Wars and blockades

[Redjack02]

Good point Avery. Maybe some altering needed there.

Maha maybe the point is to make it possible for two nations to start a war. Just for the fun of some players (Pirates)

Just some thoughts tough

[Admiral Nelson]

Perhaps they are not aloud to trade in said ports without the nations permission, but they are allowed to use there warehouse and build ships there.
( Smuggling )

But they are allowed to pirate there... Due to pirates being roamers.

[Redjack02]

Agree on the warehouse. ( investment might be to big ) and smuggling for sure.
Shipbuilding is to big for the nations owner not to see it. Shipbuilding should be at the pirates heaven.
If the ships are not comandeered or bought on the market.
But only manual trading routes should be possible if you are not welcome in that port. (Pirate or at war)

[Maha]

Agree on the warehouse. ( investment might be to big ) and smuggling for sure.
Shipbuilding is to big for the nations owner not to see it. Shipbuilding should be at the pirates heaven.
If the ships are not comandeered or bought on the market.
But only manual trading routes should be possible if you are not welcome in that port. (Pirate or at war)

a 'pirates haven' sounds nice, but makes it even harder for merchants to go after the pirates!

cargospace of warships is smaller than most trade ships. how do you see the transfer of cargo happen? a pirate attacks, sails back to his hideout,empties his holds in his warehouse and returns in 2,3 hours time for another attack????

what if the pirate doesn't want the cargo but likes good old gold coins? where can he sell his cargo?

let us return to the larger discussion about War and Blockades

[Mugiwara]

Declaration:
USA decided to use offensive blockade on Bermuda vote for it and accepted. And than Sent a declaration to Bermuda(its necessary before able to set blockade). We will set a blockade in your X ports. IF you dont want to that happen you must pay X amount of gold as a ransom. If Bermuda accept the offer than there wont be any blockade option against Bermuda by USA for 3(changeable) months. (The ransom amount cant be more than X% of 3 months port income of Bermuda's).

Cooldown:
After each successful or unsuccessful offensive blockade attempts there should be a 1 week cooldown against same nation's other ports and 1 month for same ports. For defensive blockades you should set them for 3 days long and 1 week cooldown conditions. That way it will feel more unique to use that feature. Making blockades a daily activity both affect trades and gameplays on a negative way. Prevent players to change their nations and attack to same port over and over again There should be also a cooldown for players who sent a fleet to an armada in last 30 days cant join another blockades against same ports.

Letter Of Marque:
And we can use Letter of Marque for that purpose. An owner of Letter of Marque can join to a blockade near the Letters owner nation. Pirates shouldnt be set a blockade themselves because they have no nation treasury to pay ransom of blockades instead they can join to blockade with Letter of Marque.

Gem:
And about gem i dont feel it would be good. Maybe a new voodoo card can be implemented for put a fleet in an armada you should use X voodoo card on fleet. which will also lead to use bigger ships with high firepower to prevent spend too much credit for that small ships.

Armada:
If a nation decide to set a blockade. They should Set an armada And player will put their fleets in it. The armada will be controlled by an admiral(fits for that role but bigger rank would be more useful)/duke or higher.) And it should at least have for example 5 MoW 20 Sotl 25 Large Frig 40 Frigate. The fleet size and giving control to an admiral or duke minimum will prevent to give immunity to a nations ports with ridiculous weak blockade attempt. And also there should be a minimum limit for firepower and health point amounts which will prevent to see only cutters on blockade and it will lead to see more bigger ships on action.

Upkeep:
Offensive Blockades Upkeep cost will be more than defensive blockades. And upkeep amount should be millions for an armada for per day. and there should be a limit for blockades like 3 day long. Making blockades until upkeep not a wise idea. Than a nation can attempt for a blockade a few mins before upkeep and they win. At least 3 upkeep should pass until its over.

Reward:
With that conditions income should match the outcome. The population lose and influence lose must be %15-%20 and gold lost also must be %1 of total treasury and additional winning armada's upkeep costs. Also for 1 week duration Losing port will pay their %1 tax income from resource selling to winning nation. If defender win the blockade than attacker will lose influence but no population lose for attackers.

Repair:
During fights also there should be a repair option. Royal fleet Auxiliary and emergency call will be useful but not enough. Maybe a research in academy would be good to have. after each blockade attacks X%(or flat amount) amount of damage will be repaired. And also there should be a clarification. How many time an armada can attack during a blockade. Maybe a flat amount of time will be good. Also it can be automated. like each 3 hours armadas will engage each other inside the blockade. that will help to recover. And offensive armada's repair amount should be less than defensive armada's.


For now these are the ideas came to my mind. hopefully i can add more in near future. If some more fedbacks will come.

Sincerely Mugiwara...

[OG Deadking]

We need to keep existing rules in new features and at worse, extend them.
Altering them is most of the time something we do not want to do. You can't have a set of special complicated danger rules for the blockading fleet for example.

I think fleets in a blockade need SOME sort of "special rules". My intention with danger increasing, and removing fleets from blockades when their danger gets below 3, was to have a way to "defeat" fleets in a blockade. By my suggestion, a fleet in a blockade with full danger (180) would be defeated after 10 successful attacks. I'm sure there are other ways to make such fleet "defeatable", but they all probably require some sort of special rules. Note that "gaining 1 danger pr hour" would be the equivalent of 2 FFJ cards specifically for that fleet, so the basic functionality exists.

So I think these "special rules" should be possible to implement and understand. Now, if these rules and their consequences are UNDESIRED, that is another matter, obviously.

Blockading should not prevent players from using/entering the port. This is a very global effect. Even if it targets a specific nation or even a specific guild. A single player might have 200 fleets. What happens when there are 10 of such players? Also, take into consideration that game population grows and if the numbers are already high for something like this, then it will break in the future.

Besides numbers, we need to look at gameplay too. You have a player that runs his trade routes at an automatic way. What exactly will happen at these cases? The first thought that comes in mind is that a bloackade that prevents you from entering the port, will also affect your trade routes. Even in the case we could decide to except the trade fleets, this is not self-explanatory at large and must be avoided.

At the other hand, we like the Blockade concept and we want to implement it somehow. It needs a more specific target though.

Blocking a player from a port can already be done with the "Terrorize" voodoo card. A blockade would obviously be stronger, because it couldn't be removed by voodoo, and it would effect more people (everyone in the nation at war with the port controlling nation). So, I don't see players with automated trade routes having special problems. Besides, they could move their trading routes to different ports once they log in and notice the blockade.

YES, it IS a rather global, and powerful, effect. But then again, I think wars should be. And oh, it would be costly to keep up blockades. Particularly at several ports simultaneously. One thing is the reduced trade, which means reduced income to the blockading nation (defensive blockades). Another thing is the cost of keeping fleets in the blockade - such fleets can be used for nothing else, and require captains and admirals. Also, people with strong ships in blockades would want to have lots of gold on hand, to avoid having their blockade ships stolen. That means their weaker trading fleets are vulnerable to attacks, which costs them lots of gold.

Finally, and most importantly, I think the concept of attacking trade, by blocking someone from trading at certain ports, would be the very heart of wars. Like many have pointed out, trade is what makes the game go round. And so, trade is what should be attacked during wars. If not through my suggestions, then in some other way. The "offensive blockade" I suggested would have VERY large effects, and I realize this, but they would also be VERY costly and vulnerable. I don't see the problem with large number of players or large numbers of fleets. Basically: Move your trading fleets to other ports, if they are blockaded. Or help destroy the blockade, to reopen the port to trade. Again, I am after the EFFECT of blocking trade. My suggestion os ONE way to achieve this, but it's the EFFECT that is important, not my specific suggestion of how to achieve this (although it would be preferable if it is done through fleets somehow, and not merely gold and voodoo).

The main problem here is that someone with ONLY a big fleet/army cannot capture a port unless they have gold. I think this is the correct identification of the root problem here and this is what we need to solve.

In my suggestion, a nation could attack another nations port - after first defeating their blockade. The consequence would be loss of influence by target nation. HOWEVER the attacking nation would need to build up the port themselves to gain enough influence to control and hold the port. In fact, if nation A attacks nation B at a port where B has most influence, but nation C has second most influence, if enough influence is destroyed from nation B, it would be C who gained control of the port, NOT A.

A working scenario could be the following.

WAR BETWEEN TOKELAU AND BERMUDA scenario

I am using existing neutral nations to give you a bigger picture.
Let's suppose that King Kart decides to conquer the Tokelaun port of Aiora.

To achieve this, he orders his Bermudans to assault and blockade the port.
Several nobles respond to his call and decide to send their fleets against Aiora. This is how the Blockade begins.

Tokelau decides to fight for the port and King Sir Henry Morgan orders the counterattack. His fellow Tokelaus respond with the dispatch of their own war fleets to prevent the blockade. Additionally, SHM manages to get support from several individuals; they also send their fleets to aid.

So, we enter a state where both nations will use their fleets to clash outside Aiora.

End of Scenario

At the end of the day (daily update), based on the fights that took place (here we might need some extra rules, inevitably) the system determines if the blockade has been successful or not.

In case of a successful blockade, the attacking nation "steals" a percentage of the defending nation (which can only be the port controller nation) influence. This influence is divided among the attacking players depending on their contribution. It is removed equally (according to their holding percentage) from the defending nation's players.

If the port is won, then the blockade is by default removed. If not, they can continue for a new blockade.

So, the blockade can be a DAILY (or more days) EVENT where two sides enter a contest for the port. Any player can assist the side they want. At the end of the day, there are influence wins/losses.

If this idea sounds charming enough, we only have to determine the following:
1.Initiation Rules (Should be a majority,2 days long voting with immediate ending in case current majority is met)

2.Engaging rules (We could use Danger system)

3.Winning rules
*What will define the winner? Plundering gold, damage dealt?
*Minimum requirements for a blockade to be successful will be needed; a single howker cannot win a blockade against a 100M population port, even if no defenders appear. Not to mention that we should avoid any "spam cases". We cannot have a single small player attempting blockades anytime he wishes. It must be a group action mostly.

4.Reward rules (Percentage based influence - exact figures are needed)


WAR declarations should not play a role. It should be up to each Nation's honor whether or not they will declare a war before entering hostilities. A successfully initiated blockade though, should set the diplomacy status to WAR.

We can have a public nation log that will record such events so everyone will be able to track this. This log can include all promotions/arrivals at the nation, diplomacy status changes and port blockades attempted/defended.

Having blockades be "events" would be another way to handle this. I've seen something similar implemented in other games.

Regarding your point 3: I think something like my suggested "forts" (NOT to be confused with the OTHER forts thread :-) ) could help out here: A port has a baseline "fleet" of "forts", which will automatically appear when a blockade starts, to prevent small fleets from being able to win blockades. Further, if you really wish to restrain the ability to start such blockade events, you could require that they can only be started by a nation among the top 5 nations measured in influence in the port in question, and only after a national vote, of course.

Finally: Thank you for your extensive reply, and I hope some of these intentions are implemented - the ability to attack trade by blocking ports, and the ability to attack a nations influence in the port through some sort of naval combat. That was may main intention behind this suggestion. I thought a complete suggested implementation would make it easier to discuss a way this can be achieved; my hope was always that the INTENTIONS someday will be fulfilled. Having said that, I DID but quite a bit of effort into the suggested idea, to make it "complete", functional and coherent :-)

MY ADDITION
I think that the native players of the port that is being blocked should only be able to let their merchant fleets in but no war fleets or they will automatically engage in an attack on the defending fleet. I also think that war declarations would be very helpful so all would be informed of the war and can organize attacks. I have seen in other games where people could organize "rally's. This rally could have up to 100 ships and send them in to attack a defensive blockade. The least amount of ships you can use to send the rallied ships to attack the blockade is 20 Lets say for instance Egypt and Tokelau went to war. I could do a rally in Regis and if i get 20 or more ships from my nation allies they will go after the port that we are trying to go after and keep attacking blockades until we get defeat.