randomwalker's page

...giving Rogues the ability to quickly (instantly?) get behind their targets is a good thing.

(....)
I expect there will be Rogue attacks that include a Leap behind their target.

No need to get behind, just have them look another way.

Sneak Attack is available whenever the target has the Flat-Footed state or is not targeting the attacker.

(Rogues won't do it from behind anymore, they'll do it in groups)

Quote:

.... I asked, wouldn't you rather know that I had a concealed weapon? He responded, "No, he would rather buy his coffee without having to be concerned about why I was carrying."

That officer was an idiot. Or at the very least, was not a "rational actor", in the economics sense of the term.

But then... most people are stupid.

I would say the officer is pragmatic. The fact that he notices the weapon makes more work for him. The fact that you are showing the weapon stresses people who notices it. Assuming that what they don't know won't hurt them in this case, he's right.

Anyways, the whole situation strikes me something that would happen only in America.

Gun laws in settlements: I don't quite get the point. If equipping a weapon takes enough time, that should favor assassins - but why would anyone want to make their own settlement more vulnerable? (the defender seems not able to draw a weapon in self-defense until actually hit, which seems a much more severe disadvantage than the attacker being noticed by npc guards a split moment earlier).

Also, it creates a imbalance if bard are allowed their instruments and wizards their spellbooks but paladins cannot equip their swords.

Azure: it means each twice marked character require a separate 'twice marked' add-on. Not a typo, just ambiguous wording.

...and no-one knows what it will do, including (i believe) the designers. But they have promised it will do something cool not obtainable by other means.

1: .... Will Bardic Knowledge (and by extension, knowledge skills in general) somehow be present in Pathfinder Online?

2: .... the inclusion of friendly fire means that Inspire-type abilities and also other sorts of "auras" will have trouble distinguishing friend from foe. How will this problem be handled?

3: .... What if bards could equip an instrument in a similar way?

4: .... in-game instruments to make music...

Hi Rinn and welcome!

1: no idea. Possible uses of knowledge could be identifying keywords on equipment and spells wielded by others, getting more info on mobs and escalation cycles.

2: Beneficial auras (bard, paladin etc) may be restricted to your group, or could affect anyone not hostile to you. However inspiring two strangers fighting each other would become messy (could be loser death curse you for aiding in his death, could the winner turn to you for helping his opponent?), so restricting it to those explicitly allied with you would likely work best. Detrimental auras could be subject to friendly fire as usual.

3: I expect this is exactly what they plan. Higher quality instruments with more keywords should allow better/more varied songs.

4: ...or how about composing a signature melody to each of your spells? (just drooling, not expecting this in the first 12-18 months).

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You are what you eat.

Dario wrote:

... if you're walking around, notice you're Being Observed, and put on a mask, should that effectively protect you from assassination?

This is where my mind went as well. I think the answer should be "No".

Should you be able to disguise yourself while Being Observed? I think not!

OTOH, should disguise help you evade assassins? Absolutely, but Being Observed should quickly break down the disguise.

A disguised assassin being observed should be revealed as "Assassin" and not by name. The question then boils down to: should asssassination disable the anonymity of failed assassins? (Flipside: instead of using mask to avoid assassins, i can now use it to ID any unsuccessful ones).

PS: is it confirmed that you can freely attack Flagged assassins? Or is there a hidden assumption that there are laws against assassin masks, automatically making the exposed assassin a criminal?

Great presentation! It's so refreshing to see someone actually state their assumptions up front instead of trying to sell complex equations and gloss over the input.

Key point: "The relationship is surprisingly linear around skill difference = 0" for T1 vs T1. However when you start comparing different Tiers, I would suggest not using weighted distributions but run full brute force: the distribution of "how many newbs" may not be nice and symmetric.

What scripting/programming language are you using? There may be enough competence here that you should consider sharing your code, at least when a combat simulator is released (next year?) and we get a better handle on variables and ranges.

Two comments:

-try using far less (or thinner) equi-curves to make it clearer, on my screen the middle portion looks like solid colour.

-the conclusion "one lvl 4 = 16/13 lvl 1" seems to be is they are lining up and fighting one at a time. 5 attackerscould get (1+2+3+4+5) = 15 attacks when zerging for every (1+1+1+1+1)= 5 when lining politely up (ie: terrain is important!)
On top of that, there are unknowns like flanking bonuses, debuffs, AoE attacks etc.

What happens if you are in the middle of a siege and the pvp window ends?

I certainly hope the cavalry arrives and the attackers have to withdraw and try again tomorrow.

Why do I hope that? Because of real life. The PVP window is essentially the settlement saying: this is when we are online to engage in war. If you want players with commitments outside the game (ie. a life) to take part in the territory control game, we need that protection.

The alternative is that a guild based in a later time zone declares war in the last 5 minutes of your pvp window, then just wait for another 4 hours before attacking to make sure they meet the minimum resistance. That is unfair on meta-gaming scale and not a smart tactic.

Logging off during war and hoping the npc guards can handle it is bad enough. Not being able to log on a day during the pvp window is bad enough. Losing your settlement (to someone too weak to take you or the npc guards in a fight) because you logged off 5 minutes before the pvp window closed is not acceptable!

Not having npc guards show up at their predicted time favors later time zones and punishes people with limited/inflexible playtime. The (opportunity) cost of the npc protection is not trivial (limited DI), you should at least get what you pay for.

EDIT: Even if you need to break off the battle and start over the next day, the settlement should not necessarily regenerate all buildings. A simple 24 hour debuff for building damaged beyond a certain point could lead to whole new "strategic bombing" strategies.

In a completely different thread James Jacobs stated:

Golarion is actually the same size as earth. The equator is south of the bottom edge of the Inner Sea map, while the arctic circle is north of it. Irrisen is really the only land along the north that's all about ice, but that's partially because it's a land of magical eternal winter.

If assuming the lower edge of the Inner Sea is the equator and the upper edge is the artic circle, then River Kingdoms correspond roughly to... Ukraine.

(köppen climate type Dwa)

(Just don't tell anyone that the cluster is running a non-physics job ;) )

A non-physics job that may take up several seconds of cpu time...

I'll admit my first thought was "why would he do a brute force calculation on such a simple problem?" (ie all independent calculations), but then my second thought was "right, he has a cluster".

and it's vastly more useful than some stuff i spent supercomputer cpu time on as a student ;-)

that aside, the discussion thread for the blog has some quick math on tier 1 vs 2 vs 3 and use of average, variance etc. Since T1 and T3 are highly asymmetric, the avg(T2-T1) is quite different from avg(T2)-avg(T1). Sweeping parameter space could like you seem to do could give very useful input for GW balancing the maths without needing to juggle asymmetric distributions in their minds.
(just remember to get some sleep, or bugs will eventually start to breed in your code).

re: Critical Existence Failure,

GW have indicated that some injuries (crits? special attacks?) will be debuffs that will not be healed by simple rest. This indicates that severely wounded combatants will be at least somewhat less effective (and that it might be possible to specialize in 'hamstring-and-run' wolfpack tactics, or to at least give your killer a wound to remember you by).

Should there be an additional debuff proportional to hit point loss? I don't like it because it favors alpha strikes and makes situation rapidly spiral out of control. Realistic yes, but somehow feels 'unfair' from a gaming perspective. (if you like realism, absolutely try the Riddle of Steel tabletop RPG - just not be too attached to your character)

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Being wrote:

DarkLightHitomi wrote:

...Hopefully you'll just consider me rude and not much worse.

No: much worse would be accurate.

Really? Why is that? The entire difference of opinion is over something that can at worst be considered rude, so what is so horrible about my opinion that it is not just worse, but MUCH worse?

Do you guys really want to continue with this in a public thread about skills in PFO? (New thread or let it go, please).

My point was that "+1" isn't meaningful until we know what the normal bonus range is. +1 attack, for instance, is pretty low value, while +1 stamina per round might be completely broken.

Bluddwolf was referring to the tabletop game, where "+1" is an absolute 5% higher chance of success (+1 on a d20). Extrapolation would give something like 5% higher hit chance, 5% faster stamina regeneration etc. Not overpowered but enough to give an extra edge on a specialized build.

Btw I like idea of "train as if higher stats". The effect of stat bonuses afaik are: meeting training requirements, saves, and (unknown) settlement bonus if in the leadership. In addition to 'train as if higher stats', traits could alternatively give save bonuses, attack bonuses with certain regional weapons, or extra bonus to settlements.

It is important to me that whatever small mechanical bonus the trait gives is still relevant at higher levels, ie that it isn't just "8 hours worth of xp".

But 95% of the reason for regional traits is the fluff.

I would hope most people would respond to this knowledge with "Oh wow, I had no idea"

This is a tricky point for us non-US (and non-anglophone) folks.

Slang, and especially racial slur, evolves fast. Which leads to a lot of "Oh wow, I had no idea". Until you start delving a bit deeper and run into the whole US political correctness thing, where the traditional European response is less politically correct. When communicating in foreign languages (like english) we prefer words to have an up-front meaning and stick to that meaning, ignoring subtle nuances and believing that two synonyms mean the same thing.

Also, many words have different connotations in different societies. A tit is a type of bird, a boob is a stupid guy, a f~# is a cigarette, etc. Which leads to "get over it".

Conclusion: expect us non-US players to use different terms, or adopt US slang without having the context. Confront us by all means, but don't necessarily assume bad intent.

Oohh, what was the topic again? right, skills. I'd like to see linguistics and diplomacy - at least on the forums.

In game: dancing skill that unlocks new animations as you increase it!

Sponsorship has various (mostly social/roleplay/defensive) benefits. There, as some will be pleased to hear, very few MECHANICAL features to influence these relationships.

Thanks for quick clarification! I didn't realize Kobolds have improved initiative.

As discussed above, settlements can offer huge advantages without them being mechanical: most will want their home base in a safe trade hub close to exciting action and with all the right trainers.
As for incentives to actually join the settlement and not just hang out.. yes, i'm sure we players can arrange that (at least with a robust contract system). If it is a clear win-win situation (CCs give more trade, better defense, and more artifacts - all making the settlement better for the CCs to live in), I have no worries at all.

Since CCs are persistent but can move between settlements, I expect to see a quite a few mercenary band CCs. But it also seems that the announced CCs may also be proper CCs and not "just" settlements.

The equipment packages are explicitly stated can be sold to other players.

The regional traits and twice marked are essentially "items" that are consumed by a character, not linked to the account. It should work to trade it to a friend. If sweet-talking to a GM is needed, your alpha status should give you plenty of access to them. I wouldn't be worried.

The secret salute though seems linked to the account (not the character) and is likely non-transferable.

EDIT: since the 'twice marked' and the adventurer account in question are part of the same pledge your case seems very solid. Also, I cannot imagine GW wanting to be anything but helpful.

stuff about CC's being sponsored by PC and NPC settlements

A major unknown here is: What are the benefits for the CC of being sponsored by that particular settlement?

-location, safety, training facilities etc are obvious.
-should there be other benefits to the CC dependent on the DI/reputation of the sponsoring settlement?
-should more CC's means reduced benefits?

I would assume NPC sponsorship to have minimal benefits (except security/predictability) and maybe also a cost, so that any 'homeless CC' should only use it as a temporary solution.

You mean 'paired with' as something like "daily limit X points, weekly limit 4X points"?

Personally, I would be more interested in the effort required to meet a daily limit: is it 15 minutes of dedicated grind or 2 hours?

I can probably get in 30 minutes most days, but 4 hour sessions only if the mrs is away and all the kids go to sleep as intended - which will hopefully the 4-5 times during the EE period...

My guess is that the previous 6 DIs were each associated with a single ability score like this:

• Security = Strength
  
• Industry = Dexterity
  
• Population = Constitution
  
• Civilization = Intelligence
  
• Spirit = Wisdom
  
• Morale = Charisma

This gives me more confidence in my prior guess that Morale = Charisma & Constitution because Morale also effects "the efficacy of the workforce" which is very close to "Population".

That is my guess as well, and meshes well with the "settlements are shared characters" line of thinking. Hopefully "2 abilities associated with" means that the DI depends on two abilities rather than the two abilities being modelled by a single DI. (ie a rogue-centric high Civ settlement should be different from a wizard-centric high Civ settlement).

On the other hand, there are still 6 indices that dictate what buildings you can operate in the settlement:
*security
*morale
*civilization
*lawfulness
*goodness
*reputation

I = 20 WTH? You aren't a libsassin. you're a wizarian. But I suspect you are a drow underneath it all making you a websassin.

Nihimon's point buy isn't that spectacular compared to many others here, actually. The average stat block in this test is a rather heroic 13-14-13-15-15-14 (NG Human Wiz5), which makes me wonder...

I'm more impressed by the numbers of people with multiple 15's in their physical stats, not to mention the lvl 7-8's (i suppose that means 40+ years with 'more life experience than anyone else', which means there must be loads of stories to tell).

But Nihimon, I'm ready for a wizarian duel anytime, NG elven wiz5 to NG elven wiz5 (just don't expect me to be that in game, i do enough divination and compulsion magic at work).

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I think some means of capturing officially a settlement is good as players would otherwise just respawn and fight to the "death". Perhaps part of this would be knocking the means for the settlement's defenders to spawn and populate the settlement ie its population falls below a certain level for a certain amount of time is conducive to attacking and claiming the hall additional to other conditions reached collectively?

Capturing the Hall effectively means you are in complete control of the settlement. Knocking down Civ index (to reduce player respawn rate) and Security index (to reduce npc guard respawn rate) are obvious routes to achieve that.

Incidentally I see this mechanic as an incentive to declare war on settlements with the same alignment, since many buildings may have alignment criteria and therefore be usable only by conquerors of similar alignment.

On the good side, it should make wars between polar alignments more about total destruction and wars between similar alignment more about conquering with minimal damage.

Interesting to see 3 distinct flavours of settlements:

Security: defense by city walls. Fighters and clerics (defensive classes). Likely hardest to siege outside pvp window, may perform well with few players online. Best law enforcement.

Morale: defense by armies. Bards (buff class) and sorcerers (um... also charismatic?). Potentially the best if many players online (formations). Best harvesting/crafting??

Civilization: defense by heroes. Rogues and wizards (glass cannon classes). Potentially good for zerging (faster player respawn)?? Best economy/trading??

On top of this, I expect alignment to make a difference: A lawful high-civ settlement should be better for wizards and merchants while a chaotic high-civ settlement should be for rogues and gamblers. An evil high-morale settlement might 'motivate the workforce' in very different ways than a good one.

If my assumption of the unwritten rules varies from your assumption of the unwritten rules then what violates my sense of the game may not violate yours.

Exactly the clue.

The unwritten rules are important, but despite them being 'obvious' to us we operate with different sets.

@Bluddwolf:
- non-griefing pvp'ers I see as somewhere between killers and achievers (ie it's about winning), though potentially you could become some sort of pvp-explorer (trying new tactics not in order to win but for the sake of exploring them).
- the thrill of politics and intrigue I put on the border between social and killer (ie the ability to affect others, not just play side by side). Politics is more on the social side, pvp theft more on the killer side.

Hardin Steele wrote:

If PFO keeps the system described so far the low level materials will be irrelevant after a few "levels", which would be unfortunate. I remain hopeful all levels of materials will somehow stay relevant throughout the life of the game instead of just being farmed and refined, only to be vendored, as those low level mats have no other value.

What if Settlement and structures required the Basic materials but in large quantities, and combination of basic materials to mid-grade materials with larger proportions of the basic materials. Then they can reserve the high-end and rare materials for high end gear, artifacts and special type things.

Agree. For large scale projects quantity > quality.

Something to keep in mind is that, as the system had been described so far, our characters will not be wielding a wood plane and glue. We'll be directing a team of fletchers in a fletching structure in a settlement.

I liked the system in Pirates of the Burning Sea, not as a crafting system but as an economy system. This was based on a finite number of ports with different resources and belonging to different factions - along with the obvious dangers of transporting goods (it's a pirate game after all) - and ships being permanently lost in battle.

Raw materials and recipes were generic, but caps on how many industries you could own and how many ports you could operate in meant that noone could do it all, and high-end ships needed a bit of everything: hull and masts, sails, cannons and huge anchors, rations (hardtack and rum), and even a bit of granite for ballast. So, to run an efficient shipyard you would need 7-8 players operating in at least 3 different places (and if one of those places were closed down due to pvp war...).

I ran the full 'what character are you' test on myself.
Apparantly I am a lvl 5 elf wizard.

neutral good, but very close to both LG and NN.

As a non-american, I really liked the comments about cultural mixing and evolution.
Being, I like your 'outside perspective' on the game. I sure see games differently now than I did 20 years ago, but you seem to be another 5-10 years ahead of me.

Nihimon wrote:

It seems like there ought to be some mechanism to "lock" a Buy (or Sell) Order for a short period of time while you gather the resources to fulfill it. I would expect there to be a significant Reputation hit for failing to fulfill it after locking it. And I would expect the player who placed the Order to be able to set a minimum Reputation required to lock the Order. That should keep low Rep characters from abusing the system to cause grief.

Out of curiosity, why? What is the advantage of a mechanic to say "I don't have that, but I will get it for you so don't get it from anyone else in the meanwhile." that can't be replicated by contacting the buyer and saying exactly that to them? Isn't getting swooped by someone else who actually has it on hand part of the risk of reactive trading?

Nihimon, this is what the contract system is for. Replace 'buy order' with 'supply agreement', and define terms for delivery, contract breach (in very fine print), etc.

@Bluddwolf: yes, agree.

The hideout just needs an inventory and you should have that need covered. But:

"PVP purposes" to me also includes avoiding PVP, so there are several ways hideouts tie in with pvp:
-you can hide from enemies/bandits in a hideout, avoiding being caught
-you can [we assume] hide your goods in a hideout, reducing item loss if caught
-hideouts (occupied or empty) can be found by others who may then attack (and loot?) them. I assume an unoccupied hideout will have no indication of who the owner is and destroying/looting a hideout will not give a flag [maybe looter?] or alignment hit.

this opens questions like:
-do I as a skinner put my hides in a hideout [pun not intended] to avoid losing them if killed by a mob or bandit - but at the risk of theft by anyone who can find my hideout?
-do I as a city guard automatically destroy any hideouts I find, or can I mark them as 'known' and try to find if it belongs to a friendly harvester/trader/smuggler?
-is it a legit thief playstyle to find and loot hideouts (risking that they are occupied)?

The point of the criminal flag as I see it that it allows settlements to enforce their own laws in their own territory. It is not about GW controlling player behaviour but about giving us (ie settlements) tools to set the rules in the part of the sandbox that we control.

If you (or anyone else) think open pvp should be allowed, you can make a settlement with no laws against murder. While I strongly defend the right to make lawless settlements, I prefer to join one where npc guards will protect me from random attacks in the street. Both have to live with the consequences of their laws (an behaviour).

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I wonder if there will be various skills: Scavenge, butcher, smelt-down, skin etc?

argument in favour of skinning skill etc:

IIRC, in harvesting operations the quality of the material obtained will be MIN(node quality, harvester skill). "Harvesting mobs" should follow the same rules. The cost of training the skill (and requirements to get the badge) can be tuned to achieve the wanted impact on economy and behaviour.

(Is there any lore for mining dead earth elementals og sawing up treants? I would expect that to be top quality material)

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It is my hope that hideouts are the settlement equivalent for bandits, and other "fringe" types.

If you need a 'settlement equivalent', why not a proper settlement? I see hideouts as (temporary) ambush sites built along the trade routes.

IMO any bandit group should be able to operate several hideouts a move between them. IMO hideouts should be constructable even in owned hexes (actually finishing it without being detected should be incredibly hard though), and claiming land should not destroy existing hideouts.

IMO hideouts are part of "personal PvP", not territory warfare.

21 out of 64 from outside the US, 22 if you count Puerto Rico. Granted it's self-select reporting, but it's still an impressive international contingent.

Interstingly, my view was the exact opposite: I can't understand why US is so overrepresented.

this article suggests that the percentage of online gamers in the population is maybe 1/3 in EU of what it is in US. On top of this there are language barriers, differences in internet culture and "critical mass" effects (ie perceived US-centricism makes non-US members more likely to leave and US members more likely to stay).

meh.. so you seem to be right. 2:1 ratio isn't unexpectedly skewed. /sigh
C'mon world - discover PFO already!

randomwalker wrote:

The answer to the orginial question then seems to be confirmed: you need a tent to declare war.

Has it been confirmed that a settlement is all that's required to declare war? I thought they had said there was a minimum DI. Particularly since they've said there's a minimum DI that requires a PVP window.

There is no explicit dev confirmation and everything is subject to change. The balancing will happen sometime during EE when settlements and warfare is implemented.

However my clear understanding of the PvP window is that while higher DI requires larger windows, there is nothing to stop you from opening the window earlier. So, even if you require a PvP window set (which makes tremendous sense), that should be possible with a tent. A tent means you claim a hex and are part of the territorial warfare game.

As most of you will have noticed, Lisa posted the following in the screenshot blog thread:

The building behind the palisades is an early version of the keep, the building where all the administration of the town takes place. It will be a very important building in PFO. Eventually, it will evolve into a castle, but in the earliest versions, it is actually a tent. The evolution of buildings is pretty cool and our concept artist, Darren, has been working his butt off to concept these evolutions out.

-Lisa

The answer to the orginial question then seems to be confirmed: you need a tent to declare war.

Bluddwolf wrote:

as ambiguous as this one is

Ryan Dancey wrote:

There clearly must be a mechanism to go to war against an enemy even if they don't wish it.

I dunno, doesn't look very ambiguous to me. It's not very specific, but it's not ambiguous: It plainly says "there must be a way to start a non-consensual war." Which I think we are almost all in agreement is a good thing.

Do you mean War as in attacking and destroying enemy settlements?

Or do you mean War as in doing it without aligment/rep loss?

A 'consensual war' is one where there's agreement that there is a state of war.

I hesitate to give RL examples of non-consensual wars since this is an internet discussion, but there are many examples of conflicts where one side regards it as war and the other as terrorism.

"Lawful Good" in PFO means someone who always adheres to the alignment rules. Whatever they may be.

"Chaotic Good" in PFO means someone who adheres to the Good/Evil rules, but not to Law/Chaos rules.

etc.

what we know so far is that killing other players is evil. Killing in self-defense (attacker flag) is permitted but revenge (1min later) is evil. Killing accidentally (AoE) is evil. Using undead or slaves is heinous.

Those that want to stay lawful good simply have to follow the rules. If you don't have the discipline to do that, you don't get to have the alignment. The reward of being CE is that you can play how you like and make your own judgements. The drawback of being LG is that you have to follow artificial constraints all the time.

In the example of LG parties starting a fight due to misunderstanding, the ultimate LG response is to surrender/die and lose equipment instead of alignment. The example also illustrates why paladins (at least in earlier editions) should never team up with chaotics.

243 posts and you're still having to ask...

To the question "what is the..", there is no formal dev answer. But to the question "what should the minimum structure be..." we seem to have some sort of consensus:

The minimum structure they are proposing is the resulting structure you get after upgrading your Fort/Watchtower with a Settlement Charter. That is, a Settlement.

This is for war between settlements, which allows you to attack all members and structures in the enemy settlement without alignment/rep hits and criminal flag.

I expect one world map and 'local maps' for each hex.

But what info would be useful to have on maps? What info would you pay to have?

-Geographic points of interest? Rivers, forests and mountains should we more or less known from the start.
-Natural resources? now we're talking. If a hex must be surveyed by a skilled person to estimate potential resource levels, that could be valuable knowledge.
-Monsters/escalation cycles and dungeon sites? If cycles take a week or more, there may be a market for knowing where to find certain mobs. If they change faster, the info is already too old when you get it.
-Settlements and hex ownership? yup! Especially if they keep being burned down and pop up again in new places. Must have for traders, bandits and other adventurers.
-Detailed maps of enemy settlement layout? Gold mine!!

Check out Ryan's posts in terms of Chartered Company and Settlement Membership in the discussion thread of the "Put It It Writing" Blog....as far as I know they haven't been changed since then.

You have to be within ONE alignment step of a Charted Company or Settlements Alignment in order to be a MEMBER of either. If you slip outside of that range, the system AUTOMATICALY revokes your membership.
Meaning you can no longer be a MEMBER of the same in-game PLAYER organizations as the rest of your play group.

(....)

This game makes a VERY BIG DEAL of what Alignment you have...not just in terms of your relationships with NPC Organizations but also in terms of the sorts of realtionships you have with other PLAYERS and PLAYER organizations.

Of course you can easily drop from NG to CN by doing a few chaotic evil acts, and I very much see your point.

In you example the Jolly Rangers (NG) could probably decide to officially become CG or NN. But that would kick out any LG members. If they really want to stick together there's still the option of the others doing some chaotic (or evil) acts. But more likely, they would group with you to do good pve stuff until you could rejoin (and obviously allow you full access to your stuff).

If the alignment shift is the result of "one bad day" (aka leaving the computer logged in), the PvE work to get back to CG should not be days and days of grinding. The lawful shift may take a few days, but should be automatic as long as you don't break more laws.

The problem is then not 'one bad day' but that you can't have a barrel with 'one bad apple'.
My old DnD group would struggle to keep together in PFO, as one would gravitate towards CG and another towards LE (and the rest stay around LG-NN). The current PFO alignment system makes it impossible for us to play as a group. On the other hand, it makes it much easier to find people with more compatible playstyles and values, which I have great hopes for.

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The 'settlement' screenshot in the blog set thoughts in motion.

Core question:
Will settlements be constructed strategy-game style?
I mean like bases in C&C/starcraft/etc, placing one building at a time and having to consider logistics and defensibility. (Actually the best example would be SimCity Societies since that has 'development indices').

Background:
-settlements grow one building at a time
-some buildings may raise development indices (DI), other will require certain DI. The order or building therefore matters
-wares must be hauled between buildings (mine->smelter->smith->market), markets and storages should be easy to access, but buildings can also be attacked and destroyed. Travel paths and location of buildings matters.
-space may be limited, at least space inside palisade/wall.

IF we can design our own bases, then layout is a big part of the strategy. A single gate to make it defensible, or multiple gates shorten the travel routes? Compact build for effectiveness or open build to make it harder for assassins (and save space for future additions)?

I'd also love to see buildings placed on the map directly relate to develop indices.

I am concerned about how short the range is for displaying shadows :(

I also notice (in the tower picture) that the shadows are not parallel, suggesting that the sun is less than 100 m away.

But these are easily tunable settings in the engine and has nothing to do with art or world development.

The long thumbs must surely be an indicator that pickpocketing is in the game (which I guess is one of the griefing mechanisms Bludd noted).

on a serious note: The settlement seems too spread out. I'd like to see a broad main street (wide enough for wagons and military formations) and a large square, but otherwise close packed houses and narrow alleys. Palisades/walls should be an obvious economic incentive to build compact. (and the assassins will love you for it).

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A skirmish or insurgency may require a minimal settlement structure. Then you have a full scale, siege and counter siege war, that requires the highest levels of settlement development to launch and support such a massive undertaking.

It is quite simple really: The ability to declare war requires a minimal settlement (assumption), but the ability to build and support siege engines or train advanced soldier skills requires advanced buildings and corresponding development indices.

I see no need for formal 'tiered warfare' since what you can bring to the battlefield depends on tiered buildings and settlements.

Perhaps there will be some kind of a restriction on trade, or special requirement for trade with a settlement at war?

-it is easy to flag a settlement as "under siege" if attacking army is/has/builds [CRITERIA]

-it is easy to flag anyone doing economic activity in settlement "under siege" as "involved with [settlement]"

-depending on what you want to achieve, you could additionally
-flag any neutrals entering the besieged hex as "trespassers". THere may be a "contest" mechanism that could be used for this though.
-flag anyone entering (but not leaving) the settlement as "involved with.."
-close the doors of besieged settlements so that noone can enter or leave (except by teleports, death porting etc.) except by permission from both sides

I think 'neutral' opportunists entering the besieged hex are just as likely to offer help to the attackers as to the defenders.

KJosephDavis wrote:

Why wouldn't the neutral merchant suffer the typical negative effects associated with aggression if they acted aggressively against one faction or another involved in a war with a completely different faction?

Because I expect the attacking army to be PvP-flagged. Which means they can be attacked by anyone without suffering negative effects.

[Edit] I realize this is an assumption on my part that is not based on facts in evidence.

Nihimon, it sounds like you assume "WAR" is some kind of open pvp flag?

War is declared on a specific settlement, allowing you to attack any and all members of said settlement without penalty - and vice versa. I see no reason why war should change your pvp status with respect to neutral parties.

The only reasons I see for war parties to add pvp flags are assassins vs commanders, crusaders vs heinous tactics and bandits vs merchants trying to move out their goods before the city falls (which i find much more likely than them bringing supplies in).

Bergen, Norway

(internally known as the best country in the world. other countries' opinions may vary).

Now, I agree that banditry (in appropriate volume) is good for the game because it provides opportunity for varied playstyles and activities. But banditry is in no way good for the economy.

This is the whole point!

Banditry is good for merchants because it gives a more exciting and richer world - despite cutting their profit. Unless you are a gold farmer, even the most economic minded gamers play games for fun. Building a trade empire in a world of war and banditry is a much worthier challenge than just watching money roll in in Simcity or such.

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There is no permadeath for players, but there is permadeath for settlements. Since I regard wars as "settlement pvp", I get the following logic:

-only settlements can declare war. The minimum settlement structure to declare is the minimum requirement (fort?) to form a settlement.
-There should be a requirement to have a pvp window defined (ie "flagging the settlement for pvp"), and there could also be requirements for morale index or similar (allowing assassinations to undermine morale/infrastructure to the point of disrupting the war).

-the war ends when one settlement ceases to exist (or when a truce is signed). If for argument sake your 1000 mongol archers operate out of a simple tent, I should be able to burn down that tent and formally destroy your settlement and end the war (ie removing the WAR flag for all parties).

-Any further hostile action by the losing warriors is formally banditry, and since they do not belong to a settlement any more they cannot declare war. If they should spontaneously all choose to join the settlement of the next tent (or the one rebuilt on the same spot), that is technically a new and unrelated war.

Bluddwolf, you forgot one more crucial effect (that was discussed a year or more ago)

5. Banditry (with hideouts breaking fast travel and no instant item mailing) means there is risk associated with moving goods, making the economy more decentralized. This supports price differences making local traders, haulers etc viable playstyles.

Without risk, logistics is simply an inconvenience (and therefore removed completely in some games). With risk, it can be the core of the economic game (like PotBS).

I'd love at some point to see bandits blockade a settlement. And trader organizations employing bandits (and assassins) to try to monopolize certain routes.

(cleverly breaking wall of text into two posts)

IMO the governing principle for undead (and slaves) should be that undead (and slaves) provide alternative ways of doing npc jobs.

ie. if you can hire npc guards, you can summon undead guards
ie. since mines and lumber mills are powered by npc workers, they can be powered by undead (or slaves).
ie. since settlements are protected and patrolled by npc guards, they could be protected by undead.

Using undead/slaves will have different costs and rules. A tiny necromancer settlement might run unlimted farms and mines without manpower or food constraints - but may require a specific (evil) building [so that assassinating the 'Chief Operating Necromancer' may cripple the whole settlement].