Goblin Squad Member
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...that does not mean that the game's system needs to be coded to give out an automated warning...
Agreed the system should not always report such an attack, but there should be a chance, varying with relative strengths (raiders to guards), that one of the NPCs escaped the massacre and fled with the news to town. A raid should not be a cakewalk.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Isn't gaining maximum profits and leaving a smoldering hole in the ground also a choice?
Not really.
Gaining maximum profits or leaving a smoldering hole in the ground is a choice.If you can do both with no trade-offs, then there is nothing to choose between, you'd just always do both.
If my group is contracted to assault a rival's outpost, for the purpose of removing it, I would also want to extract as much profit from it as well. That might even have been a part of our negotiation in the contract.
Of course you'd want to do both.
As a gatherer, I would want to have both high production and safe outposts, but a well designed game would make me balance those two desires, not easily get both.Won't your "contract negotiations" be more interesting if the options are raid it for profit, and not ask your employers for much compensation vs raid it for destruction, but your employer has to pay enough extra to make it worth the loss of loot.
*edit* and I don't think "it takes a little longer" to be enough of a drawback to make deciding to forego the destruction a meaningful choice. 1/2 hour to raid and take goods vs 2 hours to raid, take goods and destroy isn't significant enough. Maybe if it was 1/2 to raid vs 48 hours to raid plus destroy.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you should be able to do three separate things once you have overcome resistance at a harvesting outpost: Loot the stored inventory; take over ownership of the outpost (even spawning your own npc guards if you spent the DI beforehand); or destroying it. Each is a distinct, interruptable action. You can even do all three in order after you've used the outpost for a time. I think that balances nicely if an outpost is relatively easy to set up-easy to start, hard to hold.
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Goblin Squad Member
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As a gatherer, I would want to have both high production and safe outposts, but a well designed game would make me balance those two desires, not easily get both.
I never suggested it would be easier, but it would be at least more time consuming. The more time raiders remain at the scene of the raid, their risk increases.
If you want both high production and security, you can have both. You will just have to pay for it in a higher consumption of your time and or of your resources (material, monetary or human).
As Sepherum reminds us, the Devs have said: Outposts are easy to build, and hard to hold. I personally love that fact that Tork Shaw quotes the River Freedoms. It gives me hope that they (River Freedoms) are part of the guiding principles or rationale of the game's development.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I remember, as a teenager myself and some friends tried the stock market game by Avalon Hill. We quickly learned there was only one strategy to win, everyone tried it every turn and we quit 'cause it was boring.
Anyone here ever play World in Flames? The first turn that Germany inevitably turns on Russia the Ruskie player basically shows up to get his butt kicked for 4 hours. If the Allies have their act together eventually he'll have a large army with some units equivalent to the German and she'll be able to take the offensive. But oh boy, that takes patience.
There are already a lot of mercenary/pvp type companies who have announced themselves. Who wouldn't want to loot an outpost, increase it's profitability(?) and destroy it? We say there are peeps who will want to play all kinds of roles-of course. In an open-pvp sandbox world you're always a target. Where are the players who will want to be an easy target? That's why I want the devs to carefully consider balance in the raiding mechanics.
If there is a serious element of risk and danger for the outpost operators and a need for some espionage and important choices for the raiders this could spawn a lot of fun, meaningful pvp.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Destroying the outpost while increasing it's output is so illogical it's immersion-breaking to me. Chopping down saplings doesn't get you more wood. Burning a coal mine (the only way to destroy it, btw) does not increase productivity. Picking up the already-mined coal and running away with it is looting the inventory. Running around and smashing stuff and burning stuff and taking stuff apart real quick could certainly be made a separate decision for the raider, and would be faster than the already fast outpost setup.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Sepherum Aye. As we damage the the outpost, we're also damaging the means of harvesting, so it doesn't make any sense to be able to harvest even faster. And if we bring in our own commoners (or impress/enslave those we can grab before they hide in the swamps), how exactly are we bringing in another harvest of cotton in 1/6 the time? If it isn't ready for harvest, it isn't ready for harvest.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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I think you are drawing a slight disconnect here... Stripmining is not damaging the outpost AND harvesting faster. Its damaging the outpost BY harvesting faster and more carelessly.
I'm not sure how many of you have agricultural backgrounds but its pretty easy to screw up your ongoing crop rotation by being careless in the short term. That is what we are modeling here.
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Aaaanyway - It looks like there are some real problems with the damage aspect of stripmining and a certain amount of consensus that making the destruction aspect more costly to the raiders. This is in line with something we were chatting about in the office yesterday... We have a 'sabotage' system (I think its safe to mention because we mentioned it once before) and it might be better to push destruction aspect out of stripmining and back onto the sabotage system.
It might be possible then to both capture the contents of an OP on arrival and then work towards nabbing ongoing resources for as long as you can hold the outpost. Basically what we have above but with destruction removed and the output counter dialed down a bit.
This also has the benefit of simplifying the destruction of all structures to either upkeep failure, siege weapons, burning them to the ground, or sabotage, rather than having this 5th OP specific method of destruction.
I should mention that the sabotage system has quite high costs in terms of time, resources, and skill requirements.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you are drawing a slight disconnect here... Stripmining is not damaging the outpost AND harvesting faster. Its damaging the outpost BY harvesting faster and more carelessly.
I'm not sure how many of you have agricultural backgrounds but its pretty easy to screw up your ongoing crop rotation by being careless in the short term. That is what we are modeling here.
--
Aaaanyway - It looks like there are some real problems with the damage aspect of stripmining and a certain amount of consensus that making the destruction aspect more costly to the raiders. This is in line with something we were chatting about in the office yesterday... We have a 'sabotage' system (I think its safe to mention because we mentioned it once before) and it might be better to push destruction aspect out of stripmining and back onto the sabotage system.
It might be possible then to both capture the contents of an OP on arrival and then work towards nabbing ongoing resources for as long as you can hold the outpost. Basically what we have above but with destruction removed and the output counter dialed down a bit.
This also has the benefit of simplifying the destruction of all structures to either upkeep failure, siege weapons, burning them to the ground, or sabotage, rather than having this 5th OP specific method of destruction.
I should mention that the sabotage system has quite high costs in terms of time, resources, and skill requirements.
I think I've been blah blah blahing too much when I was basically recommending the system you just described. Yes, simply put, the combination of sabotage and stripmining was overpowered to me (and I think a few others).
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Goblin Squad Member
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... good luck with gathering all this corn out of the field in a few hours.
Stripmining is not damaging the outpost AND harvesting faster. Its damaging the outpost BY harvesting faster and more carelessly.
In this particular case, it's not about harvesting all the corn in the field's, it's about taking the seed corn that's stored in the barn for the next planting season.
I also am glad to hear that the additional Resource extraction will be separated from the destruction of the Outpost.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think you are drawing a slight disconnect here... Stripmining is not damaging the outpost AND harvesting faster. Its damaging the outpost BY harvesting faster and more carelessly.
I'm not sure how many of you have agricultural backgrounds but its pretty easy to screw up your ongoing crop rotation by being careless in the short term. That is what we are modeling here.
--
Aaaanyway - It looks like there are some real problems with the damage aspect of stripmining and a certain amount of consensus that making the destruction aspect more costly to the raiders. This is in line with something we were chatting about in the office yesterday... We have a 'sabotage' system (I think its safe to mention because we mentioned it once before) and it might be better to push destruction aspect out of stripmining and back onto the sabotage system.
It might be possible then to both capture the contents of an OP on arrival and then work towards nabbing ongoing resources for as long as you can hold the outpost. Basically what we have above but with destruction removed and the output counter dialed down a bit.
This also has the benefit of simplifying the destruction of all structures to either upkeep failure, siege weapons, burning them to the ground, or sabotage, rather than having this 5th OP specific method of destruction.
I should mention that the sabotage system has quite high costs in terms of time, resources, and skill requirements.
Great! That is really all that was needed to make this system incredibly awesome in my opinion. Really looking forward to this now.
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Goblin Squad Member
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And since no one else has...
On we sweep with threshing oar, Our only goal will be the western shore.
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Goblin Squad Member
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... it might be better to push destruction aspect out of stripmining and back onto the sabotage system.Great!
Good call, Andius :)
Right now raiding / strip mining seems like a great way to both wipe out your enemies and turn a huge profit at the same time. In short, it sounds overpowered.
A better alternative would be the option to strip mine the area or do asset destruction.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Some ideas that might be worth input
So, current, strip mining seems to be a binary action, either it happens, or it doesn't. Though Tork Shaw and others have mentioned, the real world equivalent is more variable - exchanging short term harvesting for long term harvesting.
What if you make a couple variables stats for each resource at an outpost, and link them in such a way: collection speed, resource health, processing, efficiency, and integrity. Resource health might be the likelihood to produce higher quality resources, processing reduces the relative weight of goods for transport (lumber boards vs trunks, carved stone, milled grain), efficiency a generic multiple, and integrity of the outposts health.
If raiders simply want to deny resources to an enemy, simply raise the outpost, and move on. However, if you want to capture it, let raiders have some more discretion over the types of resources they have - they can sacrifice quality and efficiency for speed and processing, or integrity, processing, and speed for resource health. Each variable has a link with the others, as you raise or lower one, the others are adjusted in kind.
This allows for the same dynamic as strip mining, but more nuiance for each region.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Reavers may take a bigger yield over a short time, 2X or 4X, but not without extra bodies (yes NPC, but where to they come from) in this manual labor technology.
Maybe it is taking the seed corn (per Nihimon). Inexperienced people (reavers) may damage the fields, esp non-farmers blundering about (as resident NPC have been killed or driven off in the raid). But the inept are not going to make a fabulous harvest. (And yes I have a little experience, summers on my grandparents acreage -- animals, gardens and a couple acres of sweet corn and ensilage -- or as a grad student in applied biology -- it would be called agriculture in US).
One can drive off the breeding stock with the yearlings bound to market, but not getting 10x the yield; not in the manual labor economy.
Maybe taking the beams out of the sawmill. might give more, but going out into forest and felling more trees, even haphazardly is not a big yield without more NPC labor.
I an not sure how one gets more stone out of a quarry with fewer laboring bodies.
Where does any NPC labor come from? The locals are not going to line up and ask the reavers for pleasure of being whipped and beaten to increase their rate, esp. to make up for output of NPC killed in the raid.
lam
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Goblin Squad Member
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On the strip mining issue, I'd have to say that a reduction in output makes sense as a result (say, every minute of strip-mining reduces total output by 10% - including for further strip-mining.) This should 'heal' over time, but basically it would represent damage to the base resources the outpost is intended to gather (premature gathering, sloppy mining leading to cave-ins, etc). You should be able to spend some resources to help it recover more quickly, of course.
This would also make 'strip-mining' an available gathering tactic for those in a hurry to collect a specific resource - it will hurt them in the long run, but the option to hurry production makes sense. The browser game Pardus uses a system that works somewhat how I believe this should - resource yielding tiles can hold up to 500 of the resource, each time you gather it, the rate of regeneration lowers. If you only skim from the top, you have easily sustainable income, if you take every single bit of the resource, it requires weeks to return to full yield.
As for actually physically damaging the outpost - it should be burning the fields and salting the land. You could theoretically do it after raiding the place of every scrap of usable material (reduce the node to 0% production and then attack the outpost structures), but you'd only bother to do that if you really want to prevent their ability to gather that resource, and I believe it should be an entirely different type of action. (Declaration of war style.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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Just an aside: What kind of bloodthirsty raider destroys an outpost by messing with it's crop rotation? Butters from South Park? I can just see Bluddwolf blackmailing a settlement by threatening to pull up their lima beans.
That's exactly what the Spartans did to the Athenians during the Archidamian war (OK, so it was the destruction of olive trees and vinyards, not lima beans). It is a valid part of economic warfare, and always has been; there are plenty of further examples from the ancient and mediaeval world - but it sounds like the sabotage system may be a better way to model it than strip mining an outpost. I for one can easily see Bluddwolf and his crew running off on an extended chevauchée across enemy hexes, destroying production and wreaking havoc. Even if that means pulling up lima beans.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It will be very simple to do both, strip mine and then destroy the assets. Short of making them invulnerable once the strip mining has completed, what stops a raiding party from then destroying the outpost?
Nothing. Infact I would imagine most people out to do asset damage will rob the place first. The good part is that they are not profiting from doing asset damage. If they want to do asset damage, it's now an extra step.
It will be very simple to do both, strip mine and then destroy the assets. Short of making them invulnerable once the strip mining has completed, what stops a raiding party from then destroying the outpost?Nothing. Infact I would imagine most people out to do asset damage will rob the place first. The good part is that they are not profiting from doing asset damage. If they want to do asset damage, it's now an extra step.
Yea, most raiders will either be there to destroy (as in faction warfare), or to strip, but not both.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Yea, most raiders will either be there to destroy (as in faction warfare), or to strip, but not both.
I don't believe that "most raiders" will pass up the opportunity to strip what wealth they can, before they destroy their target outpost.
My reading of the raiding system and the subsequent posts here leads me to the following conclusion:
1. Outposts are easy and cheap to build and hard to hold. This will mean that most outposts will be defended with NPC guards, rather than PC guards. This makes Outpost Raids, quasi - PVP.
2. The first point will allow PCs to focus their defense to the much more valuable POIs, especially Watchtowers which are their "eyes and ears" in their hex.
3. Because of the three choices a raiding party has (Stipmine, Destroy or both), these parties will tend to be larger in size than previously thought. I was thinking between 8 - 12, but now I'm thinking as much as twice that amount.
4. Because Watchtowers may be a necessary, primary target, these raids will have more planning and require a more tactical approach then just a small to medium sized blob.
5. Reconnaissance and information gathering as a preemptive step is specifically mentioned and is very, very welcome!
Having to think in order to PVP successfully is a great plus. If the Devs continue to move in that direction then will be able to be claimed as a major feature of PFO.
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Some good points, but let me bring your attention to this post by Tork:
I'd like to draw your attentions to this reply :) Mr Gifford has really caught how this system is intended to function. Stripmining, however, is not the primary function of raids. In fact I think it will be a rare occurrence...
Let me add a few points;
- Creating an outpost is relatively cheap. The outpost management role is meant for smaller, dedicated companies. They are designed to be semi-permanent structures - difficult to defend abut easy to create.
- The transport of a large amount of goods from a strip-mined outpost will be a serious concern for raiders. Bulk goods are HEAVY and that amount will certainly require a caravan. It is much more likely that strip mining will be an act of war and the majority of these goods will end up being left on-site. Or even on-corpse, as raiders are cut down making their escape. Alternatively, some of these goods might play an important role in building a siege camp/weapons in a PoI hex you may have recently captured...
- Almost ALL settlements will declare the act of raiding illegal. Even Chaotic settlements. The only place you will be able to raid without attracting a criminal flag will be the outposts of non-allied PoIs, and even they will have options for hiring mercenary companies to defend their outpost or hex. In addition, the upkeep costs on PoIs are minimal - so their outpost goods are really for trade only.
- Stripmining will be an effective way to interrupt the steady stream of resources being fed to a settlement. It is not as effective a way to gather resources as having outposts. Bulk goods are cumbersome and only valuable to settlements.
So, you see, he says that strip-mining won't be done too often, because you require a SLOW caravan in order to move all the resources, AND, the longer you take, the more PC reinforcements will arrive.
This means that even though you're probably right about these outposts rarely being defended by PC's, once the guards are attacked, PC's will probably be alerted, and be on the move. This means that you have a relatively SMALL window where you can get in and out before the reinforcements arrive.
If you're intention is to just do damage to an enemy, you can attack an outpost with a smaller force, quickly burn it down (I'm hoping), and get the hell outta dodge...
Otherwise, you have to anticipate that PC's will arrive (hopefully after you've killed all the guards).
So, if you ARE in fact doing it for the $$, then it'll need to be a much larger operation, because it will not only include the destroyers (who will kill the guards), but also, you need people who can do the stripmining, AND, you need enough people to THEN defend a caravan against the inevitable PC attacks.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Maybe it's an accident, but I see "Raiders" hitting an Outpost to damage that Outpost's production capability, and the term "Reavers" which is defined as:
"plunder, rob"
"(1) rob, despoil (2) to deprive one of"
"seize, to carry or tear away"
The implication is a party of Reavers could go in to steal goods and leave the Outpost intact, while Raiders set out to not only carry off what might be feasible, but to reduce production.
The difference is the intent of the attacking party. That might make it easier for the attackers to define their intent in order to "flip the right switch" when the attack begins...
It could be a group of Reavers can haul off some loot undetected...really, why kill the goose that lays the golden egg? If the owners of the Outpost are so inattentive as to not notice a large party of enemies carrying off piles of goods, do they deserve to keep it? (River Freedom, eh?) That door can swing both ways, after all.
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Goblin Squad Member
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It will be very simple to do both, strip mine and then destroy the assets. Short of making them invulnerable once the strip mining has completed, what stops a raiding party from then destroying the outpost?Strip mining an outpost damages the outpost (not damaging an outpost when strip mining is not an option).
Although this rapidly produces a large amount of goods, it also deals 10% of the outpost's maximum hit points in damage to that outpost with each interval, eventually destroying the structure.
If you strip mine for 10 minutes, you gain 10 hours of normal production and destroy the outpost by the end of the 10 minute period. As I understand the blog, you can steal all the resource stored in the outpost (that which has not been transported to the PoI or settlement) instead of strip mining and leave the outpost intact, still able to process bulk material. This does not seem like a tactically correct action.
The implication is that under normal operation an outpost will not deplete the resource by 10% per hour until the resource is used up, that an outpost will continually produce bulk resource as long as the outpost is functional. I am not sure that this is a desirable option. It may be that poor management of the outpost will drain the resource dry. It would be wise to have a very skilled operator of the outpost to insure proper husbanding of the resource for the longest possible output over time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Harad, though it is very possible that outposts could drain a hex's resource table like gathering does, that hasn't been explicitly stated, as far as I know. The bulk goods that come from outposts may or may not reduce in purity while being collected as the gathering resources do.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Shane, I admit that I have not seen anything that details the longevity of the resources produced by an outpost as they have for harvesting/gathering/mothrnodes. Hopefully Tork can shead some light on that in the dev rethink.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ah, reality.
This (PFO) is a fantasy. It is not an LSD dream. There should be some connection to the reality that we know; though we differ on what is real. There is even a concept that this has a Pathfinder basis. There is suspension of disbelief.
I am not sure where in any of the above lies the concept that spending 10 minutes (converted to real world hours, I think that is still less than one hour) can suddenly yield 10X yield by characters who have limited/no idea what they are doing, without the normal NPC harvesters (let alone those who can add to the efforts), and magically make the harvest system less efficient.
1) if raiders want to harvest faster they need to bring NPC to harvest and to transport -- this has in game cost.
2) If reavers want to take what is there, they need transport, which has some cost.
3) if raiders want to destroy, they need to bring expertise (PC) and possibly labor (NPC); is the destruction magic or mundane?
lam
3) if raiders want to destroy, they need to bring expertise (PC) and possibly labor (NPC); is the destruction magic or mundane?
Or, they could just bring torches...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I've seen something of a consensus develop from players that we'd prefer to see the robbing/productivity harming aspect separate from outright destroying of the outpost structure. Tork said something about the devs revisiting raiding.
It's been a few days is there anything new about that?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I can see possibly three motives for attacking an outpost, but I can't see why they must be exclusionary to one another.
First, and easiest, is to raid for quick looting. Basically this is the bandits approach. A group of bandits raid the outpost, kill its NPC guards, and make off with as much loot as their fast traveling band can carry. If there are PC guards, then the bandits could also use the SAD system to extract quick and easy loot, without bloodshed.
Second, and more risky and time consuming, is the poacher's approach. These groups go in, kill the NPC or PC guards. Once the guards are eliminated, they set up their strip mining (harvesting) operation and extract massive amounts of resources. This is time consuming and requires caravans to haul off the bulk loot. It therefore incurs more risk of retaliation from the original owners.
Third, the military style raid (siege) to destroy the facility as part of an ongoing feud or war. Of course these groups will pick up any resource loot laying around, but their objective is to destroy the outpost to deny their enemy the resources.
If a group is diversified enough in skills and capabilities, and large enough to spend and extended period of time at the location of the attack, they could do all three (obviously saving #3 for last).
I can see possibly three motives for attacking an outpost, but I can't see why they must be exclusionary to one another.
First, and easiest, is to raid for quick looting. Basically this is the bandits approach. A group of bandits raid the outpost, kill its NPC guards, and make off with as much loot as their fast traveling band can carry. If there are PC guards, then the bandits could also use the SAD system to extract quick and easy loot, without bloodshed.
Second, and more risky and time consuming, is the poacher's approach. These groups go in, kill the NPC or PC guards. Once the guards are eliminated, they set up their strip mining (harvesting) operation and extract massive amounts of resources. This is time consuming and requires caravans to haul off the bulk loot. It therefore incurs more risk of retaliation from the original owners.
Third, the military style raid (siege) to destroy the facility as part of an ongoing feud or war. Of course these groups will pick up any resource loot laying around, but their objective is to destroy the outpost to deny their enemy the resources.
If a group is diversified enough in skills and capabilities, and large enough to spend and extended period of time at the location of the attack, they could do all three (obviously saving #3 for last).
A couple points... I agree with your second and third reasons for attacking an outpost, but, in regards to the first one, we're not sure if that will be a viable option or not.
Tork said that these resources will be extremely heavy, requiring a caravan, and thus, it's likely that each "bandit" will be able to carry
VERY little before being encumbered. Think about a backpack full of wood for example, how much could someone reasonably carry without becoming encumbered?
So, let's say for example, you bring 15 guys to take an outpost, and it takes you 45 minutes (just throwing #'s out there, but they're not that important).
You then tell all the guys to carry as much as they can without being encumbered. It's quite possible that this will only be say, 50 silver pieces worth of stuff, for example, and of course, if you and your group wipes, you don't get any of it anyways.
So let's say 1 gp = 100 silver, and for the hell of it, we'll say that 1 gp is roughly equal to $1 USD... that would be the equivalent of each guy carrying 50 cents worth of stuff in his backpack... so $7.50 total.
Now, this isn't to say that it WON'T be viable (and these #'s, admittedly, could be very far off). What I'm saying is that based on what Tork said about these resources being heavy, there's a good chance that, while this WILL be possible, it WON't be viable... but we just don't know.
A separate point I'd like to make, is that there's an option #4 people seem to be forgetting, and that is, taking the outpost, and holding it. Not strip-mining it, not burning it down, just taking it for yourself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I don't think outposts, as envisioned, will generate the kind of meaningful pvp hoped for.
Here's why (warning, heavy theory-crafting ahead):
If an outpost is easily destroyed, economic analysis of it assumes that it loses all value (or gains negative value, based on resources provided to enemies) as soon as the company is no longer actively extracting resources. To mitigate the loss of the investment in the outpost, either (1) the returns from it (value of the resources gathered) have to be great enough to produce meaningful profit in a relatively short period of time (which establishes the minimum time frame a company must reasonably expect to control the outpost), or (2) there have to be enough outposts that the rate of loss inflicted by external forces is a small enough margin to be written down.
In the first case (1), a small company may very likely only be able to maintain control (defending it from casual† raiders) of an outpost for something like 6 hours, due to OOC constraints. In those 6 hours, the company not only needs to recoup the cost of the outpost, but also needs to generate enough value to offset the value they could be making in other (risk-equivalent) professions. These conditions lead to two further options: (1a) outposts are dirt cheap or (1b) outposts have high production rates.
In the second of these two cases (1b), outposts in lands relatively devoid of threats will quickly dominate the market with their vast production, lowering the value of the resources produced and making outposts in threatened lands not economically viable (not to mention further cementing economic power in lawful lands). This is undesirable. In the other case, where outposts are extremely cheap (1b), defending an outpost probably won't be worth the risk involved. Furthermore, it will likely be economically advantageous to destroy one's own outpost rather than risking having its output seized by an enemy. This leads to little, if any, actual combat PvP.
The other general case (2) is that outpost sites are plentiful. If this is the case, the rate of loss caused by raiders has to be comparatively low enough to be tolerated. For the worst case, I am assuming a production loss of 40%; I don't expect anything higher than that to be tolerated by the companies managing the outposts. (Once you're having half or more of your work stolen, you're generally incentivised to steal someone else's instead.) This 40% efficiency loss is also likely to be the highest 'cost' the player-base will accept for operating in lands not under strict control (eg. chaotic, or low taxed).
With the maximum acceptable loss-rate assumption established, the maximum likely loss-rate needs to be established to determine how many outposts are required to enable the max likely losses to be equal to the max acceptable losses. If there are too few outposts, the max likely losses will be higher than what would be deemed acceptable. Since I'm working toward a conservative estimate (to help reinforce my point), I'm going to assume a settlement population of 200. That seems, to me, like a minimum-viable size to be able to hold land. That's 20% of the 1000 that the largest settlements' populations are projected to be.
Assuming an 80/20 population distribution between settlements and outlaws (again, a conservative estimate, especially in lawless lands), a settlement of 200 might have to contend with an outlaw population of 50. Again, applying the 80/20 rule to online vs offline population, I'm assuming there will be an average of 10 'outlaw' characters online in the vicinity of a settlement of 200 (where there will be ~40 online). Assuming raiding is a viable source of income (which, if it isn't, this whole discussion is moot), I'm going to assume, from those 10, a single casual† raiding group is active. Furthering my conservative estimate, I'm assuming it takes a raiding group an average of 3 hours to raid and destroy an outpost (because of general player downtime, walking, hauling, scouting, etc.)
Putting all these assumptions together yields my conservative estimate of a loss of 8 outposts per day, if destruction is incentivised. As establishment of an outpost isn't difficult, but still requires effort and resources, I'm going to assume that the outposts are re-established at the same rate they're destroyed, albeit with a 24-hour loss of production (since it does require [likely thankless] player effort). Thus, a loss of 8 outposts per day, each causing the loss of a day's worth of production should be a maximum of 40% of the total output of all the outposts. Thus, my conservative estimate is suggesting that each settlement have easy access to 20 outposts as a minimum.
If I'm a member of a settlement and I get notice that a couple of the two-dozen outposts we run are being attacked, outposts that have very little value, any PvP effort I mount to defend them will be only because I have nothing better to do. And even then, I'm only going to ride out to meet the attackers with a force large enough to easily overwhelm and drive them away. Why bother risking the inconvenience (and equipment loss) associated with dying when the settlement will just pay to replace the outpost?
† Casual meaning a group just large enough to overcome the NPC guards and haul away as much loot as they can carry.
tl;dr: Disposable outposts aren't worth fighting for (or break the economy).
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Goblin Squad Member
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I would prefer outposts not be highly disposable for this reason:
This is an outpost and so is this.
Outposts obviously aren't a little shack. They appear to be little homesteads with production capabilities. I mean is it just me or do both those structures seem to have living quarters in addition to storage facilities / work areas?
Does anyone looking at the structure honestly feel like that is something that should be torn down and rebuilt on a frequent basis?
I think a player should have a reasonable expectation that when they build themselves a little place to live, that it won't be burned down the next time they log in unless the land they live in is absolutely ravaged by war.
Raise the cost to build it, and make it reasonably costly/difficult to tear down.
However we have no word on just how "semi" semi-permanent means, and they have separated raiding from profit for raiding for damage, so at this point I'm hopeful that semi-permanent =/= gets burned down all the time.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Andius, yes.
@deisum, if outposts are not destroyed in raids but merely looted (as a rule of thumb), all the owner loses out on is some of the profits. No matter how many times the outpost is looted, as long as the owners steadily get some income then through the passing of time the outpost will surely have paid off its construction costs eventually.
Of course, the more you can defend it, (and you might get help from your settlement/other companies in defending) the better. Defence requires investment of time and resources though, making the decision between fighting or folding a meaningful choice .
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ deisum: I've been thinking that an outpost would be relatively easy to set up and have a moderate hourly output. That way a small company (20 members) could, with a concerted effort, build, pay off, and start seeing a profit in a weekend. I appreciate your analysis but I don't necessarily agree with two of your assumptions. No outpost is going to be in a 'safe' area. Gathering and harvesting attract monsters and escalations the longer they operate. Hexes with POI near settlements are still a target in a full-blown war; the population levels you speak of are obviously deep into OE. Secondly supply of any resource will, by necessity, be limited by the number of people who want to spend xp, effort, skills, merit badges and training towards something like gatherer-harvester-site contruction-outpost manager. Not everyone will see the fun in that. I know I won't. So I don't see oversupply.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Sepherum, gathering and harvesting (as described in a previous blog post) are not the same thing as outpost management (outposting? I dunno what the verb would be :P). There hasn't been any declaration that NPC's are going to raid outposts as of yet (but that would be an interesting idea, wouldn't it?).
Gathering and harvesting give the materials you make player equipment out of, such as weapons, armor, tools, and so on. Outposts give the materials you make 'settlement equipment' with. Buildings, siege engines, wagons, and so on. The two systems are totally separate from each other, as far as I know.
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Goblin Squad Member
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My view on raiding for resources vs destroying the object of the raid is much in-line with Bludd's posts. Who would really raid an outpost, mine, lumbermill, ect (even with the intent to destroy and not loot) without taking at least what they can carry on their body. When you look at strip mining, that implies a caravan to haul your loot away, weather you destroy the outpost or not. I think that there should be a distinction but not an either/or. Like Bludd said, it comes down to risk management. The longer you stand around, the higher chance of being discovered and the defenses coming to retaliate.
If we are raiding for the goods we can carry, it is a get in, get out job. Sure, we can inflict alittle damage, but I wouldn't say destroy it as that will take time.
Strip mining with the intent to walk away with massive amounts of loot would incur a lot of risk but you get a lot of loot.
Going in with the intent to purely destroy the outpost would be similar, but with less loot. Basically you walk away with whatever you can, but the main focus is destroying.
I think time is the main factor determining which of these 3 gets accomplished. A quick raid = run in, kill guards (or distract in some fashion) then steal what is in the "bank" and then run away. takes 5 mins or so. Stripping a outpost to get as much as you can from it requires time, something like was posted in the blog where the "harvest" from the outpost is lowered from an hour to 10 mins and you get the hours' worth of goods every 10 mins. Longer you sit there, the more you get but the higher chance of getting caught and there Is the risk. The destroying part ( I think) would fall in the middle as you are taking time to set fires, break stuff, kill livestock, ect. but are not there gathering resources like stripping does.
Maybe add a 4th aspect which is strip mining followed by destruction which would be similar to the blog where as you strip the resources (hour worth every 10 mins) you deal damage to the outpost, think of it as gathering everything you can from the outpost while starting to set fires and kill stuff. Like splitting your forces, once you clear a barn, set it on fire. This IMHO would take the longest of the 4 but would give the most loot and the most risk, as well as most alignment/rep hits for the raid itself.
Just some thoughts I had. I only skimmed through the 200 posts I missed over the last week so if I restated or am beating a dead horse, just ignore. :-)
all in all, I loved the blog and really like the fact that the UNC will need another department head for our "raiders"
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Sepherum, gathering and harvesting (as described in a previous blog post) are not the same thing as outpost management (outposting? I dunno what the verb would be :P). There hasn't been any declaration that NPC's are going to raid outposts as of yet (but that would be an interesting idea, wouldn't it?).
Gathering and harvesting give the materials you make player equipment out of, such as weapons, armor, tools, and so on. Outposts give the materials you make 'settlement equipment' with. Buildings, siege engines, wagons, and so on. The two systems are totally separate from each other, as far as I know.
Rereading back I think your right. However I still believe there will be a progression to build up to outpost construction/management with concurrent opportunity costs to the character. Not sure how many peeps will sacrifice Ftr 1 or Rog 2 for Outposting (Composting?) 2. You have finite xp to spend, after all, so I don't think there can be ubiquitous safe outposts in OE.