Am i the only one who can't find the opening topic?

It's not there. The forums ate it.

Stupid forums.

Group combat isn't all about the numbers, its all about the druid/mage.

So true. *sigh*

Hinder, damage.

That post took like 45 minutes to write. Hold on, let me see if I can do it all again.

Estarra's thread about the conflict climate made me think more about how so many complaints about raids, and most other forms of conflict, end up featuring a bit about how annoying overwhelming numbers are. "You only raid when there's few of us", for instance. That's a large part of what's so demoralizing about conflict.

Trouble is, I don't have a brilliant idea for a solution. But maybe in the spirit of brainstorming it'd be better to post a bad idea. My hope is people will respond constructively. Tear the idea apart, but also propose something better, or a way to fix it. If we can keep the thread from devolving, we can maybe come up with a great idea.

So here's the bad idea to get things started.

Each nation has a barracks room somewhere in which up to 25 guards can be stashed. Whenever there's a raid in an area that the nation protects (a village, Nil, Celestia, Etherwilde, Etherglom), and the number of foreigners exceeds the number of citizens, members of Security can call some of those guards from the barracks from the obelisk, but only enough to even the numbers (and that only if there's enough available in the barracks).

For example, 10 Celestians and 2 Serens raid Nil. When the Magnagorans arrive, there's only five of them. At the obelisk (or equivalent) a member of Security can call up to 7 guards from the barracks, then order them around the area to help with the defense.

Guards can be dismissed the same way. Also, if another Magnagorans comes to Nil, a guard will automatically be dismissed so that the number of Magnagorans plus guards never exceeds the number of foreigners. If a guard is killed in action, he will reset back in the barracks in three RL hours.

Since a guard is never as valuable as a player, there's still an advantage in numbers and a reason to encourage people to get involved. But the sparse side of the fight won't feel so demoralized (hopefully) about being outnumbered.

Okay, so tell me why it's a bad idea but also tell me what would be a better idea.

(The forum had better not eat this again.)

What if, a Glom comes to help defend Nil with the Mags. Then not only the Mags get one extra player to defend, the system would also consider the Glom as a not-Mag, allowing for one -more- guard to be summoned. And what happens if there are no one from Security on?

I'll think of ideas soon enough.

Shrines make group combat dumb.

In any situation where there is a raid on ethereal, instantly wrath, distort/gravity (can't remember what it's called) and invasion goes up, therefore passively damaging raiders, slowing their movements, preventing escape in most cases, and sending hoards of tough mobs to assist in the defence.

On top of this it's essentially impossible to defile a shrine to nothing in enemy territory, simply takes too long.

Shrines should be like how they were before, or the number of sanctified rooms necessary to defile drastically reduced before one can reach the shrine.

Numbers...eh nothing you can really do about that.


Also--ethereal glom/seren should be meldable by both forests. The prime reflections of both are, doesn't quite make sense why the converse is not.

Its almost impossible to know the actual number of people raiding. You have to take in consideration the non-enemies, the newbies, the non-enemies that do intend to raid and get enemies for the first time... and so on and so forth.



How about more events? Idle combatants usually raid when they're bored.

I've been thinking of an event where admins would play supersoldier characters that would raid the Basin, like minions of Kethuru or something. They would have the same, or probably have mixed skillsets. They would come in waves and lusternian communes and cities would have to repell them -or- influence them to aid their cause. Just an idea... Kinda off topic really

How about if you're really outnumbered, the respective Lords go "GTFO*" and ban you from defending so you don't feel so crummy about not defending. And no, this is not a real suggestion.

* = Nejii had to explain what this meant to me when he said it on MSN

There was a good reason for that!!

That's certainly a problem with my approach. If you tried to use the same kind of "AI" that Avechna uses to figure out who's responsible for a kill, you're just setting people up to cheat against it.

And it's a good point that if you can get "foreigners" from another nation to come help you, they increase your side's numbers twice -- themselves and a guard. I almost don't mind that, because it gives people more reason to have allies, or to hire mercenaries. But it also means you can hire level 2 newbie rogues to stand there so you can get more guards. I just wonder, is it worth it? Especially since you can't have more than 25 guards in your barracks.

But in the spirit of brainstorming, let's imagine we have just developed a brilliant algorithm that's able to determine who is a raider, who is a defender, and who is a bystander. Now does the idea work? If so, then we've solved half the problem, and all we need next is that algorithm.


It'd be a good idea if we had unlimited admin time available. (Plus, if the admins had to actually fight with our actual skills sometimes, I bet we'd have fewer balance issues and probably fewer skills designed to make developing a system intolerably complicated.) But it's just not realistic to expect admins to put in that kind of time.

However, since we're brainstorming here so no idea is too radical to bring up, what if the admins offered a credit salary comparable to what people make for guiding, to play either a) members of a mercenary force that can be hired by defenders to even the odds, or B) your invaders. The salary would come with it a requirement to be available a certain amount of the time. I am highly dubious of this, but go ahead and run with it anyway.

I'm not sure that variable level guards will be a improvement on the situation, given that they will face the same limitations as other mob combat. It's potentially a good idea, though I have reservations. While the chance of the opposing team failing might be increased if you can summon a certain number of mobs to bash enemies entering your location, I highly doubt the quality of the combat tactics and competition will also rise. It's still zerging - it just means the opposing team has to have someone who can tank more. I don't find running into a room with 10 NPC's anywhere near as interesting or unpredictable as running into a room with 3 PC's, even though the chance of survival might be approximately the same.

I suppose if the idea is just to make raiding unappealing unless the opposing side has near equal strength, then it could probably work, but it doesn't really address the fundamental issues of group combat being essentially about zerging in Lusternia.

I'd like to toss around a couple of other (likely worse) ideas.

- What if there were penalties for a larger team attacking a smaller one in a single location? The larger team has to maneuvre around each other to hit only a few targets, so all of their attacks miss much more often. Or maybe the more different people that consecutively attack the same person within a certain timeframe suffer karma burn for the dishonourable fight and gain increasingly debilitating temporary afflictions.

- Also, what if the org-loyal planar areas had derivatives of the nation shields on prime, so that PC nation defenders had a certain chance attacks against them would be absorbed by the shield (so they are dodged like the acrobatics skill) and mobs had a damage reduction percentage that decreases as the sum of PC and NPC loyals on that plane increases. Sort of like there is a given amount of protection produced by the nexus to go around, and it has to be shared by angels & Celestians, or Serens & fae, or whatever. The more things to protect, the less individual protection there is. If the planar area has large amounts of org-loyal denizens and defenders readily at hand, the protection would be almost unnoticeable, but as more and more denizens or defenders are removed, the protection would increase. This is both to make complete decimation increasingly difficult, and to weight PC combat itself without introducing NPC assistance. This doesn't take into account the size of the raiding party, but it does give even a few defenders a huge advantage in protecting the last of their most important loyals. It would also make collecting too many fae/angels/demons carry certain disadvantages in protecting them, assuming it was possible to vary the amount your nation has. Maybe this could even be a nexus world upgrade.

- Alternatively, what if the avenger system was extended to planar-protected areas (and perhaps removed from some non-loyal prime arenas), and anti-zerging measures were introduced to the system itself as well as watering down the penalties for one or two kills. Perhaps if too many people attack the same person, their declare on the target is revoked for a minute or so.

I know none of these are that great, just trying to join in the brainstorming.

I actually think raiding Etherforests and cosmic planes should be really, really hard, while raiding the prime forests and cities should be much easier. After all, shouldn't it be much easier to run in and graffiti a temple than ascend into the heavens and slaughter the deities themselves which are worshipped? I think more neutral areas of conflict need to be implemented, rather than making raiding the sacred planar areas easier or more likely to be raided. And by neutral I -don't- mean like Faethorn, I mean independent and non-city/commune leaning NPC orgs that players can choose sides and battle with each other over. Why can't you pledge to join the aslaran tribe yourself, and gain access to their private headquarters, promising to try to attack and enter the krokani headquarters and those who defend it? Or something, I don't know. I remember something from years ago in Aetolia, where there was a big underground lake and you could do a quest to join one of two NPC organizations - I think they were like thieves or something. I really enjoyed the meaning behind that, moreso than a quest that has no long-term or role-immersive effects.

Group combat isn't -always- about the numbers, though it tends to be that way. Leading plays a large roll, and ability to think on your feet mid-combat.

Look at yesterday, 4 Magnagorans (2 warrior 1 mage 1 guardian) vs 10-15 Celestians (1 bard couple mages, tons of paladins and guardians). Results: 23 celestian deaths, 2 Magnagoran deaths.

Not sure if it goes here or not, but have the important denizens for an org NOT hit the org with their room attacks? Bit hard to fight against raiders if what you're defending is killing you.

Or wait, was this changed already? Hope it was. If not, please consider.

That was fun when fighting Serenwilde. The avatars smooshed Serenwilders while the Celestians killing the Avatar were happily numened I suppose changing that would be fair, but its helped me more then hurt

I often see Ashtorath beat the tar out of Magnagorans.

Think Nihilists sacrifice themselves to the Demon Lords, might be wrong though, never really been in Mag.