Should we get rid of Invasions/Major Faction Influence Clouds?

[Mantorok]

No need to get rid of invasions, we just need to have cooler heads

As embarrassed as we are to admit it (or as most do, lie and say they're not really mad) we get passionate about roleplaying. We're engaged, we've put effort into this, our stories, our factions, our characters but we need to just step back. Factions die. They do. Whether they get destroyed by others or get dragged into the ground by inactivity and decay, it happens.

Look at the galaxy map every six months, it felt like the end of the world when the Sith Empire was pulverized, knowing that the Republic wasn't going to stop until we were gone. But it's said, it's done, we're fine now, I'm over it.

Invasions are good, we're simply human.

Keep your head on, it's not the end.

 

[Captain Larraq]

I also like fatty's post, and it's very similar to a one sided campaign I've run before.

It isn't hard to put together a simple decision tree with three objectives at a time.

Maybe three phases that lead to results between complete loss, complete victory and a stalemate (where the invader has a foothold)

Each Objective could have a writer limit and be a separate thread. The phases would help break it down so a side can't just be steamrollered in 24 hours, might help the pacing a bit.

I actually love this idea. It reminds me of those Goosebumps 'choose your adventure' books where you chose what page to read to have the character do different things. I could read those for days!

I think it would be fun if faction admins sat down and came up with a progress tree for each invasion. Dont focus so much on pvp or objectives, just let individual writers decide how they wish to participate and let them do it. Every few days the two faction leaders sit down amd decide how the battle is going... Offense leads, defense leads, or stailmate. And then the story and roleplay moves on from there.


like...

Sith invade OP planet. story progression happens every 3-5 days.

sith winning: outer defenses turn to sith control, battle shifts closer to primary targets. Sith may use outer defenses on target.

OP winning: outer defenses stay in OP control, but Sith forces bypass them and continue for primary targets. OP may use outer defenses on targets.

Draw: outer defrnses destroyed. fighting moves inward. noone can use defenses on targets.


And each of 3-5 periods has a list of three story progression options, but individual players can still go back and, say, try to re-take a lost defensive position or repair a broken defensive cannon or whatever other craziness writers can come up with.

I love this idea as it pulls invasions away from 'rush them, stab them, take their stuff' and structures it in a way that promotes storytelling.

and you end up with a minimum of around 27 different conclusions to the story.

 

[Onrai]

Still would love to see invasions paused, the map filled out, and invasions resumed. Making a new major faction would then require the effort to carve out territory(rebellion rules redux, anyone?) and showcase that they'll actually last, with a solid and supportive member base. After all, there are many factions through Star Wars canon(Confederation, CIS, Rebel Alliance, etc) that rebelled against established factions and took some(or in some cases, all) of their territory.

 

[Darth Avida]

Damn it... I had an awesome post going on, than I hit a wrong key and it got erased.

Anyway, I have a proposal to make that hopefully isn't too complicated:

Make Invasions, an Over Thread. Skirmishes are based on a single Invasion objective, and involve one location. They may or may not have additional rules/objectives attached to them.

So opening an Invasion is really just a deployment phase, where you organize your forces for the invasion. Then you have your skirmishes, and depending upon who won what objectives in those skirmishes, it will be easier to tally the score. Then once the Skirmishes are finished, and the victorious group occupies the objective, the rest of the Invasion can act as a wrap up. In the wrap up, if the victorious faction has not entirely completed every objective, the losing faction has a chance to change the tide.

For example. Let's say there is a hypothetical planet with a command station (Skirmish a), a shield generator (Skirmish , and a power station (Skirmish c). The Invaders take the Power Station, but fail to take the other objectives. The Defenders will regroup their forces and assault the stolen objective. The Invaders then have the difficult choice of either sabotaging their Power Station, or trying to stay their ground and repulse the Defenders from retaking the objective.

If they blow up the Power Station, the Shields go down, which allows minimal reinforcements to have one last shot at taking the command center. If they fail to blow it up they lose. If they fail to take the command center they lose. However, if they do take the command center, they are victorious because then they will have the only two objectives that matter after destroying the third objective. There should be a consequence post-invasion however if they decide to destroy an objective. Though that can be decided later.

If they defend the Power Station and succeed, they can regroup and attempt to take another objective. If they fail, they lose and must retreat.

I'm sure this sounds confusing, but it really is quite simple.

On its MOST BASIC LEVEL, the Invasion thread is just people shifting and moving around (and tells the over story), and the Skirmish threads are the battles (the mini stories). Battles are won, but they don't win the war. Invasions tell the story of how a select few battles win that war.

I like the general gist of this, and I think that the way it should be put into place is that the two (or more) factions that are at war/invading (I personally think invasions should be a step in an over-arching war, with the invasion being the mid-step between a battle and the war, not the deciding factor of the latter.) should agree upon pre-set goals and objectives (Such as, A needs to capture the tower, which requires either disabling the shields or winning a frontal assault on the main hall. B needs to defends the main hall and have a small force to keep others out of the shield generator area [which is exposed or something] and guard the tower.) as well as bonus objectives that could be used as the backup in the instance that they fail to obtain the other objectives for a second chance at winning. Very much like you said, but rather than making a skeletal structure, you would make it more elastic and allow for the sides to negotiate on what they want for each goal. (Clearly the end-goal is the command center equivalent, or maybe a specific target to retrieve.)

Basically, faction A decides on their defensive positions, and in order to get to the main objective is to get through the others in some way, while faction B decides on their bonus objectives and then the two negotiate on how the invasion will flow. This allows for two major factions that have fleets available to actually use them, and deny the other faction the ability to completely decline fleeting. As much as I dislike being involved with fleeting, I think it is completely rude and unsportsmanlike to deny another player the chance to roleplay because either A) they are better than you, or B) You don't think you can succeed in your objective if it involves them. And from what I've seen, that's why fleeting gets completely "lolnope"-d all the time. I honestly think that if two factions have large fleets available, the two should be required to perform fleeting, or have other consequences levied against them. There is no reason why not requiring fleeting means that you can deny fleeting completely out of "fairness". If Faction A has a massive armada, what is to stop them from obliterating whatever transports that faction B is somehow using without a fleet to get them there? (That's my opinion anyways, on fleeting at least.) I totally understand with minor factions and those without fleets or the massive member base, but when you have a smaller faction it is also easier to arrive at a location undetected, unlike having a massive army show up out of thin air without any form of transportation, or transportation that arrives on the planet with no way to be attacked. From when I learned how to roleplay, it didn't matter if you were trying to be nice or not, if you denied someone the ability to respond to an action, no matter how small, when there was awareness of a situation it was considered godmod. And to me, when I see people just suddenly loldrop into a planet and clash with an army and claim that their fleet is not allowed to do anything about it is ridiculous. That, to me, is the broken aspect of invasions.

Conflict will ensue, sure, but that's to be expected. Roleplayers are whiny, angsty, people. And when you don't get it your way, or it isn't "fair", then you complain. Fair doesn't mean that everyone has the exact same forces and the exact same chances of "winning". Fair means there are no artificial means inhibiting a group or promoting another.

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Silara Vantai"], I love you. Can't like that post enough.

 

[Lina Ovmar]

TL;DR

I'm just gonna leave this here

http://youtu.be/WibmcsEGLKo

 

[Raziel]

Let's have a really complicated framework to put invasions in!

Wait, no one asked for this?

Well Kark you, I was bored.



The notion would be a framework where you split the invasion down into manageable phases and threads. In this image the threads are vertical and the phases horizontal. Yes, I know this looks complicated, but I've worked up an extreme example with lots of phases and threads.

After each phase, the winners of the objective are decided and you move onto the next phase. No the key bit, which is counter-intuitive, is you do not stick to the plan. You only plan ahead one phase. As an example for one PvP thread, the first objective might be:

1A: Attack/Defend an orbital station
At the end of this phase you move onto:
2A: Orbital Defences Breached: Attack/Defend the outer defences of the Capital City
2B: Attackers routed: The defenders now counter-board the attacker's capital ship

But again, you do not stick to the plan. The story is there to be influenced by all the participants. All you really do is break things into manageable chunks, and after each phase award a victor and come up with a sensible next phase.

You can have as many PvP threads as you want, and can even set a limit of participants on each thread. (I'm abstracting to a concept of a "mission thread" here, it may or may not be a real forum thread.

Fleeting can be on-going, or split down into phases too.

You can set up two PvE threads with a participant limit, and each side's members who want to avoid PvP can do some objectives.

Both PvE and Fleeting have a measurable impact on the outcome.




Anyway, this was pretty much a waste of my time, as I'm fairly certain most will find too complicated and rigid. But the point is it's just a fixed framework to allow you to answer such questions as:

My fleet got wiped, but my Jedi Masters have murdered everything in front of them, who wins?
I want PvE to have an effect, but how do we balance this with PvP?

It's entirely flexible, you can set the weighting of PvP, Fleet, PvE right at the start.
You can decide how many people you want in each mission thread, or do something like the current alderaan invasion and split Masters/Knights and Padawans/NFUs.

Another thing worth mentioning, is that you need to keep things modular. The modularity allows you to break the invasion down into areas of responsibility. The two faction admins can do everything, but they'll burn themselves out very quickly - I've seen this so often. You have to devolve different areas to other responsible persons that talk back up the chain. You'd want a war room for each invasion (thread/skype) where the faction admins, and the faction leader for every thread, get together and decide winners and brainstorm ideas for the next phases. (Again, key is letting the actions of the characters guide the phases, don't stick to a rigid plan - rigid plans also take time, the above example has 23 objectives if you work it out at the start, 11 if you play it by ear)



And of course, if you really want to go to town. You can expand a number of invasions into a Campaign:

 

[Raziel]

None of the above will fix the angst and god-modding of being pressurised to win by your faction admins. Other than my musings before I haven't a clue how to fix that!

Someone tech sub a Chill-the-feth-out +1 Hammer of Godmode Smiting ?

 

[Alice Red]

[member="Raziel"]

I bloody love you. Full homo intended, have my children.

 

[Cedric Dorn]

All Invasions should be handled via a modded version of the game Empire At War.

Full LAN match between the two faction leaders.

 

[Kana Truden]

Way to blow me away, [member="Raziel"]! In a good way! This is awesome!

Holy mother of- Just wow!

I also support [member="Lyna Moridena"], seems totes legit!

 

[Menoetius]

All Invasions should be handled via a modded version of the game Empire At War.

Full LAN match between the two faction leaders.

If only

 

[Lina Ovmar]

More rules = less flexibility.

just saying

 

[Captain Larraq]

[member="Raziel"]



may i have your babies?

 

[EmKay]

I support [member="Raziel"]'s theories and supplement my own.

I learned how to take a loss by playing Dark Souls. There's only so many times you can die before you're made or broken, but either way you know that failure is an option and you will learn to live with it.

Everyone should be required to play it before they enter an Invasion. :3

 

[Ayden Cater]

[member="Enigma"]

You keep asking for that, like the map can only be filled if Invasions aren't a thing.

Another thing to consider; when was the last time a faction got a large territory expansion from one or two Dominions. Those days are gone. Tef stopped handing out that much real estate some time ago. You'd have to do a -lot- of Dominions to get anywhere close to filling in the map.

 

[Beowoof]

The devil is in the details.

Again, very true. That's why the RPJ made the decision they did.

 

[Preliat Mantis]

you know nobody forces anyone to do invasions

 

[Darth Avida]

I still stand by a combination of mine and [member="Fatty"]'s ideas, as it is better to have flexibility in allowing the two factions to agree on set objectives and bonus objects rather than make a mold that not everyone fits in.

 

[Maya Carrick]

[member="Raziel"] I like this idea a lot it would make things go a lot more smoother. Even those that aren't to keen of this it would make a lot of since and keep things flowing good and then went there was a problem there would be other people that the fraction leaders had appointed as this FA aren't here all the time they have RL and other needs then to babysit all during the and Inv.