loftar wrote:I'll just post this reminder that the reason we changed siege going into this world was because last world every other noob was being sieged, while there very little to no interesting PvP between equal players. At least that's the way it seemed to me. Not saying that was correct, but please elaborate on your thoughts on this point.
I think there are some lessons to learn from other games on this point, which HnH can learn and adopt from. There is one in particular that I think deserves your attention and analysis, because it could be almost transformative to HnH and neatly integrates with some other systems: It is from another MMO called Albion Online, a full loot PvP MMO with hundreds of thousands of active players, which was developed by an indie German studio and sold a couple years ago for $250 Million, which has sieges as a core part of the gameplay.
I honestly think you should blatantly rip their siege system off, as it'd work exceedingly well with HnH, and was the result of years of iterations before they finally came to something that is now almost universally enjoyed by the playerbase.
I do think that if you do adopt it, however, you will need to overhaul other systems related to PvP to ensure that there is more PvP parity between active players, because it will truly shine if players feel like they can fight one another, but otherwise would be a waste of resources to implement if people are going to ignore PvP because they feel like they have no fair chance against botters/people running enhanced clients. Additionally, a few economic systems would need to be lightly modified.
Albion's siege system:In Albion, sieges are exceedingly common because groups of players are encouraged by game systems to have multiple satellite bases to access scarce resources, and a primary base for living in/production. Player groups typically have multiple bases, because unlike HnH, there is little fast travel (unless naked, in which case you can fast travel readily) and resources are limited to X number respawning per map tile per unit of time. Further, map tiles (think of a map tile as the equivalent of a region with a Thingwall in HnH) are ALWAYS missing many resources needed to have complete production chains (you may have the resources to make quality swords locally, but not treeplanter pots or wild animals may not be present in anything but small numbers and their products could be poor), and of those that are accessible, many spawn at lesser rates than are desired (but if your group is small enough, you may have excess of certain resources).
In Albion the server persistently tracks nodes that only allow a set amount of a resource to be respawned into the world per given map tile over any period of time (every node replenishes at a fixed rate, and will not replenish past a fixed cap.) Therefore, a given map tile can only comfortably support so much economic activity (harvesting) before it becomes fully tapped. Further, traveling with these resources means traveling without fast travel through areas where players are regularly hunted and ganked by other players, meaning that satellite bases are a necessity to allow for the safe(r) gathering of local resources and then stockpiling them in the satellite bases, before finally moving them in convoys to production facilities (typically at the main base) and eventually markets. Think of a British colony using locals to gather necessary resources and then transporting them to port cities, whereafter the merchant marine brings back the raw resources to Great Britain for processing in their factories, before being sold to markets domestic and foreign.
Defensive Timers:Every guild gets a single base that is immune to sieging (I will explain later how this is not exploited), but all satellite bases may be sieged on defensive timers. Every map tile has a server set defensive timer that a player can view - Players can then choose to settle their satellite bases in areas where the defensive timer matches their period of peak activity for their group of players. This has the natural tendency to make players settle next to other players active in similar timezones, which has the natural tendency to make them interact in the open world when they encounter each other, either by forming alliances or through conflict. Players will rarely settle areas where timers do not align with their activity, because it makes it more difficult for them to defend their bases.
Bases, when first placed, are vulnerable to attacks until some period of time has elapsed and they gain the siege protection. This is done to allow local groups to stop bases from being settled, but if they are not vigilant, may allow other groups they are not friendly with to sneak in and start to project power.
How sieges function:There are locations of economic interest (territories) that exist on every map tile which are first fought over before a base can be sieged. These are not unlike Thingwalls, in that they are static locations which may be fought over. They provide economic benefits for controlling them, either access to arable land for growing far more crops than normal, or access to high value resources that are better than what can be found in the other unclaimed sections of the world.
But perhaps just as importantly, controlling the ones in the map tile with your base makes it immune to sieges for as long as you control it, because any sieging group must first claim the static territory object before they launch a siege on your base. They do this by declaring an attack on your territory at the "defensive timer" the previous day, which gives the defenders 24 hours notice that they will need to defend their location for 30 minutes (I think it's 30? Might be different now) at the next defensive timer. These attacks must be financed by some valuable resource which is lost to the opposing side if they are victorious in defense.
If the attack succeeds, the attacker gains control of the territory and may now launch a siege on the local bases within the map tile. They do so by doing the same process of declaring a siege at the time of the defensive timer, giving the defenders 24 hours to prepare. They may then attack the base, but must do so repeatedly for larger bases that have put certain valuable resources into making them more resilient to sieges. (This can range from 1 to 5 SUCCESSIVE sieges, or 20 minute windows on successive days.)
If the attackers have retained control of the resource, and attacked the base the requisite number of times to "defeat" it, they can then destroy the base.
Losses of Sieges and gains of attackers:The base itself, the resources spent on building the base, and the infrastructure inside of the base including all production buildings and refining buildings are lost. However, the attackers gain nothing other than the destruction of the base. Attacks occur not to loot the interior, but at the attacker's expense either as a method of power projection and/or to gain better control over the local resources.
How siege immune bases function:As mentioned earlier, groups of players may have siege immune bases. However, the base that is immune to sieging is ONLY immune to sieging as long as there are sufficient players wandering the world feeding "energy cores" to that base.
Energy cores dynamically spawn, and must be discovered by players roaming the open world. Energy cores are almost functionally identical to the meteor system in HnH (dynamically chosen location, timer that may be queried to ensure that players have some time to gather to collect them), but vary differently in two major regards: They are only visible from moderate distances, meaning players must travel/explore regularly to identify energy cores that are going to spawn and query the timers on them, and they spawn with such a frequency that exploring for them and gathering/fighting for them may be considered a daily activity.
When players bring these cores back to their bases and consume the core (which will otherwise despawn if not consumed) they get three rewards:
1. Energy that constantly drains, and until drained, makes the base immune from sieges.
2. Energy that may be used to empower the production of goods at margins better than other non-energized locations which provide better marketability (In HnH this would likely need to be changed to integrate into the quality system, as there is no functional equivalent item drains in HnH as there are in Albion Online.)
3. An individual reward (in HnH, this would be the equivalent of a hefty chunk of LP.)
#2 is quite important, because it is one of the main driving factors in stopping players from making alternative guilds and placing unsiegable alt bases all over the place. This would, of course, dramatically raise the upkeep in terms of energy cores required to maintain alternative bases - But players are also rewarded for placing all their eggs in one basket by deriving an exceedingly important economic incentive for doing so.
Factions are always at war with one another over item quality. I suggest that you could obtain the same result by allowing the base with the highest energy to have no soft-cap on any goods produced. However, any other goods produced will have a softcap over item quality 50 ranging from 50% of the highest existing example of an individual item's quality (no energy, or no base) to 0.1% scaling based on how close they are to the highest base's energy supply. Energy cores should have diminishing returns in terms of energy awarded when placed into a base of a reasonable degree, to always allow other emerging bases to catch up, and not allow any one base to skyrocket to unobtainable heights.
Last edited by Robben_DuMarsch on Thu Jul 13, 2023 10:27 pm, edited 5 times in total.
by DonVelD » Thu Jul 13, 2023 3:12 pm 
![¦]](./images/smilies/troll.gif "Trollface")
