The defending side's 'reward' is that it gets to keep its dharma.



Oh ew. I didn't think we were talking about having the dharma you can get from enemy territories come from that territory's dharma stock. No thanks, that's going to go the same way as raids stealing power by killing angels/demons/whatever.

EDIT: Also, Daereth... Did you not even read say... the first post? The one where Estarra starts this thread?

So, Dharma idea:
1. Any Champion or Security member can go to any plane aligned with any organization and use SIPHON DHARMA to siphon the dharma from that plane. This is announced to the org that owns the plane being targetted on their city aether by the nexus keeper for the org in question. Siphoning dharma only works if the room being siphoned from has the "native" type of dharma for that plane present (see 4).

2. Siphoning dharma produces a tic every 15 seconds. If the person that initiated the siphoning is absent for any tic, the siphoning process ends. Every 4th tic siphons 1 dharma from the room out of a total of 10 dharma per room in a valid plane. If the person siphoning the dharma is allied to the organization that controls the plane being siphoned from, they get one mote of "dharmic essence" in their hands. This essence drops if they die and is used for channeling below.

3. If a room is completely drained of dharma, it becomes vulnerable to outside powers imposing a new dharma on that room. This is done by champions/security using CHANNEL DHARMA, uses a similar countdown to siphoning dharma and costs one mote of dharmic essence per point of dharma to be channeled into a room. Champions/Security can check the dharma level of a given room with SURVEY which gives messages like "The local dharma is normal.", "The local dharma has been lightly/moderately/severely weakened." and "This place is completely without dharma."

4. Channeling dharma costs dharmic essence (obtained via siphoning as above) in order to forcibly change the 'natural' terrain type (ie. the one that you get if you use TrueGround) to the type meldable by the channeling org's mages/druids. (Magnagora can taint rooms, Gaudiguch makes deserts, etc.) This even works on planes that normally can't be terrain changed, like elemental and ethereal. This can also be done on your own plane if the local dharma is all drained, but NOT if a plane-opposed style of dharma is present.

5. Instead, dharma naturally regenerates and retores itself to the default state (ie. taint for nil/earth, wyrd for ethereal Glomdoring, etc.) at a rate of 1 dharma point per IG moon phase, first removing any unnatural influence and then filling in the native dharma. This comes out to an average of 1 dharma every 4 RL hours or three and a third RL days to go from 100% alternate dharma to 100% natural dharma if left alone. It takes half that time if the natural rate is suplemented by the org that owns the plane using their own dharma to speed the recovery.

So the basic plan would be that people would raid a plane, use SIPHON DHARMA a for a bit to get the local dharma down to a weak enough level and then go back to their own plane for a while to siphon some of their own dharma and take it over to the plane being invaded. Then they head back and CHANNEL DHARMA into the denuded plane and wyrd ethereal Serenwilde, taint Vortex or what have you.

So, if you camp a room on a plane (a huge problem with raid combat right now), you additionally can semi-permanently stop that plane's meld defenders from melding that room? Or you can then bunker down harder than before? Not really a fan, especially as it doesn't introduce a win/lose condition.


EDIT: This would also introduce more repetivive and neverending raiding. You come, bunker down in a room to change the environment, leave. Come back a few hours later (as the plane totally hasn't had any time to return) and do another room. Rinse, Repeat.

If it takes that long to naturally regenerate, the immediate problem I see is that there will be a time when org plains are completely drained of dharma for a long period of time, which means they'd never be able to meld their own plane in defense.

EDIT: And ninja'd, of course.

EDIT 2: And just so I'm at least slightly constructive... Shorten the time considerably. An hour per phase looks good in my eyes, with the added condition that the natural regeneration only takes place if there is no unaligned meld in those rooms. That means that three hours after the raid is done (provided the meld is dissolved/broken), the plane is back to normal.

Enyalida:

EDIT: Also, Daereth... Did you not even read say... the first post? The one where Estarra starts this thread?

Reading's hard.

Xenthos:

Reading's hard.

This is a graphical game, reading is unneeded.

Can neutral territories offer some kind of reward? I'm thinking specifically of somewhere like Faethorn that lies in the middle of two enemied territories. I would much rather conflict moved there where I can die without having to bash for 2 days to make up for it because fighting occurs on one side of an arch not the other.

Example: whoever controls Faethorn gets a fullmoon/newmoon effect, with something vaguely similar for the cosmic plane.

People may disagree with this but tying control of land to resources is a great motivator. Faeleaf, earwort, merbloom offer reasons to raid beyond epeen. Elemental essence could offer another. Make miners in villages more worthwhile to control.

This is in addition to the lockout changes for enemy territory which I like for the most part.

Please jump to my topic on the Dharma Initiative!.