I was in the bookstore yesterday, reading some books that catalogued the Battle of Poitiers and the Battle of Agincourt, and as I sat reading, I realized how awesome it would be to see large-scale battle like this in Lusty.

Now, I remember the old Armies topic that was in Ideas a few months back, and I tell you that we really don't need a system that allows for massive armies. We can have large-scale battles without any NPC involvement at all. Or any Divine involvement, for that matter.

How you ask? The solution is simple, though has to be explained in steps.

Step 1: The battlefield

As large-scale battles require a degree of freedom of movement for positioning of troops, troop movements, flanking, etc, these battles would need to take place in a wide-open area. Luckily, we have such areas. Suitable places for large battles include Verasavir, Oleanvir, Toronada, Northern Seren, the Moors, the Skarch, etc.

Step 2: The troops

So, you're probably wondering how we would have a battle like this. Well, it'll take a bit of OOC planning. For the best results, we should try to gather as many fighters as possible. For matters of simplicity and example, I'll use Celest vs Magnagora. Gathering all active fighters in a call to arms, should provide at least 20 fighters for each side. From there, you can move into organizing troops. Ultimately, this would depend upon the army commander, but certain standard matters, mages = archers, guardians = support, warriors = infantry, would come into play. Those with mounts could count as cavalry and be used as such. Once you have your army divided into regiments, you could put field commanders in charge of them. From then on, they would act independently of the rest of the army, while still taking orders from the commander. Thus, for the sake of simplicity, let's say you now have 5 regiments of 4 fighters each on each side.

Step 3: The combat

Here's where a bit of the challenge will come in. Group combat in Lusternia right now currently focuses on a swarming strategy. Bunch all your fighters together and run headlong into the enemy. Focus on one at a time and hope that you can kill them faster than they kill you. I don't know about anyone else, but I find this manner of fighting very BORING. Instead, in a large battle like this, we will have to train ourselves to not bunch up and to make use of the open space and multiple regiments we have to perform flanking maneuvers. For example, taking a front-line regiment of 3 unmounted Paladins and 1 Celestine into a northeasterly charge against a front-line regiment of 2 unmounted Ur'guard and 2 Nihilists. While the two regiments sit locked in battle, a second regiment of 3 Aquamancers and 1 mounted Paladin would move up to a room south of the skirmish and begin casting Hailstorm (arrow storm) to the North. From there, the Magnagoran front-line would be faced with sticking it out under the hail, retreating back to the north, or if one of the front-line Paladins hadn't blocked south, charge the Aquamancer unit. Such jockeying for position would add a whole new degree of scope to group battle.

As for casualities of battle, this is where it gets tricky again. There would probably need to be some kind of 'Geneva Convention' agreement on the rules of engagement, but something that seems reasonable to me is to allow battlefield resurrection, but if someone is forced to pray for salvation, they would be OUT of the battle for the remainder. Thus, preventing such battles from going on forever, as they most undoubtedly would if slain warriors were allowed back in. Same goes for people that would leave the battlefield by means of Cubix, Heartstop, or simply running away. If you leave the area of the battle, you would be considered withdrawn, and thus, OUT of the battle.

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Of course, this is just pure ideas at this point, but I'd love to hear everyone else's opinion on it.

I doubt anyone could muster up 20 fighters at once. Take the recent wildnodes. Everyone knows when they happen, but Serenwilde had almost no people.

Unless of course the winners got individual prizes. then Everyone would be into it. They way to get people to participate in anything =prizes.

None can field 20 fighters at once. At best, you'd have your top tier (3-5, maybe), and then the meatshields.

Most of the rest isn't feasible, because it's not effective. IRL, you live or die, and transition relatively fast. Here, to kill we need to lock down and beat on someone, which is why groups focus fire on one person at a time.

I'd like to say first that in actuality one room in Lusternia's environment can represent a rather large area. This isn't as evident in the cities as it is a savanah type environment.

I'm going to ignore the troops section, it isn't relative at all to a Rapture combat system.

I could see the anti-swarm strategy feasible. However, it would require an ingame design (skillset) that would involve altruic defense. Say for example a player is able to absorbs away types damage for another player, maybe even divert it entirely. Of course in the name of balance the diverter wouldn't be able to do much in the way of defending themselves, having focused their defense away. The defender would still have to be able to mount an assualt, otherwise this is pointless.

Hope the concept is graspable, this is essentially just a formal, and complicated meatshield technique that if woven in correctly could eliminate swarm assaults on one player and force assualts on multiple and different players at once to be able to engage the bigger players after a time.

Group combat where you don't focus on one person is just a one-on-one battle with a lot of spam in the background.

But then that's what he's saying he wants and is how battle is glorified in pictures. Battle apparently wasn't 9 people charging through sword infantry to swarm and destroy a piece of artillary. They had to cut down the smaller soldiers to get to the larger problems. Group swarming I guess wasn't feasable, seeing as how you had a back side as well as a front.

IRL, you're defending a point with sword infantry, someone gets their cavalry to ride them down, or shoots them full of arrows. Here, you're defending a point, you throw up greaterpent and have Ixion ready to smash face on anyone who manages to get around it.

Reminiscent of WoW battlegrounds... just have to create coded objectives so honestly the problem is devoting coding time to actual creation of such things.

Basically, to do this we'd need to code something entirely seperate from the normal combat system, or else have such a huge number of made up rules for what you can and can't do that we may as well just RP it.

Lusternian combat is just too different a thing than actual, real life combat for anything like this to occur.

No, I think we'd only need another skillset that provides altruistic blocking and ways to pierce it for attacking the more desirable target. If successful this would at least stop gank/swarm tactics. The widescale battle thing between players however will always have to be imagined.

Or they all just swarm the defender and then beat on the other guy?

If done right it would have to potential to make that not worthwhile, with layers and crisscrosses of defense. By the time you got to the meat, if you had focus fired on random targets you'd have total disruption (remember the 50 gallons of spam milk you get with swarm-fighting) of a force's command or those big targets would have beaten the crap out of you, if they had figured out/overpowered your defense.

Question: Why does Lusternian combat revolve around swarming tactics? That's not cool.

Answer: In real life, that doesn't happen because it only takes one or two hits to take down anything short of a tank. In order to have an interesting combat system, players need to be able to survive more than two hits. Therefore, it takes lots of damage/afflictions to take down a player. Thus, the only reliable way to take down opponents is to swarm.

Sorry. Large-scale combat in Lusternia, with players, is not really feasible. Perhaps with armies of NPCs, like with that other IRE(Aetolia?)'s war system - maybe. But it just doesn't work.

Well the theory behind it all is that in real, significant combat, you can't just run through ranks of peons and assault a tank like people do in Lusternia.

There are ways to implement barriers in Rapture against this kind of combat through skills. How complicated and enduring it would be to design it, I have no idea, but it is possible.

But yes largescale combat, as in taking in the scope of 5 adjacent rooms in the entire battle with seperate sqauds will never happen in normal combat (there'd have to be an objective to justify this tactic).

A proper war needs to have troops regimented. When opposing regiments are in the same local area, it becomes a war zone. If your regiment is killed in the war zone, its members are barred from re-entering that local area. You regimental affiliation remains until one side wins.

A regiment must include 3 members. 1 member must be a PC. If each member meets a requirement, they are granted an added power. A mounted Seren and 2 Centaurs could be mustered into a regiment of Cavalry. So long as they remain in the same room, they might be granted passive trample.

If each member of the regiment is unmounted and wielding a shield, you may take a defensive stance.. You must declare a direction that corresponds to a room exit. Anyone entering from that direction could only target people defending that direction. Each regimental member can choose their own direction. Settling into defensive position might take 10+ seconds.

only one regiment from a side may be in the same room.

Players not in a regiment may not target players in a regiment in a war zone.

What you don't seem to realize, though, is that there ARE no peons in Lusternia, unless maybe you bring your novices to fight with you.

Don't tell me that a common probate with a novice system is not a peon in might and overall effect of battle compared to someone like Daevos or any other combat ox.

Even a newbie can web, and constant webbing can seriously hinder someone.