Militia Baracks
Posted: Fri Sep 26, 2014 10:16 pmThis is an idea I had a bit ago, but decided against posting it for the time being due to having not refined it. However, in the PVP vote thread John put up an issue with the game seemed to be people not raiding/warring due to fear of losing characters. Even secondary chars people make still take a lot of time and effort to do so, and likely would only be used in a desperate scenario, though the idea of 'expendable' characters is somewhat intriguing to me.
The Idea:
I'm unable to find just how prevalent militia barracks were in the early days of colonial America, at least in the traditional sense of a word: a place that houses troops, though I'd assume that town armories were commonplace. Nevertheless, we'll just go ahead and call the building I have in mind just that, a Baracks, with a combined function of housing and arming militiamen/troops. We could have two sizes/tiers of baracks, one for small to moderately-advanced villages, and one for advanced villages. Each would have its own advantage and uses, and to quell any misunderstanding the above may bring, both could be placed in one village.
While more complex ways to maintain the baracks could be thought of later, I'll try to keep the premise simple. A baracks can be used by any player part of a village to create a temporary, special, militia character that would replace your primary while in use. This will cost upkeep for the baracks, and can only be done say once per two days. Your primary will be stored in the baracks (feeding/tending the rest of the militia or whatever if you need an explanation) until the militia is killed or if you choose to despawn him. Beware though, if the baracks is destroyed, the soldier character will immediately die and you will be placed back into your primary and at the mercy of whoever did the deed.
Temporary militia characters start with a set number of skills, all combat related, and cannot gain anymore. Their weapon skills will be, of course, relative to their weapons. Their humors will be around 20-50% of those of the primary character that spawned him/her (I dunno what it'd truly need to be for balance purposes), and their equipment average in quality. Each type of baracks (such as advanced and regular) as seen above, could give out different sets of equipment depending on how much upkeep a player is willing to spend. Average baracks could give out a choice of swords, slingshots, clubs, pikes, for a set amount of upkeep cost, and the more advanced guns and such, though you can always equip militiamen with other weapons if you want, leaving them in a crate by the baracks or whatever (though they likely won't have the required skills for them, purity and clothing/armor comes into mind), though there's a danger of losing said items. You get the idea. Their look can be selected by the village creator (masks/cothing/ext.) so each village militia can have a standard image. They'll have an inventory, of course, which can store food and other items for their humors, though their humors cannot be upped. They're entirely dependent on the primary character. To keep the cost of them relatively cheap, none of their items or equipment they spawned with (right out of the baracks) can be dropped out of their inventory, though it can be moved back and forth between equipment and inventory.
Militia characters can steal/vandalize/ext, but doing so will give a scent trail leading directly to the baracks that spawned them. After around five hours of use, the militiaman will despawn, making him fairly impractical to use for anything but his primary function. If he despawns in this way or purposefully, all items (save for the ones he spawned with) will be put back into the Baracks in a special 'baracks inventory' or whatever you want to call it. Anything that doesn't fit in it will be dropped on the spot.
The Idea:
I'm unable to find just how prevalent militia barracks were in the early days of colonial America, at least in the traditional sense of a word: a place that houses troops, though I'd assume that town armories were commonplace. Nevertheless, we'll just go ahead and call the building I have in mind just that, a Baracks, with a combined function of housing and arming militiamen/troops. We could have two sizes/tiers of baracks, one for small to moderately-advanced villages, and one for advanced villages. Each would have its own advantage and uses, and to quell any misunderstanding the above may bring, both could be placed in one village.
While more complex ways to maintain the baracks could be thought of later, I'll try to keep the premise simple. A baracks can be used by any player part of a village to create a temporary, special, militia character that would replace your primary while in use. This will cost upkeep for the baracks, and can only be done say once per two days. Your primary will be stored in the baracks (feeding/tending the rest of the militia or whatever if you need an explanation) until the militia is killed or if you choose to despawn him. Beware though, if the baracks is destroyed, the soldier character will immediately die and you will be placed back into your primary and at the mercy of whoever did the deed.
Temporary militia characters start with a set number of skills, all combat related, and cannot gain anymore. Their weapon skills will be, of course, relative to their weapons. Their humors will be around 20-50% of those of the primary character that spawned him/her (I dunno what it'd truly need to be for balance purposes), and their equipment average in quality. Each type of baracks (such as advanced and regular) as seen above, could give out different sets of equipment depending on how much upkeep a player is willing to spend. Average baracks could give out a choice of swords, slingshots, clubs, pikes, for a set amount of upkeep cost, and the more advanced guns and such, though you can always equip militiamen with other weapons if you want, leaving them in a crate by the baracks or whatever (though they likely won't have the required skills for them, purity and clothing/armor comes into mind), though there's a danger of losing said items. You get the idea. Their look can be selected by the village creator (masks/cothing/ext.) so each village militia can have a standard image. They'll have an inventory, of course, which can store food and other items for their humors, though their humors cannot be upped. They're entirely dependent on the primary character. To keep the cost of them relatively cheap, none of their items or equipment they spawned with (right out of the baracks) can be dropped out of their inventory, though it can be moved back and forth between equipment and inventory.
Militia characters can steal/vandalize/ext, but doing so will give a scent trail leading directly to the baracks that spawned them. After around five hours of use, the militiaman will despawn, making him fairly impractical to use for anything but his primary function. If he despawns in this way or purposefully, all items (save for the ones he spawned with) will be put back into the Baracks in a special 'baracks inventory' or whatever you want to call it. Anything that doesn't fit in it will be dropped on the spot.
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