Tearing Down Walls (Figuratively) with NPC's

[Vaku]

While browsing the threads here, I saw this:

I think walls need to be less important. It would be nice if we didn't need to keep a village on constant lock down to keep it secure. If villages were somehow autonomously able to defend themselves from hostile actions without requiring players to be online watching every action 24/7. Perhaps the ability to station NPC guards and patrols in a city that consume authority on an hourly basis and by the amount of work they need to do.

Then siege engines don't need to be so bulky and useless and instead can be carted around without dying every 10 squares and without the 24 hour cool down. It could just be that any non-villager that is operating or building a ram nearby is flagged as hostile by the guard and remains so for an amount of time predetermined by the village. Committing criminal acts within a guard's sight would also turn them hostile. Whether the ability to bash walls by hand stays or goes would be irrelevant then.

Perhaps the guards are equipped by the village and some form of training mechanism could be used to determine their power, such as a construction. Improving guards increases their authority drain and the training mechanism might have some form of development as well, perhaps a system similar to feeding it curiosities. Having guards watching for thieves, raiders, and vandals would make it possible to run a market or even not worry so damn much about keys. The benefit to siege engines would be to break through a lesser defended portion of the city as it's likely the gate is heavily guarded.

And I found it interesting since being a new player, I was wanting to do some exploring of other people's work, villages in particular. However, due to claimed land being naturally impassible, and walls on constant lockdown, I couldn't enjoy the creativity of other players.

I am going to support, TeckXKnight's suggestion of NPC's that could guard for the ultimate goal of making towns/villages/etc. areas of social interest for everyone who does not have a personal claim there. People would still be able to be as protective and paranoid as usual, leaving their gates locked and patrolling 24/7, but for those who want to display their work, they would be able to do so without so much fear of having things vandalized.

Anyways, what do you all think?

[Vaku]

Or, should villages that want open borders and still want to be successful, rely on the playerbase that inhabits their village.

Meaning that, nothing changes, it would be that if you want open gates, you have to rely on having a village heavily populated by friendly players.

[M_So]

I foresee massive amounts of lag with this, huge army's led by a single person and peoples claims spreading to every corner of the map.

[teengames]

I foresee massive amounts of lag with this, huge army's led by a single person and peoples claims spreading to every corner of the map.

i see the same thing (pande already has many vclaims right next to poor noob camps its essentially fast killing w/o murder)

[Vaku]

If the concern of this is about claims not being used any longer, that's not what I'm aiming for with this suggestion.

Claims could perhaps be split into city claims and personal claims. A city claim could probably only be connected to other city claims, where the origin claim comes out of some sort of banner that is constructed. A personal claim would operate as claims usually do.

As for concern for lag, I would assume an NPC guard would produce nearly as much lag as a bear, or ant or any other NPC.

My ultimate aim using NPC's or not would be to make villages more open to sightseers and traders so that a village would act more like a village rather than a fort.

[M_So]

If the concern of this is about claims not being used any longer, that's not what I'm aiming for with this suggestion.

Claims could perhaps be split into city claims and personal claims. A city claim could probably only be connected to other city claims, where the origin claim comes out of some sort of banner that is constructed. A personal claim would operate as claims usually do.

As for concern for lag, I would assume an NPC guard would produce nearly as much lag as a bear, or ant or any other NPC.

My ultimate aim using NPC's or not would be to make villages more open to sightseers and traders so that a village would act more like a village rather than a fort.

Problem is village claims can over lay personal claims, witch will get the noob living there be killed by guards. Will there be a limit to how many guards you can have? (something like 2-4) If you can have as many as you want will not be long till people have 400-500 each this game will be more a matter of making NPC then anything else.

[ninja_yodeler]

although im still quite undecided after reading all this, it might help your problem of

I foresee massive amounts of lag with this, huge army's led by a single person and peoples claims spreading to every corner of the map.

i see the same thing (pande already has many vclaims right next to poor noob camps its essentially fast killing w/o murder)

if the guards dont have murder, sure those same poor noobs might be attacked by the gaurd, but being ko'd is a lot better than being killed, and it still helps against proper raiders and thieves, because frankly, who goes around raiding, or stealing from an enemy town with knockout shp. if someone were to break your def. then you'd be screwed...

but as it stands. my vote is i dont know

[teengames]

Or you could just tame bears and tie them to your fence or w/e

[Vaku]

Problem is village claims can over lay personal claims, witch will get the noob living there be killed by guards. Will there be a limit to how many guards you can have? (something like 2-4) If you can have as many as you want will not be long till people have 400-500 each this game will be more a matter of making NPC then anything else.

For the number of guards, it would seem appropriate that only a maximum of 10 can ever be placed inside any one village, and that guards would only ever operate within villages. The spread of village claims that contend with any preexisting personal claims or other village claims for that matter would need to be settled politically.

It would be unfortunate for a noob to be living in an area where there is an expanding village, but such is life with laws such as Eminent Domain existing in the real world.

[TeckXKnight]

i see the same thing (pande already has many vclaims right next to poor noob camps its essentially fast killing w/o murder)

This is a legitimate concern. Scents need to be left and they should be meaningful scents leading to the perpetrator of a crime. You run into that exact same issue if you have siege towers or structures which defend a village or assault it. The question is how do you link it to someone? I don't really have a solution to this. This should not be a cheap means of killing someone without leaving scents. Perhaps link the scents to whoever issued the order so that it will lead to the Chief and/or Lawspeaker. Sure, they might be alts but they are in positions that could substantially damage a village. In particular if the LS was killed and the authority was waited down (exasperated by the additional cost of having npcs) then an invader could just assume control of the village.

As for a hardlimit on number of npcs, I could see that dramatically stifling their usefulness. You can't solve this by attaching it to some mundane number such as number of villagers or amount of authority but how about to the cube root of the number of tiles that your village controls. This would mean that a brand new village would have 7 guards and could assign 1 more after it expanded once but after that it would become increasingly slow to gain more numbers. This means that new villages aren't entirely left behind by more developed villages but development isn't pointless either, as it would be with a hardcap. Even for a humongous village, expanding solely for the sake of more guards would become a massive effort and expense if you think about the size of numbers for a cube root.

Also, like Vaku said, make guards so they cannot leave village territory. If your personal claim or property resides within village territory then you're under their jurisdiction. They were always at liberty to revoke your claim and essentially lock you out of your own home. As we've seen in the past, if a village is particularly vicious or territorial, they can and will revoke everyone elses rights to live near them. If they're not then it's a welcome security blanket. Players who have invested the time and energy to expand their kingdom should have the ability to influence their region.

Another issue I didn't really take into account is villages versus personal claims. Personal claims would be utterly screwed by this as they would have no capacity to have guards or defensive structures but they would face the same assaults that a village would. No matter what they're going to be at a heavy disadvantage but like this they're just left out to dry. How do you make it so that newbies and hermits aren't entirely fucked, in other words.

I foresee massive amounts of lag with this, huge army's led by a single person and peoples claims spreading to every corner of the map.

Completely taking over the map seems unrealistic but I'll be honest, I haven't done the math. Expansion to that level would probably require a small army of bots producing linens and steel for a couple few years I think?