Click here to read the previous dev blog (#6) - Province Attributes
Welcome to the seventh experimental plugin development blog, where I discuss a suite of custom plugins being developed for our rather secret gamemode, provisionally called "CampaignWar" (CW). Today, we discuss the latest plugin in this line, Border Raids and Naval Battles. These are partly based on assaults on Nations, so I recommend familiarising yourself with them before reading on.
Border Raids
Border raids can be thought of as a variant of the PvP assaults on Nations. There are, however, significant differences. Chief among them is where raids take place: in provinces that border enemy provinces, rather than preset regions.
When a nation begins a border raid on a neighbouring enemy province, capture points will generate inside it. One will generate where the attacker began the raid from. The others will generate in random locations; they may even generate inside the province's town.
Here you can see capture points flags: one to the left of me (highlighted), and another to my right (in the river).
The capture points are highlighted by beacons and a particle border that outlines the cap zone. Stand inside the cap zone to capture the point. The beacon and particles will change colour depending on who controls the point. For example, if it is red, that means the enemy controls it.
If you get lost, you can right-click a compass. The compass will point towards a cap point; the action bar will tell you the point's name and relative distance. Keep right-clicking to cycle through the cap points.
Since capture points can generate inside the province's town, the town becomes vulnerable to PvP and explosions just as it does during a war, and attackers can place ladders and scaffolding inside it. But, of course, any damage is rolled back after the raid concludes.
Another difference between Nations assaults and PvP raids is that kills do not contribute points - only capping does - and Movecraft can participate. The idea is for raids to be strategic more so than contests of pure PvP.
As for travelling to raids, this is where TownyBuildings comes in. You can build a War Camp building and assign it to an allied nation to let them deploy to your town if it is under attack. It also works for wars, not just raids.
Naval Battles
Recall that there are two types of provinces: land and ocean. Ocean provinces are fought over in naval battles. You can think of each ocean province being a Nations Movecraft assault region, although the "assault" mechanics are obviously different as we shall see.
You can attack an ocean province if you control an adjacent province. This can be either a land province (e.g. a coastal town in your nation) or another ocean province that you have captured. Control of ocean provinces is important during wars, as they enable you to begin attacks on adjacent enemy land provinces.
A nation captured the ocean province through a naval battle, hence it being shaded.
When a naval battle begins, a maximum of three capture points will generate in the attacked ocean province and its adjacent ocean provinces (regardless of who controls these). Capture the cap points using ships to earn points. Using multiple ships will speed up the capture process as each ship contributes capture progress - albeit up to a limit, so that a few ships are sufficient to achieve the maximum rate of capture progress.
The flags represent cap points; the circles denote their cap zones. In reality, they will be wider.
The boundary of each cap zone is helpfully marked by a particle border, which is again coloured depending on its status.
Here, the cap zone and beacon is green because our side controls their associated cap point. Again, remember that the cap zone on the actual server will be wider than what is shown.
Like enemy kills in border raids, sinking enemy ships will not earn you points — but it is still helpful. Sinking enemy ships inside the cap zone will gain you cap progress. But it also works the other way: if the enemy sinks one of your ships inside the cap zone, you will lose cap progress.
Conclusion
Of all the dev blogs posted so far, this is the one most liable to major change before or after release. There are still many details that need to be worked out, such as the exact rewards from these modes of conflict and when they should take place (the latter will likely involve vulnerability windows). Unfortunately, starting a new job has significantly slowed down my progress on this - as well as the server in general - but I hope to get back on track sooner rather than later. Feel free to leave a reply if you have any questions, comments or concerns.
Last edited: 4 days ago x 3
