Power

[Alator]

@Balance Team

Need your help on this. Power is in a weird state right now. It doesn't mean much if the town is not being sieged (currently: many more buildings are in the works). However, once sieges start, it looks like sieges will be almost TOO much in favor of the attacker. Start thinking about this. I'm going to be posting up the configs in the next couple days with the current info so you can analyze.

 

[ShadowRavynn]

Thats interesting, because someone - I think mala?? was telling me that last map they were trying to destroy a town and have 5 siege machines aimed at it and it was regenning power (?) faster than the turrest could do dmg? I could be slightly off on that - but I think thats what he said...

LOL

 

[MalaWolf]

Yeah I'm not sure how much of it has changed this map regarding power/regen, and there were issues with Kainzo manually resetting the power of the town we targeted following glitches with defense cannons, but I feel that an active town will have no issue repelling outpost attacks.

So please correct me if my stats are wrong but an a soul cannon, fires at a rate of 1 power every 10 minutes using 1 tnt, 3 coal, 3 redstone and requires an input of 5 diamonds/emeralds. There is also an itial pause of 30 minutes where the cannon does nothing. Finally, after 4 shots it upgrades to a t2 cannon, firing at 1 power per 9 minutes, then after another 60 shots it upgrades to a t3 cannon firing at 1 power every 8 minutes.

1 Outpost can build 2 cannons and under normal circumstances you wouldn't be able to build/fund more. (My massive assault last map was funded by an entire maps worth of mining, where I spent 10k souls and 7-8 stacks of tnt to fund 4 outposts (8 cannons) ) So realistically, after 1 day of straight tnt, you will have done 300ish damage in power. The daily increase in power from a t3 town is 140, so having fired 150 times from each cannon (without enemy town interference) for a straight 24 hours, using 4 stacks of tnt, you are doing around 160 damage to power. This is at maximum...

However; in order to do this much damage with a single outpost per day you need;

• To be online for the entire 24 hours attending the cannons (pretty much impossible, realistically you will only have them up for 6ish hours, and probably not even that because the defending town can interrupt the cannons, or steal from them easily. You need total dominance over the town you are sieging to keep the cannons online)
• Preventing sabotage against siege cannons (A level 60 miner can build a vanilla tnt cannon and destroy your cannon in 1 hit as outposts do not prevent block breaking (not sure if it prevents left clicking, but a tnt cannon was used to take my siege cannons offline last map, wasting all the money the attackers put it, and a lot of time as the cannons need to warm up again.
• Have all the materials ready (imo gunpowder/tnt is very rare and it's a huge risk to put them towards assaulting a town.)

So while the numbers do let you do pretty heavy damage to a town the realistic requirements prevent that number from being pretty large, and from my experience the town power regen stubs most/any damage do you put into the town. A true siege would need multiple people on during multiple time-zones that are willing to waste a lot of time standing around preventing damage to siege cannons.

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In my overall opinion, town power should either be reworked or scrapped. I am personally not a big fan of the massive risk/massive reward that is town sieging, where you spend large amounts of money/time/energy to completely destroy a town. (and according to Multitaltened) then grief said town on a pirate looting treasure hunt. imo players shouldn't be able to permanently lose town regions, as it is unfun and discourages the assembly of great looking towns. (if there is the potential they can be destroyed/claimed over).

I think that power should either be more fluid, easier to take towns to 0 power, but loss of power not be as damaging. (Maybe disable town safe-zones, defense mechanisms, allow door use ect) but prevent the grief and total destruction that is allowed now.

Either that or remove power as an element of townships 3.0, it's not fun and as evident from the type of pvp on the server now, focus on the traditional sense of raiding/town attack found on traditional hero-craft. (bring it back to basics.)

Tldr; Town Power is fine/probably to weak for the attackers due to realistic requirements, and that imo the current power system is dumb and needs a rework.

 

[ShadowRavynn]

I agree that we should not have to worry about l I sing piwer, deregionING all the way down and whoever is sieging should not be able to completely destroy the town.

Especially on the freaking PVE side of the map... Imho...if ppl wanted to siege and pvp, they would have made their town on pvp... I don't mind the power and I like the idea of having to feed power to the bldgs to keep regions intact... but I do NOT agree with PVE towns being the ones getting siege nor do I agree with towns being wiped off the face of the world... ESPECIALLY considering how horribly long it takes for SMALL groups if ppl to get their towns built, designed, populated l, region ed and upgraded...

Are we trying to have fun or let's just drive off those of us who don't want to pvp much so we can reduce our player base even more... lol.

AND.... string doesn't work to check I f you are even IN a War zone... it only says if you can build or not...

AND.... it would have potentially been fine if we were told about the possible destruction of our towns if we are on east or west sides of northern continent...

Mmkaayy.. I am done for now. Lol.

♡♡♡
Ravynn

 

[Alator]

So, I'm turning this into a power/raiding/sieging/resource management thread.

This is what Kainzo wants from war:
1) wars should stop money gain (or even lower it) so towns cant sit there and accumulate vast amounts of wealth
2) wars should make towns "less safe" but should have some limit imposed so you cant always be at war
3) towns eventually need to be "cleaned up"
Sieging --- I'm guessing is the attempt to lower town output to stop currency gain.

Sorry Ravyn, PvE towns won't (I'm 99% sure) won't be safe from war. General raiding/harassment, sure, but not war.

Power, war, and resource management all tie in to each other. I agree that the sieging function, while cool on paper, is obnoxious and messy in practice. Towns, especially "end game" towns, have the potential to produce stupid amounts of cash, even with the taxes. I need your (the balance team's) help in smoothing all of this out. We need to get this worked out without the 'this is stupid/players will leave" comments. It's what we have, we need to make it work for everyone, or else remove all money generation and just lower taxes (boring).

Raiding:
Right now superregions set chest access to false for everything within its control. I want chest access (raidable chests) true for everywhere except housing. Maybe councilrooms. Block up your chests or lose your stuff. Makes the raiders happy, while still helping to prevent townie-theft

Power:
I want to change the way power works. Right now it is meaningless. In the past, it made sieging stupid and was crazy unbalanced (from what I understand). I want power to be an internal resource, think the Command and Conquer games. You need power to run your base (town). Right now town passive regeneration is crazy high, and the structures of power are nothing in comparison to the town regen.

The only town that cannot build structures of power is the tribe. The larger the town gets, the more structures of power it can build. If a town builds the maximum number of structures allowed, it should net a NEGATIVE amount of power. The larger the town, the larger that net negative should be. Towns can counter this by activating a new structure (We'll call it Soul Focus) that acts as as the emergency generation function that has been removed from council rooms+. This will cost emeralds to activate, and drain money out of a town's bank. So that's the tradeoff: activate a few extra structures, or keep your power level safe?

Sieging:
Remove siege cannons/defense cannons. Outposts/military base upkeep costs will increase. They will serve as forward operating bases for wars, or embassy/tradeposts.

War:
Will function essentially as it does now, however I will admit I don't know much of the ins-and-out of the system. I need to do more testing on Visions. My understanding is that it costs a fee to start a war, with a multiplier depending on the level difference between the towns and the number of members. Once the flagging system, is set up, war will flag you PvP-on for your opponent (last I heard. This could have changed). War kills reduce town power, with a spawn-camping cooldown. The value of that power reduction can be changed depending on how we balance power (see above), but it is currently set to 1. Towns can sue for peace for a fee, again adjusted by difference between town sizes and number of members. I don't think there is a 'grace period' where towns cannot be re-warred after a war ends currently. This needs to be added.

Aggressor: either wins the war (is paid the fee to sue for peace), gets bored and gives it up, or is counterattacked and sues for peace/loses power themself.
Defender: either surrenders (sues for peace), loses power (superregion, not subregion, block protection removed temporarily and the war ends), or counters the attacker and wins the war.

The purpose of war is twofold. Give a 'step up' for raiding, and to help remove money from the server.

This isn't a quick change, as several bugs need to be fixed, and several functionality aspects needed to be added. I want us to put together a decent gameplan here before we release it to the public for comments.

 

[ShadowRavynn]

I have no problem with war itself... but can we get clarification please.

Can an attacker or someone who goes to war with you destroy your council room chest and thus permanent destroy your town where you have to completely remake the town again?

Out of my entire post...that is my main issue and one I cannot get a clear answer on... LOL

 

[ShadowRavynn]

Am on my phone at the moment but wanted to comment real fast before I get home tonight...

I personally think that ALL chests in towns should be raidable, including housing... put a block on it or oh well.

Now my understandING for power is if your structure has power, the nonmembers are unable to open the doors to get to the unlocked chests..

Another thing I think that would increase interest is if there were a special...subjugation...Blick out in council room chest. And if the Raiders are able to take it back and hold it in their town's council room chest, thena portion of the housing income diverts from the subjugated towns bank to the Raiders bank.

People want bragging rights, and the subjugated town could be marked somehow with an emblem or tag or something that shows who they are subjugated to.

This could also introduce new temporary titles into the system and give a cool goal for ppl to raid for.

♡♡♡
Ravynn

 

[Alator]

I have no problem with war itself... but can we get clarification please.

Can an attacker or someone who goes to war with you destroy your council room chest and thus permanent destroy your town where you have to completely remake the town again?

Out of my entire post...that is my main issue and one I cannot get a clear answer on... LOL

As it stands now, it is technically possible to destroy a superregion, however it is practically infeasible. I plan on changing this by altering the outcome of a successful war.

Am on my phone at the moment but wanted to comment real fast before I get home tonight...

I personally think that ALL chests in towns should be raidable, including housing... put a block on it or oh well.

Now my understandING for power is if your structure has power, the nonmembers are unable to open the doors to get to the unlocked chests..

Another thing I think that would increase interest is if there were a special...subjugation...Blick out in council room chest. And if the Raiders are able to take it back and hold it in their town's council room chest, thena portion of the housing income diverts from the subjugated towns bank to the Raiders bank.

People want bragging rights, and the subjugated town could be marked somehow with an emblem or tag or something that shows who they are subjugated to.

This could also introduce new temporary titles into the system and give a cool goal for ppl to raid for.

♡♡♡
Ravynn

We want mayors to have some prism log review commands, but the more townie theft we prevent the better, which is why I would like to have housing chests protected, but I'll consider it.

The subjugation thing is an interesting idea. I don't think we could get what you have described exactly, not cleanly anyway, but I can think of other options. Such as:

• Increase all taxes by 20-30%
• Make the central structures generate money equivalent to the tax increase per day.
• Make the central structure have dragon eggs as a reagent. Tribe needs 1 , towns need 2, etc.
• If a town loses a war, the block protections drop, and the attacking town can steal the dragon eggs from the central structure as they loot the town.
• The losing town has the option to either purchase new dragon eggs from the server, or try to buy them back from the attacker at a hopefully discounted rate.