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Other => FOnline:2238 Forum => Archives => Closed suggestions => Topic started by: Nice_Boat on February 17, 2010, 10:49:16 am
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The idea that could somewhat support the faction in control and make it flow more like normal combat and less like a bar brawl would be to create an entity called "town militia".
The idea is as follows:
- you can buy cheap (33% - 50% of the normal price or even less, would require balancing) mercenaries (10 to 20, depending on the type - for example, Den would have 20 metal armor dudes with assault rifles, BH 10 mutants with rocket launchers and miniguns) belonging to the militia at the Town Control dude if you control the city for an hour; if the militia prove to die too often (ie. there's none of them present most of the time), make them spawn with no cost after an hour and have 1 or 2 casualties (depending on the town - 2 for Den AR dudes, 1 for BH mutants) respawn every 15, 10 or 5 minutes (that'd would also require balancing);
- you don't need any charisma to recruit militia, they don't follow anyones orders and spawn on specific town map points;
- ALL the town guards are removed - militia is to replace them;
- militia does not respawn when killed (if we go with the "buy" option - it'd require timeouts on buying balanced like the aforementioned militia respawn of the "auto" option);
- militia members have infinite ammo and don't spawn any items when killed;
- all the militias are equally competent; 2 Den dudes should be more or less equally capable in combat (in terms of HP and skills) as BH mutants;
- militia will attack any member of a faction from a list introduced by the town's captor - I'm thinking of a friend/enemy list just like at the faction base, which gets saved after you lose the town to prevent needless micromanagement (of course all the in-game factions would be listed); the list should include "non-alligned" as well; initially after the capture everyone aside from NPC factions and "non-alligned" would be listed as an enemy to further reduce micromanagement;
- militia members don't attack "friendly" players who cause collateral damage to non-key (untalkable) NPCs - if you burst a civvie while targeting another player, you don't get shot, if you burst a civvie while targetting a civvie, you get shot, if you burst Metzger or a trader while targetting anything, you get shot; still "enemy" players are the top priority;
- to control the town you need to kill all the militia, talk with the TC dude and then wait the usual 20 minutes;
- capturing the town makes everyone's listed on the "don't shoot" list (aside from NPC factions and non-alligned) karma at that town go back to 0.
The reward for controlling the town would be in caps paid per hour and perhaps some resources based on what the town has in the Fallout lore. Given the more stress this system would place on the team trying to control the town for prolonged periods of time I think the ammount should be a bit boosted - like 3000 caps per hour or so to make people really care for the potential profits without giving the faction too much of an advantage. It'd require balancing for sure, but I'd up it a bit.
This sort of a deal would still give a bonus to the faction that manages to capture the town somewhat permamently while allowing for some really dynamic combat, especially at peak hours. It'd prevent defence by camping on the worldmap and encourage actually being present in the town to fully utilise and coordinate with the militia. It'd also give you an ability to attack the town 24/7, giving the PvP players way more fun. Even more, it'd prevent 4 bluesuits from troll-taking the town which is and always was one of the most ridiculous aspects of TC. So, in theory, all the pathologies plaguing PvP nowadays would be removed.
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yeah, but what about up ordinary players trying to make a living, the last thing i want to do is to come to gecko to learn energy expert and have a 100% chance of being shot and having all my stuff looted from my corpse...
from what i understand you want to make the northern towns inacessible to all unalligned players.
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yeah, but what about up ordinary players trying to make a living, the last thing i want to do is to come to gecko to learn energy expert and have a 100% chance of being shot and having all my stuff looted from my corpse...
from what i understand you want to make the northern towns inacessible to all players not in a gang
Well, the default setting for non-gang players would be "friendly" - and if some faction decides to switch it to "kill on sight", then they're absolutely bound to receive some hate/flak/whatever. Actually, such a situation could make for some interesting, spontaneous "raids" on the PvP towns made by players who don't really care about PvP. It would make who-controls-what issues actually matter and force more player interaction, bringing the gang players and pvm players/ncr dwellers together. Oh, and you can learn Energy Expert in the Enclave - all of it. Armorer too. SG - Raiders. BG - Reno. Basically all (or most of) the professions can be obtained in towns that wouldn't have any militia.
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hmm, then why does the wiki seem to say that you can only get the 1st lvl of the proffesion in bh and gecko... :-\
sorry, off topic, but still, not quite off course
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hmm, then why does the wiki seem to say that you can only get the 1st lvl of the proffesion in bh and gecko... :-\
That's a common misconception. For example, if you have a guy who is listed as Armorer [3], it means he can give you profession levels up to 3, not only the third one. So basically, if we follow the Armorer example, you could just get 180 repair, take your 60 MFC and about 9000 caps (don't remember how much it costs right now) and get your three levels all at once at Navarro.
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thanks boat, maybe someone should put this up on the wiki though, just in case...
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Some good things, I think however that change is too big to be implemented anytime soon, maybe you could give some little ideas to improve actual system ?
- you don't need any charisma to recruit militia, they don't follow anyones orders and spawn on specific town map points;
- ALL the town guards are removed - militia is to replace them;
- militia does not respawn when killed (if we go with the "buy" option - it'd require timeouts on buying balanced like the aforementioned militia respawn of the "auto" option);
- militia members have infinite ammo and don't spawn any items when killed;
- to control the town you need to kill all the militia, talk with the TC dude and then wait the usual 20 minutes;
I like this part ; where you can seize control anytime you want by attacking the town and successfully killing its guards.
- all the militias are equally competent; 2 Den dudes should be more or less equally capable in combat (in terms of HP and skills) as BH mutants;
Here I totally disagree ; all towns have not thugs of the same strength, and it would add some more interest in choosing to fight in that town rather than another town ; with time big towns could have a difficulty level that makes them unable to be taken by small gangs, whereas small towns could be affordable by any gang - factions could agree in letting small towns to small gangs.
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Here I totally disagree ; all towns have not thugs of the same strength, and it would add some more interest in choosing to fight in that town rather than another town ; with time big towns could have a difficulty level that makes them unable to be taken by small gangs, whereas small towns could be affordable by any gang - factions could agree in letting small towns to small gangs.
That's a good idea too - to keep the things balanced you'd have to have lesser rewards for "easier" towns, but I can see how it could work just as well and be less "gamey".
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Yes, increasing the reward in the towns with strong thugs is a good idea to go with that system. It can balance it a bit more.
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Good suggestion. It would add some dynamism.
=>Question to developers: If accepted, is it difficult/long to program this?
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Yeah, a bit. Though I don't read it thoroughly yet.
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Good idea, but I doubt it gets implemented anytime soon (too complicated).
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Its interesting, I was thinking maybe some NPC raiders coming into TC would spice it up, but this could work instead.
Do you mean that multiple gangs could buy "mercenaries" at once, then they all spawn at the start of TC hour and only when all hostile mercs are gone that you could take the town?
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That's somehow his idea I think ; the good point of it is that you can't manage those mercenaries (thugs), nor place them. You pay for them all at once and then you're done. Maybe you could buy for a new squad of them too, if you were paying a very expensive price ?
Another suggestion, Nice_Boat, maybe when all the thugs are dead, the town does not belong to your faction anymore, but is returning to a neutral state ?
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It would (perhaps) force everyone to actually fight at the same time instead of, wait on WM -> enter -> clearout -> wait for other side to do the same ... repeat.
Of course the reward would probably have to increase to make spending all this money on mercs worthwhile.
I don't think having to protect the mercs would be a good idea though. Shouldn't be about who can spam the most mercs wins.
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The mercs should be limited in numbers not to make them a real force in a normal battle, but they should be strong enough to stop bluesuit-trolls taking the town or really small, unorganised groups. In case of a real attack on town they should just give the defenders a bit more time to prepare. The 10-20 number is just an idea, it should of course be balanced by watching how it all goes ingame.
That's somehow his idea I think ; the good point of it is that you can't manage those mercenaries (thugs), nor place them. You pay for them all at once and then you're done. Maybe you could buy for a new squad of them too, if you were paying a very expensive price ?
Another suggestion, Nice_Boat, maybe when all the thugs are dead, the town does not belong to your faction anymore, but is returning to a neutral state ?
New squad might overdo it a bit, it's all a matter of balancing things out once the basics are there - it's always an option to consider. Returning to neutral state would mess with the reward system a lot I'm afraid, and I wouldn't really want to force people to buy the militia - if they want to guard the town for an hour or two and leave, why prohibit them?
Do you mean that multiple gangs could buy "mercenaries" at once, then they all spawn at the start of TC hour and only when all hostile mercs are gone that you could take the town?
No, militia would be there just to make things even, TC hours would be gone. I mean, since you can attack 24/7 the defenders simply have to have some sort of force that's going to buy them some time and make up for the fact that they're not going to be on guard duty there all day.
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Ah, then no, windows will need to remain.
But this has the basis of a decent idea somewhere in there I'm sure.
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About town control reward:
Currently equipment of one soldier put for a town control fight is worth more than the reward itself.
I'd suggest changing reward from caps to some items that are unavailable otherwise, or very hard to obtain.
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up
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I have another suggestion for the TC.
Can I develop it here, or do you prefer a new topic ?
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I think that some of these suggestions are good and worth trying out. In general I think having smaller rewards frequently is the way to go. Timewindow was a mechnism to prevent "bluesuit capturers", making sure that the faction that controlled the town didn't have to be awake 24/7, this was however before the notification system (countdown) mechanics were in-place, so it's not certain that we'll have the same problems as then. Again, this needs to be tested, tested and tested a bit more. The reason why we've been waiting with changing the current TC is that we've need more feedback so that we can truly improve it instead of just making or worse, or invoke the "they changed it, now it sucks" phenomonen.
This suggestion will not be implemented before wipe, however.
About town control reward:
Currently equipment of one soldier put for a town control fight is worth more than the reward itself.
I'd suggest changing reward from caps to some items that are unavailable otherwise, or very hard to obtain.
This was already tested, in some sense, by having excess items that were traded in the town and things dropped nearby in encounters transfered to the town. It didn't really work out as well as we'd hoped, so it's not likely to return.
What I'd like to see, is some suggestion of how to truly make TC into town guarding, where the players don't benefit by gridcamp killing random bluesuits that enter the town. This is harder than it sounds, as we all know that a bluesuit may either be a scout of an enemy faction, or simply an innocent loner.
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This was already tested, in some sense, by having excess items that were traded in the town and things dropped nearby in encounters transfered to the town. It didn't really work out as well as we'd hoped, so it's not likely to return.
New system with caps is better than the old one, but there's imparity with effort put into the fight.
I'd suggest some usefull special items, which would not put the balance out (some kind of "cherry on a cake"), for example:
- Armor Hardening Kits (+2DT/+5% DR improvement for one armor - equivalent of Toughness perk)
- Motion Sensors
- Pack of cookies (25 cookies)
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What I'd like to see, is some suggestion of how to truly make TC into town guarding, where the players don't benefit by gridcamp killing random bluesuits that enter the town. This is harder than it sounds, as we all know that a bluesuit may either be a scout of an enemy faction, or simply an innocent loner.
The reason of BlueScouting Exploit is the lack of death penality...
A little thing that may avoid this systematic grids killing could be to link the reward to town economic's activities.
The idea is that town economy is for a great part made by players.
So, killing all guys on grid would be a lost for town attacker.
This would make more sense in my mind, and help to stand up town life.
Big squad would have an interest to be attractiv for people, and push new player to leave the NCR bluesuit park.
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A little thing that may avoid this systematic grids killing could be to link the reward to town economic's activities.
The idea is that town economy is for a great part made by players.
So, killing all guys on grid would be a lost for town attacker.
This would make more sense in my mind, and help to stand up town life.
Big squad would have an interest to be attractiv for people, and push new player to leave the NCR bluesuit park.
That would be very good. Such system should be designed upon a foundation that it would be more profitable to help a player stay alive at town and collect o good reward, than to kill him and take his possessions.
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Such system was already tested - it failed completely (:
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IMHO mostly because you had more profit from simply killing player, than waiting for the reward.
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Can you develop the reasons, skejwen ?
Maybe the failure was most a context issue than a system one.
I have sometimes the feel that people see TC as a big squad need of interest.
Personaly I see it only as a mechanism for the whole population, a real game mechanism.
The major problem on the server is for me the lack of player interaction (friendly as hostile).
Dynamic come with the need. And there is any real one at this time, once you have your base (and genraly a bunch of alt...arf).
This proposition was on this purpose. Push/help people to have more interaction (other than basic killing).
Supporting fully this mind would need other change for sure (crafting limit, limited/localised ressources...etc)
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or maybe we could have the faction name under the player's feet, so that one would know if the player is part of a hostile faction and a scout, or just some unfortunate loner.
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unfortunate loner.
can be scout too.
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or maybe we could have the faction name under the player's feet, so that one would know if the player is part of a hostile faction and a scout, or just some unfortunate loner.
I think some kind of server-side name/outline colouring could do that job pretty well.
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Name colorising is not the problem. It works actualy fine.
And having a "global faction flag" (managed by the server) would be a bad thing in my mind.
You have to know a bit people you encounter in this world, thats nice and more immersive.
For sure, dont considerate here the alt exploit.
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This suggestion has been implemented now, it's currently being tested. There's some modifications from original suggestion, but all in all, the things mentioned have been incorporated.
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One simple question:
Imagine Klamath
Imagine Player A and Player B
Imagine Player A and Player B in Klamath
Imagine that Player A and Player B are neutral towards Klamath guards (they are both not on the list)
Imagine that Player A attacked Player B in Klamath
What is the guards' reaction?
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@Ghosthack:
It would be nice to have a "changelog" sticked on the forum for major test like it.
So, tester could easly test each new feature implemented and share their comment.
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guards help kill player B since they don't want to feel the sting of Player A's minigun.
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Nice_Boat: had kinda same idea for town control :) sweet
btw ur faction still doesnt take english lang people? (i bet you remember me)
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@Ghosthack:
It would be nice to have a "changelog" sticked on the forum for major test like it.
So, tester could easly test each new feature implemented and share their comment.
It's not on 'public' beta server (i.e. the one you're playing on).
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Ahahah... ok