Wars/military

[Danno]

Closest thing I could find was this: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1696

I think it goes without saying that many of us avoid combat because we don't want to die and lose our LP. I've also noticed some of the recent murders became huge political messes despite the fact that the culprits could easily slay a lot of us. Now, despite that I don't think some of the recent victims deserved to die, I've never really liked the idea of reparations much. Today, we have to be careful what we say around certain races, and there's definitely racism in that certain races have more opportunities than others simply because of what happened to their ancestors. I used to wonder why one country would apologize and be nice to the country they just ravaged when they were enemies, so it's sorta weird/interesting seeing the same thing happen here. But in this case it doesn't seem like there are a bunch of other higher powers to maintain the balance/pressure the "ambitious" country.

Anyhow, maybe we could have wars and such without worrying about our LP. I haven't made a village yet, so I don't really know how the authority system works, but... If you have certain skills/stats, maybe at the cost of around 20k LP and some daily village authority you could create a new character. However, this wouldn't be any new character. It would be created as a "soldier". The "soldier" character would be unable to farm, craft, gain LP, or do any other stuff like that. Maybe it could have some basic options for helping out around the village, such as lifting objects and helping build at a construction site. The soldier would clearly not be designed for village duties.
The soldier would maybe have some new combat skills. Maybe you'd have to train against scarecrow-like dummies (constructed with branches, straw, and straw hat?) or spar with other soldiers to gain something similar to LP (or it can even still be called LP, just you wouldn't have any civilian skills available to learn). You wouldn't have to train them too much to learn some new combat skills, maybe they'd only be able to learn a certain number of combat skills (so they can't become a "jack of all trades"... warrior style). The soldiers would need to be fed. I guess they wouldn't have any use for stats like PSY and INT. Perhaps there could be a cap on how many stats you can raise (e.g. 75 STR + 10 CON + 10 AGI + 5 DEX = 100 stats, the cap). Maybe the default cap would increase a little for each banner your village has (I really don't know how village stuff works).

Suit them up, march on over to a nearby village, and declare war. Civilian attacks would be reduced by, say, 1/3 against a soldier. Soldiers would get a huge attack bonus against civilians and be able to knock them out pretty easily. They'd be able to drain civilian HHP to something like 50%, but be unable to kill them. Maybe the soldiers would have a small inventory (like 2x3) for looting. If the target village's soldiers are all killed and all the civilians are knocked out, your side wins. You'd also win if the village chief surrendered.
Perhaps before the attack, you could demand something from the village chief (if they're online) and they'd have a choice to give in, refuse, say they don't have it, or ask the soldiers to wait until they can properly prepare for war. If the chief isn't online, then the next person in charge makes the decision. If no one's online, I guess the soldiers can't attack, but they should be able to leave a notice.

And maybe they wouldn't have to destroy the palisade/brickwall to get in... As this is a bit more of a friendly version of war, maybe they can break into the village without destroying stuff after all the target soldiers are killed. Like, they could force the gate open by dealing 2000 damage on it. There should probably be something to prevent slaughter and intense looting/vandalism by civilian alts on the defeated village. Maybe your civilians can only enter after your soldiers have returned home, so your civilians would be doing so at their own risk.


I imagine multiclienting would be a problem here unless someone can think of something.

[Winterbrass]

Sounds cool, if not very practical or simple to implement.

[DaMaGe]

Sounds cool, if not very practical or simple to implement.

yup

[Gauteamus]

Sounds like alot of arbitrary rules. Something not at all far from this is already possible with normal chars, without all the special restrictions and character classes. Before we knew it, we would have wizards.

[sabinati]

indeed, why not just make some combat alts?

[Danno]

Because 100k LP for murder is a rather hefty investment, not to mention the points you have to spend on combat skills and unlocking murder. There's also the time spent moving to full tradition (possibly from full change if you wanted to make the 100k LP grind a little less tedious). I can spare bear and boar meat no problem, I usually just throw it away. Feeding it to my soldier alt would be a better use for it... And you'll probably say I should trade it to someone who's aiming for 5000 strength, but I'm far from trade cities so it wouldn't be worth the time, plus I don't support that idea.

The bottomline is that we can plainly see things as they are. Nobody wants to lose a character they've invested that much time into. Having a soldier system like this would likely bring actual wars, not the rare murder accompanied with a political complaint. We don't need wizards, mostly just swordsmen and archers. If we had horses, we could also have cavalry.
Of course, you could still do a normal raid with your supercharacters (though this doesn't seem to happen much, anyway). The soldier system would give weaker villages some chance to defend themselves, though you could still kill all the villagers in one hit with your q400 sling and their soldiers would only be able to knock you out at worst.

Just about everyone in the world of Haven & Hearth is always preparing for war. We build our villages, we build our weapons, we build our palisades. We build our stonewalls if we can, along with metal armour. Leather armour is plenty enough for handling wildlife, so anyone with metal equipment is clearly worried about fighting other people. But, like I said, nobody marches out to war (unless they've found a really easy target) since they'd have to risk their main character. What we've got now is more like a cold war.

[sabinati]

Because 100k LP for murder is a rather hefty investment, not to mention the points you have to spend on combat skills and unlocking murder.

not really, you're going to be training this alt in a settlement, not starting from scratch in the wilderness. remember, this is a combat alt, so you don't need to bullshit around with anything but combat stats and skills. with the recent combat update you can be pretty effective with 100 in a combat skill, especially in groups. just get it a good sling and hunt for a few hours a day.

There's also the time spent moving to full tradition (possibly from full change if you wanted to make the 100k LP grind a little less tedious).

a few weeks of play for a couple hours a day, a month at most, to go full change, train up combat, and go full trad. i'm not saying it's a throwaway alt, or that there is no investment here. but there is a large difference in time investment between this and your main.

I can spare bear and boar meat no problem, I usually just throw it away. Feeding it to my soldier alt would be a better use for it... And you'll probably say I should trade it to someone who's aiming for 5000 strength, but I'm far from trade cities so it wouldn't be worth the time, plus I don't support that idea.

that is, in fact, a perfect use for it. you only need to care about str, agi, and con for this character, which you can get from hunting bear, boar, deer, and aurochsen.

The bottomline is that we can plainly see things as they are. Nobody wants to lose a character they've invested that much time into. Having a soldier system like this would likely bring actual wars, not the rare murder accompanied with a political complaint. We don't need wizards, mostly just swordsmen and archers. If we had horses, we could also have cavalry.

i didn't really care that much when i lost my combat alt. i haven't bothered with it since he died, because i'm not going on combat ops anymore. and yes, we need swordsmen and archers, luckily we already have them.

Ofcourse, you could still do a normal raid with your supercharacters (though this doesn't seem to happen much, anyway). The soldier system would give weaker villages some chance to defend themselves, though you could still kill all the villagers in one hit with your q400 sling and their soldiers would only be able to knock you out at worst.

the recent combat change gave weaker villages some chance to defend themselves. the proposed soldier system is unnecessary, and as geuteamus said, imposes a lot of arbitrary rules that don't really fit with the rest of the game.

Just about everyone in the world of Haven & Hearth is always preparing for war. We build our villages, we build our weapons, we build our palisades. We build our stonewalls if we can, along with metal armour. Leather armour is plenty enough for handling wildlife, so anyone with metal equipment is clearly worried about fighting other people. But, like I said, nobody marches out to war (unless they've found a really easy target) since they'd have to risk their main character. What we've got now is more like a cold war.

agreed, there isn't enough conflict, but it's a complicated problem.

[dra6o0n]

So basically, allow players to wage war using animated golems or something in that idea?

The fact that players will participate with their own character is out of the picture because dying would mean you'd lose a ton of progress.
So why not add some sort of army minigame where you can "order" creatures to fight the other army for territorial contol?

But then it won't exactly fit the game's lore i guess.

[Danno]

not really, you're going to be training this alt in a settlement, not starting from scratch in the wilderness. remember, this is a combat alt, so you don't need to bullshit around with anything but combat stats and skills. with the recent combat update you can be pretty effective with 100 in a combat skill, especially in groups. just get it a good sling and hunt for a few hours a day.

Well, I guess that might not be the end of the world for a rich village with pearl necklaces, good tea, high quality bear hides and leather to spare crafting bear capes and waterflasks, and high quality wheat seeds to waste making flour. But if you want to make the LP from those things a little more significant, you'd want to give this combat alt some skill in cooking, sewing, etc. But why waste all that (and all that time) on a combat alt when you can make your main character that much more insanely powerful?
You can argue the theory that anyone can make a combat alt like this, but we all know it's not happening. It's too much of a hassle, you'll have a little fun murdering and griefing, the alt will inevitably be hunted down, and then I guess that's about it. That's not a war, that's just bullying.

a few weeks of play for a couple hours a day, a month at most, to go full change, train up combat, and go full trad. i'm not saying it's a throwaway alt, or that there is no investment here. but there is a large difference in time investment between this and your main.

Anyhow, I think this is still too much of an investment. If people have to put this much time and effort into the character, there won't be any wars because they won't want to die. The soldier doesn't have to be something you can whip up in an hour or two, but it has to be pretty easy to make one.

the recent combat change gave weaker villages some chance to defend themselves. the proposed soldier system is unnecessary, and as geuteamus said, imposes a lot of arbitrary rules that don't really fit with the rest of the game.

Well, I'm a pretty peaceful person, myself. I don't think ruining the gameplay for any players is necessary at all. But this is a game, so I wouldn't mind some battles. My fights with bears consist of stoning them and waiting for them to stop being pansies, but I guess other people just kill them in one hit... and that's the toughest battle in the game. The next challenge is to fight other players, but nobody wants to risk it (myself included). Some people might even feel too guilty to rob another player of hundreds of hours of gameplay. The proposed soldier system would be a little less devastating while allowing us to battle other players. And, of course, it doesn't have to work exactly as suggested.
The rest of the game is pretty much just grinding, so I think this would be a positive addition.

I mean, we can always spar with each other... But our characters just can't be compared with each other. If you and I were to fight, you'd definitely beat me in one hit. The proposed soldier system would ensure our battle characters can't be too much stronger/weaker than each other (with the stat cap, maybe there should also be an equipment bonus cap). Of course, stronger villages will still be at an advantage since they'll be able to get better equipment, feed their soldiers higher quality food and at a faster rate, and they'll probably have more active players, so they'll have a larger army. I guess it gives weaker players more of a chance to defend themselves against griefers, similarly weak villages, or wanderers from strong villages. Or just something else to do if you're a strong village and are simply grinding your days away.

In any case, I don't think this would have much of a negative impact (unless you're a griefer or anti-newb activist). I guess it's another story if this is hard to implement and/or if jorb/loftar are not interested in this. Well, this is one way to make battles happen.