Building rot - DUPE persevered for discussion

[deadboy]

This is my ideas spliting from the building/vehicle rot thread. It is many people's ideas added to my own

Ok, first, buildings should rot at a very slow rate on their own, very slow indeed. This would allow for the odd building collapse, and property hazards, but would not mean much work. If a building collapses, everything in it disappears, including people. This would allow for a new tactic of razing against enemy armies as you could hole up in a building so that they are forced to get rid of everything in the town to kill you, which would mean that they have none of your resources weapons etc to add to their own when moving onwards.

Now, the main point I want to make is about building based warfare. I want to see buildings "Rot" Due to being attacked, so little to no demolishing projects. It would work like this. A mud hut would be fully destroyed, from first built to everything inside and everyone inside dead in...
10 days from a hammer
5 days from a sledgehammer
2 days from a ballista
1 day from a catapult
1 day from a catapult with fire stones
0.5 days from a crane

A castle however, would be destroyed in

140 days from a hammer
70 days from a sledgehammer
30 days from a ballista
15 days from a catapult
10 days from a catapult with fire stones
3 days from a crane

Now, each of these things would work as follows

Hammer: Still a tool, is a project, requires being inside building

Sledgehammer: Still a tool, is a project, requires being inside

Ballista: A machine. This could be set up quickly, say taking 4 hours, and say taking for 2000g of wood, fire bolts of 50g wood and 10g iron once a day, either at a person or a building, if a person adding two attacks to an attacker as they could still attack normally. It could then be deconstructed giving back the wood, but not what has been fired

Catapult: A vehicle (Although ideally a new sub-catagory). One man could enter it at a time. This could be driven between towns, moving at the speed of walking. They would take awhile to build. Once in attacking town, it would have three options

1) Stones: Fired at a building, they take just stone
2) Fire stones: Fired at a building, they take stone and propane
3) Shot: Fired at everyone in the town they take stone and deal 2-20% to every member targeted regardless of shield and skill. This does not count as an attack, so as with ballista two may be made

It could not be locked, and so the man would have to remain in it during a siege or lose the catapult, and it would give a 25% defence bonus. They would make up the backbone of a siege

Crane: Not a siege weapon as such. It would be a machine, untakedownable except by siege weapons, and would be able to destroy buildings very quickly. It would double up as a defense weapon as it could destroy catapults. It would be expensive, not deconstructable, and take long to make. Its other bonus would be that it would quadruple the speed of building buildings within a town

Now, these are just the main destruction devices, I would also like to see the following

Castles/Keeps/Outposts: These would be very highly defendable buildings. They would rot very slowly, and have certain "Extensions"(A new sub-catagory). They would also have a special door called a gate, which would not be destroyable with a crowbar, and would take half a day to raise and lower. (A new sub-catagory). A castle would have two towers and a wall, a keep one tower and a wall and an outpost just a tower. Locks could be built between the extensions and the castle itself, and new rooms could be built inside a castle

The extensions would work like vehicles, with the person on it able to talk to everyone in the town, and no dragging. They would however, only be able to be attacked by, and attack with, long ranged weapons. The extensions would be as follows

Tower: These would take one fully loaded person, would give a 50% defence bonus, and a 25% accuracy and damage bonus to attacking

Wall: This would give only a 25% defence bonus, but would be a very important area to defend

Now, this is only the main defence weapon, but the way to defeat one of these would be the following

Battering Rams: These would be vehicles, but would take three men to operate. On normal doors they would be twice as efficient as crowbars, but on gates they would be a certain project. This would be a mix between dragging and crowbarring, in that it would take a minimum strength to be used, say 4 strong men, and then afterwards, like a crowbar, it would take half a day to use, but only have a percentage chance of breaking down the door.

Iron clad battering rams: Like a battering ram, only with a 25% defence bonus

Siege towers: A very specialist piece of equipment for scaling walls. This would be a vehicle, and would have two positions, at wall, and dismounted. To scale a wall at least one man must begin a project scaling wall, and whilst this project, taking half a day is in effect, no man can leave the siege tower, or enter it, and so they can be shot at by people on the walls. Once at the walls it is in position at wall, and the only thing that can be done with it is a project dismount. Once the men are at the walls, they can enter it from the siege tower, and go inside the castle to raise the gate, letting the rest of the army in, but if they are killed whillst on the walls, of course the siege tower is lost to the defenders.

I would also like to see the five following ideas as well

Wall mounted trebuchets: A machine on walls for destroying siege towers and catapults, with a small chance of destroying them and everything inside them

Town gates: These would lock out a road, and programming wise would create a new location when locked Outside (town), in which only the gate would be visible. This would be like a locked door. If this was besieged, it would give the citizens time to retreat to a castle to mount a defence.

Bombs: If a building is entered, a bomb should be able to be used, instantly bringing down the building, but the man who set's it off in the process as well. It should also be visible as a clothing and therefore almost impossible to get away with using as a weapon of war

Crowbars: These should take only half a day to use, rather than a whole day

Outposts: Going into a little more detail with the outposts, they would be an attacking weapon. They would contain just a wall, but would have the following properties

1) Cheap, perhaps 6kg of wood
2) Deconstructable, when done with them, like a ballista, they could be deconstructed for the wood back
3) Quick rotting, they should collapse from perhaps three catapult attacks, or a few trebuchet attacks. They would fall apart on thier own in about 100 days
4) Quick building, a keep would be able to be set up within half a day, and would have a gate for keeping out others (Remember that it takes half a day to lower or raise, so if you try to drag people in to lock them up they can simply leave before the gate is lowered again)

Together these ideas would add a new dimension to war beyond the whole drag and kill thing, and would also add more drama to wars. Along with this, it would allow strong towns to more easily defeat weaker towns -even- if they have a single locked door! Which at the moment isn't so easy

[Sicofonte]

I like all this. But...


The firebolts of the ballistas are really weighted arrows. 50g wood sounds absolutly insufficient.


Fire stones should take stone, wood and oil.
Propane?... are those rocks a kind of butane gas cylinders?

[deadboy]

I like all this. But...


The firebolts of the ballistas are really weighted arrows. 50g wood sounds absolutly insufficient.


Fire stones should take stone, wood and oil.
Propane?... are those rocks a kind of butane gas cylinders?

Heh, ok to all of those, and I just happened to have propane on my mind at the time (And well, if cantrians can carry a gas around with them why can't stones . No I'm just kidding, oil is a better idea)

[the_antisocial_hermit]

If a building collapses, everything in it disappears, including people.

I still don't think all people should die if they're inside. I think there should be a chance (however small) of survival. Whole buildings demolished don't result in 100% deaths all the time. As I pointed out before (so yes, this is stating something twice, though this time in a second thread), not everyone in the towers died during 9-11. I don't think anything in Cantr could even be on that scale, so why would everyone in a building being demolished be dying?

[Sicofonte]

Well... now I'm thinking seriously about propane bombs...

Some iron and propane, let's throw it, and... put your cover on your grape!

LoL



About people and stuff inside a destroyed building, I like this idea:
For stuff, apply in one time the rotting corresponding to several days (depending on the kind of attack), and the remaining stuff appears outside the building.
For people, apply 120% +/- 40%, so 20% of the people will survive, although seriously wounded, and living people and corpses appear outside the building. The numbers could be adjusted depending on the kind of attack, so people inside a building being destroyed with hammers would be almost safe after it, but people suffering a trebuchet attack would have little chances of survival.

[deadboy]

Lol, propane bombs would be fun but a little too.. well... powerful for cantr, whereas I've tried to balance out this idea alot, and about people living when a building collapses, I'm not strictly against it, I just know it would be very difficult to implement

[Schme]

I hate this whole idea.

[Pie]

thats becaus you're unimaginative. I LOVE IT ALL!!!

[Schme]

I'm not unimaginative at all.

I "Imagine" that if this is implemented, nobody will build them, because nobody actually has any metal or anything, and I imagine it will be just another thing slowing down the game. It'd be much cheaper just to have a crowbar.

[Crosshair]

Wall mounted trebuchets: A machine on walls for destroying siege towers and catapults, with a small chance of destroying them and everything inside them

You've watched "The Return of the King" Too many times.

This is pretty good, but I don't like the enormous machines of warfare... Castles you can fire arrows from, sure, catapluts, maybe, but bombs and seige towers? Bah!

At least make ship to ship warfare applicable before totally renovating land warfare...

[BZR]

Some of these ideas sound good.

I think that we need them to balance Cantr.

[Froger rulz101]

I like most of you ideas but like Crosshair said it sounds like you've watched return of the king the whole ballista idea sounds a little to big and catapults maybe the trebuchets are a little big to but stuff like archers shooting of the top of Walls and the cattering rams sound like a good idea. Scaling ladders would be a great addition and it would take a few hours to climb and they could push them off maybe a warlike cantr III would be a very cool addition

[Sho]

So, these are interesting ideas and all, but how many towns are there with enough active, involved citizens to cooperate in building and manning an active castle defense?

If what you're looking for is a way to make combat "more balanced" (assuming everyone can agree on what that means), then there are ways to do that without going all-out Minas Tirith with a half-dozen new methods of attack and defense. It sounds like people are getting carried away with the "eye candy" aspects of new suggestions instead of focusing on what they actually want accomplished in terms of improvement in gameplay or societal development.

[Nosajimiki]

When I first read this idea it sounded pretty cool, but then my logic had to go and waggle it's finger at me. As is war is difficult to wage b/c it is so expensive. you need vehicals, crowbars, good weapons, shields. Over all these things take the average cantrian atleast the 1st 10 years of thier lives to build up, depending on how accessible these things are where they live. Since war is so expensive, it makes populations sit around forever arming for it to the point that when they are done they either are too attached to thier possesions to want to risk it, or half the army has fallen asleep and died. Instead of war needing more resources to be effectively mounted, it needs to be made cheaper. IE: make vehicals and crowbars less nessissary. If for example a horse could be domesticated within maybe one-two weeks to make a vehical that would serve no function other than keep you from getting draged and possibly give a small spead advantage on roads.
It would have no lock, and fit one person so that another person cant get on and pull you off but it would hold just enough weight for a rider and his belongings and move on roads between the speed of a cart and a bike, to keep them from begin stolen you would have to build stables to lock them in/to or have a tie project which forces the next person to get on it to untie it before he can ride off with it (takes 4-8hours?). Because they have no lock, they become useless as cheap storage containers, or merchant vehicals justifying thier price.
stone hammers could be used as cheap crowbars that maybe take 4-6 times as long (so a group of people with hammers could do the job of one guy with a crowbar), then more towns and players would have the option to wage war. This way a primative town could arm an army within 2-3 cantr years that would theorticly stand a chance against other primative towns that might just so happen to have a lock or two, at the same time making a war against a high tech town with many locks and good weapons futile.

[deadboy]

When I first read this idea it sounded pretty cool, but then my logic had to go and waggle it's finger at me. As is war is difficult to wage b/c it is so expensive. you need vehicals, crowbars, good weapons, shields. Over all these things take the average cantrian atleast the 1st 10 years of thier lives to build up, depending on how accessible these things are where they live. Since war is so expensive, it makes populations sit around forever arming for it to the point that when they are done they either are too attached to thier possesions to want to risk it, or half the army has fallen asleep and died. Instead of war needing more resources to be effectively mounted, it needs to be made cheaper. IE: make vehicals and crowbars less nessissary. If for example a horse could be domesticated within maybe one-two weeks to make a vehical that would serve no function other than keep you from getting draged and possibly give a small spead advantage on roads.
It would have no lock, and fit one person so that another person cant get on and pull you off but it would hold just enough weight for a rider and his belongings and move on roads between the speed of a cart and a bike, to keep them from begin stolen you would have to build stables to lock them in/to or have a tie project which forces the next person to get on it to untie it before he can ride off with it (takes 4-8hours?). Because they have no lock, they become useless as cheap storage containers, or merchant vehicals justifying thier price.
stone hammers could be used as cheap crowbars that maybe take 4-6 times as long (so a group of people with hammers could do the job of one guy with a crowbar), then more towns and players would have the option to wage war. This way a primative town could arm an army within 2-3 cantr years that would theorticly stand a chance against other primative towns that might just so happen to have a lock or two, at the same time making a war against a high tech town with many locks and good weapons futile.

Lol, ok, to begin, I've only watched Return of the King twice.... however.... playing the games .... several hundred games of Battle for Middle Earth 2 but never mind. Anyhow, Nosaj, the idea of this -is- to make war cheaper, because if a small town cannot afford a castle, a large town can build an outpost quickly, hide inside to make a battering ram, and then take down the town safely within a full day by using the battering ram, and none of that would take much wood, just a little for the keep. It would make war more interesting, mnore balanced, as there are large differences between the defences that a small town could put up against a large town than there is now, here a well organised medium sized town with a small keep may be able to stoicly fight off a large town but never wage a counter-attack. So there is no element of imbalancing the game play. And Schme, obviously people will build them, because if you read the costs they are not too expensive, and they allow a massive bonus over people without the advanced weapons of war.

Second paragraph.... on the fact that it would be a huge change to fighting in cantr. This is wrong, it would change things a little but not too much, the fighting would still be all the same between small towns, but get organised and you can unleash more of your large towns power, or make yourself unattackable from all but within the town.

Thridly.... Someone said that noone is ever going to be awake enough to organise a castle defence. This is the whole point of the town gate idea, it allows a town to have a warning of at -least- a day to prepare itself, and drag it's citizens within the castle. A day is -plenty- for an organised town so it shall not be too difficult at all, and it shall only be organised towns that can afford the larger defence things like castles, and therefore only organised towns that stay alive and expand, and therefore -only- organised towns shall remain, making the game oh so much more interesting when towns do not just fall asleep and die because they cannot.

Fourthly.... this is trying to turn cantr into a "war sim", well, no, it is making cantr more realistic, who said cantr wasn't meant to be fun? Half of the fun in cantr comes from the politics behind attacks, rebellions, and wars, and the other half comes from being a part of a town, and being a part of that town growing economically and in size, and maybe running that town, and by the way, the RPing is built into both of these.

Now, if this is where the fun comes from in cantr, this idea will add to both of these as it shall encourage town growth and awakeness, encourage new players as the game shall become more interesting which shall lead to more RP oppurtunities and also mean that a town should be able to organise more efficiently, and as a result of all this, and the balance off attacking and defending it shall make wars happen more often, like in real life as everyone isn't always all "We should get along with our heathen worshipping/Resource rich/Resource hogging/Tyrancal neighbors" in real life, they usually go to war with them if they can win instead.

Make cantr more fun people! Implement this please!

Oh yes, and I also agree with ship warfare too