Goblin Squad Member
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I think having longer crafting times might make crafted items worth more, maybe worth more than their components (gasp).
If I can instantly (or near instantly) turn a mountain of iron into a stack of swords, then I might as well wait until I know what I need. Say instead that my town can only make 3 swords an hour or two suits of mail, etc, based upon available forges. If some adventurer wants to buy a new custom sword - now - then the cost of that sword has to consider everything in the town queue that will have to be delayed. If our soldiery gets into combat and needs replacement arms, they have to be in stock, not in ingot form.
I think the town forges might not have unlimited space for additional smiths. I'd guess the size/cost of the forge might limit the number of available queues that can run at the same time; each queue might require a separate smith. A master smith over the entire thing might be able to adjust queue priorities, etc.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am reading how unsatisfactorily harvesting, refining and crafting is conducted in must games, but few solutions other than "Make it instant", which is not a good solution. You are comparing the time taken to perform an action against the same time invested for other actions. If something is instantaneous it becomes a huge money maker (since no time is invested).
Instead it is not a bad thing that significant time is invested because that makes harvesting a choice that costs to do, or not do. Same with refining ad crafting. How about having to enter a code every 5 refined or crafted items like the random word entry for log ins for forums.
There is a game someone else mentioned I checked out called "Jacksmith". It's a cute little game where you play a smith that builds crafted weapons and assemble the parts after the crafting part is done.
Jacksmith might not be the ultimate solution, but if the current system is not favored, submit another idea(let's use a different thread though).
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Goblin Squad Member
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More time = better quality makes sense. So what do we do with that time? Are we all forced to play the exact same mini games, which will lose any semblance of any challenge even for those who really struggle with puzzles after a few players write walkthroughs for them, or even scripts? Or do we get to personally decide what to do with that time.
Just because one person thinks mini games is the best of the narrow scope of choices his mind can imagine, that is no justification to make that the choice set in stone for everybody.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Or do we get to personally decide what to do with that time.
This.
Goblinworks has already innovated a fantastic solution to this in the way Crafting (including Processing) and Gathering will work. Harvesting is a slightly more difficult problem because they seem to be looking for an experience that is similar to resource harvesting in games like WoW, where you click on a node and get something a few seconds later.
My hope is that Harvesting is not necessary, but is simply the "poor man's Gathering".
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Goblin Squad Member
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The only draw back that I can see to "set and forget" is that it may greatly increase the number of crafters.I'm not so sure. I think Stephen Cheney really nailed it.
Consider Darkfall. Do you really think there would be a lot of Crafters of any type at all if you had to spend Prowess to advance even your basic Crafting skills?
I think PFO will go a long way towards separating out the casual crafters who only craft because it's a big hole on their character sheets.
It is the same house with a different coat of paint. If it causes behaviors to be different, I will be very happy. I will have to observe results.
As we all know, you can redesign the play pen, but once you turn the monkeys loose inside... well they always do the same monkey stuff.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My hope is that Harvesting is not necessary, but is simply the "poor man's Gathering".
And my hope is that it is something completely different, aimed at different resources that will be needed in far smaller quantities (special herbs, unusual woods, antler and bone etc), though not exclusively so. If you make it the "poor man's gathering" you are missing the opportunity to develop niche crafters who specialise in things that are not done often, precisely because they are so rare.
What's more interesting when you discover you need some Adderstongue for a particularly rare thingummijig* you want to craft? Going to the company bank, where they have 20 stacks of the stuff, and petitioning to take some out, or tracking Hobs (for example) down to see if he has a lead on anyone who might possibly have some? I know I'd prefer the latter - and it would certainly increase interaction among players. And the added hassle would be worth it for me as the crafter, since I'd be able to pass that on in the cost to my customer ... :)
*please excuse the technical terminology.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No matter what mini-game they design, as long as it involves set patterns that can be fed into an if/or/and algorithm then someone using AutoHotKey can design an undetectable script that will quickly scan the screen for certain pixel colors and based off of the coordinates of those colors solve your mini-games and give that person a very effective solver.
This is something I'm willing to accept. A good mini-game should focus less on being un-bypassable, and more on being fun for the people who don't bypass it.
A great exsample if the maps on DF. All the areas of the map are covered in fog of war before you explore them. I'm all for implementing a similar system in PFO with the ability to sell people sections of the map you've personally explored added in.
I realize if this happens there will be mods that show the full map without exploring / purchasing it made available extremely quickly.
The fact others will use this doesn't ruin the fun it adds to the game for those who don't.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And my hope is that it is something completely different, aimed at different resources that will be needed in far smaller quantities (special herbs, unusual woods, antler and bone etc), though not exclusively so. If you make it the "poor man's gathering" you are missing the opportunity to develop niche crafters who specialise in things that are not done often, precisely because they are so rare.
I hear you, and my expectation is that this suggestion is in line with what the devs have planned. That won't be terrible, but I think it will create a market for bot harvesters.
The supply of bots is impossible to constrain, so I'd rather work to reduce demand by removing the benefits.
You could use crafting points that build over real time, then you can only spend points you have for near instant crafting. This slows down crafting over the long term, but doesnt force individuals to to play a game without actually playing it.
I personally dont consider waiting for a progress bar to be playing the game. Not a problem if only a couple seconds but spending minutes or hours waiting on a progress bar is minutes or hours of not playing the game. I dont play games so I can wait or play some other game.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Lhan wrote:
And my hope is that it is something completely different, aimed at different resources that will be needed in far smaller quantities (special herbs, unusual woods, antler and bone etc), though not exclusively so. If you make it the "poor man's gathering" you are missing the opportunity to develop niche crafters who specialise in things that are not done often, precisely because they are so rare.
I hear you, and my expectation is that this suggestion is in line with what the devs have planned. That won't be terrible, but I think it will create a market for bot harvesters.The supply of bots is impossible to constrain, so I'd rather work to reduce demand by removing the benefits.
There's a much easier way to deal with bots; kill them and take their stuff.
That, combined with ever changing spawn points (or at least a very large number of spawn points, of which only a few are ever "active" at the same time) makes botting very slow. It is still profitable if it works - after all, the botter has put no effort or personal time in at all so even one node is a profit - but if the travel time between nodes is far enough and/or dangerous enough, that bot is not going to last long in the wilds of Golarion. Sure, you can thread your harvesting tools, but they'll still take a durability hit. At what point do all but the most dedicated of botters turn around and go and do something else with their toon?
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Goblin Squad Member
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There's a much easier way to deal with bots; kill them and take their stuff.That, combined with ever changing spawn points (or at least a very large number of spawn points, of which only a few are ever "active" at the same time) makes botting very slow. It is still profitable if it works - after all, the botter has put no effort or personal time in at all so even one node is a profit - but if the travel time between nodes is far enough and/or dangerous enough, that bot is not going to last long in the wilds of Golarion. Sure, you can thread your harvesting tools, but they'll still take a durability hit. At what point do all but the most dedicated of botters turn around and go and do something else with their toon?
Just imagine, an army of bots, constantly preyed upon by our bandit community, ;) they would become bandit kings in no time...
hmmm... a bot-harvesting-tax....|
Goblin Squad Member
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@Lhan, do you have any personal experience with bots or botters? I ask because I think you may have some preconceptions that aren't accurate. I know I did.
When my wife and I went back to Vanguard, we hooked up with a raiding guild we used to play with and became really good friends with another married couple. They were a lot of fun to chat with, and both of them were really good healers. After a while, it dawned on me that one of them was using a bot, because you could send her a /tell and get an immediate buff, and her husband would make jokes about her watching movies while healing. They were great people - they just didn't see anything wrong with botting, and I have to say I largely agree with them, especially in Vanguard.
I also remember when Vanguard first came out, I was trying to level up my Blacksmithing. At the time, they had a really great website that showed you everyone's level, and I could see this one guy who was already like a level 35 Blacksmith while most of us were still in the teens. I would occasionally send him /tells and pick his brain about it because it was all fairly complex. Anyway, he was a really great guy, and it wasn't until he was joking about reading a book while crafting that I realized he was using a bot.
My point is that these are normal people who are generally good and friendly, and they're at their keyboards. If you see a harvesting bot in PFO and send it a /tell, you'll almost certainly get a response, and it will almost certainly be friendly and helpful. How are you going to be able to identify the ones who deserve to be killed and have their stuff taken?
I kind of understand the desire for a "pure" game where these kinds of things don't happen. It's kind of like the desire for a "pure" state of play at a convention where people don't cheat and steal your Magic: The Gathering deck when you beat them and then go outside for a cigarette (true story). Unfortunately, it's not possible to force other people to play by the rules without using measures so draconian that they're actually worse than the behavior they're intended to stop.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I got to 100 Weaponsmithing pretty darn easily. I sold a few lots of ore for the gold I needed, and harvested 90% of the mats needed by myself, mostly in the safe zones.
I was making swords ( minimum mats for skill up) and got to 100 in about 30-40 hours online. I think 20 swords was worth 4 points once I got past 75%. Roughly.
Now I just need to log in and get the 10k prowess for Mastery....
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Nihimon
Yes, I do, and when I say bot I mean someone who is afk and is running their toon on a script that requires no input from them whatsoever. Your definition appears to be different (as we have already discussed in vent). While I appreciate that there is not much that can be done to stop it, I have never been one to subscribe to the idea that because we can't stop something we shouldn't even bother trying (reductio ad absurdum: why legislate against murder, it's already happened, so you can't stop it?). I do think that using such programs, especially in the absence of the player at the keyboard, is wrong and I would prefer that PfO stamp down on it when found.
I must admit that I know nothing about the crafting system in Vanguard, so I don't know why someone would need a bot or how they would use it, but I will freely admit that I have both read and watched films while crafting in Darkfall; I think anyone would go crazy if they didn't.
To answer your question: if someone is at their keyboard and answers a /tell appropriately, then ok - I couldn't tell. But I'm pretty sure I could work out whether I was talking to a person or a scripted response PDQ. And so could most people. And in the case of a script, it's a bot I really don't want in the River Kingdoms, and I'd be happy to take a rep hit to remove it - if only for a while.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I must admit that I know nothing about the crafting system in Vanguard, so I don't know why someone would need a bot or how they would use it...
When people talk about mini-games for Crafting, I think of Vanguard. At the high end, crafting any one item would take 3-5 minutes and require the user to activate the proper action in response to Complications that might arise. It could be extremely challenging at times. Clearly, the developers wanted the player engaged in the process.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There are some benefits to botters, as I found out the night before I left for vacation. I was mining our near a kobold spawn and found a bot mining nearby. The bot had an attack script going when it took damage and could detect when to use a polearm or bow. There is a small chance this player was not a bot, but it was extremely likely he/she was a straight up bot.)
As the bot killed kobolds the tombstones piled up, so I stopped mining and stared looting. The bot mined three node gaining 153 ore max, while I looted around 475kg in loot (I had already mined about 350 units of ore, so was badly weighed down by the time I left). I got tons of salvage and hit three feats from skinning tombstones while the bot mined away.
Sure, that's the exception, but if you can kill the bot, find a way to exploit the exploiter.
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Goblin Squad Member
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There is little gold in the clan bank. I haven't been around for at least a week to put in or take out, but I know a few folks have been dropping gold in. Substantial amounts in some cases. We do need to get some cash flow going on, as the few contributing can't carry everyone else. (Hint: Socialism doesn't work. It never has, and it never will.)
Please gather some raw materials and either refine them and sell them, donating the proceeds to the clan bank, or sell the raw. It would be nice to get more in-putters than out-takers.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I am trying to think of a way that we can:
1. Keep an adequate balance in the clank for refiners/crafters that find themselves "short" at the moment.
2. Not have it be just a few that maintain that balance.
a. Some can contribute raw/refined mats.
b. If they prefer, others could sell part for the Clank's balance.
3. Build Clan wealth that is protected and secure, yet not lost if a person holding it walks away from the Clan or the game.
Some of this is being done already. We are all very co-operative and team oriented. This area could be organized better, for better results.
What are your thoughts?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I worry that we're going to be forced to have "the few" bear the burden for the simple reason that there aren't that many folks still playing.
I've been running some of the small treasure maps we have in the bank to put in the clank, but I'm also trying to get my Staffcrafting up to where Being's was (I'm almost there). I probably have enough cash for it, just need a bit more Iron. I'm happy to run small treasure maps as long as we have them. If someone wants to put larger treasure maps in the clank, I'll happily run those and put the whole amount in the clank.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't trust the clan bank. I generally put in half of my harvests (like hides or leather) in the clan bank and hold the other half in my bank as reserve. If I refine something using clan resources (like I used my hides and clan essences to process selentine leather, and split the gold costs 50/50), then all of those processed goods go back into the clan. Mostly because clan crafters need that stuff.
When I need more cash than I've gotten from drops, I run small treasure maps. If I owned the map, I put in at least 1/4 of the gold as taxes. If it was a clan map, I put 1/2 of everything back to the clan. I think socialism can work - I don't think it can be totally voluntary. I wouldn't mind if Koda or Glis (or both) held most of the cash and significant valuable and doled them out to push projects the clan needed.
The lesson learned, I think, is that we have a wide range of player activity. In PFO, some of us will belong to the same companies, some will belong to different companies. Companies need to have (1) more secure banking, preferably with logs, (2) companies need to plan for a people who have more time or less time, (3) there need to be goals - things to use resources on, rather than just grinding skills (I think PFO has this covered).
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Goblin Squad Member
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Interesting thing about gathering in Darkfall as it relates to Prowess gains and purchases. The mastery system requires a huge outlay of hard-earned Prowess (10,000 units per mastery), so players much choose carefully which mastery they need. So here is your specialization.
But the lower level crafting gives Prowess gains as well, plus the bonus of being to salvage goods IF you can craft them (starter level items may be salvaged by anyone as a level one item). Therefore the crafting system at lower levels encourages generalization.
Not sure if that is good or not. With thousands of players having everyone being able to craft all the low level items seems a big negative, while the specialization at the top is certainly good since it limits the supply of high end items and rewards the high end crafters for their investment in the skill.
Still have not seen a recent thread or blog on how crafting advancement and specialization will work, and how crafting skills will play out in PFO. I know there have been some blog posts in the past, but nothing lately. I am also quite interested to see a comprehensive list of skills to see how the developers are setting up the knowledge system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You can probably see the ghost of Prowess in the Influence system for Companies (most recent blog)...Absolutely. That's one of the things I really like about DF, except for the grindiness of it. Standing there unable to even turn your head and look around for 8 to 13 minutes while harvesting a resource node is incredibly boring - it's virtually impossible for me to do that without tabbing out to do something else.
A lot of my work at Aventurine was about rationalising and redesigning systems that were struggling, from the 'role' system, to the new GUI, to the achievements system.We've been pretty hard on the UI design. I suppose a large part of the design there was intended to obscure as little of the view area as possible. I suppose the bag system was designed with an eye towards making the UI interaction to loot someone function as a means of making it take time.
I'd prefer to see a UI that generally looks a lot like WoW's with panels of options and clearly labeled tabs and buttons, rather than a large number of small icons. I'd also prefer to see the system make it take time to loot a corpse by actually making it take time, rather than using the interaction with the UI as a proxy for that.
I'd love to hear about the parts of the system you worked on that you think turned out well, and which parts if any you think would work well in PFO.
Yeh I completely agree with you and Bringslite about grinding. That was a bit unfortunate and was a sort of side effect of two things - one was the extremely limited options for creating interesting or varied achievements, so we ended up with 'ill 50/100/1million' type things. There is a secondary design for 'later development' of that system that may or may not ever get implemented that winds down the grinding by opening up the kinds of ways to win prowess. Its something we are being super conscious about in PFO. The other issue, weirdly enough, was that grinding was/is considered desirable at Aventurine and more importantly with their Korean partners. They actively WANTED that time sink in there because its very common in the eastern markets.
GUI wise - I am pretty pleased with much of it but there are some serious problems. We had much less time than we needed and only about I'd say 70% of the developments designed were implemented. A whole new system for inventory management never made it into development and as a result we had a front end that no longer worked will with the back end.
I am going to be pretty closely involved with the GUI on PFO but dont panic! I shall be paying close attention to lessons learned in DF. Again we have the benefit of pre-produciton and iteration this time :)
Hi Tork. I happened to enjoy a very beautiful vid you plugged on your fb site (worth a watch), which I enjoyed greatly. I can see you have a "thing" for circles, hehe ;). But this appears not to have worked so well in DF:UW, at least the GUI comes in for a lot of stick in this thread and over in the DF forums (of course you explain some of the reasons above)? Are you anywhere near working on this feature in PFO and as Nihimon asked or did not ask: Comparing the Twitch based combat vs the Tab-target how that will change your approach? Also what about how Camelot Unchained are going about their GUI where it's fully customizable:
Making a Game Out Of the Web ?
Hope it's food for thought if you've not seen it already. I think apple are very good at this in terms of minimizing "clicks" required also to perform an action.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Announcing a new alliance
The Goblin Squad has entered into an alliance with two other clans, Imperium (about 150 members) and Moonrats (about 45 members). The have two clan cities and several hamlets and villages at any one time. If you have not logged on in a while and are still planning to participate please jump in and say Hello on the Alliance channel. Lots of new people to meet.
Several of us have visited one of the clan cities and we welcomed, and I "helped fight off an attacker" (not much of an attack, one guy firing into the city gates). Fun though. Crafting stations in the cities with some bonuses. You can gather in and around the clan cities, but it's still dangerous.
It was strongly recommended the first thing to do with your earned Prowess points is to raise your primary attribute to max (140), so warriors increase STR, DEW for Skirmishers, INT for Elementalists, and WIS for Primalists. After that use your best judgment.
Since we joined up in order to learn a new territorial control mechanic (other than EVE which many of us are familiar with) log in and check it out. We will soon start helping with defending the cities during sieges and attacking other cities. For the reasons we are in Darkfall at all, this is where the rubber meets the road (or where the wagon wheel meets the goat path, or something like that).
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Shane Gifford
To answer you questions: Resources are usually in clumps but in barren areas a single node can be standing quite alone. I have found areas (within a few steps of each other} where up to 3 of the same type might also be clustered.
There are 52 picks in a fresh node, some of which can be rares. The higher the danger areas the better chance of rares. Rares reward more prowess.
A node takes 3 hours (as Jazz pointed out) to respawn after the last pick is taken from it.
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Goblin Squad Member
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TA-TA-TA-DAH!!!
After purchasing meat from another player, I FINALLY hit 50 cooking. Now I can use fish (that I can catch myself) instead of nagging all of you clan-mates to go harvest meat. Of course, I'm now out of carrots... *faceplants into keyboard*...but with my masterful 100 cooking, I can dig those up myself.
Enjoy the new bowls of bass stew in the clank.
The Cook.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Unfortunately, I tried to make this post from Comic Con, and it never made it through...
Last week Xeen had joined the clan that I'm in and the other night (Friday) he got his first taste of going out into the wilds, with an organized raiding party.
In a group of 10 - 12 we managed to sack three villages and only faced resistance in two. The nature of the resistance is the "Lesson Learned":
Traveling in what appears to be a "Gank Squad" will prevent resistance and or make what players that do resist, fight only as a means of securing their possible escape.
In the two cases where they fought and then fled, our leader(s) had the discipline and experience to know not to pursue them. The leader of our band also knew to quit while we had a resoundingly successful series of raids and to vacate the area.
These kinds of rules of engagement, tactics and discipline are what my hopes for joining Darkfall was all about. The UNC's cross game recruitment efforts are just a bonus.
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Goblin Squad Member
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10-12 people stole from three villages? You would have had a higher return-on-time if you had grabbed tools and harvested for an hour. (Of course, you should also be harvesting while you wait for the steal timer to finish.)
If we did that we wouldnt have taken 3 villages
I am glad PFO is a time based skill game, I hate grinding for xp... excuse me prowess.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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10-12 people stole from three villages? You would have had a higher return-on-time if you had grabbed tools and harvested for an hour. (Of course, you should also be harvesting while you wait for the steal timer to finish.)If we did that we wouldnt have taken 3 villages
I am glad PFO is a time based skill game, I hate grinding for xp... excuse me prowess.
Did you (re)capture, or steal from, those villages?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Did you (re)capture, or steal from, those villages?10-12 people stole from three villages? You would have had a higher return-on-time if you had grabbed tools and harvested for an hour. (Of course, you should also be harvesting while you wait for the steal timer to finish.)If we did that we wouldnt have taken 3 villages
I am glad PFO is a time based skill game, I hate grinding for xp... excuse me prowess.
We captured villages, not stole from them. We did them in rapid succession, all three in less than an hour.
As for "higher return-on-time if you had grabbed tools and harvested for an hour.", that kind of misses the point with me.
I would rather steal 10 units of iron, rather than harvest 100 units of iron. It's not how much time is spent, it's how it is spent. Mining 100 iron is boring, stealing 10 iron is not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hmmm. I think what he's saying is having that many people both cuts into your profits, and eliminates potential PvP. I've never captured a village in a group larger than 5. I've done it solo more times than I did so with any group at all.
Capturing a village is really small apples since all it determines is who get's the taxes for the next 12 hours. Taking a group that size is inefficient and overkill.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hmmm. I think what he's saying is having that many people both cuts into your profits, and eliminates potential PvP. I've never captured a village in a group larger than 5. I've done it solo more times than I did so with any group at all.
Capturing a village is really small apples since all it determines is who get's the taxes for the next 12 hours. Taking a group that size is inefficient and overkill.
If you think its inefficient or overkill... wait till its your settlement. You will not call it any such thing, or will you?
That will be the nature of the game. If you cannot defend your settlement then you will have failed. No matter what you call it, inefficient, overkill, or unfair you will have lost your settlement...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hmmm. I think what he's saying is having that many people both cuts into your profits, and eliminates potential PvP. I've never captured a village in a group larger than 5. I've done it solo more times than I did so with any group at all.
Capturing a village is really small apples since all it determines is who get's the taxes for the next 12 hours. Taking a group that size is inefficient and overkill.
It is better to capture 3 villages through inefficient overkill, than just one in a close fight. Having three pay-outs to three individuals is better than just one pay-out to one person.
As to the other point, "It eliminates the potential for PvP", yes it does. I am a thief, who will fight if he has to. Not a warrior, who fights because that is what he does. If I can steal without bloodshed, that is my preference. But if it comes to bloodshed, I'm working on my skills and practice to put up a great fight.
In PFO, I also plan in focusing on combat, and survival skills. I will then use those skills in PvP as often as my SADs are rejected. That is the best thing about skill levels in PFO, they can be developed outside of actually performing those activities. So if most if my SADS are accepted, I can still train my combat skills.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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I suppose that if you have 10 or 12 people who all want to play together and only three villages open to capture within your available area, it makes sense to roll together.
With 12 players who wanted prowess and stuff, I'd grab two trawlers, two scrapers, and a load of fishing rods and head out to a few spots I know about.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Sure. I suppose you can run an organization with as little risk as possible and throw as many people as possible at every little task.
The thing is, capturing villages is about profits. All you get is taxes, you don't own the houses inside. 99% of the time 12 people means you'll capture a village without problem.
We can throw 1-5 people at the villages and succeed say 75% of the time. That's a low estimate but it works. But if those other people we didn't throw at it are out running maps, raiding cities, running fishing boats /scrapers, killing krackens, hunting enemy vessels, harvesting resources, killing monsters, hell even sparring at the bank we're making a more efficient use of our time and will come out ahead in the end. Even if we have a slightly higher casualty rate, which will come from being more used to fighting fights where we don't have the overwhelming advantage.
There is a balance between being smart about risks, and throwing way too many people at way too small of a task. Obviously if a settlement is under attack it's a much bigger deal than a little village that gives you meagre amounts of resources for a few hours, and we'll bring in the overkill. But you need to accept some level of risk to maximize your efforts.
If UNC plans to throw their full force at everything they set about doing, they will end up nearly broke and poorly trained when it comes time to throw their full force at something that actually matters, like defending a settlement.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If UNC plans to throw their full force at everything they set about doing, they will end up nearly broke and poorly trained when it comes time to throw their full force at something that actually matters, like defending a settlement.
I doubt that... more then likely YOU will be paying your SADS or we will have your loot.
Poorly trained? LOL
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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If UNC plans to throw their full force at everything they set about doing, they will end up nearly broke and poorly trained when it comes time to throw their full force at something that actually matters, like defending a settlement.I doubt that... more then likely YOU will be paying your SADS or we will have your loot.
Poorly trained? LOL
Uh, yeah. Training to win fights in which you have an overwhelming advantage does not generalize into winning closely matched fights, while training to win closely matched fights does generalize into winning fights as which you have the advantage.
Winning fights where you are at a disadvantage is a much more general skill, but it is a much harder skill to have.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Andius,
If you throw 1-5 members at trying to capture 3 villages, all it will take is one of those villages to have 1-5 members to potentially stop you dead in your tracks. No chance at the other two, or one (last) village remaining.
No military commander builds force strength to be economical, they build it to win. They never bemoan, "we used too much force", when they win. A military commander has never been stripped of rank or denied medals for winning. That only happens when they lose, because they brought too little strength or their plan was severely flawed.
Planning for a fair fight, is never good planning. You always want your numbers or strength to exceed that of your enemy. Lowering risk and having to share the reward with a greater number is preferable to having more risk and potentially having no reward at all.
In the long term, less risk and smaller reward will add up to a more steady flow of reward and little or no risk for it.
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Goblinworks Executive Founder
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Expected reward per unit input requires a little bit of calculus to properly estimate, but a good estimate is to model the results as discrete and assign a probability to each result.
If one character alone has a 33% chance of seizing one village (because there is no defense) the expected reward/unit is .33 villages/character, + .67 chance of 0.
If ten characters in the same period of time are certain to capture three villages, then the expected reward/unit is .30 villages/character.
In the end, it's all about the coin, and with the given numbers being solo has a 10% higher return rate than a pack of 10. If a pack of 8 was essentially sure to win, it would be even better, with .375 villages/character won.
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Goblin Squad Member
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The US Army normally uses the 8-1 formula so there is as little chance as possible of resistance having any chance of winning a contest. That was in the old traditional armor and infantry era, which is behind us. The current battleground for the Army requires a different technique and the old 8-1 ratio doesn't work as well as it used to.
Sometimes overpowering the target is a good idea if you have the resources for it. Sometimes it is not.
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Goblin Squad Member
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No military commander builds force strength to be economical, they build it to win.
And no real life military commander has Pharasma marked troops at their disposal. In real life, when one of your soldiers dies, they are gone, you have to pay their family left behind, and you have to train up a new soldier to replace them. That's if you are making cold calcuations and don't care about their lives at all.
I have Pharasma marked troops at my disposal, so I know that if they die, I generally lose their gear, and then they come back to me more experienced and better prepared for their next fight.
Knowing this, I'm going to pursue my objectives more recklessly because if I split my force of 12 into three units and go take all 3 objectives at once, then move onto the next target, there is a higher chance of casualties but the gain in time is worth the risk in gear loss. Plus it's going to be more fun for those three groups if they actually have a close fight.
All I care about it is:
1. Profit vs. gear loss
2. Fun vs. boredom
3. Challenging my troops to make them stronger
Splitting them into smaller groups has a higher chance of a better outcome on all three fronts. It is a bit more risky on item number 1, and there is a risk of frustration on item number 2, but if you aren't willing to take risks that have a high potential for a much better payout then what kind of PvPer are you anyway?
It's not a matter of honor. It's a matter of efficiency and not getting bored to tears for the lack of a good fight.
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Goblin Squad Member
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If UNC plans to throw their full force at everything they set about doing, they will end up nearly broke and poorly trained when it comes time to throw their full force at something that actually matters, like defending a settlement.I doubt that... more then likely YOU will be paying your SADS or we will have your loot.
Poorly trained? LOL
Uh, yeah. Training to win fights in which you have an overwhelming advantage does not generalize into winning closely matched fights, while training to win closely matched fights does generalize into winning fights as which you have the advantage.
Winning fights where you are at a disadvantage is a much more general skill, but it is a much harder skill to have.
Here is the difference I was LOLing at Decius...
The UNC will be training too win fights.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My only complaints about darkfall are:
1) Grind based instead of skill based - PFO will have that covered
2) Village capturing is weak, more like FPS capture the objective then anything - PFO will have this covered as well
3) FPS style combat, lacks any depth for tactics and strategy beyond what a FPS can offer which isnt much - This one scares me a little, I do not think PFO will have this one taken care of. If they are planning to have friendly fire then it may be just like Darkfall which will be the only disappointing thing.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Winning fights where you are at a disadvantage is a much more general skill, but it is a much harder skill to have.
You train from the position of disadvantage. You fight from the position of advantage, unless your fight is defensive and you have little choice. It is only when the unexpected occurs, that you are forced to be disadvantaged.
If you often find yourself disadvantaged on an offensive operation, that is the result of poor intelligence, planning and or leadership. It is always better to have too much strength, than not enough. If you are going after multiple, sequential objectives, bring enough force to complete all of them, simultaneously. But when you actually run the operation you hit them one at a time. This is known as the alpha strike method. It not only thins their numbers, it breaks their resolve to continue fighting.
You can't effectively alpha strike when you are at a numerical disadvantage. This is why gank squads and zerges are so effective and feared. They roll in ridiculously strong and most try to flee, rather than get steamrolled.
The US Army normally uses the 8-1 formula so there is as little chance as possible of resistance having any chance of winning a contest. That was in the old traditional armor and infantry era, which is behind us. The current battleground for the Army requires a different technique and the old 8-1 ratio doesn't work as well as it used to.
Sometimes overpowering the target is a good idea if you have the resources for it. Sometimes it is not.
Not entirely correct. The army isn't a sword anymore (that job goes to the marines now) the army is now a scalpel, intened to hit an enemy while minimizing collatoral damage. It is still better for victory to have higher numbers, but higher numbers leads to more collatoral damage, but instead of changing posture they just change what branch gets the job, if want victory, send marines, if want image and minimal collatoral, send army.
Changing priorities doesnt change the effectiveness of techniques, merely their applicability.