Goblin Squad Member
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Formation combat should be a totally different kind of experience than what anyone has attempted in an MMO before. A well coordinated, cohesive unit acting in formation should be superior to almost any random force of zergs. The tradeoffs have to be significant though else everyone will try to do everything in formations. I suspect that the biggest tradeoff will be that we'll limit where formations can form and where they can move.
I would like to propose a system that combines a number of my own pet ideas and that I think would serve well to balance the power of Formations.
Battle Plans would be created in Command Centers (which must endure until the attack is launched) by sufficiently skilled Combat Leaders and would provide significant bonuses during the attack based on the plan lead time and the number of Combat Leaders participating in the planning. They would detail the identities of the Combat Leaders participating, the time and place of Settlement attacks, and the route of any Formations that will participate. Unplanned attacks could still occur, but would be at a significant disadvantage relative to well-planned attacks.
Espionage skills would allow characters who were able to infiltrate the Command Center to extract some degree of information about the Battle Plans, varying based on their skill and the precautions taken by the planners. This information would not be available to the player; it would only exist as an in-game artifact that would need to be taken to a Command Center (or a Diviner!) to be interpreted.
Divination could be used in three ways to determine information about Battle Plans: 1) casting "cold" (without any information) on the target of a Battle Plan would have a chance to some minor information similar to the information that could be obtained via Espionage; 2) casting on information obtained via Espionage could reveal information about the Battle Plans similar to the information that could be revealed as the information was interpreted by Combat Leaders in a Command Center; 3) casting "hot" (with interpreted information) on a target could reveal significantly more information about the Battle Plans. These Divination attempts should have significant costs, and should be limited not only for the casters but also for the targets, and in the case of 1 and 3 should require the casters to be present at the target.
It would be incredibly important to make a lack of Battle Plans onerous enough that players consistently use them when they have the opportunity, while also keeping Espionage and Divination constrained enough so that most Battle Plans (between "equals") still have a significant net benefit even if partial pieces of information about them are revealed.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Defiantly something that could add to the Fresh Start TS discussions this Saturday afternoon.
