Small group/clan content: Port Raids + Poll

[FKL 1982]

Can admin clarify how many times a day a single clan/port can be raided? Will there be a cooldown? 

[Vernon Merrill]

53 minutes ago, Barbarosa said:

Timeflow:

1. Attacker buys a flag from any national port. (to avoid basic cutter scouting right from the beginning, flag cost resources to avoid spam)
2. Rumours about the plan start spreading. The flag is announced to Nation or whole server (if you want everyone seeking fun to join.) The targeted port is unknown for defender, only the nation to be attacked is known.  Every port of that nation can be a target. 
3. The flag cannot be removed from the port for coming 20 min, giving time for others to prepare for fun.
4. After 20 min, attackers can take the flag and leave the port. An announcement will be made that a raiding fleet set sails to attack an X nation port. 
5. After 10 minutes, rumours will spread about the county name the possible raid has been launched. regardless of the attacker leave timer. Sooner they leave better for them to be undetected.
6. Attackers will have 30 min to plant the flag. The route they took is up to them. Yet the target is unknown. Do not worry about it. Not every port is worth raiding. Let some raid very unexpected ports for low-profit while others try to raid Cartaghena. There is no problem of raiding very close enemy ports either, that will serve to the creation of frontiers.
7. Planting the flag will take 5 minutes standing stationary, allowing defenders to attack and interrupt. 
8. As soon as the flag is planted loot menu will appear like deadman chest. The attacker will need to bring it to any national port. No needless AI fighting.
9. The defenders can intercept prior to or after the raid.
10. The chest will contain the 20% tax income of the port from the previous day (to be extracted from future income) + some extra goodies. If anyone else managed to cap back the chest, goodies will be deleted and only tax amount will stay to avoid abuse.
11. Deadman chest is heavy so you need to bring traders with you. Traders will serve to avoid fast ships abuse ect. protecting, capturing traders will be a priority.

Rules:

1. Max group size 6. 1 being a trader. Trader as a fleet might be allowed or let's try fighting traders?
2. Max ship lvl allowed to the attacker is 4th rate.
3. No limits for defenders. (Finally remove the stupidly high bonuses/wood difference to not see fir/fir Victories catching every 5th rate. Without correction of idiotic bonuses nothing will work in this game.)

I am at work and can not write more detailed. But this will give lots of content for everyone I guess.

EDIT: More restrictions or rules you add will only serve to another failure implementation. Keep it basic, simple, let it flow. It is raiding, keep it open, stop restricting everything to force your vision. Let players decide how to approach it. We don't need circles, AI battles, OW is enough. Whatever makes you sail is good. Stop approaching everything as a lobby instance.

Excellent post.  +1

[Yehoodi]

I like the concept of trying to figure out a way to have content for smaller clans . . . but i have a few concerns.

First, what is stopping a larger clan with say 10 or 15 great players from taking 1, 2, or 3 raids.  Or just peeling off 5 of their players to run raids whilst others do day to day PvP and seal clubbing.

For me, this "smaller" clan benefit is just opening a door for a larger clan to have more seal clubbing opportunities

Second, this could create a war of attrition for the smaller clan nations or weaker nations if the elite larger nations/clan can basically come  up to their door and wear down the smaller clans/nations assets.  

I think we all know there are folks in this game that like to use exploits and stretch things that were designed for another reason, so why open another Pandora's box?

If you want to have raids that would only give chests and rewards, but nothing or very little from the port, then that might help. 

But in the end we DO NOT want to add content that will make the strong stronger.  

 

 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Yehoodi

[Raekur]

Just keep one major thing in mind, if it becomes easier for a clan to lose stuff than build it, than players will stop building up ports.

Small clans will retreat to the capital areas and give up on the idea of building up a port for the bonuses. 

[Georg Fromm]

My only wish for a raid technique is that the raid-affected clans can not completely take away their resources.
If there are no restrictions, it may be more than clear that large clans consider this an invitation to permanently raid small nations or clans. A certain amount of resources should always be secure from access.

[HachiRoku]

anything that makes RVR spontaneous is good imo. 

[p i t]

Can we get back flags for raids?

Edited May 7, 2019 by Radicalism

[TheLoneWolf]

A few comments:

Raids should be limited to 3rd rates max with a max br. 

Should allow up to 10 players to participate subject to br.

If raiding party wins, they get to use crafting facilities (ie. virtual shipyard with all port bonuses) or harvest from farms for 24hrs and defenders (if they lose) denied use of same.  Farms would be set to full.  Port would be like enemy port if defenders loose but without use of fort. 

Raids should be same day with 1 hour notice of location.  Flag system is great. Raids should be during port timer.

Fortifications can help defenders but like in pvp not affected.

If raiding party successful, they get VM of that port for the week and defenders lose VM for that port for the week.

Raiding party gets gold chest and doubloons as reward.

Flag should cost doubloons with price high enough to discourage fake flags.

RNG port investment (ie. 4 port inv points) gets destroyed partially destroyed (ie. for farm - requires another 100 - 200 tools etc.)

 

 

[Aquillas]

50 minutes ago, Wraith said:

The system I have in mind is complex but serves to enforce these principles:

• Raids are oriented towards a county.
• A group buys a raid "landing" ship for a particular county from the conquest missions.
• This ship is a shabby Indiaman for deeps, or a shabby Trader Brig for shallows, and is filled with provisions and weapons (max-filled == slow)
• The attacking group with no fixed size or BR must escort one or more landing ships to the county of interest. As soon as the landing ship comes within sight of any of that nation's friendly AI or ports a Combat News post of a rumored raid on that County is generated.
• The landing ship captain can click on any port within the target County and generate a raid battle instance. This battle instance looks much like a port battle instance but all joiners, both attackers and defenders, must join outside the bigger circle.
• Once joined the attackers must escort the landing ship to one of three landing locations where it must remain sails down for 10 minutes. These landing zones may be protected by port fortifications so mortar brigs may be necessary to take them out and protect them.
• Once 10 minutes have elapsed the landing ship(s) holds will be replaced with goods from the port, doubloons, combat medals, and must exit the battle and be escorted home. 
  • Rewards should be scaled by the amount of time since the last successful raid on a port, visible by clicking on the port.
• A successful raid will result in 1/3 of the port income, per successful landing, of that port for the day to be placed in a chest of the landing ship captain and removed from the port income for that day.
• The battle remains open the entire time on for both sides up to let's say one half of the BR of the port's port battle.
• For anyone participating in the battle on either side, reals, xp, and combat medals (in the hold) are received as rewards, thus encouraging all nation players to respond to raids

Such a system could seem fine, but this will result in permanent erasing of small nations by big ones, which only can set-up large scale raids on a county. Small nation, if they can make it by surprise, will be unable to take back the loot in safe waters. Big nation will make raid after raid on "vulnerable" nations, making weak nations weaker, strong nations stronger, erasing the player base of small nations in a  few weeks. Remember, players always go to easy targets!

Harassed nations, losing their goods several times a week will become strictly unplayable. Their players will leave first, except perhaps the players having alts somewhere in another strong nationfor crafting and ship building. Players of big nations will then whine because of useless raids giving nothing relevant.

Other thing: doubloons, medals and marks are normally not in warehouses but in captain chests. So, not in loot, unless there is a clan Warehouse there. But for sure, if raids are implemented, all that stuff will be safely stored out of warehouses.

I voted "yes" to Raid implementation, but the system must be adapted, capped and limited, unless small nations will go to no possible development. In real life, that was the case, but in a game, the risk is "game over".

Edited May 7, 2019 by Aquillas

[DeRuyter]

3 hours ago, Barbarosa said:

snip

 

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

snip

Judging by the voting so far looks like option B is the most popular. I would like to see Raids be separate content with more instant action rather than just a mini PB. There have been a lot of good suggestions as well as some concerns for exploits so far. @Wraith and @Barbarosa had  some detailed suggestions for mechanics. I like the idea that a raid is picked up for a county and the port is not revealed until the raid is there and starting.

Here are some considerations:

·        Raids should be limited to raiders like frigates and small line ships by BR or hard limit. (One concern is that a fleet responding after the battle is not restricted).

·        Raid missions should have limited availability to avoid spamming a county or nation. A port should have a cool down timer after a raid as well.

·        Raids should not be restricted by port timers. This is balanced by the defenders having many opportunities to intercept the raid and the lower cost of losing, ie; not losing the port.

·        Rewards should scale to port size and costs for the port owner not overly punitive, but enough for a response.

·        Raids should be PVP. The question is whether to have bots if no players show up to defend the raid. Would it be disappointing to have an empty battle with no players or bots? The raiders could come out and face a defending fleet while trying to get the loot back to homeport. Again lots of opportunity to defend and generate PVP.

·        Defenders should be anyone from that nation not just the owning clan or clan on the friends list.

·        Forts should be destructable. The goal for Raiding may be to degrade port defenses for a full PB later. But repairing a damaged fort should not be nearly as costly as building one!!

 

I think we should test a PVP only version first and only add bots if necessary. PVE server gets bots ofc. Looking forward to patch.

[Audacious]

Admin Definitely B, Mechanics similar to RDR2, works well and I personally tested it. It will create 3 groups of players. Defenders, Attackers and scavengers (privs). Scavengers will hunt the attackers.

Time to add new privateer Branch? maybe...

Limit raid on the same port to once every 7 days. Mark that port on the map with Fire icon and add smoke animation when entering port. Homes are on fire, fire bells are ringing - chaos. 

I would mark the attacker who picked up the documents and loot on the world map and they should be visible to every one. Not players , but package location. This will bring pvp to Raid locations big time. 

Reputation patch would be great and would even more help with pvp.

-Friendly and Hostile Reputation meter. 

-Successful Raid repel would add Friendly rep. to all who participated in PB. 

-Successful Raid attack would add Hostile rep. to all who participated in PB. 

Friendly/Hostile rep levels open new Missions: 

100rep - Mission 1(reward x), 1000rep - Mission - 2(reward x), 10000rep - Mission - 3(reward x +Hostile/Friendly Logo Free Flag ) etc..

Keep things open to public, so they know where action takes place.

 

 

Good luck. 

Edited May 7, 2019 by Audacious

[Aquillas]

Wraith, Sorry if I misunderstand your post. What I fear is a combination of Admin proposal ("Enemy loses 15% of the port investments in that port") Knowing that you propose a total reward of 30% for attackers, I do think that my remark is still viable, the risks being:

• Players always going to the easiest targets, the risk is that small nations will be harassed several times a Week, preventing them to conquests, because being too busy every day, defending against daily raids.
• Easy to set three raids to a small nation, if they flip one of your ports yesterday evening… Raids must not be a counter measure to RvR.
• Protection against defense set by attacker alts to be set-up (this would exclude small clans and independent players from raid defence if defence is limited to the defending clan and friend clans). See the rapid exploit of the "frontier war".

I still do think that harassment protection of small nations is to be placed.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Aquillas

[Angus MacDuff]

2 hours ago, Wraith said:

Thank you Admin, this type of content is greatly needed and I'm glad it's finally being given consideration. Unfortunately I don't think either of the options as presented accomplishes what it could. I would urge you to think about designing a system that accomplishes the following overarching goals: A system that is instant-action for anyone logging in and joining up with friends/clan/nation-mates; a mechanic that does not require PvE grind but offers up potential for PvP action; finally, a system that encourages full nation participation, not limited to friendly clans or imposes arbitrary limits on the size of fights generated through BR or other types of RoE gimmicks.

I didn't quote your whole post but it is an excellent suggestion

 

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

I said nothing about a clan's warehouse being raided.

This is a very important point.  My only concern is that the common use of alts gives an opportunity for spying on ports and giving information on when a port will be at it's weakest defence level.

 

2 hours ago, Wraith said:

Raids battles can only be started, however, on ports with an open timer, thus encouraging clans to keep timers on important ports, and encouraging large clans who own County Capitals to get smaller clans to invest in port timers and protect the other ports within counties.

Timer costs would have to come way down, I would think.

[Slim McSauce]

YES! Finally! How long have we've been asking for this? Anyway, great idea. Nothing is required except that they are in fact instant actions. That's exactly what this game lacks is something 5-10 people online at the same time can quickly co-ordinate and do without putting off time for tomorrow. This on a RVR scale is something to do any time of day, which means you will finally be rewarded for being online with near endless callings for offensive/defensive raid missions. There is always at least 5 or 10 people online per nation during slow hours so this will not fail and succumb to the timer issues which holds regular rvr back.

[Raekur]

17 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Maybe, but I think we want more raids, more PvP-generating opportunities than not right?  And especially with the preponderance of timer-dodging going on I think having a mechanism via raids to make that even more costly would be a nice positive feedback loop?

How would driving up the cost a clan/nation has to spend each day be a benefit? The only thing that would occur is that some ports would be released to go neutral before the valuable ports are given up on. Neutral ports help the pvp side and further hinder the trader side. So your raids would become even less of an option as more and more ports are turned neutral. You need to look at the long term effects of certain actions. Increase the cost too much and you will see a very negative effect follow.

[_Masterviolin]

This may have been said already, but put a cap on the damage you can do! This can help avoid situations where larger countries nuke small countries into the stone age with constant raids. Time between raids should be perhaps two days.

[o Barão]

Ok interesting idea @admin. This one and the other about elite NPC fleets can be the beginning to make the NA more interesting to play for smaller clans. So +1 for trying.

 

About my opinion about raids.

- Keep it small and without warnings.

- Get a mission in the county capital to raid some port.

- The port quality will tell if is 3 vs 6 + 3 or 5 vs 10 + 5 ( i will explain this numbers more in detail )

 

I am thinking in a mix system ( pve + pvp ) so with this in mind. There is no warning, no flag in the map, nothing. The moment a raid battle starts all the players from that nation will get a message about the battle  and they can join that battle or wait outside. How this works?

regional ports will have 3 ( raiders ) vs 6 ( elite npc defenders ) + 3 slots open to players that wish to join the battle against the raiders.

capital ports will have 5 ( raiders ) vs 10 ( elite npc defenders ) + 5 slots open to players that wish to join the battle against the raiders.

 

keep shallow ports raid battles limit to 6th rate.

keep deep ports raid battles limit to 5th rate.

 

Raided ports can not be attacked again for 10 days.

 

Raids should be done in fast ships , and should be a mission to give fun to all , so let's keep it simple and limit the ships by their rate and not BR.

 

 

Edited May 7, 2019 by no one

[Tiedemann]

The entire point why I like the idea of a raids is to replace the instant action/purpose we had with the old flags. So i really like option B. Option A reminds me to much of the current pbs system, so I do not see the point. And if 5 players raid a large nation then the screening will make this useless. For few players to have a chance it needs to happen fast before defenders can organize.  

For option B: Please make it possible for players to join and defend. Only if no players join to defend after 5-10 minutes, then have Elite NPC spawn like Interpedido mentioned. Raiders need to sink defending ships and loot them. And what ever happens just please do not ad circles!!! 😂 

[Barbarosa]

How come many of you fail to understand as soon as you put any kind of event battle against AI or players, it turns to suicide mission if you make it known or PvE group mission if no one knows...?

There is no escape from enemy if they know with what br/ships, when and where you are coming. There is no escape from home waters of enemy... Entering event battle is just a death wish.

5 min flag planting is enough to simulate coastal raiding.

Let people spread, sail. scout, pop up to check their beloved ports, let them go out and sail finally. This will create lots of content. Smaller nations will be harder to raid, bigger ones easier. 

Fake groups, help from other nations, small screenings, Sneak attacks when nation has port battle, opportunist pvpers...lots of potential. FFS don't ruin this one too please.

[Barbancourt]

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

If you're setting timers in your time zone then you should be able to defend the raids, right?

Of course not.  People don't live in the game, so we are not "scheduled" to defend ports every single day during a timer like a 7 day a week job.  Timers just limit the potential that hostility can be generated on your port, from 24 hours a day down to 3(?). 

[Farrago]

As a member of a small nation, a small clan (although ok size compared to the rest of the Dutch clans) and a US time zone player, I am in favor of raids. But as described by the Devs, I see big problems. I don’t have a complete solution, but here are some thoughts.

There is constantly ideas on things to give smaller clans and solo players more to do. What would really benefit us is giving larger clans and nations more that they have to do to maintain these spread out huge empires. I’m not talking about increasing the price tag of improvements, I’m talking about increasing what they have to do to keep the port happy and in their hands. This provides a role for traders and those who prey upon them.

So with this in mind, an unhappy or hungry port can’t produce as much X or get the mos benefits and it can’t summon as many defenders for a raid. BUT being a port in crisis, the rewards for a raid won’t be as great.

Fighting Elite AI is often more damaging than fighting players. It also requires differently built ships. There’s no reason for defenders to join. They can wait, intercept, and destroy wounded attackers.

Raid mechanic is an area where big clans/nations can dominate even more. There’s no solution to this unless you burden the larger entities with the price of being large. I’ll say it again, owned ports should require action.

Only clans on defenders friends list should be able to  enter raid battle.

Damage must damage the port and take away from owners or it will just be farmed or exploited by alts or friendly clans.

It’s a balance… the rewards can be neither too high nor the potential damage to the port too great. The important thing is to create action.

Don’t announce exactly where the raid is happening. Instead, announce the county. “Dutch are raiding the Butterfly Islands”. “Dutch are raiding the Caymans”.

Potential scenarios:

PVP zone type circle. Winner gets the spoils. Only friendly clans can enter. Winner defined as last ship(s) standing. Afterwards the spoils appear in the clan warehouse of the victor. Defender also gains awards if they successfully defend. If after 90 minutes both sides still alive, proportional awards given based on damage.

Raids are intercepting guarded treasure fleets. No shooting your own ships. Treasure fleet departing certain port going to certain port. 

[Farrago]

27 minutes ago, Barbarosa said:

How come many of you fail to understand as soon as you put any kind of event battle against AI or players, it turns to suicide mission if you make it known or PvE group mission if no one knows...?

There is no escape from enemy if they know with what br/ships, when and where you are coming. There is no escape from home waters of enemy... Entering event battle is just a death wish.

That’s why I’m suggesting that the announcement be “X Nation is raiding in the Y County” instead of specific port. 

[Barbarosa]

Edit: Delete please wrong thread.

Edited May 7, 2019 by Barbarosa

[Tiedemann]

If raids = PvE, I would like to propose removing the PvE battle instance all together. Making it even more time sensitive. 

Raid: get a flag - go to the port - plant the flag - when flag is plantet port is raided - players get raid chest in hold (make them heavy to prevent use of trader lynx 601 weight) - now get back to a safe port!

Skipping the PvE battle removes the need to sink and loot elite AI, that can take a while. Giving defenders time to organize screening, revenge fleet etc.

[Aquillas]

Another way to protect small nations is to limit the loot for raiders:

1- More ports a nation has,  more enrichment these ports will make each others by domestic trading (which is the case in real life). So it should be more lucrative to raid ports of big nations.

2- The maximum amount of loot that can be taken from a port should be visible in this port, to enemy players only (alt prevention), by introducing a smuggler in the port.