War and Peace

[van Veen]

Dear all,

We all like to wage war on the high seas and we are all gentlemen of the different navies. As such, we treat our enemies with respect and we adhere to the rules of war. Yet, our sovereigns are irritatingly silent when it comes to decision on war and peace. I'd like to see events like these announced:

• Nation X declared war on Nation Y
• Nation Z is now allied with Nation X
• Nation Z signed a trade agreement with Nation X
• Nation A signed a peace treaty with Nation Y

And I would like to see my actions having an impact on the state of war and peace!

I propose to introduce nation-to-nation status: war, neutral, peace, trade agreement, allied

Transitions between the status should be limited, e.g.

• war --> peace
• peace --> neutral
• neutral --> trade agreement, allied or war
• trade agreement --> allied, neutral or war
• allied --> trade agreement or neutral

The nation-to-nation status should identify the rules for the following events: 

• other nation port
  • entering with a trade ship (not when at war)
  • entering with a war ship (allied only)
  • placing sell/buy contracts (trade agreement or allied)
  • setting up outpost (trade agreement or allied)
• OW encounters
  • Friend/enemy/neutral tag (green: peace, trade agreement or allied; red: war; grey: neutral)
  • Name visibility (trade agreement or allied)
  • Attacking (only war or neutral)
• OW battles with other nation participation
  • joining
  • side selection
• Offensive port battles of other nation
  • joining (only if allied and you are at war with defender)
• Defensive port battles of other nation
  • joining (only if allied, but no matter against whom)
• ...

How to change the status of war and peace?

• server admin manual setting (server events!!)
• during maintenance by AI (to be implemented, proposedly in a second stage)
  • requires a current status and point ranking system
  • evaluation of events during previous day impacts the point ranking
    • Number of ships/BR sunk by a nation reduce ranking (towards war)
    • Tax money paid by foreign traders in port affect the ranking positively (towards trade agreement)
    • Hostility points to our nation (warmongerers)
    • Number of neutral ships/BR sunk by another nation leads to war (moralist)
    • Number of hostile ships/BR sunk push it towards alliance (the enemy of our enemy is our friend)
    • Number of own ships/BR sunk by an enemy push towards peace (afraid of losses)
    • Long lasting peace should be transformed to neutral (cancelling peace treaty)
    • Long lasting war should be transformed to peace (tired of war)
    • Captain's votes
    • Negative surplus (tax income - port upkeep) should drive towards peace

Next step is to individualize nation behaviour. Each nation should have one leader with different emphasis w.r.t. which of the criteria above is more important for them by a bonus system. This way you get individualized leader profiles and different nation behaviour. 

• peace lovers
• trader friends
• warmongerers 
• leaders may be replaced by server admin (perhaps turning a peaceful nation into a war house)
• leader profiles should be named with historical nation leaders

This way, the player's naval actions have an impact on the status of war and peace, yet the decision is upon the nation's leaders.

In a first stage, the system of war and peace can be implemented and status change is made manually by server admin for testing. Implementing AI for deciding on war and peace is more complex, but can be tested in a second stage. Finally introducing leaders with different flavors and preferences might be implemented shortly before game release. 

 

Cheers,

van Veen 

Edited August 17, 2018 by van Veen
Captain's votes and economy should affect war/peace decision

[Old Crusty]

This is well thought out and has some good points and features. 

   It avoids the complaints about having players making decisions for other players but I still prefer a voting system for the different diplomatic relations with other countries. 

   The one thing I learned from the last Diplomacy thread started is that people do not want to break out into two big alliances or to have peace break out all over the Caribbean. I understand these points completely. So here would be my simple solution to that.

   I believe there are ten Nations in the game. I think that if each Nation was limited to the number of allies or trade partners that would fix the problem by allowing Diplomacy in the game to being enforced by the game itself without limiting PvP to much.

[Christendom]

War and Peace DLC incoming

[van Veen]

Thank you for your comment,

I don't like votes for several reasons, nevertheless, adding a voting system on top of it might be a good idea. I added "Captain's votes" to the evaluation criteria. 

Cheers,

van Veen

Edited August 16, 2018 by van Veen

[vazco]

We already had alliances modeled in game and it didn't work.

It's next to impossible to create a system which would work with all diplomatic interactions between nations, as they're very complex, dynamic and non - trivial. There are situations when a nation is allied with half of another nation and in war with the second half. 

Nations already inform about their status on the forum. Building tools to simplify this would be ok. Building some artificial diplomacy limitations will never work. 

[Batman]

[Licinio Chiavari]

6 minutes ago, Batman said:

How to know why usually GB is at war with everyone...

[Angus MacDuff]

34 minutes ago, van Veen said:

Thank you for your comment,

I don't like votes for several reasons, nevertheless, adding a voting system on top of it might be a good idea. I added "Captain's votes" to the evaluation criteria. 

Cheers,

van Veen

Any voting is a terrible idea.  It means that a possible 49% of players are unhappy.  Even if the win percentage is higher, you have no right to tell any other player how to play the game.

[Fenris]

14 minutes ago, vazco said:

We already had alliances modeled in game and it didn't work.

It's next to impossible to create a system which would work with all diplomatic interactions between nations, as they're very complex, dynamic and non - trivial. There are situations when a nation is allied with half of another nation and in war with the second half. 

Nations already inform about their status on the forum. Building tools to simplify this would be ok. Building some artificial diplomacy limitations will never work. 

It worked, but not as it should. Simple clicking on a button, by every member of a nation, "voting" for a favoure ally can not work, blocks were the result.

A nation should agree on 1!!! ally, should be able to have 1 trade agreement or several, and should be able to be neutral to all nations. A war should be a matter of great importance, with many possibilities in game, and not a permanent state of the art, just because development and ideas are "so hard" to introduce in the game. Many other games have simple but great mechanics choosing between allies or foes, why it still does not work in NA, is beyond me. I guess it is Game Labs wish to make a game pew pew, sailing simulator, more than a real MMO.

[Nelsons Barrel]

An alliance system is always just a bad tool to deal with the low playernumbers.

[Fenris]

6 minutes ago, Nelsons Barrel said:

An alliance system is always just a bad tool to deal with the low playernumbers.

Has nothing to do with player numbers.

[Licinio Chiavari]

Just now, Fenris said:

Has nothing to do with player numbers.

Honestly a meaningful RvR could even get a better, more stable and may be growing player population.

[Fenris]

Just now, Licinio Chiavari said:

Honestly a meaningful RvR could even get a better, more stable and may be growing player population.

You mean with alliance system?

 

[van Veen]

Voting did not work for alliance system. 

Making your real actions count for war and peace is what is needed. Note that I proposed several contradicting factors that ensure that there is a balance. It's more dynamic like this to prevent the blocks we had in the past. 

Imagine that system as the sovereign that takes the decision in far-away Europe whereas we are the captains in the carribean. There might be odd decision that you might not support or understand...

[p i t]

RVR needs to be driven by econ and crafting. Bring back crafting regions- rvr becomes important-pvp outside capitals increaes-population increase. Period.

 

You don't need an alliance system to force people to work together.. look back at Sweden and all they accomplished in their prime. Dominated the server because of cohesion in the nation.

[Christendom]

Ditch nations for RVR.  Make it 100% clan based.  Clan diplos deal with other clans.  No bullshit nation politics.  We need to stop trying to make this system work.  It doesn’t.  

Edited August 16, 2018 by Christendom

[Licinio Chiavari]

3 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Ditch nations for RVR.  Make it 100% clan based.  Clan diplos deal with other clans.  No bullshit nation politics.  We need to stop trying to make this system work.  It doesn’t.  

Correct in the end even if I would prefer a tighter RvR.

Still there's no way to make a serious RvR as long as there's this level of personal freedom (and I would underline that I consider the 'nobody may say me what I shall do' attitude, pure and simple BS).

[Fenris]

12 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Ditch nations for RVR.  Make it 100% clan based.  Clan diplos deal with other clans.  No bullshit nation politics.  We need to stop trying to make this system work.  It doesn’t.  

And what about independents and 1 man clans? Or smaller clans? How do they fit in in that gameplay?

[Christendom]

12 minutes ago, Fenris said:

And what about independents and 1 man clans? Or smaller clans? How do they fit in in that gameplay?

Same way they fit in with the current game play.  Get on the friends list of another clan.  Solo players currently can’t do RVR.

We already have a partial clan system anyway, which is the problem.  Nations don’t work because clans simply don’t need them.  Clan X does all the work and that 2 person clan in the same nation still benefits.  We either need to ditch the lower BR pbs and clan owned ports and go back to the full nation 25 person system or simply ditch nations entirely and only have them as a backdrop.  We’re currently in between systems and it’s not working.  

Edited August 16, 2018 by Christendom

[Licinio Chiavari]

3 minutes ago, Fenris said:

And what about independents and 1 man clans? Or smaller clans? How do they fit in in that gameplay?

Good question.

Still this is a MMO: it is pretty normal you cant play fully a MMO alone (World of Warcraft, EVE teach: if you want to play them fully, you have to gang up).

IMO: 

1. Keep un-capturable ports as national ones, with demi-crap economy and AI drops but still with defensive AI reinforcements for those hanging there.

2. Leave rest of the map to clan and clan alliances politics.

3. (Extra note). Reduce the on map ports (I would say by around 50%) then add discoverable potential hideouts: can be seen only from very close and allow construction of secret small outposts (again that can be seen and added tuo account map from very close). This, coupled with other exploration features (like discoverable deep ships passages in shallow waters). I would add this moreover in a clan based game to give more stuff for lone explorers pve optional).

I am only unsure about the use (if any) of national flags (aside entering and being defended in Capitol areas) and the possibility of same flag battles: but if it'd move to clan centered (like EVE) it will be normal.

[Batman]

1 hour ago, Licinio Chiavari said:

How to know why usually GB is at war with everyone...

At least we don't complain when we lose three ports and threaten to destroy the server

[Licinio Chiavari]

2 minutes ago, Batman said:

At least we don't complain when we lose three ports and threaten to destroy the server

I never complain. And sincerely, I remember Brits complaining a lot on different matters.

[Guest]

56 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Ditch nations for RVR

“Nations” is the mechanic for solo’s to tag along and into battle.

Most players try a game before joining a clan, how would you implement this, joining clans first without knowing them is dubious to say the least, all sounds like band-aid over band-aid stuff.   

[vazco]

2 hours ago, Fenris said:

It worked, but not as it should. Simple clicking on a button, by every member of a nation, "voting" for a favoure ally can not work, blocks were the result.

A nation should agree on 1!!! ally, should be able to have 1 trade agreement or several, and should be able to be neutral to all nations. A war should be a matter of great importance, with many possibilities in game, and not a permanent state of the art, just because development and ideas are "so hard" to introduce in the game. Many other games have simple but great mechanics choosing between allies or foes, why it still does not work in NA, is beyond me. I guess it is Game Labs wish to make a game pew pew, sailing simulator, more than a real MMO.

Imagine a real situation from the game - Danes have BF, who has their enemies and friends, and rest of the nation has their own enemies and friends. How voting would work for them? If vote goes bad for one side, they would simply go around the system. You can't force people eg. to screen for someone just because some system decided they're allied. You also can't force people to not to screen for someone - for the same reasons

[Fenris]

45 minutes ago, Christendom said:

Same way they fit in with the current game play.  Get on the friends list of another clan.  Solo players currently can’t do RVR.

We already have a partial clan system anyway, which is the problem.  Nations don’t work because clans simply don’t need them.  Clan X does all the work and that 2 person clan in the same nation still benefits.  We either need to ditch the lower BR pbs and clan owned ports and go back to the full nation 25 person system or simply ditch nations entirely and only have them as a backdrop.  We’re currently in between systems and it’s not working.  

I have no issue with clan based gameplay.Ok, nations as a backdrop..For example a spanish port remains spanish even VCO for example captures it, but VCO owns the port, and has all rights within. Okay so far.

My only problem is that EVERYONE needs a clan then, even independents, casuals, PVE players, and so on. and if they are not on a friendly list, they can easily be attacked, which leads to same old "gonna leave the game, getting ganked all the time" under circumstances.