Legend:

TCS = Territory Control System
VCP = Village Control Point
CPH = Central Power Hub
PTS = Public Test Server

Introduction:

This is a topic that many players have been waiting for and the time is finally here! In this thread we will talk about the design ideas surrounding the Territory Control System (TCS) and some of the structures and mechanics planned for it. We were going to talk about TCS and our thoughts on seasons in the same thread but have decided to break it up into separate ones to be able to have more focused discussion.

It is difficult to give an ETA on when these will hit the Public Test Server (PTS) and live servers as there are a lot of components to get working for it to be playable for users. We expect a 4-6 week development time to get the alpha features working and playable for users on PTS, and then another 2-4 weeks of playtesting and tweaking before it hits live servers.

Control Towers

Control Towers are the main structures that the system is based around and once built a clan will claim the entire tile it was built on. Players will build a Control Tower using a combination of existing and new resources. Players will be able to choose where to place the tower anywhere in a tile on valid flat enough land, free of obstacles and not too close to mob spawns, cities, dungeons, etc. There will be a standard list of exclusion areas that cannot be claimed. Control Towers can ONLY be built starting from a holding, which is necessary to prevent alt-clan dropping abuse.

Purposes of Control Towers

Control Towers are going to have a multitude of purpose and function. Their primary purpose will be to expand territory owned by a clan from their primary city outward. They will also open up the ability to build structures, such as clan nodes and factories, on these claimed territories.

Control Towers will require power to provide most of their benefits and have to be linked to the territory that has the clan's Central Power Hub (CPH) structure. Clan buffs can be extended to owned territories and a resource cache is available on upgraded control towers which provides a new clan currency (name undecided still) based on the economic activity in a tile.

They will also provide offensive and defensive benefits related to sieging for towers on or adjacent to clan holdings. Rune travel is another area we plan to give control to the owners of the tile, which will consume a pretty small amount of power but will prevent rune travel to your controlled territories to non-allies.

Central Power Hubs

There will only be one CPH that a clan can build in a city, and hamlets will be unable to build them. Building a CPH will turn that city into the Capital City for your clan’s empire and territory. Connected territory to the CPH will carry power and benefits like clan buffs, which are only generated from the capital. The tiles not connected to the grid will be in a “Un-Powered” or “Inactive” state. The CPH will require charged Redstone Crystals or a connected clan refinery to be charged. The amount of power the CPH can transmit per hour and the amount of energy storage it has will both increase as the structure is upgraded.

Every structure placed in territories will require power except for the control tower itself which will act like a transfer station carrying the power to your linked territories. Structures will require varying amounts of power depending on their level and certain active benefits you can enable. The CPH can provide power up to 4 tiles away before amplifiers must be used to extend this range.

Amplifiers

The CPH can only push power so far - 4 tiles away to be exact. To extend the reach of your territory past that you will need to deploy Amplifiers. An amplifier can only be placed on a level 3 tower tile and will extend the range of power by an additional 3 tiles in all directions.

Redstone Crystals and Refineries

Redstone Crystals will be a new resource exclusive to TCS and will be able to be found from Obelisks. They can also be bought from NPC vendors at a higher convenience cost. Empty Redstone Crystals can be filled using small refineries available for houses. Small refineries produce less power than clan refineries and are the only place to charge empty Redstone Crystals. Charged Redstone Crystals will apply a specific amount of energy instantly to the storage tank in your power hub when placed in it.

Refineries will use recycled gear and basic/rare materials to produce power but it will be slower and less ideal. Refineries will serve as a recycling of old durability gear as durability will NOT factor into the power received from an item, and it is a way to supplement power costs of Redstone Crystals.

Structures in TCS

There will be 4 basic groups of structures in the TCS after you place a Control Tower:

Clan Nodes - Mines, groves, quarries and farms
Clan Factories - Produce new resources that are exclusive for buying various items from a TCS shop/war factory
Utility - Portal chambers, local banks, scout towers (identify intruders), collectors
Defensive - Guard towers, cannon towers, walls, etc.

Clan Nodes will not be something you gather anymore using a tool. Instead they will produce a crate of resources every "x" minutes. These crates will stockpile until they reach a limit, and anyone can open up the node and take the resources from it. Resources can only be extracted from crates if it is in a player’s bank, personal safe or any of the clan bank tabs. However, if you have a collector on the tile than any node/factory on your tile that hits the limit will still produce resources directly to the clan bank. So for example if you have a mine producing 1 crate every 6 minutes with a max of 10 crates it will max out after an hour.

Nodes produce regular and rare resources for owning them, while factories will produce various new resource points, such as war points, used in the TCS shop for items. We plan to have a few different variations including Artillery, Warhulk, Naval, Equipment and Food factories. These will be a later addition and not included in the initial roll-out patch.

Utility structures will provide lots of benefits to clans, from identifying hostile targets to being able to teleport around your territory looking for threats. Structures planned here are portals for teleporting quickly around your territory, local banks, automatic collection systems to harvest your nodes for you and watch towers to give you advanced warnings on raiding parties. These will be added in future TCS patches and will not be in the initial roll-out.

Defensive structures will include structures such as guard towers, cannon towers and walls to protect your territory! Various upgrades will be available and different types. These will not be in the initial roll-out but will be added in patches afterwards.

Raiders and Crates

The TCS is designed specifically to give bonuses and benefits to clans for expanding their territory, while charging an upkeep cost for the resources and benefits provided for doing so. However, it is designed to give raiders content too. Even if you decide not to build a territory yourself there is going to be a lot of CRATE reasons to raid someone else’s! The resource crates produced by clan nodes will be plentiful and once picked up will prevent instant teleportation. Players will need to take these crates back to a bank in order to be able to open them. This means a raiding party will need to plan its raid and an escape route as well.

We are looking at adding in an inventory to mounts as well to help with moving larger amounts of items. Crates would have a similar mechanic to the sealed treasures but will be “locked” until they are put into a bank. The weight will be relatively low compared to the weight of the items players receive, and will follow a similar concept to the mount slot with a massive weight reduction mechanic. Lore-wise this is why you cannot teleport, the resource crates cause too much interference! Final implementation of the way crates work will happen during development, but the idea is you will need to run them out of the territory and cannot recall so defenders can attempt to retrieve their stolen wares.

Obelisks (Formerly VCPs) and Control Towers

Obelisks will be an important regular objective for clans who either own territory in the area and for those who do not. They will continue to provide loot and will have a new loot table for the initial TCS implementation patch that will be changed to align with TCS type resources. The important resource they will give is the new clan currency, a TCS only resource that will be used in a new TCS shop to buy blueprints and other items. An additional purpose related to TCS will be added later, which has not been fully decided upon. This is a point we would love to hear some feedback on and some ideas on additional purpose. To get the ball rolling here are a couple ideas we had in the chamber:

1. Capturing an obelisk will decrease the cost of taxes and power paid by by the towers in the area around the obelisk. If you are not the owner of the tiles around the area than it will give you a bonus of gold taken as an extra tax/upkeep from the owners of the tiles in the area.
2. Obelisks will provide a certain amount of power to the capturer, reducing the costs for the powering of your structures.
3. Obelisks will include a different resource node in each, and whoever captures it will have the node produce resources in crates like other clan nodes in TCS.
4. Obelisks will have a portal and whoever last captured it can use it as a portal exit in their network.

Resource Cache

This is a function that is available on a level 2+ tower and requires power to function. Resource caches will fill up based on economic activity in the tile from gathering, killing mobs, opening dynamic objects, etc. - essentially ANY item generation on the tile outside of TCS structures such as clan nodes and factories. Clan currency will be generated based on this activity instead of actual resources, which can be used to buy items from the TCS shop. The resource caches will build up and once a day be emptied into the owning clan’s currency stockpile. 30 minutes before this happens the resource cache will be vulnerable to raiding by an enemy clan. In the case of multiple resource caches over a larger network, each will go vulnerable in an evenly spread fashion throughout the day or activity window.

TCS Shop

This will be a building and/or an NPC that will provide all the blueprints for players to build TCS structures. Blueprints are used in conjunction with mods to craft final items to place such as Control Towers and clan nodes. The shop will only sell things that can be bought using the clan currency.

War Factory

This is a structure that can be built in a clan’s capital city. Here you can use the various TCS points you've accumulated via factories built/raided and obelisks captured. You will be able to purchase items such as cannons, warhulks, ships, weapons/armor and blueprints for clan structures.

Upgrading Control Towers

Control towers can be upgraded which will give you the ability to place more structures and provide clans access to the resource cache at level 2. Upgrading will also allow you to build more structures on a tile and placing a tower will require a level 2 Tower adjacent to the tile you want to claim. “Amplifier” structures, which expand the tiles power can be applied to, can only be built on a level 3 tower. Towers will take 24 hours to upgrade, and during the last 1-2 hours depending on level it will be vulnerable. The higher the upgrade the longer the tower will be vulnerable for at the end of the upgrade. Destroying the tower during the vulnerability period will cancel the upgrade.

Building and Expanding your Territory

Expansion of territories is something we want to have time constraints on so overnight massive territory claims do not happen and you wake up to towers all around you. There should be a progression and a potential for back and forth border disputes as clans try to expand into each other. When a tower is placed it takes 24 hours to activate or come online, and only one tower can be placed at a time on a tile. The tower will go vulnerable for the last hour (23 hours after initial placement), and the clan claiming will need to defend against any attackers as it can be destroyed during this time. The world map will show when a tile is being claimed but will not show a timer unless you go to the tile itself to find out the time it is vulnerable. The world political map will show when an upgrade is in progress just like when a new territory is being claimed.

Materials for Control Towers & Structures

There will be a few standard materials used in building the TCS structures and we will likely re-use building mods or a new module type. To build a tower or any of the structures in TCS you will combine the number of mods needed with a blueprint for a structure. Blueprints will be purchaseable from a new TCS shop that will use the new clan currency. This currency will be earned through resource caches and capturing obelisks.

How Control Towers affect Sieges

Control towers will offer a few benefits against incoming sieges to make them desirable, both to build to defend and to destroy before attacking a holding. Every control tower a holding is adjacent to will increase the time for a siege to begin by 24 hours, giving the defending clan plenty of notice to prepare for a siege. This would be a maximum of 96 hours (4 days) increase on the siege time as if the tile the holding is on as well as all adjacent tiles are claimed with a control tower the holding will be unable to be sieged (this is a point we are still debating, feedback please!).

This means an attacking clan would need to first destroy one of the towers around a holding to open it up to a siege to begin with. We are also debating some defensive/offensive bonuses, such as the health of the clanstone, based on the number of towers the defending or attacking clans have around the holding. Every friendly tower adding a non-stacking 25-50% to the clanstone health. Every enemy tower either negates a friendly tower or lowers the clanstone health by a non-stacking 10-15%. If there was 1 friendly tower and 3 attacking towers then a clanstone would have a 20-30% health debuff applied. Another option is clan buffs being buffed or negated based on the amount of friendly/enemy towers. The idea is that sieges will be more than just about a single battle, they will be a build up of several smaller battles of borders as an enemy pushes in on someone’s territory until finally leading up to a siege on someone’s stronghold (their holding).

Control Tower States

Towers will have 4 states: Powered, Unpowered, Inactive and Derelict:

Powered: The tower is connected directly or through a chain of towers to a CPH and is provided sufficient power to operate. All structures will work fully on the tile while the tower is in this state.
Unpowered: The tower is connected directly or through a chain of towers to a CPH and there is currently not enough power to operate. All structures will cease their functions and all benefits of towers on the tile will cease.
Inactive: The tower is NOT connected directly or through a chain of towers to a CPH. All structures and tower related functions will cease working. If the tile is not reconnected to a CPH within 48 hours the tile will become derelict.
Derelict: A tower must be disconnected from the CPH network for 48 hours to go into this state. Once in this state it will be susceptible to take-over or no-warning destruction. Sieges initiated against a tile in this state will cause it to be vulnerable IMMEDIATELY upon initiation. Alternatively a clan may place their own tower (if they meet the placement criteria for expanding) to attempt to capture the territory. If successful they will take over ownership of the structures and their inventories from the tile. They will start with a level 1 tower regardless of the level of tower there previously.

TCS Marked Gear and Resources

All exclusive TCS items and resources, such as clan blueprints, structures and gear/items, bought from the war factory will have a special marking. This will make a distinction between regularly made items and those from the war factory for things like warhulks and gear. The only exclusion to this is the redstone crystal items used with refineries and power hubs. The reason for this marking is we expect to wipe the entire world of TCS structures and resources related/bought with the exclusive resources. This is only going to be necessary if we go the route of seasons, which will allow us to be more liberal in the giving of points and how quickly territories can be gained and lost. Seasons will be brought up in the next design thread for consideration as well as a scoring/lore based system we plan for this whole TCS idea.

Farming and Seeds

One of the things we want to add both to housing and to TCS is the idea of farming and seeds. Long term we would like to do more advanced systems involving seed splicing but that is way down the line. Initially we are going to look at personal farm plots being added to player houses and larger clan farm plots being added to territory control. Farms will use seeds to grow which will be farmed from either mobs or dynamic spawns as well as from vendors for a high-price convenience. This feature will not be in the initial implementation and we will expand more on this in the future as we get closer to putting it in.

Water Tiles and TCS

Initially players will not be able to place any structures on the water but we do envision expansions to the system to allow players to expand into a “flotilla” style of play on the water. There is likely to be water based structures for shallow water around land though.

 

Redstone is from dungeons and dragons. Just to clarify.