So after testing the Battlegroup System with chadz earlier i came up with this rough idea but as i never actively played Strat i can not say if people would be interested in it.
I wrote this post on the fly so some ideas might make no sense and others might open loopholes i did not think about, input about that is very welcome.
Also i am not a coder and after all this seems like a lot of switching and merging of already existing mechanics.
So in no way is this in planing but just a collection of ideas put into some kind of structure.
With the Battlegroup system it is possible to set up fights, another team can accept those fights, then agree on an amount of gold each team is allowed to spend.
After the gear is bought both teams lock the settings and join a server to start the fight.
(All explained in the
Announcement about it.)
Now since one of Strats biggest problems seems to be people exploiting where ever they can, i was wondering how much interest would be there to actually play a sportsmanship based kind of strat.
I would imagine something like:
Clans earn a set amount of money which does not depend on their members in any way.
Each of those Clans is one Battlegroup and Battlegroups can not interact with each other in any way.
Besides gear you also buy troops from that money which will work like they do in strat at the moment.
Troops can only be purchased in Castles.
Gear can only be purchased in Cities.
Troops and gear are actually assigned to players in strat and can be moved around by them.
This in the beginning will make every clan exactly equal no matter how many members it has.
Players assign themselves to one Clan/Battlegroup and can not fight for any other clan.
This means that rather large factions are encouraged but no matter the size, the same amount of available gold to purchase that troops and gear will be at their disposal.
After a while this will lead to multiple clans/factions that have the optimal size for the set amount of gold income.
That income can be tweaked if necessary but should be big enough in the beginning to support even the current large clans.
Another option would be to increase it over time when the amount of battles going on raise.
When an army attacks another army, the people leading those armies talk to each other and agree on a time during a window of opportunity.
They agree on that time and lock it on the website so the server slot gets reserved, in theory even clan servers should be able to host those battles if they run in Battlegroup mode (not sure about this).
If they can not agree on a time, they can both set a time, lock it in and when both set it, something in between gets auto selected, slightly in favor of the attackers time.
This will prevent clans from trying to get unfair advantages due to attacking at specific times or trying to force other clans into fighting at 5am.
Overall this will require a lot more sportsmanship than it did so far but it really is only something for people who enjoy regular clan fights on a fun basis.
Only armies themselves would be able to attack and defend, individual players can either be in such an army and be moved around with it or do "trading" which i will get into later.
If you assign yourself to an army, your own first spawn into battle will be free which means inactive players who just hang out in an army will have to play to actually give that army an advantage.
Everyone in the clan who is not in that army will have a regular first spawn at the cost of one ticket.
The amount of players on each team in battle should depend on the amount of troops(tickets) in each army and should be still somewhat balanced even if huge armies try to smash smaller ones although there needs to be small advantage in numbers.
This will make it worth not having only one big army with your whole clan assigned to it as not all players would be able to participate to make use of their free spawn except if you are having a battle between two huge armies.
The village/city/castle taking would basically work as is right now although the AI would need to be adjusted but is only important until all fiefs are taken by clans/factions which would be desired to happen asap.
All three would have different impact in a set area around them (circle most likely or region if those get predefined).
Castles: Being in range of a Castles owned by your own clan would allow everyone fighting for you to spawn with free gear on the first spawn (not only the people who are assigned to the army and get the free spawn).
Also it allows you to directly assign troops to that Army without actually entering the Castle
Cities: Being in range of a City owned by your clan will allow you to purchase gear inside it's influence. Without actually entering the city.
Villages: Villages would play a minor role and only boost the armies movement speed inside their influence, this will make it desirable to take villages while you are on the move to somewhere else and basically use them as speed boosts to outrun armies. Due to that minor effect they would most likely be undefended a lot and by that instantly taken without a battle.
All three should have a minor impact on gold gain of a faction or some other benefit i can not yet come up with - feel free to add.
This would be the basic concept.
Now for individual players who are either not in a clan or are roaming outside of an army there would be stuff available in Cities, like Tournaments.
Those would happen regularly and are announce on a news page so players can travel there to participate.
Those events would feature their own Battlegroups which can be joined by players already in a clan and would be event with either zero or very low impact on the location they are at.
Also those could be further adjusted towards fun by allowing people to vote on the kind of event.
So it could be a Rageball, Siege, CTF, Battle and so on and on any map available.
More serious events or even all of them could include rewards inside cRPG, mostly small amounts of gold i guess or for major, Staff hosted events maybe some items or fluff rewards inside Strat.
Trading and stuff could be included as with caravans that are mainly transporting gear from cities to armies which cost 50 tickets + the gear they carry and can only be raided by armies that consist of 50 tickets or something like that so people can cut off supply lines of the enemy by sending small raid groups.
Those raid groups and caravans would be moving at a different speed than armies so they are more of a small scale battle thing and allow factions to grab each others stuff.
My creative phase sadly ended about 10 mins ago and I drifted off quite a bit from the whole battlegroup thing but people who actually play strat might be able to imagine those mechanics applied to how it works right now.
It could be massively simplified if only the battlegroup system was used as in unlimited gold and regular game modes without tickets but clanfights do not really need any strat implementation.
Also sorry if you hate the ideas and I wasted a lot of your time.
Any kind of suggestions to get the most fun out of it are appreciated though!
