Introduction
You’ve been tasked by one of the factions of the war seas to hold a fortification, as you arrive at the island there’s nothing but fog on the horizon. Your crew disembarks from your ship to man the cannons at the island, Morden and Iris standing back as they haven’t quite decided what to do yet.
Just as you’re trying to plan what exactly to do, any thought of doubt is cast from your mind as you see silhouettes in the mist, and they’re not coming from the direction you came from.
They sure as hell aren’t happy about you being here, and will try to remove you from this place by any means necessary.
Warning : This suggestion focuses on moral alignments, faction relations, story quests, quests, and whether slaughtering retreating soldiers or surrendering soldiers is considered immoral in the War Seas.
The Idea
Bringing the experience of being negative reputation to the commoner, with ships docking at shore and crews disembarking with intent to end your life.
I’ll also be trying to integrate faction relations and your… “morality” ( whether you’re Merciful or Relentless ) into all of this, so bare with me!
Also, some extra quest variation.
I’ll be elaborating more on invasions, but they’ll be a hell of a lot different.
SIEGES
“You’ll pry this island and its fortifications from my cold, dead, hands.”
There would be two main reasons you’d be in a quest involving undergoing siege, either it being a story quest or a sidequest.
I won’t try to specify which is which, but you can just come to your conclusions.
But first, some basic things that carry over between both.
Basic Siege Mechanics
After docking at the island, your crew disembarks off your ship and gets to the cannons of the fortifications, unless the fortifications themselves are already occupied by the other faction.
In that case, just kick them out. ( Through violent means. Or… potentially peaceful ones ( Like convincing them to surrender and letting them go. ) )
The fortifications have their own standard ammunition, but you can order your crew to use your own.
When the enemy arrives, some of their ships have explosive barrels ( unless there’s already some perfectly fine ones lined up with the wall of your fort. )
They will attempt to offload these next to your walls to bust into the fort.
They’ll also try to force open other entrances, such as locked/blocked off doors.
Your fort can take damage in ways other than this, namely cannonfire.
But this does direct damage to the fort, not just make new entrances.
If the fort runs out of durability, the cannons cease to work.
The fort cannons work like fort Talos cannons, except this time you’re not being shot by them.
You can repair the fort’s durability during downtime, or during story quests Morden/Iris will usually take care of that. ( Probably Morden, let’s be honest. )
Backup Delay Sieges
Backup’s coming, you just have to hold out.
( Concept of what the top bar would look like )
A health bar appears up top, like it would for boss fights. Instead showing a time limit.
This is how long you have to hold out for.
During this time, the island will be swarmed by enemy crews, captains, and quartermasters disembarking off their ships. Just fend them off and hold out.
Continuation
“It wasn’t enough.”
After holding out, you can either finish up… or take up some extra challenge.
Cruel Pursuit ( Relentless )
You pursue the remaining enemy forces and several more ships appear in the mist, shooting these down will result in them giving you 1-2 sealed chests, apart from the flagship.
Sinking it guarantees you 4 sealed chests. ( With flagship I mean just the heaviest and largest ship in this engagement… )
Of course, the ships and crews will be stronger than they were before.
You slaughter the flagship’s entire crew, captain, and quartermaster.
You don’t find a key to the fort’s treasury among the bodies you looted.
He probably threw it into the ocean out of spite.
Tactical Regroup ( Merciful )
You hold strong for a second assault, now with the extra aid of allied forces. Ships and crew will be stronger. You just have to hold until the last. After the dust settles, the flagship, its captain, the crew, and the quartermaster seem just about ready to accept their fate.
You instead offer to let them go if they give you the key to the treasury of the fort, which coincidentally the captain has.
They sail off and you enjoy your loot.
Difficulty Elaboration & Moral Alignment
The tactical regroup would have 2-3x more enemies, to balance the amount of loot you get.
Loot will be sealed chests and a bunch of chests.
The aid from the backup is more to deal with the ships, than to deal with the crew.
Having to fight as one against several ships is also pretty difficult and being stranded at sea can be pretty punishing, however you’re not being swarmed.
That’s why I’d say the balance between Relentless and Merciful here would be about the same.
Same for the reward, by the way. Both get the same reward ( unless you don’t sink all the ships when chasing them down and just board each of them instead )
You don’t need to be the specific moral alignment in order to pick the decision though.
Though going through with said decision for said moral alignment will result in it swinging more towards that moral alignment. ( Make the moral alignment less than a “Kill? YES/NO” and make it dynamic, based on the player’s decisions. )
Faction Elaboration
Slaughtering an entire crew and its captain isn’t a good way to establish relations with another faction.
If your relations with certain kingdoms aren’t just because of the story, but also sometimes by the player’s actions.
Relentless option would result in a significant decrease in favourability, not Continuing would be a slight decrease, and Merciful would be a slight increase to no change.
Morale Sieges
Break their resolve.
(Concept of Morale Bar, also shows all sieges will have the same bar decoration)
Until the morale bar is depleted, the island will be under a continuous assault.
You deplete the morale bar by not taking much damage, killing a lot of enemies, sinking ships, slaughtering captains, et cetera.
After morale is depleted, the enemy will surrender.
No more boats will spawn.
You get 4 options.
Let them go.
Take them prisoner.
SLAUGHTER THEM.
“Let your high command know they should send more.”
The fourth option is taunting them. This’ll lead to a relentless assault.
RELENTLESS ASSAULT
( Concept of Relentless Assault, with the wave displayed in the top left, the wave timer in the bottom left, and the number on the health bar displaying how many enemies are left. )
Relentless assault is basically the siege’s endless mode, ships coming in by the dozen and crews disembarking off them. The wave timer always starts a new wave, doesn’t matter if you killed them all or not.
If the wave’s a higher number, it’ll obviously be more difficult.
The only way to get out of relentless assault is by ringing a bell at the center of the fort after clearing a wave before the wave timer hits zero. Then you have a time window ( Maybe three minutes or a minute, dunno. ) to get your loot ( Sealed chests and regular chests usually, with multiple sealed chests being for later waves. )
After this time window, a huge armada shows up in the distance.
Your objective at this point is to GET OUT OF HERE.
The panic you should feel when you see the armada should be ten times the amount you felt after realizing its not just one sailboat Ravenna is sending after you.
Faction relations.
Faction relations won’t change as much on a morale siege as it would with a backup delay siege.
It’ll probably just be a minor decrease.
INVASIONS
I am a troublemaker on the war seas.
This should probably be limited to story quests/clan activities.
You’re basically invading a country, nobody should ask that of you at random.
Basic Invasion Mechanics
With invasions, you and your crew disembark from the ship. Your crew constantly following you, during story quests Morden and Iris will likely accompany you too ( and yeah they’ll use their abilities alright, but letting either of them die would result in instant failure. )
For Clan invasions? Eh, it’s not really a story quest. It’d take place in a seperate game too.
The stationary NPCs would despawn, apart from shopkeepers and such.
The place would be under lockdown with heavy military presence.
Every town would be a capture point with heavy enemy resistance.
Story Invasions
Invasions related to story wouldn’t appear in the Agora, and accordingly the story would sour your relations with the place you’re invading.
Either that or its just your job to remove all military presence ( through means of violence )
I don’t know, I haven’t thought as much of invasions as I have with sieges.
They won’t move toward you, as this would be part of the maingame.
Clan Invasions
Shop NPCs will also despawn here.
Clans invading places would take an ingame day to get underway, with it appearing in the Agora.
After the invasion begins, all invasions will be on a seperate page of the Agora where people can join to either spectate or participate.
The seperate place would be only the place being invaded, with enemy NPCs moving to your position to actually loosen your grip on the island. ( the reason its in a seperate game is BECAUSE PUTTING THIS IN THE MAINGAME IS EQUIVALENT TO ASKING FOR DYNAMIC NPCS. )
( it would be laggy! nobody wants that! ITS ALREADY BAD ENOUGH SOMETIMES
MY SHIP DOESNT EVEN LET ME STEER so seperate game it is!)
You’ll only have one place on the island captured, and your job is to capture MORE.
Of course, clan invasions will have the enemy faction’s presence be a lot more significant, with stronger soldiers.
After capturing every place and eliminating the opposing military presence ( if you take too long, more will spawn in at places yet claimed. ) , your clan’s infamy will increase and your clan’s relations with that faction will decrease.
Unless that isn’t gonna be a thing and in that case let me chime in.
Faction Relations
Depending on how much of a nuisance you are to a certain faction, you can have different relations to them. So you could be a nuisance to Ravenna, to Keraxe, to Sameria, etc.
You’ll be able to see your faction relations somewhere ( haven’t thought about it yet ).
Probably some place on the map though, you can click the faction that a place is under protection of and be able to see your relation to them.
Or it’s a completely seperate thing in the map tab, like you have to press a button and it shows your faction relations.
I don’t know.
Clan Relations with Factions.
If you’re part of a clan, your relation with factions outside of story will be slightly influenced by your clan’s relation with that faction.
So even if FOR INSTANCE : Your clan is an absolute nuisance to Keraxe. You can not be a nuisance, but your faction relations will still be slightly influenced by that.
CREDITS
Armor Games, for the inspiration for the Morale System with their Warfare 1917 and Warfare 1944 ( both are good flash games, check em out. Warfare Online’s broken, and I don’t even know if it has morale. )
Obsidian Entertainment for Fallout New Vegas, for the slight inspiration for the faction relations thing. Faction relations are just a bit more a “why is this not a thing” tbh.
Tour De Pizza, but more specifically the composers Mr. Sauceman, ClascyJitto(Frostix) and POST ELVIS for Thousand March.
Devolver Digital, but more specifically the composer Carpenter Brut for Le Perv
Bluddly on YouTube for mashing up the aforementioned tracks, ( nah really it does sound good )
tbh the mashup kinda got me in the inspirational mood to just go “hey, what if we were the guys at fort talos fending off an opposing faction”
Forums Admin @Meta for making it so suggestions mains have less of an urge to jump off a bridge.
No seriously this is a nice quality of life change!
( not been confirmed to be implemented on the forums YET. )
these are probably the weirdest credits for an ao suggestion, I KNOW. apart from meta
postwriting
I’ve had these ideas in my head for the entire schoolday regarding sieges, I had the idea at like 8 am BUT NO REAL OUTLET FOR WHERE TO WRITE EM BECAUSE ME LAPTOP GOT REVOKED SO I COULDNT EVEN MAKE A FORUM POST UNTIL I GOT HOME
whatever its alr
i have no real idea what most of the invasion stuff would look like, but i have a pretty good idea about the sieges. that’s also why there’s so little concept stuff about invasions, legit no idea.
also i would be HEAVILY BIASED IF I WERE TO RATE MY OWN SUGGESTION!
so you guys do it instead
kthxbai
stupid ideas post : Stupid Ideas Volume 5. Sieges
previous suggestion : Regarding Deckhands : Rewritten
