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[War] Improvements to the Town-War System

Shadownub

ICE ICE ICE!
Legacy Supporter 3
Joined
Mar 21, 2011
Location
Spire
Hey guys,

I'm not sure whether someone's already posted some of this, or whether indeed it's still in planning, but just because I'm noob I'll post it anyway =P

As you all know, the War system in Herocraft has never quite been... complete. Currently, war consists of grabbing a handful of bloodthirsty citizens, raging to another town, banging and hammering on the front gates of the enemy town, and hoping very much that they're feeling cheery today and might just feel like exiting the safety of their beloved town to have a bit of random PvP just to satisfy their daily needs. Of course, 50% of the time the defending town won't actually like this idea and will just sit inside their town and bar the gates, which means the bloodthirsty army of citizens will rage for a bit, trash talk, and then walk home as if nothing ever happened.

There is no chaos. There is no destruction. For the most part, war is nearly entirely pointless.

However, there is the obvious point that people don't enjoy having their posessions destroyed by mindless armadas of enemies from another town who declared war because they felt like it. Towns are extremely tough to make, and thus mayors and residents don't want to lose all their hard work to what is sometimes nothing more than a band of raiders. So how can we balance the system to make war fun, but not just plain griefing.

Here's one example idea, please provide feedback.

Example: Territory Control
With the recent 2.0 Patch, things have changed within cities and towns. Towns are now required to have certain structures as they expand, such as Libraries, Guard Towers, Inns, etc. Although these are perfect also for practical use, as, for example, Inns allow large amounts of income from passing newcomers who need a safe spawn point, it is possible that these could be turned into centrepoints of the War system. Quite simply, in order to 'capture' another town, you must first control their Guard Towers, then their Library, Inn, etc. until eventually you reach their Town Hall or Headquarters (Depends on town level), which you have to capture. Each building must be held individually for 3 hours until it officially 'yours', in which time the controllers must have first killed everyone else in the structure and then remained alive/in the structure. (Also applies when the defenders try to take it back) by having the largest number of people in the structure, which means lots of work When you do this you must also kill the mayor, upon which you gain control of the town. This, of course, doesn't mean that citizens can't revolt against you and your new uses of the city, or that the old mayor cannot return with his own army to take the city back. But it would give war a bit of strategy and also explain how things work.

Advantages:
-Fun and not extremely hard to understand, although I'm terrible at explaining things
-Makes sense with the new system
-Doesn't require any extra work

Disadvantages:
-Mayor will be very annoyed if he just suddenly gets stormed and loses his town.
-If people have to go offline, things get screwy.
-Conflicts with "NO PVP IN TOWNS" rule, although that could be 'changed' so that members of one faction could attack members of other factions during war, upon which, for example, the rings would be turned to netherrack and lit on fire.
-Sleeping/Marking and Recalling in Key Structures could be very, very annoying, especially in the case of the latter, as beds can be destroyed. If Recalls/Marks were impossible inside Key Structures, that would be nice. Sleeping, I believe, would be strategic and should be allowed.

If you have any of your own ideas, post away! =)

Cheese,
Shadowhand/Sigpit
 

AlexDaParrot

Legacy Supporter 5
Joined
Jan 12, 2011
Yeh, this all sounds awesome in concept, but once you get to the point where towns paid large amounts of money are being taken over because they can't be online 24/7 to always be guarding their key structures, many people will dislike the system.
 

AussieDingbat

Legacy Supporter 5
Joined
Jan 15, 2011
Location
Australia
There isn't a "No PVP in towns" rule anymore, as far as I'm aware. If you can pvp, and you're not at spawn (i.e. a bug in regions makes pvp on there for some reason), then I'm pretty sure you can PVP.

What I think would be better, instead of the threat of losing towns due to inactivity, is perhaps on another map, the "War Map" for arguments sake, a town could build outposts for certain amounts of coin, and then perhaps we could fight over them. Those that controlled an outpost would have control over the surrounding chunks for maybe 100r or so, allowing them to exploit the resources in the area without competition.
(Think Sov in Eve Online or something like that)

Basically, we would need to design a system that works with current mechanics and rules, but also has some benefit for taking part in it, both for the defender and the attacker.
 

pyrokinetic

Legacy Supporter 4
Joined
Feb 7, 2011
I like the idea of having to capture all the key points of the town to take the town over, but the fact that a lot of players will be offline during invasions will make it near impossible to defend.
 

Dazureus

Legacy Supporter 4
Joined
Jan 14, 2011
Location
Texas
I think there will always be issues with a war system, but this has some potential.

I may be mistaken, but using that warzone plugin could make town-to-town wars a lot simpler. One team declares war on the other, and after a short time of preparation (thinking 1-2 days here) the defender's town is sealed off and becomes a warzone. Restricting access to only participants of the war would be immensely helpful (this could use it's own list submitted at the time of declaration of war or simply use the town's charter), and perhaps we could allow bringing items from the outside. After it ended any carnage could be reset (or not) and the winner gains or retains control of the town. Of course there would be things to do when a winner is determined- if the war is lost, all LWCs could be removed and all citizens have to comply with the new mayor or leave.

I also think it should be possible to call allies. Towns A, B, and C come together and attack Town D, Town D calls for the help of Towns X, Y, and Z, X and Z consent but Town Y refuses, now it's ABC versus DXZ in Town D's territory. The members of ABC can enter one team's gate, and the members of DXZ can enter the other.


Kingdoms should be able to declare war on other Kingdoms. Extra large battlefields with multiple checkpoints!
 

Shadownub

ICE ICE ICE!
Legacy Supporter 3
Joined
Mar 21, 2011
Location
Spire
Thanks for the feedback guys, I appreciate it.

First, a response for Aussie...
I love the idea of a separate "WAR" Map in which you could fight over resources and such. It's an excellent idea and has a lot of potential. I have only one question - would the events in the WAR map have any effect on the main server map? For example, would outposts in WAR govern territories in just the WAR map itself, or also in the Main Map? If it effected 'territory control' in the Main, it would be a nice change of things, and would be very fun as well as giving War a new, realistic purpose, although it holds the problem there of not leaving enough land for the Wilderness to control. Aside from that, awesome.

The largest problem with the Key Structure [Territory] Control idea appears to be activity, and there are a few points to be discussed here. One remedy to this problem that I thought of is that both towns that are at war must first decide a time that they can wage war with at least 8 people on each team for at least 4 hours, although this makes war 'planned' and scheduled, which is really defeating the purpose in a way. Alternatively, the attacking team might have to signal their attack a few days beforehand and the defenders don't have a choice in whether they can change the timings or not. During the time that the attackers specify, both towns become griefable, PvP enablde and their rings are set alight to signify that they are at war. This allows for Defenders to also make sneaky comebacks while the rings are alight, so that, for example, half of the defenders could stay at their hometown while the other half tunnel underground until they reach about 200 blocks from an enemy city, where they set up camp and lay siege to the enemy town. If control of any one structure has not been achieved by an attacking team within the time that they specified a few days beforehand, nothing happens, really. Any 'grief damage' done by other towns will be reset during this time if possible (Yes, Daz, I like your idea xP)

In other words, Dazureus's idea is my favourite at the moment, and if a plugin could do all that for us, then even better.

Keep posting ideas, guys =)

Cheese,
S
 

Jorict

Legacy Supporter 7
Joined
Jun 4, 2011
The capturing of a town, rather than losing the town, if said attackers were a kingdom/looking for kingdom, they could take them over to become part of their kingdom. So, if someone had a kingdom, and this one town had a high export/income, they could capture them, and tax the a high tax to help with upkeep and other kingdom affairs.

To leave the kingdom, you would need to rebel by keeping all of your current kingdoms men, out of your town, and hold all positions for 3 days or something of the such. Or even possibly storm the Capital and and become the King yourself.
 

Dazureus

Legacy Supporter 4
Joined
Jan 14, 2011
Location
Texas
That was my original plan, arranging battles in the FFA map with previously-decided-upon
consequences. Got a lot of hate over that. xP

The length of warzone battles is determined by the amount of deaths on either side, so activity wouldn't really be an issue in this case. You just reduce the other team's lives to zero and the battle ends. Whether this is all that determines who won is another story. With the plugin the capture points aren't very important to winning at all- it's essentially capture the flag, and gaining control of checkpoints merely lets them heal you. I'd almost assume that this aspect could be removed in favor of constant PvP, but something closer to TF2 capture points, with a single extra-important one (like in the Town Hall) would be more favorable.
 
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