that village is within X distance would be cool).

And what if someone builds many rams a safe distance away, and then rolls them all in and wrecks them one by on the same wall segment until the wall gives?

As for the travel part, I agree. Though teleports within a village would be hard to give up.

[baconbandit]

I like the transport ideas lothadus has, I wouldn't need to teleport if i could take a lot more items back with me at once.
No so sure about the battering ram part :/

[loftar]

what happened to combat and villages?

Well, we spent half the dev session discussing such developments. Not good enough? :)

[Lothaudus]

Battering rams shouldn't be damaged while moving too much, they should be damaged mostly from attacks against the wall they're trying to destroy. That way, the attack itself will take time. Players will build a ram nearby, giving the village time to locate it if they maintain a watch (A Watchtower or similar object with a bell that goes off every time someone not of that village is within X distance would be cool).

And what if someone builds many rams a safe distance away, and then rolls them all in and wrecks them one by on the same wall segment until the wall gives?

There's a point where the more organised, better community has to win. If the attackers are that well prepared that they can hide that number of rams (I'd wager that at the 3 -5 rams mark) without the defending village noticing, then the defending village deserves to die. The Watchtower suggestion or similar "buildings" would go some way to resolve this.

Keep in mind that simply extending the claim of your village (or personal claims around the village) to add a 200 tile buffer around the exterior of the wall, is insanely easy to do as well.

As I said, there's a point where the better organised group has to prevail.

And to the transportation: Add railroads and trains would be cool. May not fit the setting though.

[Seizure]

Could have told us that in the original post... (heres some fluff for now, but were working on something big, etc.)

I think most people who pay attention to your posts were wondering that same thing (several in Sodom were), and were just hoping it wasn't forgotten like so many other things.

[Potjeh]

And what if you build the rams 500 tiles away from the village, hidden behind random trees? You could break a wall without any warning.

[Jackard]

Potjeh, there comes a point in time where the more organized community with a better custom client has to win.

[Gauteamus]

#1 Transport

1. Remove teleportation completely. Hirdporting, travel to hearth, travel to village, crossroads. ALL OF IT.
2. Add horses, wagons and river barges so that people can carry reasonable amounts of goods at a time (one of the problems with hunger right now is that even a whole cupboard of food isn't enough to last a single person very long, so you need to haul metric fuck tonnes of shit everywhere).
3. Fuck key rings.
4. Allow us to build carts in mines, you god-damned anti-cave mining fags.

Problem solved.

Helms Deeps will now need Gates to get in and out. 20 layers of walls will need 20 gates (and 20 keys stored safely on a keyring or in an abstracted list as per whomever's suggestion). Thus being both aesthetically pleasing and functional. Villagers will be able to get in and out of gates without having to use teleporting because someone else dropped the key or has the key and logged off or you lost your own key or whatever.

Trade will become large quantities of goods back and forth along rivers between major towns. Some people could setup and become traders who only travel back and forth selling goods. Horses will allow lone riders to travel large distances to get goods they need and travel back quickly.

Travel should take time. The only people that upsets are people who zap back and forth everywhere hauling tonnes of shit. Again, that's because you NEED to haul tonnes of shit to actually do anything and hauling tonnes of shit can't be done in a single trip right now. Allow us to haul tonnes of shit in a single trip (wagons and barges) and weyhey, an hour spent travelling as you haul 2,000 pieces of clay back to village in the one trip is suddenly worthwhile.

This is good.

[Jackard]

more seriously, theres a reason forts cleared the trees outside the walls

[Lothaudus]

And what if you build the rams 500 tiles away from the village, hidden behind random trees? You could break a wall without any warning.

I'd say 100 - 200 tiles of movement before breakage is sufficient. 500 tiles away would result in 3 - 5 repair sessions (of about 30 - 60 mins each). Of course once again, if the defenders are offline that doesn't matter but there's a point where I'd say "for fuck's sake, what do you want here? Villages to never be broken in to?" I mean, let's make it take 6 weeks of constant battering before a wall drops. Then what if it's Christmas and no-one logs in until week 7? OH GOD LET'S MAKE IT TAKE A WHOLE YEAR THAT SHOULD BE ENUFF.

What we have now is a big improvement over the sudden surprise attack. And yes, the defenders should have to put some fucking work into defending their village. If that means someone has to go out and scout behind every tree within an X mile radius, then so be it. Though again, I did say Watchtower and large claims (large claims which if someone tried to build on send you an XMPP notification now).

Maybe if you go inside a Watchtower you receive a notification of all movement made in the last day and a list of all rams within its range?

an hour spent travelling as you haul 2,000 pieces of clay back to village in the one trip is suddenly worthwhile.

I want to emphasise this for loftar and jorb too, given their tendency to understate numbers. I quite literally mean 2,000 pieces of clay. Not "2 more chests lulz". 2,000 pieces. You should be able to fit 60 chests on a river barge (6 tiles wide x 10 tiles long). A covered, horse-drawn wagon should be about 3 tiles x 5 tiles and hold about 30 chests. On roads it should move at just above human running speed, off-road it moves at just above human walking speed.