I have been watching this thread and we will make some more adjustments over the next couple of weeks.
I'm also considering adding in a couple more objectives per city, possibly easier to get, but worth less in terms of advantages and points. Or alternatively, we could also go harder to get and have a larger advantage. Or both.
I am also considering using a different mechanic for them, possible something where you just have to control a room in the city, like capture the flag. At any rate, let me know your thoughts, comments, questions, and hate filled rants.
I'm not sure if it works this way with all of the other cities, but during the raid we just finished defending, the objective didn't have to move through the gates in order to be completed?
The raid ended a room before it would have passed through the gates, where we were making our brave last stand and/or twiddling our thumbs. We were all a little surprised when it showed complete.
Khandava has had a couple guards die and not come back. Or, well, I replaced them after a day or two instead of waiting any longer. No guards died in the last one for me to check.
The 100-0 healer nerf does sound harsh, as crazy as they were. I was hoping for something like a per-target cooldown on top of the internal healer cd and reducing the heal to like a Hands hit. ~100 +hp every 5s or so. As it stands now: If guard killing was really viable in a raid, then I might make sure every squad has a healer, but I'll probably be phasing out the few we have now.
Maximized guard setup really feels like 1-2 shieldpersons (Dunno if they stack their piety) and a heap of istani now, with maybe (maybe) an archer or two outdoors. A 10-knight stack through defend is like 250 damage to me that gets nullified by a Priestess or two before the next round, so I can basically channel and push through it. Shieldmen get a pass on their crap damage since they come with piety. If constables always hit in the same prompt before other guards, I might try 1 constable/a few knights for the prone damage bonus, but testing guard setups isn't exactly cheap or easy. Would be nice to see more options in the wasted guard types, like some damage type choice or afflicting.
Random: city guard swap (guard) for (guard type) would be cool, at the expected costs.
E: I also feel a bit reluctant to do a lot of guard swapping with the expectation of more substantial changes. Siege seems fine to commit changes to, unless the Engi release comes with any new siege equipment :O ?? #fishesForTidbits
Re: timezone warrioring: I think a 'raid' is probably the one place I'm okay with it being a time wizard battle, even if it's irritating to come home from car shopping with an angry baby and go right into a 1:2 raid
If this is a concern, could take a leaf out of the obelisk book, as this is something that system does well (a bit too well at the moment, but hey). You could add a way (upkeep with shards? gold? energy?) to cover a ~8-12 hour slot during which they can't be raided, so people can be somewhat sure that they might have someone around capable of defending. I'm not sure how necessary it is, but might be worth consideration.
Would like to second the point about repurposing some of the useless guard types. Personally still think healers healing players is too big an edge, but an ICD might make it less of one (assuming the heal amount was much lower as Gjarrus said).
Personally I like the idea of holding a location better, as it removes a lot of the current issues with objective placement being way easier in some cities (Khandava's standard is extremely trivial to steal for instance since you get minimal siege exposure), and sounds like it might remove one of the more frustrating aspects of the system (the channel). It does run into the problem that breaking fortified positions can be really hard (totems, traps, etc), but we're seeing that already anyways.
More objectives would be nice on both ends of the spectrum.
Might be nice if we could ransom objectives for other objectives, too (free my standard and you can have your ugly statue back, etc).
i think we should function off the assumption that raiders are going to be heavily stacked against defenders and work balancing from there. Anything less than that is just a slow and inevitable downward slide for any faction that isn't strong enough to actually just PK-win, and we're just going to end up making the dominant team more dominant. It's obvious that's going to be the status quo until something exists to make it less appealing than actually raiding when there's some semblance of balance ~~
also I was effing sleeping to wake up to you literally proving why 'we pick the time' is the biggest deciding factor of raids within hours of you saying it's meaningless to change mechanics to counteract that advantage.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
this isn't like me wanting to win every time. it's me not wanting to be steamrolled every time or get a phone call at 3:45 am cause that's when you decide to raid and no number of people awake at that hour can do anything about it except flail and die, even when one of our best PKers are online. i don't care about losing, i care about wasting my time on mechanics that are, at best, frustrating and at worst, impossible to actually play with. That's why I didn't care when you took the statue after 6 days of dealing with constant guard bugs during constant raids and why its taking a lot of energy to give a squirt about caravans anymore (and leylines but that's just because surges are still firing off of half of my bashing combo). I reference myself from the viewpoint of the raiders arguing in favor of these changes because I think it's kind of crap to be able to use timezones as an advantage(1) and I think it's crap to intentionally abuse that, even when it resulted in my own team's victory. '
Edit: (1) Use timezones as the primary advantage
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
Sure. If people want to raid us with noone around, we'll do it back. I figured that went without saying, and I believe I said already that if people are willing to do it there's nothing you can do about it (in any conflict system in the game). To directly quote, people sleep eventually.
We can talk in game about terms of engagement and such though, could be fun. The fact remains: the more you stack the deck against a raiding team, the more they'll stack the deck in return. The more the deck is stacked by either party, the less fun it becomes.
Right but you seem to miss the point or seem intent on ignoring the point that the raiding team has complete control over their team and the defending* teams gets whatever they have online and whoever they can metagame into logging on in a 15 minute window. Your deck is already stacked because of the quality of the people you have and that has absolutely nothing to do with the kind of balancing that is being requested or that is necessary in this mechanic if it's going to work outside of these kinds of numbers games.
You raided Khandava when they had 3 people earlier, we raided you when you had 2 visible players and you returned the favor. When exactly do you think we're going to come back for our objectives? Logically and strategically it's going to be when we believe you're going to lose and logically and strategically that means there is going to be an inherent disadvantage to your team, otherwise we're wasting our time. Literally small groups of defenders need to have mechanical advantage or there will be no motivation to ever do anything but that.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I see the existence of a PK-dominant faction who is also able to decide when a fight occurs with nothing that exists to resist either aspect of that fact. I'm not mad that your team is better. I'm not mad that your team can pick when fights happen. I'm mad that the reality of these two facts are real enough for you to utilize to your advantage in multiple raids on one hand while you say 'eh itll happen' on the other without any acknowledgement that it might be a problem worth addressing.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I'm not ignoring your points, I just have a different view.
The quality of a team is irrelevant to balance. You don't buff or nerf a system/class/whatever based on one circle being strong or weak at any given time. I'm not sure if that's what you were saying, but its what I understood. Feel free to ignore if I'm off base.
I think your missing my point, honestly. Which is simply put: if defenders have a mechanical advantage, people will just raid when there are no defenders. Personally I'd much rather see something as I noted above similar to obelisks, where you can enforce a rough timeslot in which hostile raids against you must take place (for an upkeep cost). It leaves raiders with a way to still pick the time, but gives the defenders a say in when that time will roughly fall. Gives somewhat of a middle ground between the two extremes.
To expand, if smaller groups get bonuses for dealing with raiders, one of two things will happen: 1: Those bonuses will be better than having a large group, at which point you've killed reasons to insentivise participation. 2: Those bonuses will be inferior to having a large group, at which point you've not actually fixed the problem since this is still the path of least resistance and will be optimal to take.
To me, neither of those states of affairs are desirable.
I see the existence of a PK-dominant faction who is also able to decide when a fight occurs with nothing that exists to resist either aspect of that fact. I'm not mad that your team is better. I'm not mad that your team can pick when fights happen. I'm mad that the reality of these two facts are real enough for you to utilize to your advantage in multiple raids on one hand while you say 'eh itll happen' on the other without any acknowledgement that it might be a problem worth addressing.
I'm pretty sure there is a post on this page with some thoughts on how to address the problem with me as the author. Disagreeing with your solutions does not equate to not acknowledging the problem. I simply do not believe your solutions will fix them, because empowering defenders does not work if you can be raided when there are no defenders. For as long as that is trivial to achieve, it'll happen.
My point was quite that quality of fighters is irrelevant to the necessity of some change being made. I'm down for your suggestion or something similar with a heavy dose of cynicism that it'd be implemented. I'm down for not being woken up at 4pm and I'd love for the 'once a month' thing to change to '24-hours' so I can go to sleep without having to check if it's the 8th of Vita or the 18th of Vita.
The way I see it, if no benefit is given to a smaller team, raids will continue to be Team Size vs. Team Size off-hours event (unless somebody decides to be gallant and good sportsmen and not abuse mechanics/loopholes in mechanics which I think we both know went out the window as soon as raiding was introduced), actively creating a strategic advantage to use the mechanic when as few people as possible can participate - actively discouraging anything resembling a fair fight numbers-wise. Raid defense will continue to be disproportionately determined by 'can my NPCs kill you? y/n' which, as Cyr wisely alluded to, is not something to be scoffed at but also not something that a large number of individuals in the game cannot deal with.
With the majority of people you're going to want another person who can intelligently target an enemy over hoping aggro procs go well for you. If I have to ask Curran to sit out because I and 2 friends want a healing buff, it is a much smaller price to pay than ignoring the raid and just continuing to bash Demon's Pass and letting Curran go for it solo until she gives up because people who are more continuously involved dgaf about the raid because we know through experience that it's a waste of time to bother. Your method says that there has to be enough people to win a fight to make raid defense possible, mine creates some wiggle room for the inevitable times when there are not with a window of 1-2 people where defending team decides if another fighter is worth the cost of X benefit. 3 fighters w/ healing or 4 fighters w/o healing? Depends on the person and again creates like a strategy for defenders and raiders both to care about something other than playing when the fewest number of people are online to defend.
Edit: Your method IE making no changes.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
gunna post again cause im rambling and then go to sleep.
raids as they are already create a situation where fewer players = better. Giving small groups of defenders an edge addresses that problem, not exacerbates it, even if it means one person one time doesn't have to jump in line to die. I think the affect it potentially has on discouraging raids from even happening during these vulnerable times will do more to give players an opportunity to take part in the system. And this incentive for more numbers will come from the raiders, not the defenders, which is kind of important cause like raiders decide when raids happen.
Edit: More rambling: You woke me up: And I'm saying this understanding that I am arguing in favor of giving a Septus/Cyr defending team the same advantage I'd give an Oystir/Bellini defending team but it doesn't change my point at all. In general there's a huge problem with this downtime hours stuff and in general something should be done about it. If we all QQ then it's whatever, but if 1 person is around then that 1 person ideally would have some incentive to smash their head against the brickwall of a raid defense. Aannd right now that number isn't 1, but closer to 3-4, aannd the 3-4 people who will jump up against those odds are more than likely going to be the same 3-4 people over and over. And again, like, Curran, but she's just generally great.
You say, "This is much harder than just being a normal person."
I think this kind of raiding would work really, really well if we had solid faction balance in the game PK-wise, in terms of player ability/arties/numbers. It would be so easy to make all of this work and it would be such a blast if that were the case - multiple sides that present a genuine threat to each other on a daily basis. Fights that are almost never foregone conclusions.
But that is absolutely not the case. And is why people are squabbling so much about what defenders should and shouldn't have. I think it's going to be very, very hard to make this system actually, well, FUN with the player distribution we have.
I will defend valiantly for the time being (or raid if asked enough times), but I kind of just want Antioch to get all of the objectives (which they definitely will) so I can take my Impy vacation. I mean, this system does definitely have an end condition, where, unless "losers" ransom their stuff (so that the raiders can steal it again), it just dies out naturally, and I think we're on our way there.
Pewpew spitballing Constable -> Rogue: fast attack, low strength, poison damage, physical aff? Would fit the yank upgrade thematically. Soldier -> Spearman: Medium attack, very high strength. For unique benefit, either limb damage or a reverse piety (like the clockwork fan) Warrior -> Mage: Magick damage! Can AM have a magick damage guard? Knight -> Um. Maybe an on-hit mark that makes the next guard hit intended for another target go to the first one? I'd trade some fire focusing for phys damage.
Other guard ideas: A guard type that does low to no damage, instead marking the victim for an accurate siege shot Sapper - Removes walls and rubble, loads siege, low combat stats Engineer - Builds walls and spreads rubble, loads siege, low combat stats
On time windows again, https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/208289385-Citadel-Vulnerability-States is a decent evolution of mitigation methods for off-hour conflicts in a game filled with the abusiest of the abusers. I wouldn't give stolen objs quite the same level of protection as native objs, if any at all. 'Size' can be translated to objective value with smaller windows for more vital objectives, indirectly sliding the difficulty scale. Dunno how you'd do it ICly, though.
I like the mobile aspect of it, honestly. If stationary objectives get put in, I'd like to have a mix rather than a full swap. Stationaries would give healers a place, since the mobile objectives don't really give enough time to bother.
I'm not sure if it works this way with all of the other cities, but during the raid we just finished defending, the objective didn't have to move through the gates in order to be completed?
The raid ended a room before it would have passed through the gates, where we were making our brave last stand and/or twiddling our thumbs. We were all a little surprised when it showed complete.
I have the wrong room flagged, I will update the change later today.
I'm not ignoring the points being made about balancing the system in various directions to help/hinder raiding times, just thinking about it some more.
On a side note, this may be a good chance to create mutual defense treaties with other cities/councils to smack down Antioch.
In the end I feel kind of bad for @Jeremy because this is almost impossible to balance BOTH sides and I feel that no matter which way it goes, someone's gonna be unhappy
On a side note, this may be a good chance to create mutual defense treaties with other cities/councils to smack down Antioch.
This... frustrates me a little. Maybe a lot. Because it certainly did come up. Oh boy did it come up.
The main problem with it is that Antioch can handily smack us both down anyway. Demonic is probably the weakest I've ever seen them. Magick is doing slightly better, but is small-ish and doesn't have the caliber of player AM does (all of the really "top" players are very heavily concentrated in AM).
But yeah, AM has already actively interfered with/threatened/punished even the hint of even the most fleeting of alliances. And they can back that up. We did want to co-raid with demonic, though I was never keen on us defending each other. But really, that might not be any great loss, because working together might actually just make things even worse.
AM is just (a lot) stronger than our joint force would be, and even a very temporary demogick coalition would mostly just allow them to get more of their guys off the bench for whompings. So joining forces might very well just help reinforce AM dominance at the expense of both demonic and magick. In short, we need to be quite a bit stronger individually for teaming to make sense.
Maybe I'm biased, but I'd prefer for it to remain possible for a smallish group of raiders to be able to raid successfully, rather than requiring a large number of people to even bother attempting to raid against any opposition. If anything, give an advantage to the side trying to recover their own objective from the city that has claimed it. For example, captured city npc helping by hitting enemies, rallying a couple npcs/guards to join the counterraid, objective being slightly faster to move. I think it'd be fun if the objectives could change hands frequently, with raids and counterraids being a common thing. Too much power on the defender's side would just mean the city with most people+arties would get all the objectives and then sit on them forever, since no one else has a chance of getting through the defences.
Ok, so I pretty much never post, but I've heard what's been said and I thought I'd throw my two cents in. I pretty much disagree with @Jeremy and @Swale both, but for different reasons. No, there isn't going to be any talk of allying Magick and Demonic to take on Antioch. Because why? Antioch's standard team is better than our standard team, but not by insurmountable odds. It's just that when AM has their full force around their numbers are much larger.
Barring @Septus I actually wholeheartedly disagree that the quality of AM's combatants is that much farther ahead than our own (with the exception of @Dyun but that's a non-issue at the moment because squishy and no arties.) @Alvetta and @Jules may not be as 1v1 savvy as @Cyr, but fejoiwf if they're not team-savvy. @Theophilus can hold his own 1v1 or in a team as well. We have solid pkers in Magick, we just have poor teamwork.
Also, no offense to Demonic but... at the moment, frankly, they're a non-issue altogether. I don't think that an alliance with them would contribute in a meaningful way unless meaningful = meatshield.
TL;DR: I'm having fun with raiding anyway. It was my idea to raid you while you were asleep since you all raided while me and @Alvetta were at work. Yes it's a clock game. Yes it's dirty. Yes it was fun anyway, even though you did it back (I don't care.)
@Gjarrus maybe you misunderstood. Magick's teamwork is bad. Improve that and it would make a world of difference. Doesn't change the stance on Demonic though.
Continued talks about Magick's failures with the highest consistent pop and arti weight aren't too constructive, is all. E: At least with regards to a general raiding thread.
Comments
I'm also considering adding in a couple more objectives per city, possibly easier to get, but worth less in terms of advantages and points. Or alternatively, we could also go harder to get and have a larger advantage. Or both.
I am also considering using a different mechanic for them, possible something where you just have to control a room in the city, like capture the flag. At any rate, let me know your thoughts, comments, questions, and hate filled rants.
The raid ended a room before it would have passed through the gates, where we were making our brave last stand and/or twiddling our thumbs. We were all a little surprised when it showed complete.
The 100-0 healer nerf does sound harsh, as crazy as they were. I was hoping for something like a per-target cooldown on top of the internal healer cd and reducing the heal to like a Hands hit. ~100 +hp every 5s or so.
As it stands now: If guard killing was really viable in a raid, then I might make sure every squad has a healer, but I'll probably be phasing out the few we have now.
Maximized guard setup really feels like 1-2 shieldpersons (Dunno if they stack their piety) and a heap of istani now, with maybe (maybe) an archer or two outdoors. A 10-knight stack through defend is like 250 damage to me that gets nullified by a Priestess or two before the next round, so I can basically channel and push through it. Shieldmen get a pass on their crap damage since they come with piety. If constables always hit in the same prompt before other guards, I might try 1 constable/a few knights for the prone damage bonus, but testing guard setups isn't exactly cheap or easy. Would be nice to see more options in the wasted guard types, like some damage type choice or afflicting.
Random: city guard swap (guard) for (guard type) would be cool, at the expected costs.
E: I also feel a bit reluctant to do a lot of guard swapping with the expectation of more substantial changes. Siege seems fine to commit changes to, unless the Engi release comes with any new siege equipment :O ?? #fishesForTidbits
Re: timezone warrioring: I think a 'raid' is probably the one place I'm okay with it being a time wizard battle, even if it's irritating to come home from car shopping with an angry baby and go right into a 1:2 raid
Did think about the timezone thing a bit more.
If this is a concern, could take a leaf out of the obelisk book, as this is something that system does well (a bit too well at the moment, but hey). You could add a way (upkeep with shards? gold? energy?) to cover a ~8-12 hour slot during which they can't be raided, so people can be somewhat sure that they might have someone around capable of defending. I'm not sure how necessary it is, but might be worth consideration.
Would like to second the point about repurposing some of the useless guard types. Personally still think healers healing players is too big an edge, but an ICD might make it less of one (assuming the heal amount was much lower as Gjarrus said).
Personally I like the idea of holding a location better, as it removes a lot of the current issues with objective placement being way easier in some cities (Khandava's standard is extremely trivial to steal for instance since you get minimal siege exposure), and sounds like it might remove one of the more frustrating aspects of the system (the channel). It does run into the problem that breaking fortified positions can be really hard (totems, traps, etc), but we're seeing that already anyways.
More objectives would be nice on both ends of the spectrum.
Might be nice if we could ransom objectives for other objectives, too (free my standard and you can have your ugly statue back, etc).
also I was effing sleeping to wake up to you literally proving why 'we pick the time' is the biggest deciding factor of raids within hours of you saying it's meaningless to change mechanics to counteract that advantage.
this isn't like me wanting to win every time. it's me not wanting to be steamrolled every time or get a phone call at 3:45 am cause that's when you decide to raid and no number of people awake at that hour can do anything about it except flail and die, even when one of our best PKers are online. i don't care about losing, i care about wasting my time on mechanics that are, at best, frustrating and at worst, impossible to actually play with. That's why I didn't care when you took the statue after 6 days of dealing with constant guard bugs during constant raids and why its taking a lot of energy to give a squirt about caravans anymore (and leylines but that's just because surges are still firing off of half of my bashing combo). I reference myself from the viewpoint of the raiders arguing in favor of these changes because I think it's kind of crap to be able to use timezones as an advantage(1) and I think it's crap to intentionally abuse that, even when it resulted in my own team's victory. '
Edit: (1) Use timezones as the primary advantage
Sure. If people want to raid us with noone around, we'll do it back. I figured that went without saying, and I believe I said already that if people are willing to do it there's nothing you can do about it (in any conflict system in the game). To directly quote, people sleep eventually.
We can talk in game about terms of engagement and such though, could be fun. The fact remains: the more you stack the deck against a raiding team, the more they'll stack the deck in return. The more the deck is stacked by either party, the less fun it becomes.
You raided Khandava when they had 3 people earlier, we raided you when you had 2 visible players and you returned the favor. When exactly do you think we're going to come back for our objectives? Logically and strategically it's going to be when we believe you're going to lose and logically and strategically that means there is going to be an inherent disadvantage to your team, otherwise we're wasting our time. Literally small groups of defenders need to have mechanical advantage or there will be no motivation to ever do anything but that.
I'm not ignoring your points, I just have a different view.
The quality of a team is irrelevant to balance. You don't buff or nerf a system/class/whatever based on one circle being strong or weak at any given time. I'm not sure if that's what you were saying, but its what I understood. Feel free to ignore if I'm off base.
I think your missing my point, honestly. Which is simply put: if defenders have a mechanical advantage, people will just raid when there are no defenders. Personally I'd much rather see something as I noted above similar to obelisks, where you can enforce a rough timeslot in which hostile raids against you must take place (for an upkeep cost). It leaves raiders with a way to still pick the time, but gives the defenders a say in when that time will roughly fall. Gives somewhat of a middle ground between the two extremes.
To expand, if smaller groups get bonuses for dealing with raiders, one of two things will happen:
1: Those bonuses will be better than having a large group, at which point you've killed reasons to insentivise participation.
2: Those bonuses will be inferior to having a large group, at which point you've not actually fixed the problem since this is still the path of least resistance and will be optimal to take.
To me, neither of those states of affairs are desirable.
I'm pretty sure there is a post on this page with some thoughts on how to address the problem with me as the author. Disagreeing with your solutions does not equate to not acknowledging the problem. I simply do not believe your solutions will fix them, because empowering defenders does not work if you can be raided when there are no defenders. For as long as that is trivial to achieve, it'll happen.
The way I see it, if no benefit is given to a smaller team, raids will continue to be Team Size vs. Team Size off-hours event (unless somebody decides to be gallant and good sportsmen and not abuse mechanics/loopholes in mechanics which I think we both know went out the window as soon as raiding was introduced), actively creating a strategic advantage to use the mechanic when as few people as possible can participate - actively discouraging anything resembling a fair fight numbers-wise.
Raid defense will continue to be disproportionately determined by 'can my NPCs kill you? y/n' which, as Cyr wisely alluded to, is not something to be scoffed at but also not something that a large number of individuals in the game cannot deal with.
With the majority of people you're going to want another person who can intelligently target an enemy over hoping aggro procs go well for you. If I have to ask Curran to sit out because I and 2 friends want a healing buff, it is a much smaller price to pay than ignoring the raid and just continuing to bash Demon's Pass and letting Curran go for it solo until she gives up because people who are more continuously involved dgaf about the raid because we know through experience that it's a waste of time to bother. Your method says that there has to be enough people to win a fight to make raid defense possible, mine creates some wiggle room for the inevitable times when there are not with a window of 1-2 people where defending team decides if another fighter is worth the cost of X benefit. 3 fighters w/ healing or 4 fighters w/o healing? Depends on the person and again creates like a strategy for defenders and raiders both to care about something other than playing when the fewest number of people are online to defend.
Edit: Your method IE making no changes.
raids as they are already create a situation where fewer players = better. Giving small groups of defenders an edge addresses that problem, not exacerbates it, even if it means one person one time doesn't have to jump in line to die. I think the affect it potentially has on discouraging raids from even happening during these vulnerable times will do more to give players an opportunity to take part in the system. And this incentive for more numbers will come from the raiders, not the defenders, which is kind of important cause like raiders decide when raids happen.
Edit: More rambling: You woke me up:
And I'm saying this understanding that I am arguing in favor of giving a Septus/Cyr defending team the same advantage I'd give an Oystir/Bellini defending team but it doesn't change my point at all. In general there's a huge problem with this downtime hours stuff and in general something should be done about it. If we all QQ then it's whatever, but if 1 person is around then that 1 person ideally would have some incentive to smash their head against the brickwall of a raid defense. Aannd right now that number isn't 1, but closer to 3-4, aannd the 3-4 people who will jump up against those odds are more than likely going to be the same 3-4 people over and over. And again, like, Curran, but she's just generally great.
I think this kind of raiding would work really, really well if we had solid faction balance in the game PK-wise, in terms of player ability/arties/numbers. It would be so easy to make all of this work and it would be such a blast if that were the case - multiple sides that present a genuine threat to each other on a daily basis. Fights that are almost never foregone conclusions.
But that is absolutely not the case. And is why people are squabbling so much about what defenders should and shouldn't have. I think it's going to be very, very hard to make this system actually, well, FUN with the player distribution we have.
I will defend valiantly for the time being (or raid if asked enough times), but I kind of just want Antioch to get all of the objectives (which they definitely will) so I can take my Impy vacation. I mean, this system does definitely have an end condition, where, unless "losers" ransom their stuff (so that the raiders can steal it again), it just dies out naturally, and I think we're on our way there.
Constable -> Rogue: fast attack, low strength, poison damage, physical aff? Would fit the yank upgrade thematically.
Soldier -> Spearman: Medium attack, very high strength. For unique benefit, either limb damage or a reverse piety (like the clockwork fan)
Warrior -> Mage: Magick damage! Can AM have a magick damage guard?
Knight -> Um. Maybe an on-hit mark that makes the next guard hit intended for another target go to the first one? I'd trade some fire focusing for phys damage.
Other guard ideas:
A guard type that does low to no damage, instead marking the victim for an accurate siege shot
Sapper - Removes walls and rubble, loads siege, low combat stats
Engineer - Builds walls and spreads rubble, loads siege, low combat stats
On time windows again, https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/208289385-Citadel-Vulnerability-States is a decent evolution of mitigation methods for off-hour conflicts in a game filled with the abusiest of the abusers. I wouldn't give stolen objs quite the same level of protection as native objs, if any at all. 'Size' can be translated to objective value with smaller windows for more vital objectives, indirectly sliding the difficulty scale. Dunno how you'd do it ICly, though.
I like the mobile aspect of it, honestly. If stationary objectives get put in, I'd like to have a mix rather than a full swap. Stationaries would give healers a place, since the mobile objectives don't really give enough time to bother.
On a side note, this may be a good chance to create mutual defense treaties with other cities/councils to smack down Antioch.
The main problem with it is that Antioch can handily smack us both down anyway. Demonic is probably the weakest I've ever seen them. Magick is doing slightly better, but is small-ish and doesn't have the caliber of player AM does (all of the really "top" players are very heavily concentrated in AM).
But yeah, AM has already actively interfered with/threatened/punished even the hint of even the most fleeting of alliances. And they can back that up. We did want to co-raid with demonic, though I was never keen on us defending each other. But really, that might not be any great loss, because working together might actually just make things even worse.
AM is just (a lot) stronger than our joint force would be, and even a very temporary demogick coalition would mostly just allow them to get more of their guys off the bench for whompings. So joining forces might very well just help reinforce AM dominance at the expense of both demonic and magick. In short, we need to be quite a bit stronger individually for teaming to make sense.
Barring @Septus I actually wholeheartedly disagree that the quality of AM's combatants is that much farther ahead than our own (with the exception of @Dyun but that's a non-issue at the moment because squishy and no arties.) @Alvetta and @Jules may not be as 1v1 savvy as @Cyr, but fejoiwf if they're not team-savvy. @Theophilus can hold his own 1v1 or in a team as well. We have solid pkers in Magick, we just have poor teamwork.
Also, no offense to Demonic but... at the moment, frankly, they're a non-issue altogether. I don't think that an alliance with them would contribute in a meaningful way unless meaningful = meatshield.
TL;DR: I'm having fun with raiding anyway. It was my idea to raid you while you were asleep since you all raided while me and @Alvetta were at work. Yes it's a clock game. Yes it's dirty. Yes it was fun anyway, even though you did it back (I don't care.)
Agree with the @Mizae that offensive advantages on rescue raids could be a thing.
E: At least with regards to a general raiding thread.