New Mandate: War Machine

[Tathra Khaeus]

​SUMMARY: ​To give a high risk/high reward mandate suitable for warring factions to utilise. And to also make the choice of which planets to invade more strategic. It essentially provides genuine consequences that can be largely impactful ICly for large scale wars.

​STRENGTH: ​For every six hexes a faction acquires, the faction can make one of their planets [1 per hex] a stronghold. A stronghold is a highly fortified location, and can request an additional ally slot for every additional stronghold currently held by the faction. Additionally; if the defensive faction successfully repels their attackers, they will establish a new frontier defence for that stronghold, gaining a total of hexes equal to a third of their currently held amount of strongholds.

​[the information required here, numbers would be given to the RPJ's to limit their workload.]

​WEAKNESS: ​​If the defending faction loses a stronghold invasion, the loss of such a stronghold cripples their forces in a particular area. They lose a number of hexes attached to stronghold's hex determined by their pre-existing amount of strongholds. Thusly, if a faction has six strongholds previous to the invasion, they lose a total of six attached hexes including the stronghold.



​[I'm not sure if this is balanced, but I think its an awesome idea. Help me push this in a balanced but equally high scale direction.]

 

[Gilamar Skirata]

A stronghold is a highly fortified location, doubling the units, defences [semi-unique, limited, minor, ect]

These don't have anything really to do with an invasion. I like the weakness, but the strength as is is essentially a flavor boon to the setting of the war, not something actually beneficial. I like the idea of a stronghold world but the strength definitely needs twerking

 

[Darth Bellum]

While I'm all for the idea of strongholds, your suggested implication of what it does is a bit lackluster. When you're using submissions of non mass production quality, the expectation for them is that there is only a finite number produced [This especially applies to Limited and Semi-Unique production quality submissions] and the added expectation that you will use any subs that you bring to an invasion with responsibility and moderation rather than "let me lolthrow a ridiculous number of units that are now eight times the size of the invading force here and there and support them with an even more absurd number of defenses". To me, numbers mean very little in an invasion and only something that people who are really particular about their numbers do - much like how fleeting involves shield and hull values, not something for everyone; they are just flavor text taken into consideration by those who want to - not to be taken as written in stone, but not something you simply ignore either and probably a reason why there is no rule regarding the absolute conclusive value of your army composition. The expectation is you are going to be reasonable with it.

This brings me to another point in the weakness - Since the only hex that can be attacked is the stronghold, losing it is losing anything attached to it. While this is something not as significant as having strongholds placed on hexes where you border a faction or are the boundaries of your own it would suck if it was smack dab in your influence cloud. Let's say The Sith Empire wanted to put a stronghold on Malachor V and have X other strongholds spread out across our territory - if we were to lose that stronghold, we would lose X other hexes, it is basically the equivalent of losing X invasions total. Your only attackable hex provides no any sort of advantage to the surrounding hexes.

To me, this is just an offshoot of the already implemented Defensive Stronghold mandate, but there is no actual advantage apart from having access to additional NPCs and tech subs without the downside of not being able to recruit allies on offensive invasions. In my opinion, you're better off ditching the concept of doubling background noise, giving a benefit for the hexes a stronghold is adjacent to and toning the weakness of it way back.

Edit - Also the name war machine seems widely misleading with a mandate like this. Fortress World or something similar would probably be more relevant.

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

[member="Gilamar Skirata"]

[member="Kor Vexen"]

​Thanks for the input guys!

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

[member="Kor Vexen"]

Also, the stronghold isn't the only hex that can be attacked. It's the only planet within, its hex that can be attacked. That's the idea. Sorry for the confusion.

 

[Darth Bellum]

Well for most invasions, the intent is to take away an enemy hex. Any planet attacked in said hex during an invasion will result in that hex being lost - It's like having a tank in a game that is taunting and forcing the enemy to attack it, but once that target is down the rest of the team just goes down the drain with him too. The only relevance I see in forcing you to attack a specific planet in a hex filled with them is that it derails a target planet that would either be fun to attack or have any actual significance. This also leads to the idea of, why do I need to hit the super defended planet instead of this one that isn't as heavily defended from an IC perspective.

[member="Tathra Khaeus"]

 

[Darth Bellum]

My thoughts on how to make the strength of your proposed mandate better would be, the more hexes a Stronghold Hex has adjacent to it, the more allies you can request during defensive invasions against any hex attached to the Stronghold Hex. Say for every 2 hexes attached to the Stronghold Hex, you can get 1 additional ally. In this regard it isn't as strong as the Defensive Stronghold mandate which can have an unlimited number of additional allies, but will still provide your side with player characters that actually make a difference in how the invasion sways. As for weakness, maybe taking away the ability to invade hexes that are not adjacent to any of your own territory so you can't reach out across the galaxy to slap somebody.

[member="Tathra Khaeus"]

 

[Valiens Nantaris]

A stronghold is a highly fortified location, doubling the units, defences [semi-unique, limited, minor, ect] and allies a faction can utilise to protect this planet from an invading force during an invasion.

Aside from allies, none of the above is regulated or controlled for invasions.

There are useful alternatives though we might entertain if well balanced. Tag me when you have put together your best effort.

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

I love the idea of hexes being vulnerable even without direct invasions to it, and have been in the opinion that the map game is too low-risk for nearly a year now. That consequences of losing, I absolutely love.

However, equipment and submissions never make or break an invasion – they're flavor, at best, and I don't think steering in the direction of numbers providing invasion perks is what's right for Chaos. Attacking a Stronghold Hex otherwise seems to impose no added value to the invasion itself either, beyond the associated danger for the faction that holds it.

Random idea – what if instead we up the request – say, every 10 hexes rather than 5, will open hexes to double invasions, meaning if two major factions invade the same hex and both win, only then will the hex loss described happen? This can be either the same invasion thread, or two separate threads within the same timeframe.

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

[member="Gilamar Skirata"]

[member="Kor Vexen"]

I've tweaked the strength. What do you think?

 

[Scherezade deWinter]

If oyu're open to this, maybe not even a Mandate, but a shiny new addition to invasion rules in general?

 

[Tathra Khaeus]

[member="Scherezade deWinter"]

I feel like this is better as an option. The idea is to give more choices to the playerbase of Chaos, not to enforce something upon them. But just as a way for people who wish to, to spice things up for themselves.

 

[Valdus Bral]

This Mandate will only be used by those such as the Outer Rim Coalition, The Sith Empire, or the Confederacy of Independent Systems. No medium or small faction can hit critical mass with this mandate and thus it becomes worse, however with massive factions it becomes way too good. You only lose 1/3rd of the potential winnings on a failed defense, however you gain full benefits on a defense win. Not only do large factions have a tendency to win their invasions they are the ones to start them the most. So when they do win their defense you're handing them 10 or more hexes and when they lose they're losing maybe 3 hexes in addition to their failed invasion defense. I don't see this as balanced in the slightest. There would need to be a cap on how many hexes you gain, otherwise this isn't high-risk, high-reward it's very solidly moderate-risk , extremely high-reward.


Edit: I read that wrong. The main point is that it disproportionately helps larger factions who have a much higher win to loss ratio than small and medium factions. No small or medium faction is going to use this and when a faction attempts to attack a large faction that large faction has the chance to become larger. Large factions gain more players and have a higher amount of invasion-winning writers due to the increased sample size of faction members, by increasing their map presence you only perpetuate this cycle of increased likelihood of more players. The large factions get larger and more stacked and the small to medium factions get left in the dust or disappear all together as the large factions become untouchable titans who, even if they lose their defense, are merely set back a few weeks as the worst case scenario.

 

[Darth Bellum]

It's much better than the previous iteration, though I'm thinking it's best to remove gaining free hexes on a defensive win. Cut back the number of hexes a faction needs to dominion because 2 months of full dominions for a single stronghold is a bit excessive - I imagine it be simpler at three hexes needed to fortify and establish a stronghold and it is something manageable by smaller factions to achieve. With these tune ups the weakness would need to be changed as well - Like Bral made a point of mentioning before he edited, this mandate heavily favors larger factions with a member base that can sustain the constant output of dominions in order to get strongholds. I don't think collateral hex loss based on a number of already established hexes makes much sense either since what impact is there to me losing systems just because I have strongholds on the other side of the territory? Perhaps just rework the weakness entirely to say...A faction cannot submit a SSD with this mandate active because resources are being channeled into the stronghold rather than the SSD. One final note, try to cut down on the excessive text. If you need to thoroughly go in depth to explain it, there might be issues with clarity. Faction Mandates are simple and to the point without much extra clutter.

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Example -

Strength | Establish a stronghold on a planet for every 3 Dominions. Invasions against the stronghold hex or any hex attached to it grant Requesting Aid slots equal to the number of Stronghold Hexes they possess.

Weakness | This Major Faction cannot submit a Super Star Destroyer if they complete 3 Dominions for the month.

[member="Tathra Khaeus"]

 

[Matt the Radar Tech]

What about altering the hex element, and replacing it with ally bonuses or losses?

I'm not sure how long it takes to play with the map, but I imagine adding more elements is just going to increase the turnaround time of updates - ie: strongholds being indicated.

So, what if you keep the same idea, however adjust it to:

- A win provides an ally slot total bonus according to X (from faction base of 5) for the next invasion.

- A loss reduces an ally slot total according to X (from faction base of 5) for the next invasion.

This keeps a similar theme, but doesn't add extra work to the map updates, and instead still gives that element of risk (because if you get greedy, lose, you shoot yourself in the foot for the next invasion) but doesn't increase staff workloads.

Just an idea.

Also, X means based on whatever reasoning - nearby hexes? - to add slots.

[member="Tathra Khaeus"]