Beacons & Caravans
Current beacon mechanics are broken.
There is no way for a city/ council with less beacons to take down another particularly if the dominating one is entrenched.
To contest a beacon one needs beacons. But another organization with dominant beacons will always be able to destroy any beacons another might put up in the area (particularly if they have more than 3-4 beacons in the area). Further, you cannot destroy beacons of an enemy without your own beacons. This makes the incumbent very difficult to dislodge.
Considering, without beacons you cannot know about caravans (hence contest caravans), and hence quartz used to construct beacons, the powerful only become more powerful.
This is a ballooning mechanic where the dominating faction becomes progressively more difficult to dislodge. Instead, just like the mechanic for raids, there should be some kind of negative feedback than positive reinforcement we are seeing now.
Some potential solutions:
Some potential solutions:
1) Reduce beacon sentry counts and cap them at a max of 20 to ensure more even beacon fights.
2) Make it that a single beacon of a faction in an area is indestructible. This ensures they at least get notifications of caravans if not the ability to dominate it.
3) Provide more variety in caravan routes. Currently almost all of them passthrough Vardarian, Celidon and Eastern Nolmines
4) Restrict the total number of beacons a faction can put up. This makes it a risk-reward exercise whether a faction chooses to scatter their beacons or concentrate them.
I'm sure there are more solutions to this mechanic but right now it seems very broken.
4) Restrict the total number of beacons a faction can put up. This makes it a risk-reward exercise whether a faction chooses to scatter their beacons or concentrate them.
I'm sure there are more solutions to this mechanic but right now it seems very broken.
2
Comments
Kinsarmar had no beacons in Western Celidon, Khandava had four. Now Kinsarmar has six, and Khandava has none. If it's impossible to take down someone with dominance, then how did we do it?
(Also maybe if you don't want to get whupped in a system that relies heavily on a scarce resource, you shouldn't sell all of that resource to the enemy)
The system is not perfect and both sides should be coming together to fix it. Good post @Ohm and bringing it to light more
Also, demonic, did you complete your research yet? Because I am trying to imagine the holy hell "old" magick would have caught for daring to breathe a word of complaint about something like this without even completing the research tree (not that that was ever a "fun" endeavor either). I am not even saying I "like" this system. Everything about it smacks of old school shitty, "hard core" MUD people say they like so much, but that almost no one likes unless they're on top.
1 - Wave-ify beacon attacks: one squad from each comes out, fights, then the next until none are left on one or the other. This is the only time when the clots get to truly derp levels, and there is something off with how it resolves right now anyway (~55-60v48 should not end at 44v0, sorry not sorry). Sure, seeing 50 sentries is funny, but it's like a bat signal for the eventual end of this system. This would both reduce the maximum clot size and extend out the fight time of more entrenched areas.
2- Have sentries use the same target-splitting as caravan guards (including not going super-aggro once attacked).
3- Guarantee one alert when the head caravan spawns. Does what Ohm's solution 2 wants to do without a free beacon.
4 - A couple more caravan routes wouldn't be awful in the sw and se of the map.
With that, everyone is at least aware the game is on, and sentries aren't capable of winning against a substantial player force without players to support them.
OH.
5 - Allow sentries to be targeted by sentrykinsarmar/sentrykhandava/etc, and make them immune to scepter AoE and other similar nonsense.
From there, could maybe look at adding some ability to do cosmetic and mechanical customization for sentries since it won't end in giant doom squads.
Re research: 1 - Don't need fortification to see what fortification does. 2 - We started off behind because the system was only a system for participating in the system (with the obvious issues) until it was attached to orgcredits, so it was ignored except by weirdoes like Oystir. Kins didn't get their supply for the W Celi beacons after caravans became relevant, and that amounts to a ~500 quartz swing. All that is dumb but not really the issue with the mechanics of the system.
E: Domination should also be considered. I'm kinda of the opinion that everyone should be able to call in-area, with a lower cooldown in-room to give advantage for having beacons on the track without making it mandatory. Not as sold on the idea, though.
But right now it really isn't. You can't go and pvp your way against 30 sentries. Its just too much. They one shot me twice through starburst for two deaths.
Maybe it's not meant to be a purely "Biggest group wins" style system.
Maybe, and this is just a wild, wild guess: Maybe it's meant to be a system focused on long term effort and mobilising to quickly catch mobile objectives, which progress through a variety of areas to make it hard for any org to gain too much dominance. This seems the most likely answer, rather than it simply being about who can throw a big team at the problem when caravans or beacon fights happen.
Not every conflict system has to automatically favour the side that can bring the biggest team and I'd go as far as saying that the game needs some conflict systems that don't do that.
(may vanish for periods of time)