_dogster:
What happens once a province is captured and the war ends? Does the attacking nation get to occupy it like n2 where the province would be forced to pay occupation taxes? Or would the province be forced to join the attacker's nation or what
By itself, capturing a province just gives you victory points. Captured provinces stop being captured after war ends.
Whether you occupy a province after the war depends on the demands you have chosen: was one of your demands to occupy the province, and did you win enough victory points to impose them? If the answer to both questions is yes, then you occupy the province. So you don't necessarily have to capture a province during the war to occupy it. Your demands and number of VPs decide that.
Your second question is pretty interesting. In short, I'm still deciding. It is possible both options will be available, so "occupy a town" (like on Nations) and "annex a town" (forcing the town to join your nation) are both potential demands. If both exist, annexation demands will cost more VPs than occupation demands.
Click here to read the previous dev blog (#3) - TownyBuildings
In the first dev blog, I introduced CampaignWar - a custom war plugin being developed for a test gamemode. If you haven’t read it yet, you should do that first. We introduced the world, which is divided into provinces, and how individual provinces are captured during wars (through “province attacks”).
Today we will discuss wars themselves: how they are started, fought and concluded. Our intention is to make wars purposeful and have defined objectives, and to have them initiated through diplomatic means.
Clausewitz famously said, “War is the continuation of policy with other means.” And so in CampaignWar, war is not inevitable; it is one of two possible outcomes of an ultimatum—a diplomatic process that begins when one nation (A) attempts to impose demands upon another nation (B).
A demand is something you want another nation to give you. Currently, there are three types¹ of demands of implemented:
Let's suppose Nation A demands to occupy a province owned by Nation B. The demand costs victory points - more on that later.
Upon receiving these demands, Nation B has two choices: either peacefully yield to the demands or refuse and present counter-demands to Nation A.
Let's assume Nation B chooses the second option. If they wish, they can now escalate the ultimatum to the international level. This gives both nations one day to call their allies for support. If the ultimatum becomes a war, allies that accept the call will participate in it (though calling all of your allies isn’t necessarily a smart decision, as we will discover.)
Now Nation A faces a similar choice. It can yield to Nation B's counter-demands to avoid war, or refuse. If they refuse, the countdown to war begins. With both nations steadfast in their demands, and neither willing to yield, war becomes the only means to determine whose demands will prevail. The war will begin on the next scheduled war day (Friday), and will last for 48 hours (it can end earlier if one side surrenders.)
Here's a flowchart of the whole process:
As mentioned earlier, demands cost victory points (VPs). During the war, capturing enemy provinces earns VPs for your side. However, if the enemy recaptures a province, your side loses the VPs it gained from it. Provinces containing more claimed land or the nation capital are worth more VPs.
Wars aren't actually 4 days long - they're 2 days. This is just a screenshot from a test version.
To impose your demands on the enemy nation, your side must win at least as many VPs during the war as the total VP cost of those demands. For example, if your demands cost 100 VPs, you need to have at least 100 VPs at the end of the war. Therefore, it is in your interest to avoid making unrealistic demands during the ultimatum.
All nations involved in the ultimatum can have their provinces attacked during the war. Yes, that even includes allied nations that accepted calls for support. So, if you decide to call in allies, remember that they can become a liability—their provinces can be captured, giving VPs to the enemy.
What if both sides win enough VPs for their demands? In this case, both sides “win” - they impose their demands upon each other. This leads to some interesting strategic choices. For example, should you focus on securing your own demands by attacking instead of defending, even if that means the enemy side imposes their demands on you?
In CW, wars are still divided into battle sessions. During a province attack, if the attackers do not control any captured chunks at the end of a battle session, the attack fails, and the province cannot be attacked in the next session. Outside of sessions, provinces do not lose HP, and chunks cannot be captured.
During testing, we found that CW battles can be intense and hard-fought. We do not want a “nightcapping” meta where provinces are only captured or recaptured while the enemy side is offline, as this rewards avoiding battles.
Preventing this is the purpose of vulnerability windows (VWs). A nation’s VW consists of the battle sessions that its provinces can be attacked in. Right now, we think VWs should last for two consecutive sessions, although this may change before release. The VW can be chosen and viewed through a GUI. There are safeguards to prevent exploitation of the system, like changing VWs mid-war.
If a nation attacks an enemy province outside of its own VW, that nation will be vulnerable for the remainder of the enemy nation’s VW. The logic here is that if you are able to begin an attack, you are also able to defend.
Wars need a reasonable conclusion. CW addresses this by expanding truces. When a war ends, all participants enter a temporary but unbreakable truce with each other. The truce prevents them from beginning ultimatums against each other, and being called as allies into ultimatums against each other. This same kind of truce is also formed if an ultimatum is settled peacefully by one side yielding, preventing them from being spammed with more ultimatums.
As always, if you have any questions, feedback or concerns about the features presented here, feel free to reply. Your input is valuable and may reveal areas for improvement or change.
The next dev blog may come later than usual as new features are still being developed and pre-announced features are being polished.
¹ Internally, demands are implemented in a flexible way, so it is likely more will be eventually added (e.g. forced vassalization? Forcing the nation to ally or drop enemies? Feel free to share your own ideas in the replies.)
In the previous dev blogs (#1 and #2), I introduced CampaignWar, a custom war plugin in development that is designed for its own gamemode. But this gamemode is not only about testing changes to conflict. Whereas CampaignWar overhauls how wars are fought, another custom plugin – TownyBuildings – seeks to give a purpose to building inside towns.
Overview
At the highest level of abstraction, TownyBuildings could be thought of as “Movecraft but for buildings”. This comparison is not entirely accurate, but neatly captures the general concept: player-built structures - given some time, and so long as they satisfy certain (generous) block requirements¹ - can be converted into functional structures that have some utility.
Fundamentally, buildings take input items and transform them into some form of output. This output could be other items, the unlocking of mechanics for the town, or modifiers for nearby buildings. Most buildings can be upgraded to a higher level, improving their output. Naturally, higher level buildings require more blocks and time to build.
Some buildings can choose from different production methods, which change their input and output. For example, a higher-tier production method might increase output at the cost of more expensive input.
Production Buildings
Production buildings produce items from input items. Several production buildings require a resource to be ‘discovered’ in the town. Resources are surveyed on a chunk-by-chunk basis, and the building must be created on the chunk the resource was discovered on. Of course, the type of resource discovered is influenced by the biome of the chunk, e.g. oil is found most frequently in desert chunks.
Each discovered resource also has a random ‘size’, which determines the maximum level that the building can reach. For example, a Coal Mine building built on a size 10 Coal Deposit can be upgraded up to level 10.
This Coal Mine does not have enough workers, so its efficiency will suffer.
‘Efficiency’ determines how much of the production building’s capacity is utilised. A building running at 50% efficiency consumes half the input items and produces half the output items compared to one operating at 100% efficiency. Efficiency has two main determinants: modifiers from nearby buildings, and how many virtual ‘workers’ it has employed. For instance, if a building has only half the required workers, it will operate at 50% efficiency.
House Buildings
Buildings need workers, but where do they come from? The answer is houses, and their production methods determine how many and what class of workers live inside them. There are three classes of workers, divided by wealth. Low wealth workers will be content with basic foodstuffs such as bread, whereas higher wealth workers will demand more ‘’luxuries” such as sugar. Under-supplied houses can still hold workers, although their maximum capacity will suffer.
Utility Buildings
Not all buildings produce items - utility buildings instead unlock a mechanic for the town or have some other function. Several probable implementations include:
Interfaces
We get it - commands are clunky. So we’ve created an extensive network of GUIs to help you navigate the plugin, some of which you have seen in this post. Moreover, every building has an NPC which you can right-click to open its management menu.
Conclusion
What you have seen here is an early preview of the plugin. The list of buildings that will be available has not been finalised, and the plugin’s progression aspect is still being designed. Regarding the latter, it is probable that buildings will be involved in levelling up a town.
If you have any feedback or concerns about the plugin so far, don’t hesitate to reply to this thread with them. Feel free to share building suggestions in the replies too.
¹ When initially constructing a building on a plot, the plugin will scan and count all blocks that are above a certain height inside it. Afterwards, you can assign more plots to the building. Blocks in these plots will also be counted when the plugin decides whether a building meets the requirements to upgrade.
In the coming weeks, torpedoes and depth charges will be replaced on Nations, as they transition from subcraft weapons to specialised cannons. Accordingly, craft designs will need to be updated in advance; all of these changes are currently live on the Creative server to help you prepare. Here’s what you need to know.
Subcraft weapons are an antiquated system developed almost a decade ago. They can only travel in cardinal directions; they cannot be aimed. They have numerous behavioural quirks and bugs that can neither easily be changed nor fixed, leading to the emergence of balancing issues that are now well-known. Moreover, their status cannot be displayed on the craft weapons HUD which is suboptimal for the user experience. The updated torpedoes resolve these problems.
Five new cannons will be introduced:
Materials:
Ammunition chests can be placed next to the Observer.
Materials:
Ammunition chests can be placed next to the Observer.
Materials:
Ammunition chests can be placed next to the Chiseled Stone Bricks.
Materials:
Ammunition chests can be placed next to the Chiseled Stone Bricks.
Materials:
Ammunition chests can be placed next to the Observer.
Using /firepower on a craft with torpedoes
Torpedoes have their own firepower system, torpedo firepower (TF). Each torpedo launcher adds TF to a craft, and craft types have different limits on how much TF they can have.
TF is separate from the “normal” firepower (NF) used for other cannons. But some crafts - namely corvettes, destroyers and bombers - can exceed their TF limit at the expense of their NF. For these crafts, each excess point of TF will consume 3.34 points of NF. This means they can sacrifice their other cannons (e.g. naval guns) for extra torpedoes.
Depth Charge Launchers do not use the TF system. Instead, they use simple limits like AA guns: a maximum of 4 on destroyers, and 2 on bombers.
The new torpedoes are in an advanced stage of testing. Some more balancing must be done before they can be implemented onto Nations; I anticipate this will be completed within the coming weeks. All of these additions and changes are currently active on the Movecraft Creative server so that you can prepare for their implementation on Nations.
The numbers presented here may change as testing progresses. After the update is released on Nations, you should refer to the forthcoming wiki page instead of this post for the most up-to-date values.
Since fleets will need time to rebuild, naval assaults will be disabled for the weekend following implementation on Nations.
Much is owed to Sciath, WitherV and Melkron, who significantly contributed to the design, coding and testing of these features.
Xze_g:
Few questions
1.) What about the casual players who rely on protection enchants and sharpness?
2.) How are you going to remove speed potions? Making them non-existent makes horse travel waaaaay worse.
I get it if most of the features that you would be getting rid of would be only disabled during combat time (or just not allowing players to war with them) .
1) Assuming you are talking about PvE, the chainmail armour mod protects against mob attacks. A full set of armour with this mod protects against these roughly as well as Protection 3.
2) There will still be custom foods. I haven't decided what their effects will be, but Speed is certainly on the agenda. For horses specifically, the idea is to add "road blocks" that give a speed boost to horses travelling upon them, just like the road blocks for Movecraft ground vehicles.
