So, to start off: your faction (faction is just a traditional name, you can be a republic or hivemind or queendom or something) will need a theme. This is just to give the other players an idea of what your faction is based off. Your theme can be absolutely anything and is encouraged to have a theme that will stand out; Some players pick high fantasy races like dwarves, elves and orcs. Others base theirs off historical civilizations like rome, the vikings, or native americans. Still others just do broad, general ideas, like steampunk, undead, demons from hell, or a wizard's guild. If you want, you could roll with an empire based off of or even ripped straight out of a video game, book, or movie-something like the lord of the rings, game of thrones, mario, or skyrim. Multiple people have even picked minecraft as their theme, and some people even run silly/joke themes like My Little Pony or sentient strawberries. Whatever your theme is, just bear in mind that the technology level should be around near future (think 2020s earth) or balanced for that range. I will allow sci-fi theming, but as a general rule of thumb, the tech level is roughly what 2020s earth would be like, so stuff which would be possible within a couple of years would be the starting tech level "cap". So go nuts, as long as it would make sense gameplay wise.
Now, once you've got an idea for a kingdom in your head, there are a few things you need to do.
BasesFirst off, you need maps of your faction's bases, both for the starting few bases, and any future ones you create, with a maximum 3 starting ones. If you end up changing any bases via projects, edit the base maps to reflect the changes.
If you need inspiration for a map layout, just rip a layout of a fort/base/whatever from a game/real life/etc. Reminder to keep interior layouts of buildings in mind.
The full map of the world (not base maps) will be randomly generated, but bases will be located where it would be seen fit.
For map scale, make sure to provide the pixel-to-distance-unit ratio in the map image, as it helps with writing battle reports taking place in the partuclar map.
TroopsTroops are the guys that do your fighting. Unlike normal LW, you only have one type of troop, as instead of the traditional multiple-types-of-troops-with-different-equipment system used in LW, a single trooper is based on the equipment they have, and their training. Generally, a new faction will only start off with unspecialized soldiers with equipment equivalent to what you'd expect from a modern army, but it's always a good idea to train your men to utilize sniper rifles/shotguns/machine guns/SMGs/other more specialized infantry weapons, or have vehicle specialists. Speaking of vehicles, you can build different types of vehicles, from simple tanks, to troop transports (aerial or otherwise), ships, interceptors, and even spaceships if your technology is that advanced. Vehicles will be logged under Troops for convenience.
For obvious reasons, you can't bring land vehicles/sea vehicles in the air, use sea vehicles on the ground, or fly air vehicles into underground locations (unless there's a hangar accessable from above ground, but still).
SuppliesA supply is anything unique that your kingdom has at its disposal for war. Basically anything magical or technologically advanced (think futuristic) or just unique that your kingdom can use. Whether it's a natural resource (like mythril or super strong wood) a battle supply (like advanced armor, special materials, or weapons enchanted with fire magic) or a legendary artifact (like Excalibur or the One Ring). A supply can be whatever you'd like to come up with.
Again, in your update (more on this later) you should describe your supplies in a paragraph or less. Your starting supplies are automatically mass-produced, meaning you have a virtually infinite number of them (unless it's a unique weapon or something like that.)
ProjectsProjects are arguably the most important aspect of faction wars. Each day, you get two project points that you can allocate to improve your kingdom in some way-be it forging new weapons, building new buildings, training your troops to do something, developing new technology, or anything you can come up with. Obviously, doing something like inventing muskets would probably take decades if not centuries in real life, but for the sake of gameplay, it's shortened into days. Use this
official guideline in order to see how long everything takes:
(Cost with Industry focus is in parentheses)
Recruit a hero: 2 points (1)
Build a base: 6 points (4)
Train units to do something (fight stealthily, use bombs, etc.): 2 points (1)
Mass produce something: 3 points (2)
Reverse engineer a foreign item received in trade: 2 points (1) (Free if you get blueprints for it)
Create a new type of troop specialization: 2 points (1)
Add/remove stuff from a base's layout: Normally 3 points (2), but it can vary depending on how major the changes are. Consult the paragraph on spending more/less time on projects below for a guideline.
You can spend more or less project points if you like, but that will affect the quality of your results. If you spend ten days training your troops to fight on boats, you can be damn sure you'll be the best sailors in the world. If, on the other hand, you build a fort in two days, it's probably made of manure and not worth defending as even a ruined building with half of it destroyed with no fortifications would be better.
One more thing: you can spend two project points on one thing, as long as you don't mind forgoing your other project.
FocusesAt the start of the game, you pick from one of the three below:
Force: You have a militaristic society, or maybe just a surplus of warm bodies. You may recruit 10 extra troops each day.
Industry: Your kingdom is full of hard workers, intelligent scientists, and the like. All projects cost 3/4 of their original speed (rounded down).
Legacy: Your faction is a mighty empire, well established in history, and is quite powerful. You start with 15 completed project points and 100 extra troops. However, unlike the other focuses, you have no long term bonus.
Right, now that's all the mechanical stuff.
Each day, you should post an update in this thread. The update should contain all the information above condensed into the following format provided at the bottom of this post.
To join the game, you must PM me your day 0 update. For the start of the game (day 0) you should have two supplies, 200 troops, and zero spent project points (so no completed projects without the Legacy focus). Once you get the seal of approval, you may post your faction in the thread.
Each day, you recruit (or train) troops and do projects. When you finish a project, indicate what exactly it did. You finished your baconator project, you should say "project complete" and then give a description of what it adds to your kingdom. Your "information" spoiler should be edited to reflect the new info as well. If you're in a battle and have poison ammo and you don't put it in the supplies and/or troops section, the war mod will mod the battle as if they weren't there.
"Hey, 0cra, all this faction building is cool and all, but what about the actual war part?"-someone
Glad you asked! With that, let's move on to the two biggest parts of Land Wars: War and Diplomacy.
Diplomacy: You may interact with kingdoms in two ways. The first is through letters, which must be posted in the thread at the end of your update. These can be about anything. Maybe you want to establish a non-aggression pact, or maybe you want to trade, or maybe you want to call the enemy king a fuckface. Whatever the reason, you post a quick letter, like so:
Greetings, your beardedness. We may not see eye to eye with your warrior culture, but we have no bad blood between us. As such, we propose a non-aggression pact between us. Furthermore, if you are interested, we would like to trade some of our healing potions for your mighty direwolves. What say you?
You're kinda expected to be somewhat in character for the letters. You don't need to follow ancient diplomatic tradition or whatever, just don't say "Hey 0cra, non-aggression pact?" or something like that.
The other way is through PMs. Obviously I have no control of what you send here so don't bother being in character unless you want to. Generally speaking, PMs, Skype, Discord and the like would be used for plotting joint attacks on enemy factions or other things you don't want other people to know about. Doing simple things like non-aggression pacts or alliances in PMs, while not forbidden, is heavily frowned upon. If you want to trade, please do it in the thread so I know why the dwarves suddenly started using elven longbows or something like that.
Quick note on trade: how many of each supply each person gives is up to the negotiators. However, you can't mass produce foreign items until you reverse engineer them, which requires a separate project to mass producing. If you trade for/steal the blueprints for the item, you don't need to reverse engineer.
War! Alright, so let's suppose you want to fight someone, maybe because their leader is a different skin color, or because he disapproved of your opinion on pineapple pizza! There are three different ways of duking it out. The first, and by far the most common, is invading. To do this, you would post in the thread separately from your update, and it would include the following:
-Who you are attacking
-What your objectives are (nine times out of ten this would be "take an enemy base" but you can burn their farms or steal their supplies if you'd like. The effects of such will be determined by the war mod)
-The troops and vehicles you or your allies commit to the battle
-The supplies you or your allies commit to the battle
-The attacking strategy
The strategy is the most important part. Basically, you split this up into five phases. Each phase you describe what troops you're committing to that part of the plan, and what they're doing.
As soon as possible, the defending faction will write up a counter strategy. When doing so, the defender should try to avoid metagaming, i.e. they should pretend not to know what the attacker is doing (apart from obvious maneuvers like cavalry going around the side). Defenders can call upon their allies to help them-though there is no guarantee that they will arrive in time if they live on the other side of the continent or across hard to get around terrain.
Try to hit the "goldilocks" range for word counts; you should post more than "my raiders attack" but less than something people would spam "TL;DR" over.
Once both attack and defense are posted, I will determine the outcome of the battle. This isn't a RTD-all battles will be an impartial, informed decision based on the strategy and capabilities of each side. Once this is done, the war mod writes it up, post the battle in the thread, and determine who won.
The other two types of battles are stealth attacks and duels. Stealth attacks are when small groups of troops enter a base and attempt to carry out a mission-assassinate the general, steal a legendary sword, blow up the city walls, whatever. You can't take bases in a stealth attack unless the attack is well executed, for obvious reasons.
Because metagaming would so rampant in stealth missions, when attempting to carry one out, all you post in the thread is who you are attacking, and what base. The strategy, troops you're committing, and objectives must be PMed to me, whereupon the defender will PM as much information as they think is relevant to the base in question--the layout of their cities, where items are kept, where the general is, where patrols go, etc. If the king, all troops, and all items are kept in an impenetrable bunker of immovable object-unstoppable force alloy with no hope of infiltration or something like that I reserve the right to call bullshit and determine these things using my best judgement. Once I have all the information, I'll post the results of the incursion in the thread.
The third type of battle is a duel. In this, two or more kingdoms agree to fight with a certain number of troops on neutral ground. This can be for whatever reason--roleplay, rights to a conquered city, a duel between two warriors, or whatever you want. All involved sides will post their troops being committed but PM their strategies to me.
Alrighty, now I know you're probably thinking "holy fuck TL;DR" but there's just a couple more things to be aware of:
- For the sake of balance, no bases that are explicitly sided towards the faction holding it.
- Spies are not allowed.
- There's no actual mechanics in terms of diplomacy. A non-aggression pact or alliance can be broken with no penalty--in theory. In practice, doing so will generally cause every other player to hate you and consequently attack you.
- You may attempt to intercept and raid enemy trade going to other factions. Consequently, you may also guard your trade convoys with troops.
- You may have a maximum of troops equal to the amount of sleeping spots in living quarters across all bases you own. Can't have an army if they can't rest inbetween days/battles/whatever. You'll also need garages for land vehicles, hangars for air vehicles, and docks if your base(s) are located near large enough bodies of water and have boats. For obvious reasons, troops and vehicles are stationed at various bases you own, and each base has seperately tracked troop/vehicle counts/limits.
- You are expected to be active. Obviously if you have real life issues that's fine as long as you communicate with the group. However, dropping off the face of the earth with no warning means that all your kingdom's members are dropped inside the Habbo Hotel pool and left to fend their own against an endless army of stingrays with aids and make it up for grabs by your neighbors. Hopefully they'll fight over it. We do so love our wars here in Land Wars. If you missed any days before I kick you for inactivity, you'll be able to cover them in your post under separate update spoilers for missed days.
- You don't get the benefits for controlling a base until you do a 5 day project to "claim" it. This project cannot be double timed. After this project, you get the extra project slot and 10 extra troops per day. You also get to fuck around in the archives and grab information on any technology, training methods, or equipment production methods taken from the base (if applicable) in case you didn't destroy the information you'd want to use for copying their tech. For obvious reasons, you can't claim bases destroyed beyond recognition.
- No changing war strategies, unless a major event was unaccounted for, such as an obvious super weapon which you did not know about being used.
- No technology that's out of reason. Think near future at best with some magic mixed in; not Star Wars or Avatar.
- It is understood that troops patrol basess and territorial borders even if unstated in updates or logs, unless the player in question states that they're off guard duty.
- No using out of game knowledge. (army A does project A, Army B doesn't know about project A, yet makes a strategy as if they know about it)
- You MUST list all completed projects in your updates. (This is very important, otherwise it's hard to tell what you have and have not done)
- No mass-teleportation.
- A limited number of prisoners are allowed but may only be used for information. I, and whoever owned the original troops will discuss what you can find out.
- Recruiting units does NOT count as a project.
- You may work together on structures and split the days between participating armies.
- It's generally assumed that kingdoms have a rough idea of the capabilities of their neighbor's troops, supplies, and completed projects. Projects in progress are secret until the owner reveals his results.
- If for whatever reason your civilization is in conditions that are inhospitable to a unmodified human with modern technology, I'll call bullshit and make it so that they magically are not affected by it whatsoever. Toxic air? Free gas masks! Floating islands? Free jetpacks! Underwater? Free Scuba Gear!
- After you annex an unfortunate faction that you've conquered, or have gotten equipment from friendlier nations, you can produce them after you get a project to learn how to manufacture their gear yourself, provided you can mass produce the equipment's key items.
- I won't mind if you make a civilization of robots, just know that you'll start with near future-level robotics.
- The game will end when either A: There's only one alliance left (either because everyone allied with eachother or killed eachother), B: When someone decides to make their civilization create a mess that fucks over the ingame world beyond repair, or C: The players decide to rebel against the GM by making it hard to maintain a game designed for low GM maintenance.
- Try not to make your faction break the laws of physics, or make it obvious that you failed your science classes. If you have to make 1 + 1 equal 3 for whatever you're doing to work, you're doing it wrong.
- Training troops to specialize them in something costs 1 recruitment point per troop trained.
So, that's the long and short of it! I know that this seems like a lot of information, but that's just because I like to say in ten words what could be done in five. It's really not that complicated.
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Topic: Faction Wars: A different take on Land Wars. (Read 1091 times)