Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Sovereignty Warfare – Battle Mechanics

In this proposal, there are two methods of wrestling sovereignty away from an enemy: 1) conquering their outpost or 2) destroying their outpost.


Conquest

The population of an outpost will generate troops at a rate determined by the size of the population and whatever bonuses are in effect. Troops are tools for sovereignty warfare. Each troop has a cyclical (daily, weekly, monthly?) cost associated with ownership (e.g., 10 ISK per troop per cycle). This allows for a fine-grained pricing mechanism in sovereignty claims, rather than the one-size-fits-all that currently prevails. It also creates a large, but non-intrusive ISK-sink into the game.

Troops would be stationed aboard outposts to make sovereignty claims on them. Based on the index system (see above) a minimum troop-to-population ratio would be necessary to make/maintain a sovereignty claim over an outpost, meaning that, on balance, larger/more populated outposts would be more expensive to hold than small/undeveloped ones. Ships can transport troops, offloading them to outposts at a fixed rate (e.g., 10 troops per second per offloading ship). Ships can not activate modules while offloading troops, meaning that safely offloading troops requires some measure of control over the area surrounding the outpost.

The on-the-ground battle mechanics would be simple. Every second of sustained battle, a maximum of three troops are killed. Every second, the smaller force loses two troops while the larger force loses one - until one party withdraws or is eliminated from the outpost entirely. Dreadnaughts can bombard the outpost for an additional 1 kill per second (KPS), with all of the damage going towards enemy troops. Total damage from bombardment to enemy troops maxes out at 3 KPS for each side.


Example A (medium battle): 100,000 (Alliance A) vs. 80,000 plus two ships providing supporting bombardment (Alliance B). Initially, Alliance A loses three troops per second and Alliance B loses two troops per second, until Alliance A ‘s troop levels reach the tipping point (i.e., become the smaller party) and eventually start losing four troops per second. The entire battle would take approximately 8 hours and 20 minutes to resolve, with Alliance A’s troops being wiped out and Alliance B having 30,000 remaining troops.

Example B (epic battle): 2,500,000 plus two supporting ships (Alliance A) vs. 2,000,000 plus three supporting ships (Alliance B). Both alliances lose four troops per second for the duration of the battle, which will take approximately 138 hours and 53 minutes. Alliance A would win with 500,000 surviving troops while Alliance B is eliminated.


Attackers (or defenders) can offload their troops onto the outpost and then leave – there is no need to remain near the outpost for more time than it takes to offload (although doing so may prevent enemies from offloading their troops). Once offloaded, troops from both sides will grind each other down until one side is victorious. The defender will lose their sovereignty claim if the ratio of troops-to-population is too low (and the attacker will only gain sovereignty once they are above said ratio). Every second a battle goes on, some number (or percentage) of the population will be killed as collateral damage. For major battles, this could leave the outpost under-populated and unable to operate installed modules.

Defenders are able to station as many troops as they want aboard an outpost, meaning that they are (basically) in control of the minimum amount of time it would take to conquer it (at minimum). At the same time, owning more troops means having a larger daily (weekly/monthly/whatever) maintenance bill. Player groups will be constrained in terms of how many troops they can field at any one time by their collective income (and savings).


Destruction

The second option for taking sovereignty away from an enemy is to destroy their outpost(s) outright. Outpost cores would have ~150 million HP, and a single reinforcement timer (18 hours). Each layer of superstructure purchased (see above) would add its own HP (50 million?) and reinforcement timer (12 hours?). Attackers would need to grind through each layer to get to the outpost core. Layers themselves would be completely destructible, and would take modules (and population) with them as they went. Individual modules could be targeted and taken offline by damage without worrying about reinforcement timers or affecting sovereignty. Heavily damaged modules are taken offline until repaired. Repairs take a set amount of time and consume spare parts, which are manufactured by players. The outpost core would be semi-destructible; once its reinforcement timers and HP have been ground through, the outpost will become a ‘ruined outpost’. All troops and population aboard the outpost are destroyed and any sovereignty claims are neutralized. Ruined outposts can be repaired at a lower cost than building one from scratch, or salvaged by passersby.

Players docked at an outpost when it is ruined can take however much of their property they can carry in their current ship and undock as usual. They will not be able to (re)dock or use services/change ships while docked at the ruined outpost. Pilots will be able to access their property when and if the outpost if repaired (and if they have good docking rights with the owner).

Re-Working Cyno-Tech


Since jump bridges recently came to everyone’s attention, I thought I would go over how cynos could be modified in the outpost system above. The major concept introduced here is Cyno-Interference Fields (CIFs), which act as multipliers to the amount of fuel required to jump into a system. For example, jumping into a system with a CIF of -99Hz (lowest possible level) would have fuel costs reduced by 99%, whereas jumping into a system with a CIF of 500Hz would increase fuel costs by 500% (there being no upper limit to CIFs). CIFs are influenced by both natural and player-created effects. Each star would generate a CIF with effects being either limited to its own system or occurring over a given range in light years, affecting nearby systems . Similarly, cyno-related outpost modules can have effects beyond the system they are anchored, raising or lowering the CIF across a given range. Overlapping CIFs are cumulative (i.e., positive and negative influences balance out). Given a minor tweek where nearby ships can pool their fuel together, it would never be technically impossible to jump into a system, just mind-bogglingly expensive in some cases.

Jump bridges, assuming they aren’t removed, would also be affected. Rather than act as ‘highways’ for established, developed sovereignty holders, I propose that jump bridges be used more as ‘dirt roads’ for smaller organizations. In the context of player-built stargates becoming available, route optimization (even for capital ships) would be available on a basically unlimited basis once various levels of sovereignty have been established. For lower-level sovereignty claimants, jump bridges would provide the same function in a manner which is both more flexible (does not require large-scale sovereignty claims) and less effective (operate on capacitor recharge model, does not use fuel). Jump bridges would also ignore CIFs, allowing them to offer limited transit through high-interference areas.

Depending on the distribution of natural CIFs, there will be clusters of systems which are inherently ‘mountainous’, in the sense that jumping into them would be prohibitively expensive. The main access point would be gates, wormholes, and jump bridges if the local inhabitants can set a network up. Conversely, there would be areas with naturally low CIFs, where jumping would be much cheaper than nearby alternatives. Player infrastructure could be used to enhance these natural ‘mountains and rivers’, as well as tamper with nearby sovereignty holders’ cyno-related infrastructure.


That's it, thanks for those of you that read it all the way through. Feel free to ask any questions or post any comments you might have. Cheers!