Raiding

[Warbot]

I've thought long about raiding mechanics in CF, thinking of EVE, HnH/Salem, ... and it seems there is, by design, not much one could do o.o

first off, wall spamming is cancer, we had that in Salem and therefore "splash damage" was introduced,
basically, if you destroy a wall tile, nearby walls of equal or lower tier take damage, too, like, up to 95% damage
not a pretty solution, but it works, not very intuitive I'd say, one could have siege cannons that always hit the next 3-4 tile behind the first walls it hits IF and only IF they are also wall tiles,
which would provide a similar effect but in a more intuitive way... well, that's that.
Maybe there is a prettier solution for it, if you know one, share it please! :-)

Now, in Salem there is also defence (= stuff shooting at you) that you can build, which means much more than the wall(s) in front of it,
this would be something I'd REALLY like to see in CF, but unfortunately, it would be pretty pointless, as there is no risk involved, you'd just respawn, you could make a bedroll next to the base you attack and ... I guess you see the problem
in addition, the low HP compared to what guns do in damage, plus the ease to refill your HP makes this all pretty much impossible to utilize for interesting raiding mechanics
again as example of Salem, re-generating the HP (and other bars) of a high end raid char takes several minutes, also the "crime debuff" after attacking a foreign claim prevents regeneration completely for 5-10 minutes (depending on how close you stay to the location of the "crime"), I doubt that all that would work in CF.


Another problem is, that people tend to first think of "balance" and are either republicans or democrats (israeli or palestinian, ...you get the idea) when it comes to raiding and defending against it, seeing themself only at one side of it and valiantly defending/fighting for that side instead of actual balance.
Did I say balance, well, fuck balance!

As I said that is a main problem, skip balance finetuning entirely for later, as there are much more important thing to do first.
And that is finding raiding mechanics that are ideally:
- fun for both sides (at least somewhat)
- encourage pvp
- benefit from playerskill
- provide risk and reward for both sides
- put the effort of attacker and defender into a suitable relation, with slight advantages for the defending side
(yes, by default, it should provide at least some advantage for the defender, as it makes no sense to need less effort to destroy than to create)
- make sense (completely optional)


And only then you should start balance finetuning, or thinking of how to tweak the mechanics so that a hermit or small group could stand against larger groups,
so long as those groups are not incredibly determined on wiping out all smaller groups on the server, or in other words, how to counter zerging and resource pooling,
so that a decently sized group can simply wipe the server every other day.
And already I am drifting away from the main point... that is:

If you have any great ideas about raiding mechanics that would be fun and would work good for CF, please share! :-)

[Neoxion]

Any decent size group, who wants to wipe and take over server, will do it and there is no solution for that. You either ban people for cooperating (not an option) or create similar power force to counter that.
In order to fine-tune or balance something you need to have a core concept:
-will there be automatic defence structures?
-will there be protected storages?
-will offline players vanish from the map (like in EVE) or not?
-will resources be stationary or not?
To indroduce the core concept you need to answer a lot of questions, because playstyle will vary greatly. I guess we just need to go with a flow and see how the game evolves (its only closed alpha for now).

[Warbot]

Any decent size group, who wants to wipe and take over server, will do it and there is no solution for that.

It's not that simple, in EVE, you do not see the biggest group own all the nullsec space at once ... but why?!
Because of limits in power projection (wth does that even mean?!) ... that means, you may be able to beat every single other group on the server, and they do not cooperate to beat you by working together, but you can not be everywhere at once.
This further means, the bigger the area is that you control, the more difficult it is.
Well, this does not apply on the tiny current server, as distances are very short, but with a bigger server, and more mechanics and incentive to actually control territory, and not just some oil/lith deposits, you'd see the same effects here.

[edit:] and well, if we had actual raiding mechanics as currently you'll have a hard time removing a hostile claim

So if anyone got some ideas, that's the place for it!

[Neoxion]

As you also mentioned, you cannot compare this map and whole EVE map - this is a small server which can be easily controlled with 10 people (once they killed all competition) even if you triple its size (what are you gonna do once you killed all competition is a different question). And, for example, whole Serenity server (China) in EVE online was divided between 2 corporations at some point.

[Warbot]

As you also mentioned, you cannot compare this map and whole EVE map - this is a small server which can be easily controlled with 10 people (once they killed all competition) even if you triple its size (what are you gonna do once you killed all competition is a different question). And, for example, whole Serenity server (China) in EVE online was divided between 2 corporations at some point.

No, you can not, by far not compare this with serenity, the chinese have a VERY different approach to EVE, something like that could not happen on tranqulity.

And this is an alpha with a limit of 256 users and a tiny map, once there are proper player numbers and a decent sized map, you hopefully can't control a map with just 10.

But I did not get your point, what do you want to say?