New Siege Implementation: Siege Claims

[loftar]

Actually the first chapter isn't about programming at all. It's about defining project requirements and stuff like that which applies to all sorts of engineering.

As far as I can tell, the first part is about handling upstream requirements, not about coming up with said requirements in the first place.

Seriously, do you not like reading about this stuff?

I do enjoy reading about programming principles (to some extent, though I find the vast majority of the material out there is pretty bad), but from what I can tell, this particular book doesn't seem to have much in it that would add to what I already have, and again, it doesn't seem to treat the more important part in this context, namely the coming up with original design goals.

As for shell design, have you honestly made an effort to come up with something different?

Of course, but there hasn't exactly occurred a downpour of good ideas in my mind, at least not ones that have stood the test of analysis. As I said, the braziers of Salem were an attempt; one that I'd classify as moderately successful.

[irongete]

I think you'll find the current players who might consider siegeing someone will disagree with you.

Yeah, you're right. I thought of that because now you build the siege engine and you can go AFK some hours and you can't do anything to protect your weapon. Thats why I like the idea of build and start attacking with those restrictions but the other aproach may be better.

The attacker will just claim the walls themselves in order to charge it up, though.

[...] Mind you, it doesn't solve the problem of multiple wall layers in itself, but it's somewhat interesting.

I'm sure something can come up to prevent this.
Since you can't put claims next to each others and you need to move the ram if you want to do this "trick", you will lose your damage charges when you get to your enemy wall.
If you skip attacks with the siege engine some hours the siege engine start losing damage charges.
Maybe enemies attacking the siege engine removes this stacking damage buff.

Anyways its a bit of damage every some hours. Defenders should start doing something if they see a siege engine some tiles away of their wall doing wierd things. Also, new palisade should dry before you hit with your own siege engine, thats gives more time to defenders. I won't think self-charging your weapon will be a reality.

[Potjeh]

As for shell design, have you honestly made an effort to come up with something different?

Of course, but there hasn't exactly occurred a downpour of good ideas in my mind. As I said, the braziers of Salem were an attempt; one that I'd classify as moderately successful.

I'd say they were more promising than the shell concept. So why have you abandoned this concept instead of exploring it further? Shell obviously isn't working, yet it has received orders of magnitude more development effort.

As for coming up with ideas, does it really have to be a novel concept? Great artists steal, after all Do you play other games much, or even at all? IMO best source of inspiration is playing lots of different games designed by different people with different mindsets.

[loftar]

I'd say they were more promising than the shell concept. So why have you abandoned this concept instead of exploring it further? Shell obviously isn't working, yet it has received orders of magnitude more development effort.

To begin with, I wouldn't go so far as to say that "shell obviously isn't working". It could honestly be worse. For all its flaws, I don't think the siege system of the last world was totally bad. Improving in-depth defense is definitely desirable, but I do have to admit I don't consider it totally critical, or that any system that doesn't significantly improve on that aspect isn't even worth considering. As for exploring braziers further, I don't really think they added much to begin with; once the walls were broken, the base in question would still be leveled to the ground and salted. It seems they merely added a small nuisance to the process, and were also extremely unaesthetic as the obvious meta was to fill the entire base with them. I can't really say I've been able to think of many changes that would improve them reasonably.

As for coming up with ideas, does it really have to be a novel concept?

Not at all. If you read that into my comments, that was a totally unintended implication. I haven't found anything reasonable to copy either, though.

[Ysh]

I think if I will do siege system I will have attacker issue challenge to defender. After this, at some agree upon time (ideally when both player can be online, but favor defender if not such time exists), there will be battle. When issue challenge attacker can specify what his goals are (e.g. scorched earth as now, steal specific item, kill particular man on claim, etc.). During battle, some fixed size area is designated as battlefield. Attacking team has some objective they must complete (e.g. roll slow object from point A to point B, destroy some object that take long time of bashing to break, etc.) and defending team must prevent this by killing the attacker or sabotaging the objective. There is time limit, attacker loses if it runs out without objective complete. Any man who leaves battlefield is routed and can not return to the battle. If attacker wins, he gets to do whatever his declared goal is and no more.

At one point I type up ~8 page document describing some system like this, but I am never happy with it so I do not share it yet. I think this is direction I will explore if I am running this Haven and Hearth though. It seem to approach problem of binary outcome and men trying to avoid using combat system when resolve siege by using various cheese gimmick.

[MagicManICT]

Indeed, and those are rare events, hence "rarely". We did make sige changes with the reset you know.

And you're making them again because a single faction threw an autistic hissy fit on the forums to the detriment of everyone else.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease my friend.

You shouldn't just grease a squeaky wheel. You should pull and replace it as it is clearly weak and ready to break. All that excess friction is extremely damaging.

And another note: If you can't upgrade you own wall, there should be an easy way to remove them, even if expensive in energy. Yes, an upgrade could be required at any time. Make a sensible way of allowing the players to do this.

[irongete]

About the attackers being constantly online, thats what a siege means. You want to siege your enemy so you need to cut supplies from the city therefore you must be there.

I think you'll find the current players who might consider siegeing someone will disagree with you.

The problem I see is even if you are online you can't do anything to protect your weapon while it dries.

Extending my idea or different aproaches:
Instead of being unatackable: Siege engine takes less damage if owners not near the battle zone. I dont know how much less, lets say that unatended siege engine should last 2 hour of damage by two average players?
If owners in the zone, shouldn't be worth to attack the siege engine while the enemy is attacking you. You first need to kill players, then the weapon. No alt zerg.

[ZantetsukenX]

Here's the thing that gets me about succeeding at siegeing a village. It basically means you get to destroy everything that a group of people (or a single person) has worked on for tens/hundreds of hours if you succeed. It's likely only a very small amount of people who get raided and continue to play the game. Because of that, whatever the mechanic is that ends up being decided on should be very hard to pull off successfully and require lots of planning. The whole mechanic will always suffer from a problem of "how do you stop from getting destroyed by a group of 20+ trolls/griefers".

Honestly, I'd say stop focusing so much on sieges, maybe make it possible but extremely hard to do, and instead introduce some form of wall scaling to allow for thieving. Make it so you get a debuff called "Thief Status" which prevents you from hearthing while on another person's vclaim/pclaim after you scale a wall. Have it also prevent you from being able to destroy/build anything on the claim also to prevent griefing. Introduce offline guarding mechanics like traps or guard dogs. Make it so succeeding in climbing the wall results in an HP hit so you are always at a dissadvantage if you encounter someone inside the claim. Then finally, make it so you can't carry shit while climbing walls, so they can only steal what they can carry in their inventory and have to climb back over the wall to get away with the theft. Introduce locks for houses that can be lock picked with enough time and skill. Adding on to the stress while you are stealing from the place.

Sure it'd probably result in multiple walls to make it more annoying for theft to happen, but there will always be solo people with only a singular wall for you to try and steal from if that is where you get your jollies. It's always possible to come back from someone stealing your items, but having your entire industry destroyed usually means a complete game over.

EDIT: Made a new thread with this idea to further discuss it: viewtopic.php?f=48&t=64816

[Necroliter]

I tried to comprehend the design goals of siege system, but not knowing YOUR design goals makes it hard to add any suggestions.

Here is my understanding of a system and a couple of questions:
System should accomodate for non-24/7 playtime.
------Have you considered passive defense systems, similar to Braziers in Salem?

Right now, if we abstract a little from world politics, sieging and defending against siege is purely determined by combat power (being numbers, gear or stats).
------Have you considered adding other aspects to defense ability? For example economic aspect or quality one (being those defensive structures with rare resource requirement, quality-scaling or such). Empowering passive defense will allow to streamline (and maybe empower) sieges from the attacking party side of view.

Right now siege doesn`t care about the size of sieged village/plot/etc. This limits design choices, because it puts hermits and big villages on same field in term of siege defense.
------Have you considered linking attacking/defensive power to the size of claim? Or adding additional resource cost to defending bigger claims? (back to my previous question)

Will be glad to see restrictions/requirements that you used during your design process. Thanks!

[xdragonlord18]

All numbers are for illustration purposes.

I propose this:

• The attacking village constructs an 8x8 War Claim that must overlap the target village's claim.
• The attackers specify a time between then next 24 and 48 hours for the attack
• The defenders have 24 hours to go the War Claim and adjust the time +/- five hours.
• At the "agreed" upon time the War Claim will activate and and the target village's structures can be attacked by siege equipment build on the War Claim.
• For the next hour, the attackers can construct siege equipment in the War Claim to knock the target's walls down and the defenders must wait out the hour or destroy the War Claim itself.
• Defenders can raise a white flag and surrender. The attacker, if they agree to the surrender, can then demand a tribute of some kind. (Perhaps something like a % of all LP/EXP/FEPs a village gains)

Additionally here are changes that would be required to make this work:

• A village can only declare 1 war at a time.
• Declaring war on a specific village has a 1 week cooldown that doubles with each declaration of war.
• A village must be 30 days old to declare war on another village.
• Attackers that fail to attend a battle at the specified time put their village's ability to declare war on a 2 week cooldown.
• War claims can be interacted with from up to 9 (assuming the claim is 8x8) tiles away.
• Nothing can be built on the War Claim.
• War Claims must be built on unclaimed land.
• War Claims cannot be claimed.
• Declaration of War Claims cannot be built such that they contain unclaimed structures.
• Siege equipment can only be constructed on an active War Claim.
• Participants in the War Claim cannot attack or be attacked while on the claim.
• One cannot enter the War Claim with an active combat relation.
• Dry walls on other claim types cannot be damaged except through siege equipment or wrecking balls placed by their owners.
• Structures off claim have no soak.
• A village can only give tribute to one other village at a time.
• Siege equipment no longer have a drying or repair cooldown.

Reasonably aesthetically pleasing

This has aesthetically pleasing elements in the form of a bad ass looking war claim, use of siege equipment and a surrender flag. You also interact with physical objects for each action instead of merely going through menus.

feels reasonably fair to both the winner and the loser

This is as fair as the the current PVP system. Attackers must destroy the enemy base and defend their war claim. You can't build walls so attackers cant just wall themselves in. Additionally with a surrender system a player isn't necessarily going to lose everything. It doesn't stop people from running away with their best stuff so an attacker is incentivizes to accept any surrender offered so they at least get something.

accounts for the fact that people don't play 24/7.

A defender has at least 1 day to react to the war declaration. This could, of course, be adjusted to be longer.


I think theres a lot of knobs you can turn to tune the system. Additionally I tried to think of any exploits that could happen but I'm sure I missed some stuff.