Suggestion War/Raiding Plugin development

[Jack_Reacher]

I'm getting so excited!

 

[Xargun]

Quick Question - easy thing for either side to do is keep no money in the town bank. You only need money in the bank once a week for taxes and other than that there is no reason to keep money in the bank. Even if it costs 1000c to build it, you deposit the 1000c build the outpost and once again your bank is empty.

 

[kirinelf]

Perhaps with capitulation, you pay a town to be your protector, and you no longer can have war declared on you. Every time someone wants to declare war on you, they have to attack your liege lord instead. The vassal pays 1/4 of what the drain costs would be for protection (i.e. 30c/day for a small town). Both towns would suffer coin loss for killing one another (by individual, or if they have no money, from the town).

This liege lord would then have higher drain costs when they are attacked, so they lose more money if someone puts an outpost near their town (+25% drain cost per vassal). But the liege lord towns would likely be the ones who relish having more pvp come to their doorstep.

This incentivises small towns to seek protection from larger towns or pvp towns against other raiders. The protector state now gets money, but faces more incentive for attack.

You'd be able to capitulate before and during a war. But if you make yourself a vassal before the war, your Lord gets a benefit in a consistent small income, whereas during a war, they've already paid money to declare war etc. If you waited until after someone declared war on you, you'd prolly have to pay them a lump sum in addition to the vassalage tribute to convince them to accept the agreement.

Very nice ideas, although this does put a small town in great financial stress. Not only do they have to worry about paying the weekly tax, they also need to pay tribute to a bigger town to stay safe from attack.

Well, that's how it is in real life anyways. xD Best not to start a town until you have somewhere in the 10k c's, etc.

(I'm always thinking in terms of newbies/small towns/underdogs. It's much more fun to have a fair fight than it is to more or less run the small guys out of the world)

 

[LightningCape]

Gives towns a reason to trim their inactive members.

Also most of these small towns die out currently anyway....

Anything that can do this I would support.

 

[northeaster345]

Quick Question - easy thing for either side to do is keep no money in the town bank. You only need money in the bank once a week for taxes and other than that there is no reason to keep money in the bank. Even if it costs 1000c to build it, you deposit the 1000c build the outpost and once again your bank is empty.

Hmm, maybe we could start counting it as an extra missed payment if you run out of money during the week, could happen once per week.

 

[northeaster345]

Very nice ideas, although this does put a small town in great financial stress. Not only do they have to worry about paying the weekly tax, they also need to pay tribute to a bigger town to stay safe from attack.

Well, that's how it is in real life anyways. xD Best not to start a town until you have somewhere in the 10k c's, etc.

(I'm always thinking in terms of newbies/small towns/underdogs. It's much more fun to have a fair fight than it is to more or less run the small guys out of the world)

I think part of the problem we run into is a lot of people just want to have a town because they think it's some wonderful thing, where it's really a lot of work. It's not a ton of money to pay tribute every day. You can get 30c just from voting. Still making a town should be a significant investment, since sooo many towns just die out. This also helps establish new towns though, since you can put pressure on older larger towns that are now ghost towns, clearing out space for all the people who want to give it a shot.

 

[dragonzero39]

Im not going to entirely shoot down this idea because I do think that to a degree, this server could use some sort of raiding / war plugin. However, there are many many weeks and months that would be put into this project. First off, money should never be taken out of either sides town bank. That's unfair to players who contribute; not all heroes are made to fight nor do they have the cpu potential to partake in large wars. A strong capital could crush a town of new players, such as Willowdusk. This could also lead to people being harassed for the duration of the war, which is why a time limit should be placed, and after that time limit the same two towns cannot be at war for X amount of weeks to allow time for rebuilding and rehabilitation. These are just two things in a list of sub-suggestions. Keep in mind the towns that are more build oriented and the players that cant always pvp as well as others just because of their pc. Also, the town that is defending should get more of a reward for kills than the town that was cocky enough to declare the war.

 

[northeaster345]

Im not going to entirely shoot down this idea because I do think that to a degree, this server could use some sort of raiding / war plugin. However, there are many many weeks and months that would be put into this project. First off, money should never be taken out of either sides town bank. That's unfair to players who contribute; not all heroes are made to fight nor do they have the cpu potential to partake in large wars. A strong capital could crush a town of new players, such as Willowdusk. This could also lead to people being harassed for the duration of the war, which is why a time limit should be placed, and after that time limit the same two towns cannot be at war for X amount of weeks to allow time for rebuilding and rehabilitation. These are just two things in a list of sub-suggestions. Keep in mind the towns that are more build oriented and the players that cant always pvp as well as others just because of their pc. Also, the town that is defending should get more of a reward for kills than the town that was cocky enough to declare the war.

The idea of time limits is fine, but I want to point out that I deliberately added multiple ways to deal with an attacker.

Simply being active when they are busy is enough to take charges out of the outpost. Getting rid of the outpost also gives you a reward. You can cast purge outpost while pvpers are in a deathmatch and do damage to the outpost.

It does not require pvp to eliminate an attacker, simply determination and activity.

 

[Jack_Reacher]

dragonzero39 - A weak, new town would need (at times) to rely on the help of stronger, established towns. This would deepen roleplay and diplomacy.

 

[kirinelf]

I think part of the problem we run into is a lot of people just want to have a town because they think it's some wonderful thing, where it's really a lot of work. It's not a ton of money to pay tribute every day. You can get 30c just from voting. Still making a town should be a significant investment, since sooo many towns just die out. This also helps establish new towns though, since you can put pressure on older larger towns that are now ghost towns, clearing out space for all the people who want to give it a shot.

I know exactly where you're coming from, but people have different ideas for towns. Most people, and the whole idea for having a town, is to have a place that can grow, self sustain, act as a meeting point for new friends, be safe from griefers and stealers, etc. Some people just want a little private town for them and their friends, no one else (for the moment at any rate). They can afford to pay the weekly tax by voting everyday, but as soon as war comes knocking, well, they're dead. They only have like eight members, for example, not all of them active due to RL commitments. Other towns are building towns, catering to non-PvP'ers. It's easy for them since they might already have a lot of resources they use for building, but again those are resources meant for building, not trading for diplomatic immunity.

No one wants a world filled with ghost towns, but neither does a person like to be harassed or bullied. I myself am not a PvP person (I personally see Minecraft as a game for Mining and Crafting, not Fighting or Killing), but since I'm not in a town at the moment I'm personally safe from raiding/wars and losing all my money.

But one thing I can see coming out of this is the ability for higher ranked combat classes to hire their services out to younger towns as mercenaries, or for a guardian town being formed who helps out younger towns without need for tribute until they reach a certain member size. More... not quite roleplaying, but interaction. Which is always good.

 

[northeaster345]

No one wants a world filled with ghost towns, but neither does a person like to be harassed or bullied. I myself am not a PvP person (I personally see Minecraft as a game for Mining and Crafting, not Fighting or Killing), but since I'm not in a town at the moment I'm personally safe from raiding/wars and losing all my money.

I don't see myself as a PvPer either, I spend most of my time building big structures. I have played enough though to know how to defend myself, and I appreciate why we want pvp. I don't get as much satisfaction from playing on creative servers because there's not any constraints or as much effort put into a structure. It doesn't do or mean anything. That's part of why I enjoy this server, there are many different aspects for people to engage in.

If you want to build a town and recruit new members, you should have to engage with the rest of the server, and have interactions. If someone's bullying your town, find someone out there who doesn't like them, and get them to help you. If they're being douches, there's gotta be someone out there who they've pissed off as well. Conflicts and competition help give the community a focus and make people interact with one another. If you want to build with friends off in the corner of the world and not have any obligation to interact with other people, I think you should build a personal region.

People already are able to go find you and kill you all the time, it makes you careful, and it keeps things from getting stale. If people are harassing you, someone else declaring war on them means they have to split their forces, or leave their outpost to be destroyed by the defenders. The point is to make towns interact with one another in interesting ways, instead of everyone sitting off in their own regions never dealing with anyone else.

Someone can always track you down, bounty you for all of your money, and destroy your cash. Just because they can. You're not safe now either, nor is your money, though your LWCs are still safe.

Is it fair for a town with only 8 members and 4 active members to take a town spot that many other groups are eager to try and build a town?

Remember again, you don't have to necessarily engage the attackers head on, you can always wait for them not to be there in order to remove the outpost. If you can't muster up 2-3 people over a 48 hour period to find time to get rid of an outpost, that's pretty inactive, in my opinion. It takes 3 people 3 ish hours, or logging on 3-4 times when the outpost is inactive, not necessarily contiguous, to get rid of an outpost and make more money than they've lost in the time frame. That's not a lot to ask in my opinion.


The attackers wouldn't even break even for a looong time. I'm not really sure why you would attack a small town. Defender loses 120c/day, gets 250c for destroying outpost, attacker loses 500c. If you get rid of the outpost within 48 hours, you make money, and the attacker loses 500c, on top of the cost to declare war.

Attacker: costs money to declare war, 1000c, costs items to set up outpost, only gets 30c/day from the town.
That's over a month of keeping the outpost up before they even break even vs a small town, excluding items too...

If someone puts up an outpost against a small town for a month, and nothing is done, that town is inactive. It just doesn't make economic sense from the attacker's perspective to attack a small town, unless they really want to drain it's town bank, and think the town is inactive, and that no one will attack them in the mean time.

 

[kirinelf]

I don't see myself as a PvPer either, I spend most of my time building big structures. I have played enough though to know how to defend myself, and I appreciate why we want pvp. I don't get as much satisfaction from playing on creative servers because there's not any constraints or as much effort put into a structure. It doesn't do or mean anything. That's part of why I enjoy this server, there are many different aspects for people to engage in.

In part, I agree with this. Creative servers are boring for me, but the reason I play Survival is because I like to gather my materials rather than have them handed to me on a platter. Bartering with people, exchanging services, coop building and scavenging, that's what I like. Not the griefing, the ganking, the camping, the looting and the stealing. Of course, can't have one without the other unless you want a huge storm. Fun fact: On Minestatus, the top twenty or so servers are all advertised as PvP. This means that people are playing Minecraft mostly to PvP, rather than to mine/craft. Just something I found interesting.

If you want to build a town and recruit new members, you should have to engage with the rest of the server, and have interactions. If someone's bullying your town, find someone out there who doesn't like them, and get them to help you. If they're being douches, there's gotta be someone out there who they've pissed off as well. Conflicts and competition help give the community a focus and make people interact with one another. If you want to build with friends off in the corner of the world and not have any obligation to interact with other people, I think you should build a personal region.

I totally wouldn't mind having my own region, except that I don't currently have the money to donate. (I can totally hear you saying, "Well that's YOUR fault." xD)

People already are able to go find you and kill you all the time, it makes you careful, and it keeps things from getting stale. If people are harassing you, someone else declaring war on them means they have to split their forces, or leave their outpost to be destroyed by the defenders. The point is to make towns interact with one another in interesting ways, instead of everyone sitting off in their own regions never dealing with anyone else.

Someone can always track you down, bounty you for all of your money, and destroy your cash. Just because they can. You're not safe now either, nor is your money, though your LWCs are still safe.

But isn't the whole point of a town to provide safety and security to its residences?

Townships exist to create a safehaven for communities of players where they can live and function as a miniature society.

^ From the wiki itself.

[*] Join a township to have increased protection! <= From the automated server messages.

Allowing the town to choose whether or not to participate in a war should be important, in my opinion at any rate.

Is it fair for a town with only 8 members and 4 active members to take a town spot that many other groups are eager to try and build a town?

That'll depend. On the one hand, not everyone puts a town in a particular location. Oh sure the popular spots close to graveyards and all. But if they're active, are good players, make good builds, etc. I don't see a single problem with letting a small town have their spot. Sure, bigger towns might want it, but there's no guarantee they'll do a better job than that smaller town in terms of using the space efficiently, aside from being, well, bigger. Fair? Well, define fair. xD

Remember again, you don't have to necessarily engage the attackers head on, you can always wait for them not to be there in order to remove the outpost. If you can't muster up 2-3 people over a 48 hour period to find time to get rid of an outpost, that's pretty inactive, in my opinion. It takes 3 people 3 ish hours, or logging on 3-4 times when the outpost is inactive, not necessarily contiguous, to get rid of an outpost and make more money than they've lost in the time frame. That's not a lot to ask in my opinion.

It'll depend on the cooldown of the skill you proposed. That said, I know that there'll be people who, after placing an outpost, would schedule their town members times when they would need to be on (In advance, most likely. Organized warfare and all). If they do this, you'll never have an inactive outpost. Let's say you were a relatively pacifist town whose members only mine and fight off mobs. You'd be lucky to have a specialization in a combat class then, if you weren't actively farming mobs to level it. You have maybe two inexperienced members on against a highly skilled specialized PvP'er, or more than one. And every 3rd or 4th kill the attacker gets, the outpost is recharged. A little lopsided, wot?

The attackers wouldn't even break even for a looong time. I'm not really sure why you would attack a small town. Defender loses 120c/day, gets 250c for destroying outpost, attacker loses 500c. If you get rid of the outpost within 48 hours, you make money, and the attacker loses 500c, on top of the cost to declare war.

Attacker: costs money to declare war, 1000c, costs items to set up outpost, only gets 30c/day from the town.
That's over a month of keeping the outpost up before they even break even vs a small town, excluding items too...

If someone puts up an outpost against a small town for a month, and nothing is done, that town is inactive. It just doesn't make economic sense from the attacker's perspective to attack a small town, unless they really want to drain it's town bank, and think the town is inactive, and that no one will attack them in the mean time.

Reasons for attacking a small town:

1. Practice.
2. Taking them out to get a bit of money.
3. Free up the region for their own control.
4. Grudge against members.
5. Other towns too strong to attack.
6. Eliminate inactive towns.

For a big town, resources, items and money really aren't all that much, especially if they're confident about winning. Last night, I was on the server when an old player came on after having left for a bit. When he left (Not sure when, admittedly) the richest player on the server had 10k. Now that's considered small potatoes, with the richest players having over 100k. Heck, just look at the towns around. Most of them are fairly highly upgraded, which require a bunch of items and coin to make. Any town that big I'd assume has plenty of spare resources to throw into taking down a few small towns in the interests of expanding.

Edit: I'd like to take a moment here to say that I DO think this is a great idea; it'll encourage a lot more interaction between towns rather than just forming Kingdoms. I'm simply worried for the smaller guys.

 

[Xargun]

One advantage to a system like this is that you can cause inactive towns to disappear faster. Say Town A is huge and wants to make another sister town but all the town slots are full. Town B has 1 semi-active player - not even the mayor - and has 5k in the bank. It will take months for that town to finally lose regions by the current system. If several towns attack it they can drain the bank faster causing it to lose regions much faster to allow a new active town to spring up somewhere.

If the bank drain is small enough (ie 120c a day) it only takes 6 active members doing nothing but voting to cover that cost. Let alone if they mine or have profession where they can make coins - enchanter, farmer, smith, etc... Something like this could be exciting and fun - perhaps a 24 hour warmup --- Town A declares war on Town B. They put up the cash and build the outpost - once built there is a 24 hour timer that starts and then the war begins. Pvping can start right away but the bank drain doesn't. The outpost would be immune until the war starts - this gives the defender 1 day to organize resistance and/or hire some mercs.

 

[kirinelf]

One advantage to a system like this is that you can cause inactive towns to disappear faster. Say Town A is huge and wants to make another sister town but all the town slots are full. Town B has 1 semi-active player - not even the mayor - and has 5k in the bank. It will take months for that town to finally lose regions by the current system. If several towns attack it they can drain the bank faster causing it to lose regions much faster to allow a new active town to spring up somewhere.

If the bank drain is small enough (ie 120c a day) it only takes 6 active members doing nothing but voting to cover that cost. Let alone if they mine or have profession where they can make coins - enchanter, farmer, smith, etc... Something like this could be exciting and fun - perhaps a 24 hour warmup --- Town A declares war on Town B. They put up the cash and build the outpost - once built there is a 24 hour timer that starts and then the war begins. Pvping can start right away but the bank drain doesn't. The outpost would be immune until the war starts - this gives the defender 1 day to organize resistance and/or hire some mercs.

The point I was trying to get at is that while it's amazingly useful, fun and a lore-friendly way of getting rid of inactive towns, it's going to be hell on small towns that're semi-active. It probably won't affect active small towns, I'm thinking, but there're any number of RL issues that might crop up and cause temporary and unannounced inactiveness.

Really, I'm just worried about the potential, rather than the probability. Like I added in my previous post, I think this is a very good idea, increasing and rewarding activity and interaction between players. I just really hate 'rich get richer, poor get poorer' situations.

 

[northeaster345]

I totally wouldn't mind having my own region, except that I don't currently have the money to donate. (I can totally hear you saying, "Well that's YOUR fault." xD)



Reasons for attacking a small town:

1. Practice.
2. Taking them out to get a bit of money.
3. Free up the region for their own control.
4. Grudge against members.
5. Other towns too strong to attack.
6. Eliminate inactive towns.

For a big town, resources, items and money really aren't all that much, especially if they're confident about winning. Last night, I was on the server when an old player came on after having left for a bit. When he left (Not sure when, admittedly) the richest player on the server had 10k. Now that's considered small potatoes, with the richest players having over 100k. Heck, just look at the towns around. Most of them are fairly highly upgraded, which require a bunch of items and coin to make. Any town that big I'd assume has plenty of spare resources to throw into taking down a few small towns in the interests of expanding.

Edit: I'd like to take a moment here to say that I DO think this is a great idea; it'll encourage a lot more interaction between towns rather than just forming Kingdoms. I'm simply worried for the smaller guys.

Yeah that's totally legit, but I wanted to throw out the idea of throw out the idea. I lived out of a few LWCs at first myself, when I started. I just feel that there are many players out there that just don't trade or engage with the server. It is a big multiplayer server, not singleplayer or a LAN world

I think all declarations of war should be a server announcement, and maybe even setting up an outpost should be a server announcement. Similar to arena output. That would let people know that it's going down. There should be a command to find the location of an outpost. (Outpost should have to be aboveground...), but we don't want people hiding them anyway.

1) I feel like a lot of the pvpers I know have somewhat short attention spans, and are looking for either constant action or quick rewards.
2) If I know people, there will be people who will just look for any sieges going on to attack them. It may not even be that the town under attack needs to do the fighting
3) It doesn't really help an established town to get rid of a town in terms of space. You can't be close enough to overlap in terms of regions. There's not much benefit to taking out a town for an established town, unless they want to split into 2 towns.
4) Small towns that don't have enough money to pay a tribute, probably don't have much worth stealing.

I think more likely of a concern is that people will do it because they can. But other towns can do the same back to them. If you put yourself in the position of attacking a town, you also are vulnerable to attack yourself. Also it broadcasts where your attacking outpost is to the world, so anyone else who's looking for a fight might swing by to attack the attackers.

PvPers are looking for fights, not to babysit an semi-active town unless there's a clear benefit.

 

[kirinelf]

I think more likely of a concern is that people will do it because they can.

And that is the crux of the matter.

This server is fairly newbie unfriendly; you're basically forced into a town with people you're not sure you can trust just to have some form of security for your chests and valuables. LWCs are 500c each for non-donors, a huge sum for a new player who's only getting 27c a day by voting and hasn't gotten any proper mining going yet, and who still needs to save up for path specs. A typical Minecrafter would have dchests upon dchests of loot, building materials, tools and food, let alone the <4 (The wiki doesn't state an exact number for non-donors) LWCs you're allowed for chests at 500c each. So you're forced to join a town of strangers to stay safe, which could die any time if the money runs out. Then you scrounge and scrounge and finally get yourself a town of your own for a huge cost, then suddenly instead of your own little themed haven you're thrown into a world where any larger town can ransack yours for the lol.

IF your system gets accepted though, this will be known well in advance and will also actually serve as a deterrent to starting new, small and private towns. There're quite a lot of useful side effects of having this system implemented, really, upon careful consideration. This does mean that you won't get new players making private towns for themselves and their mates, which is the loss of a money sink in the economy.

Hmm... I'd say that if Kainzo approves this system, it'd be a good idea to run it through all the towns that're currently on the server. Those that're inactive without notification will be counted as abstaining from voting, and it'll also give a fair amount of prior notice to all towns. Other people might even have some opinions on the subject I haven't thought of.

Overall, I still think this system is, like most systems out there, benefiting the larger towns with more resources, but that's to be expected. There are many benefits to the system, and I have to agree that the pros slightly edge out the cons in my opinion.

I'll take a closer look at the details when I have more time and comment back on that.

 

[northeaster345]

And that is the crux of the matter.

IF your system gets accepted though, this will be known well in advance and will also actually serve as a deterrent to starting new, small and private towns. There're quite a lot of useful side effects of having this system implemented, really, upon careful consideration. This does mean that you won't get new players making private towns for themselves and their mates, which is the loss of a money sink in the economy.
.

I lived in an underground base on my own last map. I had double chests upon double chests of stuff, unprotected of course. Except for my single LWC chest of valuables. As long as you have the good stuff locked up, most people won't bother to steal stuff like wool or food or whatever, as long as you're not in a very busy area.

I'd argue the exact opposite. There aren't many new towns being created on the server. Because inactive towns are taking up slots, there isn't a money sink of new towns being created. I've seen a handful of towns that are just sitting around with 5-6 members, most of which are inactive, but since they have 2000 coins in the bank, they'll be around for months, taking up a slot. I think we should allow new towns to have a shot to try this out, but raising the cap is a temporary solution, since then you just end up with more inactive towns taking up the new slots.

This is a money sink in itself too, since it costs a good sum of money to declare war on someone and set up an outpost near them. The only way to make it profitable in a reasonable amount of time is to attack a bigger town.

Again 210c/week of protection is not a lot of money, that's 20 gold ore. You can make 1k in about an hour or so with a good pick. It's really not hard to make money. There are ways to be immune from this system, they just cost slightly more money for those small towns, there's a ton of money lying around in the ground, and people have money they don't know what to do with. This is good for small towns, since as long as they are active, they can now have a chance to make their town in the first place.

Keep in mind that town tax used to be 500c/week, and gold used to sell for less, so it's not an unreasonable amount of money.

 

[Dielan9999]

This thread is all kinds of creative!

I'm not a fan of attacking towns in the first place, because it encourages ugly towns nobody can get into, but I'm all for outposts in world pvp!

 

[Jack_Reacher]

This thread is all kinds of creative!

I'm not a fan of attacking towns in the first place, because it encourages ugly towns nobody can get into, but I'm all for outposts in world pvp!

You can make an awesome looking wall!

 

[MrFly007]

Seems like a very well thought through idea, but as someone said before (I forget who) deducting from the towns bank seems alittle over the top. Some people work really hard to donate to the town and for a large scale town, almost 500c per day seems like a big price to pay.

Over all I personally would love to see some sort of war/pvp encouraging plugin go into play. Seems like it'd be very exciting and keep everyone on their toes! Looking forward to it, good luck!