Territory control and the Steelhew arc.

Maghak

The game said:

You take a moment to consult a strategic telescope, assessing your area for tactical value.

The village of Tasur'ke has 3 strategic points of control.
These points are located at coordinates v4058, v4302 and v4269.
The area is controlled by the regime of Juxa Steelhew.
The village of Tasur'ke is not currently contested.

Hello again guys! I'm posting this thread as a bit of a heads-up and sneak peek of some developments we have planned for the next few weeks. Unfortunately they're proving a bit more complex to write than I was expecting, so the Juxa Steelhew world event has been lagging a bit behind - I do apologise for that!

As the arc progresses, we're going to be experimenting with a brand new territory control mechanic - right now, it's very much a test of the waters, and to begin with it will doubtlessly be as buggy as anything.

The long and the short of it is that areas in the northeast and southeast of Sapience (the areas involved in the Steelhew war) will be given between two and five 'control points'. If a unit of troops is standing on the control point without an enemy unit contesting it, it will be considered to hold that point. Hold all the points in an area and you control that area. It's pretty simple, and faster in many respects than the old room capture system.

Troops will be given to the factions involved in the war rather than generated with comms; this is just for the event, and not a permanent concept. There will be six troop classes with varying advantages and disadvantages over each other, and at least for the duration of the event Juxa will also possess troops that must be killed by players (as she is not likely to have PVPers of her own to get involved!)

Unit orders will be on a delayed system; using say or tell, you can issue orders like 'march to v1234', 'charge to v5678' or 'dig in' to troops, and once per in-game hour all orders will be executed at once. This is intended to try and limit the flaws of the old war system in which massive groups of players would camp on troops for hours at a time, waiting desperately for the chance to issue orders without being killed. 

We also intend to trial concepts like using engineers to dig pitfalls and build fortifications, and there will be a PVP element in that troop morale will rise and fall if allied players die or kill enemies within their sight. Supply chains may also make it into this trial, but it's possible that they will prove too time-consuming to finish in a reasonable manner.

I'm very excited to see how this pans out, and I hope everyone will enjoy it; criticism, discussion and concerns can be aired in this thread. If strange things begin happening with Juxa Steelhew's forces ingame, you can likely blame it on being modified and converted over to the warband prog from their special snowflake troll_squad prog.

Thanks for reading!

Daskalos

This may be asking for too much info, but:

1) How do cities gain troops? Do  we purchase them, and if so, are their maintenance costs? I ask because one of the things I hated about the old war system was that the cost associated with it was such that you were almost afraid to spend city money. Things like the University and Temple District in Enorian wouldn't of  happened under the old war system, and I'd hate to see us slide back in that direction.

2) Will we gain 'troops' based off of territories we control?

3) Do you plan to tie comm production into this?

4) I like the turn based system -- would it be possible to leave a queue of commands? One of the other things about the old system was grinding was required. If, say, before I go to sleep, I could pre-program the next 10 hours worth of commands, that would be awesome.

Maghak

1. This has yet to be properly decided. For the duration of this event, you'll probably get X troops spawning in Y allied areas, based on the RP that has already gone on.

2. You will gain troop types based off 'allied' areas (such as the Crag for Spinesreach or Mournhold for Enorian); mechanical control of an area is cosmetic/related to arc progress rather than a mechanical boon for this event. This will very likely change if the system is implemented on a permanent basis.

3. That's something that needs to be discussed at great length, as it would impact the entire game economy. Tentatively, I would -like- to. We'll see.

4. That's not a bad idea at all.

Ezalor

Maghak said:

There will be six troop classes with varying advantages and disadvantages over each other, and at least for the duration of the event Juxa will also possess troops that must be killed by players (as she is not likely to have PVPers of her own to get involved!)

Bloodloch doesn't have a horse in this race so far .

Maghak

That will change quite soon. Spoilers!

Daskalos

If you do tie in commodities, can I suggest some sort of 'commodity treaty' function between orgs? Different parts of the realm have different comms. Ice, for instance, isn't in the south. It would be impossible, again as an example, for Enorian to hold the Tundra for a long time. Spinesreach simply wouldn't make it possible, most likely. I'm not going to lie, because of the way the continent lies out, I'm a little worried about how comm stuff could possibly work. All that being said, thanks for answering the questions! My mind is just running through the possibilities.

Maghak

That's really something for discussion down the line, sorry.

Riluo

I just want to join Juxa and kill you all -shrug-

Kalvin

I think the plot between Juxa Steelhew, and the citys is quite good. I know am new around here, but I have beenreading up on the events of past and know a little about the blade she has from those posts. I think this is going to be a good plotline for sure.

Thanks

Kevin/Kalvin

Xavin

I honestly worry about any system that ends up tying comm production to pvp, since orgs that lose members for one reason or another end up having fewer people that really know their stuff. That said, the concept looks good. IF this is going to bridge into an actual war system, we need to be careful about time-frames though. One of the bad (or good, depending on your viewpoint) things about the old war system was the fact that you could basically stealth capture while your opponents were on downtime. I really don't like the idea of basically requiring a 24/7 presence.

Edit: Also I'm curious what duiran's troops will end up being if they're being drawn from surrounding/allied areas.

Ishin

@Maghak, one of my biggest complaints about the old war system was needing to like, sit with troops 24/7. I mean, I kinda had time for that back in the beginning, but tbh with school, work, gf living with me, and life...who really has time for that anymore? I like Dask's idea of being able to queue stuff, so long as there's a way for, say, war aides/minister to unqueue things in case there's a huge shift in happenings while whoever did the queueing is offline.

Also, will you guys be introducing something like the old school war banner that I used to have, and I know Dask had one too. It gave troops being led bonuses and stuff. If not necessarily in the troop bonus category, maybe it could give bonus to comm production or something like that if you guys decide to tie it into comm production. It could even be something limited so that it doesn't affect all the territory/troops, and just do the production/troops in your area/room.

I'm really excited about the resurrection of some kind of war system. If you guys do it right, it'll be immensely fun. Hell, I enjoyed the old one, when I wasn't having to camp troops and fight crazy odds lol

Haern

Ishin said:

Also, will you guys be introducing something like the old school war banner that I used to have, and I know Dask had one too. It gave troops being led bonuses and stuff. If not necessarily in the troop bonus category, maybe it could give bonus to comm production or something like that if you guys decide to tie it into comm production. It could even be something limited so that it doesn't affect all the territory/troops, and just do the production/troops in your area/room.

That's not something we can really talk about at this time, but I'll be sure to nudge Razmael and Oleis about it.

Xavin

Just...if you guys are considering tying things to comm production, keep in mind that one bad war is all it used to take to completely tank a city's economy, and aetolia's economies aren't all that healthy to begin with.

Omei

I just want to remind you guys that this is, by no means, a reintroduction, a prototype, a hint, or a complete implementation of a war system. All of this troop business is solely linked to the Steelhew event. So don't worry toooo much about long-term (read: longer than the typical length of a world event) ramifications.

Maghak

It's better to think of this as a means of collecting data on what might work for a future war system rather than an attempt at implementing a current one.

Tina

Daskalos said:

4) I like the turn based system -- would it be possible to leave a queue of commands? One of the other things about the old system was grinding was required. If, say, before I go to sleep, I could pre-program the next 10 hours worth of commands, that would be awesome.

And the others supporting it, I'm gonna have to speak out against this to an extent.  It takes all the risk out of war.  If you can just queue all your commands, then forget about the rest of the war, where is the risk of going to war?  Just have npc's do it all for you, it's the same argument made all the time about ranged combat.  Winning conflict with no personal risk.  There should be some risk to being in a war, commanding troops.  I mean just setting everything in advance and no personal risk, just like playing a tower defense game, and I find those very boring myself normally.  Anyways, I just think que'ing the entire day or night of commands takes too much of the risk out of it, and you don't need to actually be in the war to go to war.

Maghak

If you queue up your commands and then never check or adjust them again, you will immediately lose to an opponent who is adjusting their troop movements in response to yours.

Daskalos

For the record, I am for anything that means new artifacts.

Irruel

Xavin said:

Edit: Also I'm curious what duiran's troops will end up being if they're being drawn from surrounding/allied areas.

We could always raid Dolbodi/Salma and press-gang some of them into our army. Or we could form the Duiran (French) foreign legion: promise a bunch of crooks sanctuary if they fight for us, then give them crap weapons with inadequate food and pack them off up north to kill trolls.

Haven

While I like the spirit of the idea, I am not so sure a queue system would be a good idea depending on how it works. How much of the community would this system require? Essentially, could one person manage their entire city's army via this tells/says system? Could one person easily sabotage the army via this queue system were it implemented?

Xavin

Irruel said:

Xavin said:

Edit: Also I'm curious what duiran's troops will end up being if they're being drawn from surrounding/allied areas.

We could always raid Dolbodi/Salma and press-gang some of them into our army. Or we could form the Duiran (French) foreign legion: promise a bunch of crooks sanctuary if they fight for us, then give them crap weapons with inadequate food and pack them off up north to kill trolls.

Actually, I rather like the idea of taking undesirables that are capable enough. We'd be like the Night's Watch of Sapience except unicornsy and covered in forests.

Edit: APPARENTLY THE FILTER DOESN'T CATCH THAT WORD.

Moirean

I can't really play this week, but based on what I'm reading, I want to caution against excessive complexity and protected/automated marching. Avalon's warfare system went that way and the variable troop types/terrain options/etc became too hard to easily learn, which meant people couldn't just jump in and figure it out and only a few people bothered learning it - automated and ranged commands meant that marchers could sit in safe rooms and PK lost a lot of impact in war and it became a frustratingly niche thing with heavy heavy ramifications. Simplicity in concept is far better, as more people can get involved. Some kind of emphasis on direct engagement (perhaps with balancing options like a limited, breakable vanguard protection for marchers) would be nice if you guys are considering extensive remote options (with stuff like phase and blackwind and escape options and dopplegangers and artifacts like lyre etc, it's not super hard to run in and quickly assess stuff and retreat to safety).

I might be reading this wrong, but it sounds like troop generation is based on what territory you hold? That sounds like a really unbalanced snowballing. Whoever captures the first village instantly has the leg up and the gap in potential troop size would only widen. I might be reading that wrong (the screen on this laptop is really jacked up haha).

I was totally wondering about warfare when this stuff started and was asking Ferrik to check out our comm productions. I tried to recruit some troops just to see if I could for RP purposes, but this sounds way more extensive than I think any of us imagined - what an amazing turn of events! I hope the event is still going on when I get back, because it looks awesome!

(clearly Aetolia loves me, because pretend war is the best bday present ever :P )

Maghak

It's easy to misinterpret what we're saying as troops being drawn from captured territories, but that hasn't been discussed, let alone implemented. The difference will be solely cosmetic for the duration of the event - since we'll be manually spawning in the troops we'll be doing our best to keep things in balance.

As for complexity and balance concerns - we'll see. The intended plan is:

• infantry > archers > heavies > infantry in a rock-scissors-paper set. Not the most realistic, but easily balanced and easy to remember.
  
• channelers with type advantage over everything except other channelers, but an immediate type weakness when undefended by other units.
  
• engineers with no type advantages and no type disadvantages, weak damage output, and access to three orders, FORTIFY, UNDERMINE and TRAP.
  

If this proves to be excessively complex, we can scale it down. I'm hoping otherwise.

Maghak

I'm pleased to report that we're getting very close to being feature complete. All that remains is implementing the various engineering tasks and thoroughly testing the unit combat calculations. We're expecting to roll out the first widescale use of the new progs on Monday.

Maghak

I'm going to post this here as a sneak peak for our loyal forumgoers - it should be accessible in-game soon!

Maghak said:

help steelhew

(gods) 11.12 Territory control

This helpfile is currently under construction, as is the system it details usage for.

The territory control system is currently in its testing phase, and may be quite buggy. This 

helpfile should detail how to use it. If something seems to be broken, please message Maghak or 

Razmael!

TERRITORY

---------

Silver telescopes can be purchased from all cities and employed via CONSULT TELESCOPE to assess an 

area. This will yield an overview of the area status, and offer the vnums of the various control 

points that must be held for an area to be controlled.

A control point is considered held if there are no enemy troops in the room, and an allied warband 

of any size is present. When all control points are held, the area is considered held. If the 

control points are not all held by a given faction, the area is considered to belong to the previous 

holder, but is marked as contested. If some or all points are not held at all, the area belongs to 

nobody.

Control of territory currently has no mechanical effect and is largely cosmetic and RP-focused.

WARBANDS

--------

Warbands are squads of troops that are invulnerable to attack by players and can only be killed by 

other troops.

Currently, warbands resolve orders during alternating turns at a rate of one full turn per two hours.

 The Steelhew regime resolves first, then one hour later, all other troops resolve. This will be 

altered to accomodate additional factions after testing and expansion takes place.

Orders can be issued to warbands via tell by any city council member, war minister or war aide 

within an allied city. The syntax is as follows:

- TELL <warband> <order>

Currently, the following factions exist:

- Troops loyal to Juxa cannot be ordered by anyone.

- Troops loyal to the Eastern Coalition can be ordered by Enorianites and Duiranites.

- Troops loyal to the Republic can be ordered by Spireans.

Possible orders are currently:

- MARCH TO <vnum>:  An orderly march. Cannot bypass enemy troops. (10 rooms/turn)

- CHARGE AT <vnum>: A reckless charge! Can bypass enemy troops. (5 rooms/turn)

- ENTRENCH:         Construct some temporary defences or seize unmanned barricades.

- SPLIT:            Divide the warband into two halves.

For engineers:

- FORTIFY:   Construct a barricade to house your troops. (three turns)

- TRAP:      Construct a pitfall to snare charging enemy troops. (two turns)

- UNDERMINE: Begin destroying any construction in the room. (variable)

Some other, non-turn-based commands are:

- CLEAR ORDERS:

- ATTACK <target>:      The warband will attempt to attack this target during combat.

- WHAT IS YOUR CLASS:   The warband will reply with the unit type.

- WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS: The warband will reply with an order summary.

COMBAT

------

There are five unit classes at this time.

Infantry      Advantage: Archers.    Weakness: Heavies.

Rank and file soldiers.

Heavies       Advantage: Infantry.   Weakness: Archers.

Heavy infantry, cavalry, or similar large hard-hitters like minotaurs or golems.

Archers       Advantage: Heavies.    Weakness: Infantry.

Marksmen, slingers, or anyone with a mundane ranged attack.

Channelers    Advantage: All.        Weakness: Special.

Magicians, necromancers, wielders of the arcane. Channelers will lose their type advantage if they 

are not defended by troops from the same specific faction.

Engineers     Advantage: None.       Weakness: None.

Sappers, construction workers, terramancers, or anyone with a shovel and a backbone. Engineers are 

largely useless in combat, but are excellent at building fortifications and pitfalls, or destroying 

enemy fortifications.

Setne

Can't wait until we get to the Renaissance age and get Spies, then I'll really shine.

Ishin

@Maghak That doesn't sound bad at all man. So long as we're not like, marching around units of 250-500 hoplites all day and having to camp on them, I'm game bro. Paper-rock-scissors doesn't sound like a bad setup, depending on how the engagement mechanics and stuff work. Not too complex I don't think. I thought we had a setup like that once way back in the day, I recall each city having several troop types? But that was years and years ago, back when I was still a scrub.

Jensen

Thank you for working on and icly testing a new and updated war mechanic.  No matter the outcome, I appreciate the effort put forth to keep the game dynamic

Maghak

I have unfortunately been side-swiped by University starting up again, but 99% of our prep is done! It may be slightly later than intended, but we should be moving ahead in the next day or so.

Moirean

Yay!

Sarita

If the territory recruits are going to stay the same for future events, it may be helpful to include a chart like the one for guards listing which kind of band fits into each category for each city.

And a question: Is Bloodloch going to end up somewhere on the faction list?