Galactic Clan Wars (GCW)

I may be starting a new clan soon and this looks very interesting!

About holding systems conferring benefits: please don't.

We don't want to make this too strategy-heavy at the galactic level. This is still an RTS, not Civ.

And if we go with the chess pieces idea, the larger clans will be able to immediately take and defend more systems, so they will accrue tons of benefits right away, and the smaller clans won't be able to do anything about it.

The only reason to capture systems should be to get closer to an enemy's home system in order to have the chance to attack it and knock him out.

I feel there is few different modes or rules of gameplay available for this type of turn-based game.

Hardcore free-for-all with allied victory:

• Everyone can participate, if dead the person dies immediately and is out of game.
• Victory condition is Galactic Allied Victory of X number of players.
• Clans are more like organisational units, they have no effect on rules. If Realm wins with 15 players, five can self-destruct or settle it among themselves, until maxinum of 10 allied are alive. Big clans have big benefit early on, but they will also break apart later in the game.
• Also those who are not part of clans can take part as random elements

Clan rotation games

• Clans have to rotate their players frequently.
• Clans have certain ammount of lives
• Death decreases the ammount of lives

There is also need for concepts like

• Turn time: how long is players or clans allowed to make their decision about their movements and actions on Galactig board (the map). This could be minutes, hours or days of real world time depending on the rules of the game.
• Skirmish time: how long is one battle allowed to take that it will be considered to be "one turn". 10, 30 or 60 minutes for example. If game lasts longer, the players are still tied to that game and cannot be movable or under actions within the next turn. This gives another strategical element to skirmishes:finish them quickly to take part on next turn, or delay the battle to take enemy's turn or even surrender to make it possible to move to more important areas in the next turn.

I personally think the latter option sounds more workable as it allows teams to switch players. It would certainly result in less time waiting for players to be available. With the one life rule, say a clan has lost their pro, and on their next turn their other players aren't available.... What then? Theyre out, or we wait?

We wait.

Let's say you happen to land on a system at the same time as one Vow player and 2 Realm players. That's a 2v1v1 between the five of you. We can't use any players: we have to use the exact 5 that landed on that spot. So the five of you agree on a day and time. It doesn't have to be a Saturday at 7PM UTC: it can be a Monday afternoon or a Tuesday morning. Zaphod doesn't have to be there. If a caster can and wants to make it, fine, and the most exciting games will surely be casted, but the majority of the games should be played out as soon as it is possible, as determined by the players involved. Considering that a single loss means you are out for the season, so many players will get knocked out on the first round that it will be relatively easy to set up games after it. We have an entire spring and summer, after all. How many players will be involved? 100? 150? It won't be that hard to get them all knocked out within the space of 6 months. And the progress of the war will be super exciting as a result.

Clan rotation is more reasonable, at least at for now and without the in-game support.

In hardcore free-for-all rules would be pretty unforgiving I think. If you do not appear when there is time for skirmish, you either die or lose some Forgiving points, which once you run out you die. This would encourage active participation.

Hard-core Free-for-all is not in the end Clan-based (thus little excursion on the orginal idea) but individual based, where clans are still used to co-ordinate the game between individual players. Of course Clan can claim victory, if the last players standing are its own and agree to this. Also one single player can also win the whole ordeal with these rules.

Biggest benefit for Hardcore Free-for-all is that differences on the Clan sizes would matter more, since the one with more organized players has more commanders at its disposal. This was something that Icycalm wanted and which I also would see nice game mode, thus not maybe as the one to start with. It would require very dedicated playerbase and automatic map-system (manual updated by Exodus would be very demanding, as input from all players should be taken into account), which are not maybe realistic now.

Problem is also how you define who is dead when commander explodes in shared armies. There is few solutions, like not allowing shared armies or always checking, whose commander did die, but since self-destruction by button or foolishnesh is likely, this solution doesn't sound that fair either.

When it comes to the timetable of the turns and skirmishes, I think they should be set fixed in this gamemode. This is to make it clear and fast, thought cruel, but it is hardcore after all.

Not quite.

To adapt your scenario, Team A held one planet, with 10 commanders on it.
Team B holds two planets, with 4 commanders on each.
Team A sends 5 Commanders to attack one of the Team B planets, so have a game of 5 v 4.
Team A wins, but looses 2 commanders in the process, whilst Team B lost all 4.
So now Team A holds one planet with 5 Commander and one new planet with 3 commander (the survivors)
Team B holds one planet with 4 commanders.
At the end of the go Team A gains 2 lives, Team B 1 life (1 life for each planet held)
this therefore introduces tactics - do you split up your army in the hope of gaining more planets, or play it safe with a single 10 man team. would probalby want to test out if this is too good a life income rate. i.e. you may want to alter it so that its only 1 life for every planet above 1 - so encouraging you to split up.

Basically its Risk. I should have just said Risk.

We want to make GCW wildly different from regular CW. That's why the 2v1v1's or whatever and one life per player rules are so exciting to me. They will provide an opportunity for the most competitive PA players to be thrown into a galaxy of hand-crafted systems and engage in wildly unpredictable fights between them. It will be a completely different experience from regular CW. If you allow the clans to use whoever they want wherever they want, you'll mostly end up with the same matchups you have on regular CW.

I realize my vision for this is very hardcore, and may not be feasible right away, if ever. But I suspect that it IS feasible if we keep the scope of the first season small, and plan to have it finished quickly. Nevertheless, I will accept any format that Exodus puts forth, because playing something is better than nothing. And no matter what format they choose, there will be drastic changes for the next year, since there are so many possibilities for the format, and it is not possible for us to find the best one by just talking about it: we'll have to play a season to find what works and what doesn't.

If others are up for it, I say we do a mini, trial run. Let's get the 3 or 4 most hardcore players from each clan (who will therefore be available more often) and play a mini Galactic Clan War between us, with whatever rules Exodus wants to try. Here's Cult's team for this:

icycalm
jeffrobot494
recoil
Some guy

Let's do it.

Here's a compromise between one-player one-life, and the realities of scheduling games between players:

The clans can use whatever player they want anywhere in the galaxy for any battle. BUT, if that player dies he's out for good. So we get the best of both worlds: easy scheduling by being able to use whichever player is available that day, but at the same time if a player plays and his team loses, he is out.

We NEED a hardcore system of kicking players out quickly, otherwise the war will drag forever (even worse if clans can GAIN lives as bunny is suggesting).

Rules of the Risk could work well at the basis starting point when bringing the debt to the map-game as an idea. Idea is, that map situation has little effect on battles themselves (Risk: dices, PA: game), but strategical situation changes dramatically depending the map conditions.

Unless we use mods (which we of course could) we can't bring much of strategic debt from the map to the skirmishes themselves (except the combinations and numbers of players). For now these in-battle effects need not be implemented, just map-effects would be fine.

What are the rules of movement and commander creations and allocation? Few options to start discussion.

Movement:

• Every commander can by default move only one system next to it
• Some exception situation, which allows commanders move further than one system. (teleport to home system, teleport to Clan leader, strategic teleporters)
• Some commanders can move more than others (attack and defence commanders, different in prices)
• Maybe commanders can move differently in owned territory, neutral territory and enemy territory.

Commander creation

• Starter commanders (fixed for every clan in Clan rotation game, or maybe zero if commanders can be created during the game)
• No more commanders after start
• Commanders increase from every territory hold (too big snowball effect I think)
• Commanders increase once after certain ammounts of territories (like in Risk)
• Commanders increase fixed always at the start of the turn (like in Risk)
• Commanders increase at the strart of the turn depending on the underdog-situation (to balance and negate the snowball effect and allow comebacks)
• Do you need resources to create commanders? Resources which could alternatively used for other usages, like extra moves or teleports.

Commander allocation, where commander will pop-out?

• Where ever on your own territory (Risk)
• Home system (if conquered by others, no more commanders from here)
• Clan leader (if killed, no commanders from here)
• Certain strategic commander factory on the map
• Depends the price of the strategic resource (all possible, but some more expensive than others (cheapest to most expensive: home system, commander factory, clan leader, anywhere)

In the hard-core free-for-all map wouldn't maybe have any special traits except when it comes to positioning of the commanders on a map. In clan based one I see it would be much more interesting to see some effects on the map itself.

Basic idea would be, that map is empty at the beginning, only the homeworlds have significant strategic value. Everything else on the map will be builded by the clans and this way they will create strategically significant points on the map.

Different potential traits of the systems

• Commander factory. Allows creation of the commanders from this point and/or/not their instant transportation to other locations on the map. One (or X) commander is buildable per turn.
• Strategic resource creator. Gives you certain ammount of strategic resources once every turn.
• Engineer platform. Allows you to build one (or more) strategical building on the map to locations your clan holds. Allows also to destroy one (or more) strategical buildings on the systems your clan holds.
• Commander teleporter. Allows connection to other commander teleporter, makes possible to move from one system with commander teleporter to any other commander teleporter system your clan (or their allied clan) holds.
• Commander cannon. Allows commanders be one-way teleported to two systems further (with one turn), even over enemy territories.
• Capacity for strategical buildings. How many strategical buildings one system can have? (Fixed to X ammount, depends on the distance to homeworlds, or maybe are also buildable themselves)

Homeworld

• Has traits of the Commander Factory, Strategic resource creator, engineer platform, Commander teleporter and Commander cannon.
• Becouse of its many traits at the beginning of the game, holds extremely high strategic significanse to hold or conquer.

Near worlds

• Systems most closest to the homeworlds would have more Capacity for strategical buildings by default.
• Alternatively, if capacity can be builted, their potential is highest.

Middle worlds

• Have the least capacity, however, necessary for territorial control and to attact the enemy areas.
• Alternatively in the middle there could be some extremely high capacity systems, which became extremely important to hold.

With different buildable traits clans have to think what is their strategy, do they build a lot of commanders, wait for resources, build teleporters to move commanders move easily and make their lands defendable etc.

Cant we just give a chance to surrender? If entire team think that its better to give away system than lose players, they all agree, and say that to enemy. All Coms that did not die to that point are alive, system is gave away for enemy. That would help in 1-live game type of icycalm. You still have to fight again, and if you dont have nowhere to go, you will lose anyway.

But it should be hard cored option that is only possible sometimes, like, once for 3-10 rounds, so teams dont overuse it.

Also, orange color for Prometheans pls! At least that what I want

b

While i love the idea, we will have to scrap it for the first season because we don't have any firm way of moniteringthat right now, and we need to get this off the ground first

I would vote for a small scale, manageable initial implementation that we can expand upon. +1

If we shoot too big to start with it will simply never happen.

How about we host this as a a single day event on a small galactic map and see how it plays out with a limited number of players. 1 Life per player type deal. Clan leaders get to make the strategic choices of who moves where, after the galactic moves stage the games are played. On conclusion we move to next round of moves by clan leaders and so on.

I really want this to happen. Are there some people working on it? PM me if there's anything I can do to help, like sit around in the IRC and tell people what to do or something.

Yes there are people working on it, I would like to get a small season going if possible, form up teams of three and let me know via PM your team members. We need to get something organized so we can gauge what needs to change

*Insert rallying cry here*!!!!!

Well once we have some details I'm sure Promethean will enter at least one team, likely 2 if we're only talking 3's...

We'd need to know how many games are involved and approximate dates though to ensure we can actually make the games (and can the teams of 3 have reserve players?).

more than 1. Thats up to you, mind if I join your TS to hash things out a little?