Will armies incorporate NPC's?

[DeathMetal4tw]

I was just kind of wondering about this. When settlements start coming to life, will there be NPC warriors involved in combat? It's logical to say that among the NPC residents of settlements and kingdoms some of those locals would be trained for warfare.

I say warrior NPC's might be a good thing, and here's why:

1) The players won't be on 24/7. Games have peak hours and off peak hours, so a devoted horde of players could probably strike at 4am on a tuesday morning and take out a whole city if they were organized and they wanted to.

2) Large groups of players rarely act in an organized way in battle. I've seen some large scale WoW battles and it seemed like a swarm of people were jumping over each others heads and flinging spells every which way. If NPC armies march at the king/ruler's orders, they will form an organized nucleus around which actual characters can organize coherent tactics.

I'm hardly confident in my opinions, but I'd love to see some discussion.

[Valkenr]

I wouldn't mind seeing warfare more of an RTS style ordeal, where each character is in control of a number of lesser NPC fighters. I don't really like it when games, like warhammer, shrink buildings down that should be massive. And if you want realistic sizes, i feel you need a large army, and you need a rts style control so you can have far zoom and low quality so the game can handle that many entities.

[Pheoran Armiez]

I think player settlements should automatically have defenses that protect it (akin to NPC settlements), but maybe allow for player characters who are "guards" or "captains" of the guard to have an in-settlement summonable ability where they "call" (onjure) a number of NPC guards that follow them and assist them in combat. These weaker NPC guards would give player characters a boost to protecting their settlement (but only within the boundaries of their settlement) without allowing them to launch an invasion of their own against a neighboring settlement.

Also, keep in mind time-zones will play an important part in character interaction. If you are able to get a group of people from various time-zones, at least one person may be on during each hour of the day. While their will probably be highs and lows (seeing as how most of PFO will probably be marketed towards North America), I believe enough time zones exist to give a reasonable buffer between people logging in and out for the day.

[Bromton]

I like the suggestion that parking for the night in a barracks or fort really any building would make available for its defense ether your character run like a bot or an NPC of your level.
This would make taking a city more difficult or robbing building a pain.

[Nihimon]

@Bromton, yeah, I really like that idea, too. It makes the strength of a Settlement more dependent on the strength of the characters who call it home rather than silly out-of-game things like how many players are asleep.

[Pheoran Armiez]

What if you could obtain an in-game item that acts as a guard voucher? Player created settlements and structures could use a voucher to hire NPC guards to protect the structure or territory from NPC threats and unsanctioned attacks by player characters for 1 hour (perhaps arranging for up to 24 hours of advanced protection, like a training queue). The vouchers could be obtained by expending reputation earned through questing through various NPC organizations (with the guards resembling NPCs of the appropriate organization). *I want elven archers guarding my tower!*

In this way, player characters could help support a player created structure or settlement by donating vouchers to the leaders of the settlement or organization. This also means, player characters would be able to help support multiple structures or settlements, with each structure or settlement having a set limit of how many NPC guards could be "active" at any given time (based on size, location, and level of the organization/settlement).

Just an idea.