Updated War Rules

[firespirit44 1323]

War, war never changes. We've had war since Aegis, and it has evolved. With having more and more at stake, more and more players are prone to cheat the system, as it is natural for players. 

 

At the moment, we have warclaims and raids, as can be found here.

 

War rules

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/105813-current-war-rules/

 

Raid rules

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/110437-war-safe-zones-and-fighting-oh-my/

 

Now we haven't seen a proper warclaim since Fringe, since everyone lives in basically one city, Lago's system is designed for empires, where you have to take outerlying forts first before you can strike the capital. With Athera, I dont feel that this is the case due to the region plugin. Claiming plots and building on them are different now. 

 

Raids are just toxic now, and should be removed in its entirety. The purpose of a raid is to antagonise a settlement, by killing its inhabitants. You cant even take their resources anymore, with the removal of lockpicking. Its done purely to annoy and frustrate players. 

 

For this reason, I propose the total removal of raids, categorising war into 3 types: Skirmishes, Pillage, Siege. This system is designed to incorporate guilds as well.

 

Nation Rules:

1. There must be sufficient roleplay in order to declare war
2. Both sides need to consent to have their settlement taken, if not a successful siege will allow pillaging in which all its chests will be unlocked, several buildings destroyed, and setting it on fire. 
3. To siege a settlement, you have to first win 3 skirmishes out of 5 outside of the settlement. 
4. You may not refuse warclaims. But 3 GMs appointed by an admin will oversee and act as mediators to see if the warclaim should be accepted and to oversee the battle will go smoothly.(I'll explain the GM's role in a few)
5. Both sides must agree to the terms of war. Date, time, Victory conditions, losing conditions, and stalemate conditions within a allotted timeframe of war should be agreed upon before hand. For example: To win a skirmish, you need to kill roughly half of the 40 man force within 1 hour. Or kill the emperor. To lose, you lose half your forces and 3 captains within 1 hour. A stalemate will be announced if there is no clear winner, and the battle will need to be redone. 
6. If the invader loses 3 or more skirmishes, they may not attack that nation for 2 elven months(IRL months)
7. After a area has been pillaged, they cannot be pillaged again for 2 months. 

 

Guild Rules

1. Your group must have a valid reason for declaring war on another faction
2. You may not refuse warclaims. But 3 GMs appointed by an admin will oversee and act as mediators to see if the warclaim should be accepted, to oversee the battle will go smoothly.
3. Both sides must agree to the terms of war. Date, time, Victory conditions, losing conditions, and stalemate conditions within a allotted timeframe of war should be agreed upon before hand. For example: To win a skirmish, you need to kill roughly half of the 10 man force within 1 hour. Or kill the guild leader. To lose, you lose half your forces and 2 Captains within 1 hour. A stalemate will be announced if there is no clear winner, and the battle will need to be redone. 
4. To siege a settlement, you have to first win 1 skirmishes outside of the settlement. 
5. Both sides need to consent to have their settlement taken, if not a successful siege will allow pillaging in which all its chests will be unlocked, several buildings destroyed, and setting it on fire. 
6. Private manors do not count as 'guilds'
7. If the invader loses the skirmish, they may not attack that settlement for 1 elven month(IRL month)
8. After a area has been pillaged, they cannot be pillaged again for 2 months. 

The price of war:

 

To often, do people wage war over inconsequential things. Waging war was a serious matter, that involved heavy logistics. It wasn't about who could defeat each other in battle, it was who could last longer. While its impractical for us to delve too deeply in realism, attackers need to pay a 'price' for going to war. 

 

War hurts everyone, and this should be used as a last resort before going to war.

 

The definition of going to war is declaring aggression on each other. So for example if the attacker declares war on settlement X, they will need to pay a 'logistic fee' for marching the men, equipment, feed, to wherever this settlement is to engage in combat. Every warclaim will need to be paid upfront. The idea is to make nation leaders stop and think if it is worth engaging in war. There will be a different set of price for guilds. but guilds tied to nations will fall under nation. This is to prevent loopholes like the Decterum declaring war on a settlement for cheaper war costs. 

 

Price of war has been decided to split into two, for skirmishes and siege

 

Siege

1. The price of war for nation siege is changed to 32 gold blocks, 1 doublechest of stacked baked food(of any variety), and 1  chest of stacked cooked meats(of any variety)
2. The price of war for guilds siege changed to 10 gold blocks, 1 stack of baked good and 1 stack of cooked meat

Skirmish

1. The price of war for nations for skirmishes is set at 10 gold blocks, 1 doublechest of baked goods
2. The price of war for guilds for skirmishes is set at 5 gold blocks, 1 double chest of baked goods

 

Defenders do not need to pay a cost

 

A skeleton on what's a valid reason for going to war. Check the reasoning, ignore the systems. 

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/69431-war-claim-overhaul/

 

 

 

Raid removal consequences

Due to the removal of raids, factions like orcs will ask:"What do we do now? That's our entire RP!"

 

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/94431-warlclaim-how-to-fix-war-on-lotc/?hl=wars

 

In that thread, Pok talked at length on why he wants a larger cap. But since the removal of raids, we can just assume it would be villainous activity. 

 

1. They need proper rp before engaging in pvp, and they must make sure all who are present are aware of the situation should they call PVP default. 
2. They can only pvp those involved. Killing random bystanders is the same as no-rp killing, and will be dealt as such. If random bystander provokes the attackers, well then they become involved.
3. There are no cap to villainous activity, But that doesn't mean you can bring an army and sit around to bait people into attacking. 
4. Banditry may not occur inside a settlement(banditry being defined as people in armour killing robbing and killing citizen inside its walls)

 

Siege 

 

To progress to a siege, you'll fist need to win skirmishes surrounding the settlement.

 

 

For example, lets say I want to siege the humans. I'll have to fight 3 skirmishes near Petrus, and win all 3 of them. Once I have won 3/5 skirmishes, we can move on to the siege:

 

 

Siege requires a long time, with tools for sieging and ammunition. 

 

 

In this war, what basically went down was two sides firing each other with constant /roll 20s on siege equipment, as if it was a gattling down. There were so many fireballs thrown that at the end, the Dreadfort was quite literally gone. The only counterplay was to fire /at/ the siege equipments in order to disable them. The Teutons had one siege equipment left, and was constantly barraging at the fort as they couldn't react to it. 

 

To counteract that, and to balance out the sillyness of over-squeezing your fort to the brim with siege equipment, it'll be factored as a 'paintball cost'. Factions can 'hire' siege equipment (they'll build it in rp, but they'll need to pay the full price listed below in order if they want a GM to operate it). To keep it simple, we'll stick to trebuchets and battering rams. They can buy ammunition, just like in paintball. 30 shots for 30 ironblocks for example(could use smoothstone instead). That way the gunners will need to be smart about their targets.

 

Cost of siege equipment:

1. The cost of buying siege weaponry is decided at 2 stack of logs, 1 stack of string, 16 iron blocks. The siege weaponry must be dismantled after the siege
2. The cost of ammo is set at 1 ironblock, and 2 gunpowder
3. Addition of battering rams which require 6 stack of logs, 32 iron blocks, and 2 stack of string. (battering ram can only be used if settlement is on a somewhat even location without a moat)
4. You do not need to hire siege equipment, it is a option.

 

How to operate siege equipment

1. To man a trebuchet, there needs to be 3 people operating it, with 1 designated roller, Cooldown between shots fired are 5 minutes.
2. If you roll below 15, its a miss. If you roll 15 and above, its a hit. If you roll 19 and above, its a critical hit.
3. To man a battering ram, there needs to be 5 people standing below the wall with the ram, with 1 designated roller. Cooldown between hits are 5 minutes.
4. To successfully breach a wall with a ram, 1 person amongst the 5 will need to roll above 15 out of 20 3 times.

 

Those who say "What about surprise attacks?!"

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/98787-war-rules/?hl=wars

Sorry, we dont want it because it'll be otherwise impossible to moderate, unless both factions agree to a game of hide and seek in a region.

 

The other side

 

The issue with this system is that it allows for no one to refuse warclaims, and it does basically **** over settlements that aren't capitals. You can read the debate here:

 

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/102036-remove-warclaims/?hl=wars#entry935829

 

I think there are lots of obstacles in place, in order to take a settlement. In the end I concluded that pillaging a settlement would be better rather than lose everything and their rp.

 

Temple Tournament

 

https://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/102324-40-nation-vs-nation-conflict/?hl=wars

1. Does not need a warclaim, just a time and date for the fight and a list of participants
2. Equal footings like 5v5, 7v7, whatever the number is
3. Terms and conditions are set by the players, if you lose you pay tribute/give up your town/whatever. Both factions need to agree to it.
4. We can have bystanders!
5. Does not need a cost!

Closing notes

 

I have read this: https://www.lordofthecraft.net/topic/114970-casus-belli-system/, and  at length, it was mostly just a rehash of the same people proposing the same set of rules before.

 

501warhead will be conducting tests for war, and revisions will be made. But this is the base rules, and we'll see how it goes over the first few weeks. I dont expect a warclaim anytime soon though. 

 

The flaw I see in this system is that it basically denies on the spot rallying and fighting, like so commonly seen in the Fringe. But this is a rp server first, and a pvp faction server 3rd. I hope this will promote more cooperative roleplay instead of the hate and strife that we have now.

[Chikachu 402]

First! I APPROVE!

[GodEmperorFlam 3447]

Some number.

 

Woo! So if a place doesn't want to give up land, we just move chests away beforehand and rebuild and can't get touched for 2 months. Aha!

 

[hearth_ 1023]

Edit: Third ;_;

Awesome

[KarmaDelta 969]

Pretty sure this is rustling jimmies heavily.

I like the way the seige and skirmishes have to be payed for as well. 

 

So far, this looks like it is pretty balanced and would make mostly everybody happy to an extent.

[Quavinir_Twiceborn 1050]

HECK F!@#IN' YEAH.

 

Sounds great :D

[lemontide331 1615]

sounds gd

[John Ivory 4546]

I like these rules!

[Aedan The Bard 350]

At last the staff does something that can set things in place after so much madness. Great job, staff members, you make me proud.

[firespirit44 1323]

Also apologies for the delay, I debated seriously on whether I should allow settlements be taken without consent, as it was like in Asulon. 

 

The result was negative. But perhaps 2 months of ooc protection sounds too much. We will test the victory and losing conditions, everything will be subject to change over the course of time. 

[Narthok 10416]

So we can't have prebuilt siege weapons?

[Cyndikate 2303]

What's the difference between the settlement attack system you set and raids?

[Space 2335]

What is this even I don't eve know.

[Guest]

What is this even I don't eve know.

 

dis gai

 

he gits it

 

fo reel

 

y no u

[CosmicWhaleShark 2488]

This obviously was thought out, I like it. Wars will potentially have depth now.