EarthMC Wars Roadmap

[CorruptedGreed]

Summary

War, encompassing PvP between players affiliated with certain towns and nations, will soon be facilitated by EarthMC as a server-side feature. It has been an element of gameplay missing for the majority of the server's existence, due to the difficulty of implementing the feature in a sustainable manner. It will not involve unrecoverable loss of gameplay progress (examples being loss of nations, towns, town claims, building destruction, items in chests, etc). Instead, it will focus on geopolitical objectives. Players can expect to see an official announcement for any upcoming changes, as customary. This post is meant to navigate what war would look like, and give feedback or considerations on various aspects.

Why now?

With summer arriving soon, it is a good opportunity for the server to progress on a long-missing facet of gameplay. This would be on par with progress to migrating to Folia, and serve as an effective benchmark for server performance. Without the worry of losing gameplay progress, it should make sense to start to consider what war would look like in order to avoid any unintended impacts.

War days vs War system

Typically when discussing war, there are two distinctions made between how it is facilitated.

War days refer to an admin-initiated event in which the entire server is involved in (World War). These are typically free for all, allowing nations to attack each other and collect war points to prove who the strongest is. The strongest nation(s) are rewarded special items/recognition. These were common on the Classic iteration of EarthMC.

War system refers to the ability for players to declare war on one another's towns/nations, independent of admin intervention. This is typically done through investing gold/resources to initiate an attack on another town/nation. There was a beta test for a war system during the Nova iteration of EarthMC.

Both of these will be arriving to the server pending testing. They will be in beta, but there are not expected to be any major issues. The reason for hosting them on the production server (Aurora) comes down to stress-testing performance. With a non-destructive configuration, there is no need to worry about any damage or loss of progress.

How War days would look on EarthMC?

War days would operate as periodic events that are announced prior to happening, with a specific reward and/or objective. Upon the World War beginning, every involved nation’s towns will have PvP force-enabled. The basic principle revolves around occupying towns and killing enemy participants to accumulate points for your nation. Fully eliminating a town removes it from the war, while fully eliminating a nation removes all its towns from the war. There are effectively no stakes for involved nations, outside of competing for points.

If your town does not belong to a nation, you cannot participate in war days.

Nations can opt out of war days by doing the following:

• Being in peaceful status, /n toggle peaceful
• Not having any enemies/mutual enemies

For example, if Britain enemies Norway and Germany, they would only enter the World War if one of the two have them as a mutual enemy. If Norway also has Britain as an enemy, they would both enter the World War. However, if Germany does not have Britain enemied, or other nations, they would not enter war.

In the event a nation finds itself in a war they do not wish to participate in or just give up, their leader can run /surrender This will remove their nation from the war and eject all their towns from PvP status.

War day configuration

During the War day event, involved players will keep inventory on death. After a certain number of deaths, they will be ejected from the war (eliminated) and no longer able to attack towns or participate for points. To start off, the World War will likely be some hours long and everyone online will maintain keep inventory.

When would War days arrive to EarthMC?

The tentative date for the first World War will be May 18th (Update). Once a specific time for the event is finalized it will be announced on the Discord announcements.

How a War system would look on EarthMC?

This is a very difficult question to address here, especially given if you aren’t familiar with how war would look like in Towny. If you’ve probably heard of SiegeWar, your perception of it is not impressive. This is most likely due to many servers utilizing a lackluster implementation, and falling short of expectations. However, SiegeWar would be the best plugin to build a war system on top of compared to others (FlagWar/EventWar) that involve direct loss of land or town ownership.

In order to create a war system suitable for EarthMC, a multitude of principles would have to be adhered to:

• Towns will not suffer loss of claims, builds, or items. It is not beneficial to the gameplay loop to tie material progress to war, otherwise it becomes too much of a burden on players to grind consistently.
• Towns will not be removed from nations/Nations will not be deleted as a result of a war loss. Given that many towns rely on nation bonus to maintain claim limit, it would not be beneficial to transfer ownership to winning nations, nor delete losing ones. This ties into the first point on material progress.
• Towns will not be forced to pay gold to the attackers for losing a war. This is a major turn-off for many players and part of why many servers utilizing war ultimately fail.

Instead of these punitive measures, rewards and objectives for a War system would be geopolitical-oriented. Following a siege defeat, a town is labeled as "Occupied by:" The town remains in their nation, with nation chat. However, they will suffer some attribute loss. Such as:

• Occupied towns contribute to the /n list position of their occupier
• Occupied towns show up as being occupied on the map (same nation color as their occupier)
• If a town is occupied, it cannot brew combat-related potions (strength/speed/fire resistance) in its claims
• If the capital of a nation is occupied, the nation will lose its /n spawn

These attributes would apply to the town until it frees itself through a revolt siege. They allow for consequential changes, while maintaining the existence of nations and claim bonus/nation chat communication. This would not be an exhaustive or final list of attributes, but just some to get the idea of what can be done to occupied towns without loss of material progress or limiting gameplay too harshly. Any other ideas can also be evaluated for development feasibility, so feel free to voice your thoughts.

Summary of the War system

• Non-destructive war within Towny
• Nations can attempt to siege towns and capture them into their nation for a set time (I.E 21 days)
• Nations would only be allowed to attack nations in their nation radius. This will prevent solely PvP-oriented nations from being able to siege anyone across the map outside of their immediate range.
• In order to contribute to a battle session, players would need 7 loyalty for the nation they're in. For every new towny day that a player is in a nation, they will gain 1 loyalty.
• On top of meeting the loyalty requirement, players would have to be given the Soldier rank. This rank will allow them to contribute to their nation/allied sieges. Without this, their deaths/kills/banner occupation will not incur any points.
• Allies can help in war.
• 7 battle sessions, each 1 hour long and 6 hours apart. War can only be declared on Friday going over into the weekend. This can be changed to any day(s).
• KeepInventory during sieges, every death only results in configurable loss of armor durability %
• Charge 2 gold per plot to attack a town (50% gold sink into the server, remainder is fought over by nations). Ex: 200 gold to attack a 100 chunk town. 100 gold is sunk into the server and 100 gold is left in the war chest.
• If the attacking nation overwhelmingly wins the siege, they retain the gold (100 gold) and force the town into their nation for 21 days.
• If the defender overwhelmingly wins, they get all the gold from the war chest (100 gold).
• If either side wins but by a close margin (I.E within 2500 points), then they split the war chest gold 50/50, in this instance being 50 gold to each side.
• Nation capitals cost #% more gold to attack (default 50%).
• Unlike War days, there is no ability to opt out of the War system with zero drawbacks. There is the ability to opt out of the fighting/siege aspect, which can be done with peacefulness. Towns can toggle peacefulness to avoid being sieged, however they are automatically occupied by the nation of the largest nearby town that is non-peaceful (guardian town mechanic).
• This system allows for conflict between nations without direct war loss consequence to gameplay progress.

When would a War system arrive to EarthMC?

The timeline for a War system is much more nuanced than War days. The current development priority for the server is Folia, given it is performance-based. Once the schedule for this begins to solidify in the incoming weeks, it will become more apparent.

What does this mean for my town/nation?

You should be fine and not need to worry about any loss of gameplay progress (claims, items, etc). War days are essentially opt-in, and the War system would revolve around geopolitical objectives. Not to say there would be no impact whatsoever (otherwise, there would be no point for any of this) however it is nothing past convenience-related, or any significant loss of effort.

Conclusion

If there appear to be any short sightings or lack or clarity in this post, feel free to reply and I will address them. Feedback here will be used to gauge broadly how war should be approached. Eventually there will be an official announcement for anything implemented on the production server, following this. Thanks for reading!

[DSDevil]

I would make a change in the war plug-in otherwise the rewards would be too minimal for the attacker

Town is to remain part of the nation until they either successfully rebell OR after 21 days they can pay part, if not all, of the war chest that was sunken (lost to the system). Otherwise the attacker will always lose.

[Colt44Magnum]

for a gold sink, requiring some portion of the war chest be payed (deleted from the server) in order to rebel could be a good thing.

[DSDevil]

It is. I'm not saying that the gold is returned from system.. I'm saying that either the occupied town mayor or the nation leader of the occupied town pays gold to return the town back to the nation after a short period.

[DSDevil]

An example on how I think it should be:

A nation attacks a town which is 120 chunks in size. The attacker has to pay 240 gold to attack. 120 gold goes to the war chest while the other 120 is taken by the system and is permanently lost.

The town is occupied by the attacking nation after a siege war. 120 gold stored in the war chest is returned back to the attacker and the occupied town is forced to become part of the attacking nation for a short period (let's say 21 days)

After the 21 days period is up, the occupied town should have 2 options.

Option 1: Start a rebellion thus another siege war, if the siege war is lost then the occupied town would need to wait another 21 days before another rebellion.

Option 2: Pay a fixed percentage of the 120 gold that is taken by the system (I would suggest a percentage between 50%-100%). Once this is paid the town is liberated and returned to their former nation.

So what do you think?

[Cskyll]

this is extremely minimal and the distruction of property adds another layer to the war as now its just "oh i lose a whew armour sets let me just go buy a new one real quick" this will add barely anything and probably be forgotten

[N0YM0usE]

Earthmc is not like the typical earth server with siege war, it has been here for a lot of years and has worked out as the most succesful earth server. The most servers with destructable siege wars just die in a few months as most people quit after loosing their towns and everything they worked for. This system of war is working on a geopolitical basis which I really like because people will not loose anything they worked for but occupying nations and towns has a still a big use for nations. This war plugin gives an option for people to overtake other nations and make actual wars, even with overclaim it was not possible to overtake nations who can recruit people.

[DSDevil]

what isn't really great is that the town will be able to leave after 21 days which isn't a lot. My suggestion would be for the town to be only be able to leave after they do a successful rebellion OR pay part if not full of the sunken (lost to system) war chest that the attacker had to pay after a period of time. Otherwise the attacker will always lose

[alsjad]

Agree 100%

[MizolyRyo]

+1

[nfish2021]

is April 11 a typo

[Veyronity]

@nfish2021 I surely hope they don't mean in 11 months

[N0YM0usE]

This is a perfect design of the normal siege war plugin for earthmc. It provides the ability to overtake nations and make actual wars without destroying peoples stuff for which they worked really hard.

[alsjad]

Because you minimized the punishment of loosing I don’t see why the timeframe should also be minimized I don’t see any incentive in sieging a town if the aesthetic effects you gain can be reversed just by time alone

[MizolyRyo]

Attacker cost would be way too expensive, also could you add world/continent capital thingy

[asyi0]

War Day is a good attempt to have fun as a completely free to participate pvp event and I see no reason to oppose it.

It would be nice to not lose territory, items, or gold in the War System.
However, there are still some issues with the current proposal

• The possibility of losing /n spawn in the War System could be damaging to players who enjoy peacefully building their nations in Earth MC
• An aggressive superpower could continue to disable the n spawn of nearby small nations, forcing them to dismantle and annex their nations. For the owners of the smaller nations, this would be a loss of gameplay progress.
• Even for a large nation, someone may have a grudge against it, or for the purpose of harassment, someone may create a nation nearby just to attack it, and it may continue to attack. This will require significant resources to deal with.
• If the nation bonus of the attacked town or nation is reduced by war, an invasion combined with overclaim may occur.
• Moving a nation's capital is easy to do by two or more people just create 1 chunk of town, so PvP-oriented nations can easily attack any nations in the world for if they wants to.

In the first place, If the goal is to add pvp as an element of gameplay, wouldn't War Day be enough and no need to introduce a War System?
Or, if people don't want to join war, they should be able to optout easily, not with a guardian town mechanic, but by simply making the town peaceful, for free or at very low cost like public town (like 5g/day). Like War Day, only those who want to fight should be able to participate.
I understand that some players like pvp, but please remember that many players play EMC for the fun of building, running shops, etc., not for the war, not to spend resources to war.

[DSDevil]

You bring up some good points as the Nation Leaders are the most under threat from the War System that being the loss of /n spawn. As for the Mayors, they will face only minimal gameplay changes being -

"If a town is occupied, it cannot brew combat-related potions (strength/speed/fire resistance) in its claims"

However I disagree with your 4th point as it has been mentioned above that the claim bonus would not be effected . Though this may be subject to change.

"Towns will not be removed from nations/Nations will not be deleted as a result of a war loss. Given that many towns rely on nation bonus to maintain claim limit, it would not be beneficial to transfer ownership to winning nations, nor delete losing ones. This ties into the first point on material progress."

"This would not be an exhaustive or final list of attributes"

However, your suggestion of making a town peaceful will simply by paying gold would defeat the purpose of the War System and I think this shouldn't be included. The Guardian Town mechanic is the right way to go.

[asyi0]

First of all, I believe that War System is not necessary if we have War Day in order to add pvp as an element of gameplay and deal with conflict between nations.