by Procne » Thu Feb 13, 2014 9:12 pm
An idea:
When waste claim becomes active it doesn't automatically allow attackers to nuke stuff in the town. Instead it applies stacking effect to the town bell, let's call it simply "alarm", which increases silver drain of the town bell. So the goal for attackers is to drain bell of silver. This would force defenders to go out at some point and destroy the waste claim, at the moment that is convenient for them. Until then they can safely stay in their town and suffer increasing silver drain. The more silver they have the longer they can hold inside.
"Alarm" also has a second effect - adds a time delay before town bell becomes active again in case it runs out of silver. This would stop defenders from keeping bell without silver and restocking it only when attackers come. "Alarm" is gone completely the moment there is no waste claim active.
This mechanic makes braziers useless on town claim, as with active bell attackers can't damage anything, and when it's inactive braziers wouldn't fire anyway, so they have to be placed on personal claims.
As for the numbers... How about "alarm" stack being increased by 1 per hour of waste claim's activity and each stack increasing silver drain by 10%, cumulatively (so 1 stack is 110%, 2 stacks is 121%, 3 stacks is 133,1% and so on), as well as the time delay, before bell becomes active after restocking silver, by 5 minutes.
Ultimately the mechanic achieves the following:
- final battle takes place outside the town, face to face, not with defenders hiding behind walls
- defenders can choose the time when the battle happens
- burden of staying online and guarding is shifted to attackers - it's them guarding their waste claim. Defenders can safely wait as long as they can afford increased silver drain.
I see one problem - when town bell is inactive we still have standard combat mechanics with braziers (on personal claims) and walls, which seem to be very powerful with active defenders. In case this is a real issue "alarm" could have a third effect - each stack reduces brazier damage, by 1%. So after 2 days of such siege they would do only half the damage.
