Suggestion: Toggle pvp off for all peaceful town residents.

[GeneralDarian]

Basically, what the title says. My idea would be to have this as an option in the config. And of course, pvp would be enabled for everyone in arena plots.

Peaceful town residents can enter the wilderness without fear of being attacked, but players that want to pvp will be more encouraged to join towns that are not toggled as peaceful. Similarly, if someone wants to go around and kill random people, they can't turn on peaceful mode, and thus are able to be sieged.

[Goosius1]

• As written, this suggestion would be problematic, because it would enable peaceful residents to wander (slowly but immortally) around siegezones, maybe destroying walls or disabling traps.
• I worry also about other trolling potentials.
• That said, I'm not adverse to giving peaceful residents a little more protection.
• A decent compromise could be to allow them to always keep inv on death. I'd recommend at least some equipment degrade though, maybe 10%.

[Goosius1]

• @GeneralDarian Can you re-evaluate pls, and indicate how you want to proceed.

[GeneralDarian]

That won't really solve the problem of peaceful towns being able to terrorize any town/nation they wish, and completely get away with it. Disabling pvp would force them to use other methods to kill random people which would take longer, be more expensive, etc.

"As written, this suggestion would be problematic, because it would enable peaceful residents to wander (slowly but immortally) around siegezones, maybe destroying walls or disabling traps. I worry also about other trolling potentials."

But peaceful towns cannot do this anyway due to war allergy? I'm not saying that all damage should be disabled for peaceful residents, just PvP damage.

If possible, this could be toggled in the config...?

[Goosius1]

• Ok this is getting clearer now
• So its not that peaceful players are being bullied, rather that they are the ones doing the bullying
• How about a combination of:
  • Turning off outgoing PVP damage (thus preventing the ones who are trolling from harassing people)
  • Allowing them to keep-inv with degrade if killed (thus allowing the genuinely peaceful ones to go into wilderness without fear of losing lots of stuff on death

?

[GeneralDarian]

Yes, that would be great!

[Goosius1]

• Ok cool, so, we have a technical solution which might work (as above)
• However, its important to understand that adding any new feature comes with a cost in terms of maintenance, and also makes the system even more complicated than it already is, impacting usability for everyone. So its not free to do this.
• Thus, before rushing to implement something, I want to know if there are solutions already available.
• For example, the issue as described, is that peaceful towns are terrorizing towns and nations.
  • What exactly is the manner of this terrorization ?
  • i.e. what exactly are they doing?

[GeneralDarian]

Well, right now a town occupied an area that another nation claimed, and that town marked themselves as peaceful. Normally that wouldn't be an issue but that town is going around and killing members of the nation in the wilderness, and it doesn't really seem fair as the nation can't retaliate and siege their town as a result - it really feels like the peaceful town has an advantage over the non-peaceful town.

In addition, there have been some issues with players killing random people in the past (regardless of what nation they are in), and in theory they could join or create a peaceful town and continue doing so. By allowing the town to become siegeable it would force them to always be susceptible to facing the consequences and being sieged by, for example, a nation that is unhappy with their/allied citizens being killed.

[Goosius1]

• Ok thanks, I'll ponder on this a bit more and I'm sure we can find a solution.

[Goosius1]

Btw I think the previous technical solution I proposed could be problematic: i.e. Iteration 1

Turn off outgoing PVP damage from peaceful players Allow peaceful players them to keep-inv with degrade

Issues/Problems:

1. Its a bit complex and wordy to explain
2. I can see a warning being required not to set the degrade to less than the siege zone inventory degrade, to avoid the exploit of these players being used as mules to carry supplies into siegezones.
3. The keep-env is pretty powerful. Even if a player is not involved in a siege, they can walk more easily into sieged towns e.g. to trade. Thus if the rest of the server doesn't already have keep-inv, this may statistically cause a lot of towns to flip to peaceful (which a server might not want).

Iteration 2

• Updated effects to fix issue 2:
  • Turn off outgoing PVP damage from peaceful players
  • Allow peaceful players them to keep-inv with degrade
  • Keep-env does not apply in siegezones
• Obviously now though, this is a real mess of complexity

Iteration 3

• Updated effects:
  • Turn off incoming & outgoing PVP for peaceful players
  • Effect is disabled in siegezones
• Now this is more like it:
  • It is good on issue 1 - it is pretty simple
  • It is good on issue 2 - special siegezone interference is prevented.
  • It is good on issue 3 - because although it is still powerful, the loss of it in all siegezones is a good mitigation.

Iteration 4 ?

• We'll let iteration 3 stew for a while.
• If nothing comes up, it could be a winner

[GeneralDarian]

I like Iteration 3 the most, as I feel like everyone would benefit from it.

Peaceful players do not have to worry about being attacked if they go into the wilderness. A person that joins the server and doesn't really want to focus on pvp can choose to join a peaceful town and would enjoy immunity from pvp, unless they enter a siege zone.

Non-peaceful players are happy that peaceful players cannot attack them. A person that joins the server and wants to focus on pvp would not be able to be immune from facing the consequences of attacking players from a specific nation, or attacking random players.

[Goosius1]

• I've been thinking a little more on Iteration 3, and I think it would be problematic
• Consider if a nation wants to march soldiers to a siege zone:
  • What better way to march than if the marching soldiers are all immune to harm ?
  • Thus a simple switch can be made, making the soldiers residents of a peaceful town within the nation
  • Thus the soldiers can them march safely towards the siegezone
  • When the troops get to their destination (perhaps a safe house just outside the siegezone), then they can be moved back into their own towns and their military ranks restored.
  • This exploit has a very valuable reward, is easy to do, and hard to moderate. I can guarantee nations will try this regularly, causing a server staff and other players all sorts of headaches.
• We need to rethink, and come up with Iteration 4.

[Goosius1]

• Generally speaking, if peaceful residents were to get any personal protection (such as PVP protection, or keep inv), then it seems this would be exploitable, by mayors transferring their soldiers temporarily to those towns while marching.
• Thus in terms of a code fix, I'm leaning more towards perhaps protecting their VICTIMS.
• Thus, Iteration 4:
  • if a peaceful town member kills someone, the victim keeps inventory
• Unfortunately, this iteration opens up a spawn exploit. This would affect servers with spawn cooldowns, or no spawning at all. It would work like this - simply join a town where you want to go, get yourself killed by a peaceful town member (you could even pay them for the service), and voila you get to your destination immediately with all your items, bypassing the intended spawn restrictions.

[Goosius1]

• Lets step back a bit here.
• Consider what nations do with real life nationless bandits:
  • Are the bandits truly discouraged by the knowledge that nations can find their camps/hideouts and burn them to the ground?
  • I really don't think so.
  • I think even if that happened they would simply set up a new one and continue looting and pillaging.
  • What real-life nations actually do, is use a police force to make the wilderness safe.
• Thus perhaps what you need too, is a law-enforcement solution, rather than a military one.
• Thus, Iteration 5:
  • A police force (called marshals perhaps), which knows how to use the core "map sneaking" feature.
  • Thus, a resident could be sent out into the wilderness in a sting operation, accompanied by map-sneaking guards.
  • Once the bandits show up, the marshals could leap into action, killing the bandits and taking their most valuable possessions, their god sets.
  • If the bandits tried to take shelter in a town, they could be sent to jail as appropriate to bandits, using the Towny outlaw feature
• I believe this is the best solution so far. Consider that real life nations struggle with this issue too, and you can appreciate why a solution is difficult.
  • The solution might be improvable further too:
    • The Towny outlaw feature is an appropriate mechanic to deal with criminals such as this group.
    • Perhaps that feature can be updated (with a new ticket on the Towny board), so that the jailing mechanic worked not just in the town, but actually in a certain radius around the homeblock.
    • If you go down this road, do make sure that an event is fired when an outlaw goes to jail, because that would want to be prevented by siegewar for soldiers in a siege zone.

[Goosius1]

Closing this ticket now.

Summary:

• Could not find a direct technical solution to the problem of bandits (from peaceful towns or even just small towns where plunder costs are negligible for the defenders).
• Recommend this be treated as a "law enforcement" problem rather than a "military" problem.
• Thus, as in real-life, police forces should be formed to patrol hotspots of bandit activity (using map-sneaking to ensure the bandits don't know where they are).
• If extra code support is still needed, recommend opening a ticket on the Towny board to expand the "outlaw" feature to extend to the wilderness near towns (and if so, be sure to add an event for the jailing).