The Cost Of War: Using Battle Pay To Socially Shape Dark Sectors

[Soulrift]

This topic about Dark Sector warfare is spurred on by two presuppositions: Dark Sectors would be more interesting if there were a social dynamic behind them (such as Power vs Politics: alliances that win by force versus alliances that win by support) and, secondly, that there needs to be a means to both limit aggressors and give more people the chance to be an aggressor.

 

To this extent, I identify two key problems: firstly, the current aggressor is simply the clan or alliance that is the first to deploy their rail when a system becomes available; secondly, the only cost to attack is the cost of a rail.

 

What I propose instead is the following system:

 

Phase 0: Dark Sector is not currently being attacked. Dark Sector mission can be run normally. When someone deploys a rail against that sector, we go to phase 1.

 

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Phase 1: As soon as someone deploys an attack, we enter a 48 hour deploy phase, during which as many clans or alliances as want to can bid to be the attacker. Each clan or alliance may bid once when they first issue the order to deploy, and the highest bidder will move on to phase 2 (the rest simply regain their bid and rail). Bids are hidden, so you can't just bid the current highest amount +1; if you want to win the bid, you have to bid high.

 

During these two days, the Dark Sector can be run normally.

 

Minimum Bid: The minimum bid to attack in Phase 1 is the total amount of battle pay last paid to defend or attack the system times two. So if the current defender last paid out 750,000 credits in battle pay to hold/take their rail, all of the next attackers must bid at least 1,500,000 credits. The minimum bid drops by 4% of the current amount every 24 hours to ensure an unusual high amount doesn't paralyze a system indefinitely. (it will drop by half every 18 days.)

 

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Phase 2: Combat ensues between the highest bidding attacker and the defender over the next 48 hours. The Dark Sector is closed off TO ALL BUT THE DEFENDING CLAN/ALLIANCE and players must chose a side. As normal, both sides can set battle pay and members of the clan/alliance do not get paid for supporting their own rail.

 

Note that the current rail holder can continue to access the Dark Sector! This is key: this is the whole "reward" of being the owner of the rail. As long as they defend the rail, they have continual access to the Dark Sector; the only way to make them lose access is to lose the rail entirely!

 

Spoils of War for Defender: Each time a defending player supports their defending rail, they get one "share" of the spoils of war. If the defenders are successful, the spoils of war are paid out from the amount bid by the attacking rail. Half goes to the defending clan/alliance vault, the other half paid to each share. So, if the attacker had to bid 1,500,000 credits to attack, and the defenders run all 7500 runs to destroy the incoming attack, each run becomes worth 100 credits.

 

Spoils of War for Attacker: Each day a clan/alliance holds a rail, that rail generates Spoils based on the kinds of credits/resources available. These aren't taxed, just magically generated, and the lump accumulated sum are paid to the attacking clan/alliance if they successfully take over the rail. Thus, the longer a defender holds a rail, the more lucrative it is to take it away from them. (note: successful attackers obviously hold on to their bid, which is refunded to their vault.)

 

We'll call it a draw: If neither side destroys the other rail by the time the time limit ends, the rail with the highest remaining health takes the sector and ALL SPOILS ARE LOST. This encourages clans/alliances to actually take the other rail down to 0% (especially now that it's viable to do so) and not merely reduce the other rail to a lower percentage.

 

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Consequences: So, what happens in this system? Two broad lines of tactic emerge:

 

Power: Clans/alliances that use raw power to hold their rails open themselves up to more attacks. If they don't pay enough battle pay, or too few players accept their battle pay and fight on their behalf, or if their members attack the enemy too aggressively and leave no runs for third party players, the total battle pay paid out during the defense remains low and the cost for the next aggressor to attack also remains low.

 

Thus, power-based clans/alliances will be subject to more attacks and have to work harder to hold their rails, but they can then tax at high rates if they so desire. Likewise, they will have to offer extraordinarily high battle pay if they want the next attacker to pay a high bid: a power-based clan/alliance might have to offer 100k or more battle pay, if they expect few supporters and want a lot of spoils next round.

 

Politics: Clans/alliances that use politics to hold their rails must first obtain sufficient funding to pay out large battle pay and must then rely on community to defend their rail on their behalf. However, a fully dependent defender can create a situation where attacking is prohibitively expensive: If they pay out 20,000 credits battle pay for all 7500 runs to destroy the attacker, the next attacker will have to front a whopping 300,000,000 credits to make their assault.

 

Thus, the political cycle naturally reinforces the defending rail through popular support, ensuring a considerably longer Phase 0 period of inactivity and peace. Players might not collect quite as much battle pay as they would from a power-hungry clan/alliance, but they are rewarded by more reliable access to the Dark Sector in question.

 

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I'd point out that one very nice side-effect of these rules is that it creates a lore-sensible situation, where powerful war-mongers are continually engaged in war and peaceful diplomatic alliances tend to have much longer periods of prosperity between attacks. It also achieves the primary goals I set out to solve: it gives everyone the chance to bid to attack (rather than the one clan/alliance that clicks deploy first) and it discourages continual assaults that lock up the Dark Sectors themselves by making attacking more costly than just the rail itself. It also keeps Dark Sectors open for a minimum of 48 hours in the case of continual assaults, rather than 24.

Edited April 22, 2014 by Soulrift

[NightFury30]

I like this idea a h*ll of a lot more than just rush to deploy at the nearest open rail. since the dark sectors came online iv'e only managed to run the actual mission once or twice. I definitely like the direction this guy is going.  

[eddy193]

yes PLEASE give us this instead

[Papa_Nuk_Nuk]

bump +1

[Tazusa]

bump.

[eRazr]

POLITICS destroy everything in it's path... Apart from that: good idea on the bidding part... Personally I had another idea: Instead of TENNO vs TENNO style rails they could add a system where we fight against the Infested, Corpus or Grineer. Instead of 1 clan/alliance building a rail they could add a system where the whole playerbase builds a rail (adds to it's construction, something like an event maybe?) and defends it as needed. Corpus, Grineer, Infested or some other entity could attack that rail at some set or random time and we would have to defend it. REWARD: better drops, xp, and whatnot while we hold the rail, RISK: extreme tax, no bonuses, or something entirely different while some other faction holds it. This would slow down the conflicts and increase the time we can play on those nodes.

[SolidSp33d]

Bumper cars.

[DJ_Redwire]

Yes please.

 

Please.

 

[size=6]Please.[/size]

[Soulrift]

I would love to get a bump form DE, but a bump from all you guys is almost as good. Thanks :)

 

I wonder if I should have broken out the part about the defender being able to continue to use the rail even during the combat phase. I came up with the idea at the end of writing my proposal and just tucked it in, but it's actually one of the more interesting parts of the deal, especially for power-oriented clans/alliances.

[Worira]

Minimum Bid: The minimum bid to attack in Phase 1 is the total amount of battle pay last paid to defend or attack the system times two. So if the current defender last paid out 750,000 credits in battle pay to hold/take their rail, all of the next attackers must bid at least 1,500,000 credits. The minimum bid drops by 4% of the current amount every 24 hours to ensure an unusual high amount doesn't paralyze a system indefinitely. (it will drop by half every 18 days.

 

 

While this idea is pretty good overall, the numbers on this particular bit are ridiculous. We're talking something like 75 million credits just to start the process of contesting a rail. Further, assuming the defenders win their first contest, they get all that money back to reinvest in battle pay, which in turn increases the cost of challenging again, and therefore the spoils the defenders gain, and so on. This means you've given the defenders an exponentially-scaling income increase, on top of the money they're making on taxes. Sure, the attackers can make a bunch of money if they manage to take it over, but that's never going to happen.

[Soulrift]

While this idea is pretty good overall, the numbers on this particular bit are ridiculous. We're talking something like 75 million credits just to start the process of contesting a rail. Further, assuming the defenders win their first contest, they get all that money back to reinvest in battle pay, which in turn increases the cost of challenging again, and therefore the spoils the defenders gain, and so on. This means you've given the defenders an exponentially-scaling income increase, on top of the money they're making on taxes. Sure, the attackers can make a bunch of money if they manage to take it over, but that's never going to happen.

 

Well, there's a number of subtle nuances in my system that don't make it quite so cut and dry.

 

Assume the current minimum bid is 75 million (ie: the previous battle pay was 32.5mil). We don't actually know how much the defender is going to put up on this particular defense, nor do we know how active their own members are in defending their rail. There are a number of possible outcomes: the defender could obliterate the attacking rail without ever paying a single credit of battle pay, opening up the flood gates to 0 credit minimum bids on the next attack; the defender could pay even more out in battle pay, setting the price even higher than 75 million; the defender could only actually pay out 32.5 mil in battle pay the second time around so the minimum bid to attack stays 75 million next round; etc.

 

The price for the next attack depends on HOW the current attack is resolved. That's why I like the elegance of this system: it's not a foregone conclusion of eternally rising prices.

 

The attacker could bid a lot of credits to attack, the defender could take them all and be greedy and not pay out any battle pay, just paying it all to its members. The minimum bid to attack could stay really low, but the actual bid to attack might be high if there's a lot of contest to be the attacking alliance. Or it could be really low: you could just end up with a lot of alliances all bidding the minimum!

 

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In regards to the attacker actually defeating the defender, that is another question entirely, before we ask if an attacker will be able to defeat the defender, I would ask: should an attacker be attacking if they have no hope of winning?

 

One of the biggest complaints about the current system is that there is an endless flood of pointless and hopeless attackers. They attack, chip 1 or 2 percent off the defender, then everyone has to wait 48 hours before they can return to running the Dark Sector mission. It's brutally frustrating not because people can't fight off the attacker, but because they can't prevent the attacker from attacking in the first place.

 

I think it's important to set up the system to discourage random attacks, at least on systems that are costly to challenge. That way the general player base maintains access to systems that are reliably un-challenged. How to keep it un-challenged? Keep the minimum bid high. How to keep it high? Pay lots of battle pay. How to pay lots of battle pay? Have a lot of independent support. By handing those big payments over to the defender in the case of a failed attack, those sectors can continue to pay big battle pay and remain supported by the community.

 

But the crux here is that it relies on the support of the community. IE: probably low taxes and high battle pay.

 

If taxes get too high, if support erodes away, then a powerful clan/alliance can rush in and forcibly destroy the rail with their own might, replacing a stable politically sustained rail with a highly conflicted power rail. No matter how high your battle pay, if no one is taking it and running the mission for whatever reason (they're bored with defending, they don't want to support you anymore, they don't mind the new entrant, whatever) then it falls back to clan/alliance might alone.

 

Likewise, power-controlled nodes that are easily and frequently attacked remain accessible only to the rail's owner's members; now THEY have a vested interest to retain control of their rail in a way they don't currently have.

 

So it really all comes together because of the nuances, not just one element like the potentially rising cost to attack a rail.

[-FV-Runehawk]

My upvote is yours. 

[SpilockT_T]

I don't think DE will approve this great idea..

 

Because DE is DE....

 

P.S - I love your idea. :3

[SolidSp33d]

The bump is strong with this one.

The idea is too delicious!

[ImperiusAiE]

I can't find anything wrong with it, it seems to perfectly address all the problems we've been experiencing with the current set up. You have my vote, my bump, my support, and whatever else I might give. If even just a few of these ideas -the bidding system in particular- reach DE's ears and make it into the game then it would be an incredible improvement over what we have in place now.

[Soulrift]

Thanks for all the support :)

 

I'm also hoping this will reach DE's ears. The armistice alone will probably not offer the solution we need if it's just based on the health of the surviving rail. The current system still suffers from "first to deploy" syndrome.