Pre-Announcement: Siege Changes

[jorb]

We want to make some changes to how siege works tomorrow, but we figured we'd give you a chance to shoot us down before we actually change it. What I am primarily interested in is knowing if these changes break anything completely that we haven't considered. It may be that you still see it as too little, and that these changes still leave siege an impossibility, but that is in that case less interesting.

Change log

• Claim shields now regain 300HP per hour, rather than 1000.
• Shields can take up to 5000HP damage per hour, rather than 4000, with diminishing returns still kicking in after 2000HP damage.
• Newly established claims begin without shield, and have to charge it up.
• Catapults have no initial drying period, but rather can be fired instantly upon being built. They still have a cooldown of one hour after repairs.
• Charter stones now disable when their shield goes below 55000HP, rather than 48000. Not sure if it matters much.
• Geysers now spawn 500 brimstone globally per day, rather than 100.
• All localized resource nodes (crystals, geysers, trees, salt basins, &c) can now be inspected to see how much resources they have buffered presently.

Random observations

• A fully charged shield can theoretically be taken down in as little as 12 hours (rather than 26 as previously), assuming an ability to deal indefinite damage (using multiple siege machines, or a battering ram).
• A fully charged shield can, by one catapult, be taken down in 36 hours (~2000 damage/hour, minus 300 regained by the shield, gives 60000/~1700, rounded upwards), rather than 66 hours as previously. Assuming you never have to rebuild the catapult, this should cost a grand total of 40 brimstone.
• If you use 12 catapult cycles per day, you can take down a fully charged shield in ~3.5 days. Assuming you have to rebuild the catapult once per day, this should cost a grand total of 58 brimstone, that is, (3.5 * 12) + (4 * 4).
• If you use 8 catapult cycles per day, you can take down a fully charged shield in ~12 days. Assuming you have to rebuild the catapult once per day, this should cost a grand total of 144 brimstone, that is, (12 * 8) + (12 * 4).

Feel free to opine.

[Ozzy123]

[*] A fully charged shield can theoretically be taken down in as little as 12 hours .

Means siege system still sucks, noone will camp a place for 12 hours to raid it. Better work on some combat fixes, siege was fucked up the whole legacy haven but atleast the combat was fine.

[loftar]

noone will camp a place for 12 hours to raid it.

For one thing, this is not an accurate description, since you don't need to "camp it for 12 hours". Especially given that catapults will have no initial drying time, you can very much harass it down little by little.

However, if you can't dedicate 12 hours to raid something, then I'm inclined to think that you don't deserve it to begin with.

[RedKGB]

This sounds more like full scale fighting than raiding.

[Ozzy123]

However, if you can't dedicate 12 hours to raid something, then I'm inclined to think that you don't deserve it to begin with.

Well, thinking like that made this siege system suck

[Zeler]

Not perfect, but in my opinion going in a good way. While 12 hour camping time is still too long, I don't find it appealing to wake up to a raided village in case of shorter camping times. Im still after the idea of setting up a timer, where defending side is supposed to chose siege time.

[wolf1000wolf]

Iunno, the current system does make bases pretty safe if you stay inside. This makes hermits/small groups safer while in their base but also makes large groups antsy.

Maybe think of something that allows those PvP folks to go wail on each other all the want?

Idea:

Attackers can "Declare war/raid" or something by ante-ing some goods or LP. Then within a time frame, the defenders can accept the fight and both sides choose their fighters and get tp'd to some valhalla-esque plane. They fight. Winners get the loot/LP and if they're the atkers, causes certain amount of shield dmg. Losers lose certain amount of village shield if defenders and takes some sorta injury.

Alternatively, the defenders that got declared war on can just pay up LP and/or loot to avoid the fight.

Put a cooldown on the number of times a village can declare war in a timespan to avoid strong villages going around demanding tribute on all the noobs.

[DDDsDD999]

Still doesn't really give any way for the defenders to counter it. Just seems like whoever secures a shit-load of geysers can take down villages one-by-one by spamming catapults when they're offline.

[Arcanist]

There needs to be some way for the defenders to respond, as many villages (and all hermitages) can go 12hr without being online quite often.

Perhaps a declaration of war, then 24hr from that you can start the seige.
Alternately as Zeller suggests after the catapault is build the defending Lawspeaker can choose when the catapult is bashable/usable ( + 1hr from the time he sets, upto 24hr after it was built) the builder of the catapault would then get a notification of when that time is.

It should be easier to defend than to attack and being able to set a time is a bonus to the defenders. Seige system shouldn't be stealth system.

[loftar]

There needs to be some way for the defenders to respond, as many villages (and all hermitages) can go 12hr without being online quite often.

I don't think you should underestimate the resources required to bring a shield down in 12 hours, though. I doubt anyone would go to that length against some hermitage, at the very least.