Chapter LXIX: Defense Squads part 1 - Mechanics

Well, most people might be already familiar to defense game genre...this is what I’ll be talking about here but with one difference...it would be a PvP feature.

The defense game is, pretty much, what campaign offered us at FFXI…you have a place to defend and hordes of enemies would march against it in a try of seizing it. This idea would use camps and hamlets as target (especially camps since it can only happen at pretty small places…vide company, faction and city evolution chapters to understand this better…in short, after a certain level a hamlet will grow to a point that will create its own companies and become “immune” to this kind of turf control feature) and have both PvE and PvP features when coming to attack and defend.

The target is the Aetheryte. Kill it and the invaders win. Every aether field would stay free of influence until seized the first time. Once a city claimed it as turf, any adjacent city turf (they must be adjacent…like one controlling Bearded Rock and another controlling Bloodshore and Bloodshore squads wanting to take Cedarwoods aether field to their turf) can start a conflict to try and seize that camp, taking the turf control to them.

But since it’s easier to understand with an example, this would work like this:

a) A company leader of adjacent turf (can be any company leader, as soon as that company is from a city that has an adjacent turf to that camp) can, at any time after the conflict cooldown ceased (3 ingame months, 4 real days…the time a turf can stay safely claimed after first claimed or seized or 1 ingame day, 1 real hour, after last seizing attempt failed) declare an aggression order against it. Once it was declared there would generate 3 things:

a.1) A call to arms warning would start at the threatened city’s company, including local NPC shout and company NPC LS message.
a.2) The camp would be flagged as “threatened” at map, changing it icon and allowing players to see its “Safe Radius”.
a.3) Invaders would be allowed to start placing conflict settlement outside the safe radius. These settlements can vary depending of the squad type, going from fast-pacing caravans, small campfires and hideouts to small fortifications. Once the first settlement was placed the attack will start in 12 ingame hours (30 real minutes).

Defensive facilities, whose are similar to settlements but for defensive purposes, can be placed at any camp at any time…but if the conflict already started then the newly defensive squads must be placed outside safe radius as well.

Also, a company can have only one squad of each and a max number of soldiers so the more squads they have less soldiers each squad has, having companies and factions cooperation a vital aspect of a strong defense and/or attack.

b) Once time’s up, the invader army will start marching from settlements to camp and start attack. It’s important to say that players already can take part here…they can intercept the advancing horde (depending of the squad this can be a “bad idea”), they can ambush the settlements since destroying the settlements would cause from invader waves to stop coming from time to time to even causing certain squads to disband (again, it all depends of the squad) or they can even stay at camp to help defend it. Same goes to invader players, that can defend settlements, escort the attacking waves, play as decoy or even march with them to help attack the camp.

c) It’s also good to say that there will be a fun balancing here, similar to the one often used in games already…NPCs will have high HP and low damage, while players will have high damage and low HP so the clash of PCs might be a very fast fight and clash of NPCs might be a very slow fight. This said, the conflict will last up to 1 ingame day (1 real hour) or until one of the sides is completely vanquished.

At next part we will talk about squad units.