To tell you the truth I didn't have much worth saving, maybe 10 pages of notes tops. I wrote something out the other night on siege warfare. Here it is, tho I warn you it's a bit wordy.

Massive Survival Roleplying Game
1 STRATEGY GAME
In the past “Sandbox MMO” and “PVP MMO” have been used pretty much interchangeably. While this couldn’t be any further from the truth early attempts at Sandbox MMOs have been so damaging to the reputation of the Sandbox that it’s only now in 2015, almost 20 years after the launch of Ultima Online that AAA developers are starting to again take interest in the Sandbox genre.

When we’re talking about a Survival Sandbox, we’re talking about a game where opposing players take possession of your survival gear on your passing, but Survival Sandboxes have to be more than online deathmatches to be considered Sandbox games. Even the earliest sandbox games have offered players some form of territorial control, though the implementations have been imposing and awkward, never quite fitting in naturally with the rest of the game.

The implementation of player housing will determine how your game is played. If destruction is allowed then players will destroy any house left unprotected just because they can. If real estate is invulnerable then the entire game-world will be littered with houses, and any suspension of belief in the game will be broken. The answer to this problem comes from a genre that’s perhaps much more familiar to us, RTS games. While RTS games can play out in many ways, the scenerio that players would want to implement in an MMO would be the "construct and counter" strategy.

In an RTS game owners of various territories will either be allied or at war with other territories. It is the commander’s goal to simultaneously protect their property and that of their allies and to destroy that of their enemies at the same time. This task isn’t as simple as it sounds, players tend to “turtle” that is they construct defensive structures around their cities that make all out assaults on their city a very costly exercise-- as long as the defender has resources it is virtually impossible for them to loose. Simply put, a player city with ample resources should not defeatable, period. This is an interesting concept for Survival RPGs because it eliminates one of the most loathed aspects of these type of games, the 3AM raid.

In absence of the “zerg rush” (which will be a valid strat employed on budding hostile-provinces), the focus of the RTS then tends to hang on the outcome of skirmishes around the rest of the map. Players are not strong enough to overcome eachother on their own, BUT, if they manage to expand and acquire more resources and territory they can successfully siege one another. In an RTS the outcome tends to depend on the “micro management skills” and strategy employed by the commander, but in an RPG the outcome would instead be the skill and unit cohesion of the individual players. The success of a campaign in a Survival RPG hangs not only the player’s ability to patrol and protect their own citizens and resources, but also to successfully raid their enemies, to keep them from acquiring more resources, to kill their worker units and force their enemy to expend resources restoring their infrastructure. The guild or clan that can both do and negate the most damage while simultaneously creating the most wealth eventually wins.

I say “eventually” wins because guild/clan warfare is intended to be an epic event, not something decided in the midnight hours of a weekend. Unlike an RTS that can last either 10 minutes or a couple of hours a war in a Survival RPG should extend over weeks, months or even years. The battles may be familiar, but the war should be truly epic. They are wars between not only the players but also between economies, statesmen and ideas. Senators will spend gathered resources on replacing both combat and worker structures and units. Generals will assign units to players (captains) or place those units on patrol routes and implement strategy on how to react to invaders, overwhelming or defending against attackers depending on the amount threat. Invaders will raise farms and scout resource nodes for unprotected structures or units. And while they may have the “3AM advantage” for a day or a weekend that is likely to change over the course of a war.

In times of peace resource nodes and player cities will serve as trade hubs. In the lack of instant travel or universal banking there will be gold to be made moving excess goods to an area that values them as an import. In fact, this is part of the end-game. Though, you might not want to make the runs alone, aside from lawless players NPC bandits will take note of popular trade routes. Though risking a personal shipment won’t always be necessary, escorting merchants from capitals to your clan’s city and back will provide much needed supplies and favor to your clan which will help your leaders garner military and labor recruits.

Last edited by Bleakwise; 10/04/14 05:57 PM.
--The difference between Communism and Fascism is predicated on whether one hates one's self or "the "other."