Orc vs Human Battlefield

Something that always seemed off to me has been the jump from the towns around Tradeholm to Tesh. This two groups have been waring each other for a while ,yet there is no constant battlefield. Manny and I months back where mulling over this and came up with the idea to make a persistent battlefield. Much of it was based off of this mod (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=5939).

The general idea would be the two factions are (for the most part) infinitely spawning on either end of the battlefield and are an equal force (so one wont over take the other without PC help). PC's can jump in and help either side in the battle making it a very interesting place for PVP mixed with PVE if people choose so. Like the control points in the mod above either team can push forward and have more spawn points closer to the enemies camp. The more allies you have on the control point the faster it is captured. The battle itself (for server lag purposes) could be turned on and off at the entrance of the field. This same mechanism could also be used to control who's team you are on and the lvl of the enemies/allies (so that any lvl group can partake in the battle). If you want to get really strategic you could control how many of each type of troop you want at a time on your side (fighter, archer, caster). The battleground would make a great way to run little events which could be adjusted easily. For player that don't wish to be part of the battle a side route on the field could be made to get them across safely or to be used to simply watch.

Anyway just an idea lemme know what you guys and gals think.

*Oh it would also be a great place for the siege engines to see more use

This is a very nice idea. Could be inserted between Forth Morth and that little town. Never did make sense why a little town had no defense against an Orc Fort.

I suggested something similar few months ago. Mainly dealing with it being a timed event (something that only goes on for a couple hours a day.) So instead of it being a constant thing happening (Lagging all day long) it could only go on for a few hours a day.

An alternative to the control points (I'd imagine you would have to script all that) You could have a kill count for the event. The database could keep track of how many units were killed for each side. The side that gets the most kills wins the battle and a small reward (small xp reward to all those in the area. And the hero's names announced to the server.)

If keeping track like that would be hard then you could add in a way for players to type "event join" in the chat and then on forward each enemy faction member they kill is counted. Then at the end of the set time for the event every player that type joined has their kill count added to the total kills.

I do like this idea. I do have to say that all day might not be a good idea... as lag might become an issue. Another thing that might be considered is having a DM command to halt the thing altogether to free up 'lag space' for DM events...

Having just a kill count would make it much easier to put together. Battlefield wise it would make more RP sense to (wait so people just appear around that flag...whoa).

Also something else interesting. Having it kill count based encourages not only mass killing (the fun part) ,but also healing NPC's (gasp what is this using healing spells on others?).

Alll excellent points.

I like the kill count idea as it would lend the feel of 'attrition' to the battle.... lose too many troops.... lose the battle. Rather than tracking how many 'kills' each member of a faction tallies up.... I think it might be better to track 'losses' instead.... this would allow for things like accidental 'friendly fire' to make an impact. Kill too many of your own allies and you risk losing, etc.

Also, with a good layout, it would definitely be a great place for the seige engines to come into play.

I think the battle would be best to have a method of starting that is manual, by either player or DM. Maybe select an NPC on either side of the battle (which would determine which side they wish to fight for) and enter a VC command and then a script would announce to battle starting to the server, give a delay message so people get a chance to come over and join while the armies begin massing.

There should definitely be a limit on how often the battles can be fought, in order to keep server load down.... say no more often than every 3 real life hours. Set a time limit on the battles as well so if a player starts a battle and logs off, gets disconnected, etc.... the battle would end on its own soon after.

One practical issue is the temptation for casters to toss AoE spells when so many enemies are massed together. It might require making the spawns more spread out, so that there are skirmishes in multiple places rather than one mass of carnage.... say no more than 8 NPC members of each side at any point along the battle line.

Killing members of your own side should also have more consequence than just affecting troop reserves... it should penalize any rewards given at the end, and even have a chance of turning allies hostile.

Yes a big spread out field of spawns should limit the abuse of AOE spells some what. As for starting the event it could have a vote system to initiate it or perhaps an npc at the entrance could have dialog to start it. This way it could be limited.

Limiting the NPCs on the battlefield could work greatly. Like what Dave suggests, having 8 NPCs per faction in each spread out spawned group would reduce the AOE and lag. The database could store the starting troop count and subtract from it each time a unit dies. So every loss it spawns another NPCs (Saves on lag instead of spawning tons of NPCs at one time). You could restrict how many are on the field this way too.

When the troop count of a faction reaches zero the battle/event ends.

Should be simple to do if not overly time consuming. Only thing about making this event would be using more then a few resources.

Sounds like an awesome idea! I'd love to see something like this in Aenea...