Petition for "Moderation Sanctioned Wars" until the war plugin goes up

[Kardakes]

I don't know if this is possible, but I wanted to propose a system by which factions can receive 900,000 to declare war on other nations until the plugin goes up in cases that both sides agree to the war.

Thanks!

[Akar]

I support this.

[Diglytron]

support.

[Cryers-]

This should happen.

[Ditronian]

What is the actual proposal here? We COULD change the value back to 0, but then here are the effects that will bring.

• Anyone in war can break all of their opponents blocks/defenses and loot all their hidden/un-hidden chests, entirely without their opponent being online.
• Any faction can declare war on an opponent, loot them, and then declare peace before their opponent even logs in to find out a war was declared.

By having moderation control the declaring/peacing of wars, the second problem should be fully addressed. There is however NO way for us to address the first problem, so your opponent would still be able to act entirely free from the restraints of offline protection. Again, this will mean he/she will be able to bust all of your defenses/loot all your chests while you are offline.

If both sides of the proposed war inform moderation that they fully understand that this massive limitation exists, and that moderation can in no way investigate/control this behavior and will make no attempt to do so, then I don't see why we'd have a problem with it. This is entirely because there is no way for us to know if an act that was committed was legal at the time (ie an enemy was online). Rules regarding excessive griefing could still be enforced, but the searching for chests/breaking through defenses would not fall under this category.

Due to the very large and uncontrollable implications of this, any war declared in this way would have to be consensual.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Anyone in war can break all of their opponents blocks/defenses and loot all their hidden/un-hidden chests, entirely without their opponent being online.

Honestly? Good. It gives people an incentive to be online and defend their crap. That's what I say.

Any faction can declare war on an opponent, loot them, and then declare peace before their opponent even logs in to find out a war was declared.

This is the real issue.

[The Hedge Knight]

Isn't it possible to simply disable chest looting in factions?

As for block breaking - perhaps schedule a cron script to enable block breaking between 7pm and 2am gmt (which seems to be about peak time).

[FrostySOTF]

opposed but offering an alternative - stage battle where it's the last man standing and then the winner gets paid an agreed upon sum, something along those lines.

[The Guy With No Imagination]

Honestly? Good. It gives people an incentive to be online and defend their crap. That's what I say.

Absolutely not. The offline protection is one of the things that separates this server from any of the other hundreds of faction servers out there - and if you take a good look you'll see most of those servers very quickly devolve into chaos when there's no build protection.

If these wars are allowed, I guarantee there will be someone who takes it too far (whether intentional or not) and will piss off some other players, either driving them away or bringing back the vitriolic and toxic behavior we're trying to avoid here on twc.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Okay, build protection I understand. I meant looting chests.

[Akar]

Isn't it possible to simply disable chest looting in factions?.

this could work as a possible temporary band-aid until we figure out full offline protection.

[Katsumoto]

I do feel like something should be done as interest will fade otherwise.

[The Hedge Knight]

Should chest looting be a thing anyway? IMO it doesn't add a whole lot to wars other than making people miserable and encouraging people to hide their stuff in the middle of nowhere.

[Kardakes]

I suggest we put this proposition to a poll.

[The Guy With No Imagination]

Should chest looting be a thing anyway? IMO it doesn't add a whole lot to wars other than making people miserable and encouraging people to hide their stuff in the middle of nowhere.

Although it's miserable (it really cant be overstated how miserable it is to see entire storage rooms looted clean in some cases) I think it adds options for wars. You could knockout a factions chief supply depot even if their larger, and buy yourself time to prepare defenses or stage a full-scale assault while they're one man down as they're trying to recoup lost materiel. You could also fight guerilla wars, and have them burn through resources to catch you. If chest looting is disabled, raiding also becomes an impposibility. Without it (looting) wars become tit-for-tat matchups as people grind away to the 30% manpower threshold.


That being said, as I was writing this an idea struck me where if chest looting was disabled you could coerce an enemy player to giving you the contents of a chest, and if he refuses repeatedly kill him, essentially forcing the enemy to choose between lootz or mp...

Hm this could be a tricky discussion to have.

[The Hedge Knight]

Does anyone really want a poll at this point? Unless we have an ETA on the factions update then there isn't much point. I would much rather moderation just decided unilaterally.

[Burgess]

That being said, as I was writing this an idea struck me where if chest looting was disabled you could coerce an enemy player to giving you the contents of a chest, and if he refuses repeatedly kill him, essentially forcing the enemy to choose between lootz or mp...

Hm this could be a tricky discussion to have.

That works up until you kill them once and then they stay on their bed.

[Ditronian]

Isn't it possible to simply disable chest looting in factions?

This might be a thing we can do, there is no 'disable chest looting' option in the configs but its possible this is controlled by permissions. If it is then it would mean chest looting is disabled by default, since chest access doesn't have the enemy flag by default. I will test this at the earliest opportunity and get back with you guys on if this can be a thing. Enemies would still be able to break open the chests to get their contents, but this could actually be detected and be enforced by moderation.

As for block breaking - perhaps schedule a cron script to enable block breaking between 7pm and 2am gmt (which seems to be about peak time).

This cannot be done, enabling/disabling block breaking is not a server command etc. Turning it on/off requires editing the factions permissions file via ftp, and then reloading all server plugins.

Does anyone really want a poll at this point? Unless we have an ETA on the factions update then there isn't much point. I would much rather moderation just decided unilaterally.

Polls made by the public are always suggestions anyway. If from a staff standpoint an idea voted on by the public is non doable, then it really doesn't matter what the outcome of the poll was. For this reason I'd hold off on any polls until you know for sure that any such proposal can actually be done (ie removing chest looting in wars). No sense voting on it before you know if the plugin is capable of doing it.

Even with the chest proposal, enemies could still break through all your walls, build siege towers or whatever in your claimed lands, etc while you are offline. I find it highly likely they will do this considering they've nothing to discourage them from doing so.

[Magister Militum Flavius Aetius]

Doesn't digging through enemy terrain damage health? You could always up the health damage.

As for chest looting, no don't disable it. We tried that on one map IIRC and it totally bombed.

[Pat89]

WARRRRRRRRRRR