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Territory Control And Warfare


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Territory Control And Warfare

A vision of how Territory warfare could exist in Dual Universe

Preface

    Territory in Dual Universe can be claimed, but to simply claim territory that can be quickly mined out is not sufficient with how large planets are in Dual Universe and how expensive Territory Control Units could be. In this post I will outline a system that would encourage players to build and maintain territory units in a fair manner without requiring millions of people to be playing the game while being able to scale to millions of people playing the game.
 

Expanding Territory Units
    The first concept I would like to introduce is the idea of territory units being able to expand to adjacent hexes. The Planets are very big and having 100s if not 1000s of TCUs to defend is bad gameplay for such a small territory. In this concept, a territory unit when placed would cover one hex, then if the territory unit was fueled it would over an amount of time expand to nearby hexes to either some limit, or no limit (more on that later). This makes TCUs more valuable to protect as the loss of one TCU could result in the loss of multiple hexes of territory, also making them a better target for the sake of territory warfare. 
 

What if expanding territory unit had no limit on radius?
    Lets say for instance you allowed any TCU with enough time and fuel to expand across the entire world. This is obviously in of itself not a viable solution and we need a new concept to balance it out. A concept called Claim Strength. The idea of claim strength is that a claim is strongest in close proximity to the claim and decreases as you get further away from the tcu. Starting at 1.0, then to 0.9, and eventually down to 0.001 at the extreme ranges. Then we restrict functions of the RDMS system to claim strength. For instance, in order to prevent PvP in your territory say you need that particular Hex to have a claim strength of 0.5 or greater, outside of that you still own the territory, but are not able to restrict pvp. Then we say that anyone can place a new TCU anywhere that has less than 0.1 claim strength. This would mean while you could, undisturbed take an entire planet with one TCU, it would be a very bad idea. Not only is there a single point of failure that would cost you the entire planet, but anyone can place new tcus down that challenge your control.
    Furthermore the more territory they control the more fuel they will take up, reducing in efficiency, thus each TCU has an optimal range. This also opens up the possibility of different TCU's with greats claim strengths that can push out further.

Planetary Ownership
    Finally there is the concept of Planetary ownership which could yield its own benefits to whoever controls the most Hexs on a planet. The majority controller of the planet get's their organization's name on it on the map. and perhaps other low level RDMS benefits or resource benefits.

The overall idea is that the more land that we can claim the faster territory warfare can be in the game, and thanks to Claim strength in the beginning anyone who can build a TCU can join in claiming territory. This adds to the value of attacking Tcu's that are taking up too much territory without completely forcing everyone under someone else's rules in rdms.

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nice concept, but it has imho some problems that have to be solved...
I got some questions.
1. How do you claim another territory that is not yours?
2. how do you make savezones within this territory where no PVP is allowed?
3. what happens when two territorys collide? 
4. how do you want to balance or set up the cost of the TCUs and what do you use as fuel?

I guess, or at least i hope NQ allready has a solution for all those questions allready with theyr idea and will just ignore your idea or at least use some of the ideas from your concept.
Afaik territory warfare will need a TCU for every tile. Thats a neccessity to solve the 1. question.
Anyone who wants to claim a territory has to destroy or hack the TCU of the enemy faction or at least drop the shieldpoint of a tile to 0 and destroy all cores on the tile.
Then the TCU becomes inactive and you can place a TCU for your own faction.
Second question, all TCUs surrounding an area in the middle can make the middle a PVP free zone. and the player has the option to activate it at the TCU in the middle.
When two territorys collide both are an attackable tile anyway and a war between both factions can be announced.
Fuel could be a relatively expensive mix of different resources or a new resource.
A TCU can be fueled and this fuel replenishes after a certain amount of time.
Then the tile becomes lockable and attackable over the TCUs marker.
When a tile at the borders of the secured zone gets attacked, the org gets a massage wich planet. the cost for shooting a tiles/TCUs HP down has to be massively more than the cost of the TCU and its fuel, because when a tile gets taken by the enemy faction, another tile becomes attackable and this way another attackable ring is build.
Or all tiles in the outer circle have to be taken over befor the next ring gets attackable.

Im not sure, but i guess this could be the way how NQ could have plan it allready.

I like your idea of having a home territory that gives a benefit against when you try to claim another territory that is not close to the home one.
This makes sure, that you know where the home of a faction is. Allways the biggset on of course ^^
I like the idea that a home territory has no limit in size, but the sekundary have.
I like the idea of the markings, when an org has claimed the whole planet, make a marking who owns it.
And i like an exponential fuelcost the more territorys a faction owns.
But allways keep in mind that a faction can own multiple organizations that can own multiple TCUs
How would you solve all the exploiting possibilitys?

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18 hours ago, BiGEdge said:

nice concept, but it has imho some problems that have to be solved...
I got some questions.
1. How do you claim another territory that is not yours?
2. how do you make savezones within this territory where no PVP is allowed?
3. what happens when two territorys collide? 
4. how do you want to balance or set up the cost of the TCUs and what do you use as fuel?

I guess, or at least i hope NQ allready has a solution for all those questions allready with theyr idea and will just ignore your idea or at least use some of the ideas from your concept.
Afaik territory warfare will need a TCU for every tile. Thats a neccessity to solve the 1. question.
Anyone who wants to claim a territory has to destroy or hack the TCU of the enemy faction or at least drop the shieldpoint of a tile to 0 and destroy all cores on the tile.
Then the TCU becomes inactive and you can place a TCU for your own faction.
Second question, all TCUs surrounding an area in the middle can make the middle a PVP free zone. and the player has the option to activate it at the TCU in the middle.
When two territorys collide both are an attackable tile anyway and a war between both factions can be announced.
Fuel could be a relatively expensive mix of different resources or a new resource.
A TCU can be fueled and this fuel replenishes after a certain amount of time.
Then the tile becomes lockable and attackable over the TCUs marker.
When a tile at the borders of the secured zone gets attacked, the org gets a massage wich planet. the cost for shooting a tiles/TCUs HP down has to be massively more than the cost of the TCU and its fuel, because when a tile gets taken by the enemy faction, another tile becomes attackable and this way another attackable ring is build.
Or all tiles in the outer circle have to be taken over befor the next ring gets attackable.

Im not sure, but i guess this could be the way how NQ could have plan it allready.

I like your idea of having a home territory that gives a benefit against when you try to claim another territory that is not close to the home one.
This makes sure, that you know where the home of a faction is. Allways the biggset on of course ^^
I like the idea that a home territory has no limit in size, but the sekundary have.
I like the idea of the markings, when an org has claimed the whole planet, make a marking who owns it.
And i like an exponential fuelcost the more territorys a faction owns.
But allways keep in mind that a faction can own multiple organizations that can own multiple TCUs
How would you solve all the exploiting possibilitys

You would claim territory by taking a TCU, but this way you'd get more than anyone one Hex, but all hexes that TCU controls, thus making it a bad idea to use one TCU to take tons of land.

 

An area without pvp would be a safe zone in itself, as to take a TCU a reinforcement timer of 12-36 hours would be initiated before anything could be contested.

 

When two TCUs fight for claim over one Hex, the one with greater claim strength will take over, which would usually be there closer one.

 

The TCU cost would be the same as it is now or cheaper, as fuel some material would have to be mined or refined and burned. Not at an alarming fast rate mind you, but enough that leaving it in attended for days would mean a reduction in radius. Keep in mind you can still have a TCU holding one Hex free of fuel this way.

 

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To expand on the idea:

 

The general idea is to allow players, through whatever mechanic, to claim planets and eventually systems that allows the setting of options otherwise not available to players (like setting PvP status), making the universe really the players own. Coupling this with territory control gives a very compelling reason to claim a percentage (or all) of the territories.

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  • 2 months later...

A new point to this that was brought up from a different problem that I would like to add. there was the intriguing idea that to encourage people take territory, add another faucet to the game's economy, and give more uses for higher tier ores we could have TCU's actually generate quanta (or a resource to be sold to a bot for quanta) instead of having a Tax they would become sources of income by burning T2-T5 ores for quanta over time. This makes land valuable for the sake of having land and could be implements alongside or as an alternative to the ideas above.

In addition there is the suggestion that specific territories could award specific bonuses to industry in those territories making some tiles more valuable than others, for instance a territory when controlled could provide +25% build speed on all industry units, another could have +10% refining efficiency, and various other benefits to make different territories more valuable than others. Additional benefits could also be achieved by building an addition elements that works with the tcu (and must be placed within a max distance from the TCU and must be placed in pairs (max 3)) that act as additional control points for capture (more on this later).

Furthermore, there was additional concepts for how territory combat could actually take place with AvA and CvA and CvC. Firstly Territory units should not be allowed to be placed deep underground and should require sea level or higher to be placed (for alioth at least) so that they can actually be captured. Now instead of actually destroying or shooting at a TCU a perspective attacking force would have to do all of the following.

1. They must select a valid TCU to attack, any TCU that is surrounded by TCUs owned by the same organization cannot be directly attacked until at least one of the surrounding tcus is taken.
2. They must be declared war with the organization which may or may not have a time before hostilities can start.
3. They must begin the attack by starting a defense timer. The defenders are presumably buring t2-t5s in their TCU to generate quanta. when an attacked starts the defense timer, this is instead burned to make the entire territory immune to capture until it runs out of t2-t5 to burn. With nothing in the tcu it will keep the territory protected for a minimum of 12 hours (no t2-t5), with fuel a maximum of 36 hours (full t2-t5)(so that the attacker is likely not in their prime time, if they initiated the attack in their prime time.) Only the defenders know exactly when the TCU will be vulnerable and are instantly notified at the start of the timer. The TCU cannot be refueled during this process.
4. Once the defense timer is expired, the attackers must capture and hold the control points at the base (a base can have 1-4 of these that are added to increase the hex's benefits). The first control point is the TCU and is always labels A, in addition a base could have a B, C, D, and E that is if they have been constructed for added territory benefits. In either case the attacker must hold the majority of the points for an amount of time, doing so captures the territory and static constructs within.
5. Any resurrection nodes after capture no longer allow defenders to spawn there.

This system obviously requires AvA combat. and shifts the focus to ground units more over constructs. It actively discourages placing control points too far from each other as they are too hard to defend. Also both attackers and defenders should see the location and status of all control points throughout capture. it also provides an additional faucet for quanta which we are very short on and a use for t2-t5 so that T1 doesnt become the only source of income. Alternatively, the TCU could not burn t2-t5 and simply always generates quanta and the fuel is a separate mechanic with a separate resource.

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