npc troops

[Zorium]

Did a search and I don\'t think there has been any discussion on this...

With guild wars and the like it doesn\'t seem very realistic that there will be only player troops so...

If there are 1000 people on planeshift at the time of the war (I think this will happen when PS reaches a more \"final\" state) and there are 10 major guilds each having 80 people on at the time and there are 6 guilds involved that means 240 players per side.  Thats 480 fighters plus about 60 support people (healers, weapon repairers etc.....) per side, thats 600 people all up or just 300 a side.

Now 300 people side (bear in mind not all of those are actually fighting) is not a very large battle and can be easily dominated by one or two really powerful people, this makes such events really boring for and unproductive for weaker players.

What i\'m suggesting is that some more powerfult players will control a group of npc troops, the most powerful players control several groups (through the lesser players) and the weak players (heh probably me) will supplement the untis of npcs.

Though this means that large guilds would have at least a few hundred (if not a few thousand) npcs on the guilds list though these numbers may be supplemented by mercenaries.

This idea reflects common military structure from at least Roman times (obviously minus the npcs ) possibly the ancient Egyptians did something similar....

Anyway those are just my thoughts...

-Zorium

[Skizzik]

300 People on each side isn\'t a very large battle?! ?( Are you high on crack? PS isn\'t WW3, it\'s a MMORPG. We are talking about guilds at war, not entire nations.

Being able to hire NPCs is still a cool idea though, but some of your arguments are just wacko.

BTW, there are never just one or two really powerful people, always a bunch. If they\'re all on one side, well then the other side is screwed. But that\'s what you get in wars, one side loses (yeah yeah I know, only losers in war, no winners).

[Zorium]

Remeber first 240 of those 300 are fighting, and when you think about it thats not a very large number consider this....

Some really powerful mage comes in and casts there big blow kaboom spell (you know the type I mean ) and wipes at 20
weak as guys in the middle of your formation, this attack also heavily injures some middle strength people.

So now your minus 20 people maybe 30 due to some guys being heavily injured and not able to fight.
That is an eighth of your entire army with one shot.

So next a really powerful swordsman rushes through swinging at everything that moves (right through where the mage attacked)
so he kills 40 people (he polishes off those invalids as well).

Your now 60 people down (taking into account that the swordsman would have killed the people who couldn\'t fight).
Now thats a quarter of your army gone because of two powerful people.

I could go on on this vain but it will take so long and you get the idea anyway.  I think that you will agree that having a small group of people
dominate the battle is like one side having a tank and the other side throwing stones, not realistic is it?  I\'m trying to say that larger numbers in
battle are better as a small group massively powerful players can\'t decide results of entire wars.

Sorry if this sounds like a rant it\'s not supposed to.

Anyway thats enough from me for now.

-Zorium

[Skizzik]

All your arguments come down to this: and then strong people come and kill a lot of weak people.
YES OFCOURSE! That is why some people are called strong, and others are called weak.

Ofcourse that situation is somewhat realistic. If the USA would go to war with Luxembourg (in a world without NATO), it would be the same.
If those two individuals were really THAT powerful, doesn\'t that side deserve to win the battle? What\'s wrong with the strongest people winning? Nothing IMO.

But you are also really exagerating (sp) it. I hope the devs balance the game better than that a mage\'s aoe spell can kill 20 warriors and a swordsman slashing 40 people to death (the time it would take even if they were sitting ducks lol). Ofcourse they might kill 20 \'weak as guys\', but that\'s what they\'re \'weak as\' for. If they\'re so \'weak as\', what are they doing on the battlefield?! That\'s like sending a 6-year old to war with a plastic golfclub against battle-hardened veterans.

Try to see things in perspective and don\'t exagerate (sp).

[Zorium]

The numbers etc are exagerated for a reason, to make a point.  They are of course not going to be entirely realistic but the fact of the matter is
in other games the power dfference between the top players and even the next level down is so huge they could slay them without raising a sweat.
What i\'m saying is this sort of thing to some extent or another is going to happen in PS no matter what the devs do as you can\'t stop people spending
10 hours a day getting stronger and stronger.

Moving right along, If the USA went to war with Luxemburg you would find that the USA would lose (it may take a while but it will happen) due to the fact
that Luxemburg is conveniently placed right between Germany and France (also Europe isn\'t the largest continent in the world and England, Spain etc... would get involved).
That last comment wasn\'t designed to offend anyone just think of the consequences of attacking the middle of Europe.

Yes the strongest people people in a war \"should\" win provided they actually have the right tactics etc....  but what i\'m saying is that one side having the mega powerful mage
should not win the war purely because they have that mega powerful mage, it\'s like saying that they German\'s should have won WWII because they had the best technology but
of course as we know they didn\'t and thats because they made some tactical errors.

Have you heard of the 80-20 rule?  In planeshift this rule would say that 80% of the players would have 20% of the power while 20% of the players would have 80% of the power, though
in some games this leans more to 95-5, I would hate to see PS go this way so hence my idea.

-Zorium

[SaintNuclear]

There is some point to what Zorium suggests.
I don\'t think guild wars will be so big (although it\'ll be awesome if in very late versions it\'ll be possible), but it should be possible for guilds to pay for npc warriors.

The strongest doesn\'t necessarily win. There\'s still the richest in his way.


If guild wars will only be about who\'s the guild with the strongest players, it\'ll encourage powerleveling.
However, if a guild can hire npcs for guild wars, it\'ll be the richest vs the strongest, and the strongest won\'t be the obvious winner.


Of course, npc warriors shouldn\'t be cheap. You should be able to choose between diffrent types of npc warriors (races, AI levels, etc), and you should buy better armor and weapons than those that they come with.

[Zorium]

I like the idea to change the weapons and armour of your mercenary troops it allows variety so no two mercenaries will be quite the same

SaintNuclear you say different types of mercenaries do you mean swordsman, archers etc... or are you being more specific?

I think that you shouldn\'t be able to buy certain types of mercenaries in certain races (ok that wasn\'t very clear).  What I mean is that races like Kran\'s will be abused because of there strength (though they might be slower than other races in future releases).  Anyway if people always hire Kran mercenaries everyone will want to be Kran because the would be used in alll the wars, so it might look a bit like attack of the clones

I wonder if the devs will have entire armies for hire.  This could be useful for a merchant guild or somesuch as they probably wont have many strong fighters.

-Zorium

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Zorium
With guild wars and the like it doesn\'t seem very realistic that there will be only player troops so...

I think you should look up for a difference between \'guild\' and \'army\'
yes, it is realistic

[Zorium]

OK I will Draklar so long as you reciprocate look up battle, skirmish and war.

You are now free to do with your dictionary as you wish.

-Zorium

[Draklar]

war: an active struggle between competing entities
battle: a hostile meeting of opposing military forces in the course of a war
skirmish: a minor short-term fight

done
not sure why I had to look for the last two, but it doesn\'t say anything about being uber-huge none the less...

anyway, having guilds as real military forces instead of organisations that gather people with same classes, goals and so on is quite stupid in my opinion.

[Zorium]

I think you have the wrong idea, I was not suggesting that guilds be military forces with as you put it \"uber-huge\" armies (though some may be like this).  I personally would hate it if a lot of guilds were like this, but I would like the ability to have large (or even moderately large) scale battles, this would undoubtably be a war which may be comprised of several battles.  While with the numbers likely to be involved it would be more a skirmish (see I managed to use all three descriptions ).

-Zorium

[Draklar]

so you want huge battles in guildwars without guilds being huge military forces? That sounds... impossible?

[Zorium]

Heh no I don\'t want guilds to BE huge military forces.  NPC\'s could be in the guild and be used in war time for troops but they are not military forces in themselves they are just NPC guild members (other uses for these NPC\'s could be found , selling goods etc...).

-Zorium

[Draklar]

Originally posted by Zorium
Heh no I don\'t want guilds to BE huge military forces.  

that\'s what I just said...
well besides that this idea isn\'t realistic at all (sending merchants and alike as troops for war), guilds in PS will be players-only...

[Zorium]

When did I say merchants would be sent to war?

-Zorium