Fortress Lords and their mechanics

[engharat]

I agree with a change in current Dwarf forts - defenders should defend the Lord, not the upstair Keg that makes the lord immune. Going through a two-ramp stairs is clearly worse than going through a door. We know that the mechanic was already there, but since explicitly explained the defending faction is exploiting it with too great success, and very little fun.
I suggest to remove any Lord immunity, so that people must defend the Lord himself, and to widen the doors, so that a true battle will decide who will win, instead of a sad door siege.

[wonshot]

I mean if we look at the last set of changes to fortresses, we saw the addition of Levers added on bottomfloor posterns, to give the attackers an other entry option instead of the single funnel point maingate. With the Keg spawning on 3rd floor, that means the attackers only have a narrow set of steps to push into.

Not only that, they have to break LoS on a Zig-Zag staircase, while assigning some of their force to handling an angry lord.

Move the keg to bottomfloor, and I would argue the levers are propperly back in "play" (right now they are ignored as bottom floor is deemed too hard to defend), and the defenders can even stand a decent chance with this bottomfloor keg after a succesful jailbreak, as the attackers need to hold lord under control while holding bottomkeg area, so more manpower should be assigned on preventing jailbreaks.

These days succesful jailbreaks often does mean anything but just going back to the attackers in full control of lordroom with morale ready, not even caring if the jailbreak happends as pushing into a lordroom against morales AND at the risk of not being ressable +jailtime is too high risk for most uncordinated forces.

Just my 2cent.

[Vanmeldebrecht]

If attackers life is made harder by default, they should get better rewards from the gecko.

Like give additionally 4 inv. tokens for opening the fort. Otherwise sooner or later ppl will not push for opening fort anymore and who can blame them if u do the work to open additional content and face up to 45min of being funneled?

On a more general remark on fortress mechanics, Order and Destruction have different strengths on large scale fights, e.g. Order likes to funnel while Destruction likes to utilize their range and mobility as they cant out dps BW bombs (dont get me wrong I enjoy the differences, not having every **** being mirrored).

Thus, in my opinion, mirroring the fort mechanics is not the way to go if u want to balance forts, instead
e.g. make the attackers being able to use their strength properly and in contrast allow for more defenders.

[Lithenir]

If attackers life is made harder by default, they should get better rewards from the gecko.

Like give additionally 4 inv. tokens for opening the fort. Otherwise sooner or later ppl will not push for opening fort anymore and who can blame them if u do the work to open additional content and face up to 45min of being funneled?

This would just lead to the following. One faction opens fort and gets 4 inv. defenders start defendig with 120 vs 40 attackers at max while the rest of the "attacking" realm continues to open the other forts cause most of the defenders sitting in fort to get enough contribution for bag roll.... I had that on live long enough, don't need that here.

[Ototo]

(...)
On a more general remark on fortress mechanics, Order and Destruction have different strengths on large scale fights, e.g. Order likes to funnel while Destruction likes to utilize their range and mobility as they cant out dps BW bombs (dont get me wrong I enjoy the differences, not having every **** being mirrored).

Thus, in my opinion, mirroring the fort mechanics is not the way to go if u want to balance forts, instead
e.g. make the attackers being able to use their strength properly and in contrast allow for more defenders.

Sure. Destro never funnel. At all. What happens is that if the Choppas leave the walls, the walls will crumble. They just happen to press AoE skills cause they are bored, and kill anyone entering the door out of pure mistake... and let's not forget the poor Sorcs, trying to make fireworks so the choppas don't bore, and sadly killing people... when these tragedies are gonna end!?! When!?!

I have never seen a Choppa pulling inside a funnel, I swear!!! What happened was that the KotBS was so happy to see something green, that had to jump to hug it inside the lord room. Then the SM saw her KotBS friend sleeping in the floor and was wondering if she could take a nap too, and the Choppa noticed the situation and helped the poor SM doubts out...

Oh, come on, stop. I play both sides: Same strategies apply, with zero differences, in order and destro. Quite the opposite happen to be with funnels in fact, cause if a destro keep is going down, all and its mother of Choppas and Sorcs appear in the defensive warband all of a sudden and from every other zone and content. I have seen this countless times. In order is less usual, but still very usual. Both sides have exactly the same players, I remind you that.

[Aurandilaz]

Honestly, I'd probably remove the whole jail mechanic and create 3-5 random respawn areas for defenders during later stages.
And the merge stage 2 and stage 3. Jails are feeling obsolete, it's all about the lord room funnel.
New s2+s3; 5 outer flags in play, 4 inner flags inside the actual fort structure in play, 1 at bottom, 1 at real top, 1 at forward balcony and 1 rear balcony. To a total of 9 flags.
9 tiered "flag buffs to Lord"
1-3 defender flags controlled - Lord takes normal dmg and does not heal, 3 flags +10% more dmg taken, 2 flags +20% dmg taken, 1 flag +30% dmg taken
4-6 defender flags controlled - Lord starts taking less and less dmg, 4 flags 0 dmg modifier, 5 flags -10% less dmg taken, 6 flags -20% dmg taken and X-number regen per sec
7-9 defender flags controlled - Lord takes abysmal dmg and keeps regening faster, 7 flags -30% dmg taken n*X-regen increase, 8 flags -40% dmg and even more regen, 9 flags and -50% dmg and ever faster HP regen.


You would have a mainforce fighting over Lord area, but with each flag also counting towards the general fort process and actually matter - establishing dominance over 5 already established flags, and the 4 new flags at the fort structure itself.
Both attacker and defender would need to spread and not just create "blob this" "blob that" piles for s3 end funnelfest.
While the majority would be probably busy still doing same old Lord room funnels and fighting over the inner flags, players that cannot really do much at funnels could still be a deciding factor in fighting over the flags outside. So maybe you end with 60 people vs 60 people at funnel locations, and another 50v50 doing skirmishing of various scales at the outer areas.
Assuming competency on both sides, you would always be hovering between 4-6 flags per side which allows somewhat normal Lord fight and eventual win if the defenders don't play properly and organized enough.

[empmoz]

The keg mechanic on dwarf fort is way too easy to defend; the narrow ramp leading up is hard for players to push up (no LOS for healers/ranged, and its narrow so a lot of body blocking), and is easily spammable with AOE attacks. It's no longer a fort defense, you just have to hold that tiny ramp to win.

[Devonya]

I think moving the keg to the second or first floor could help alleviate the problem, or even adding an additional ramp to the third floor (perhaps to the balcony from the outside) to give attackers a way to flank. Having a single tiny ramp that barely one player can fit up while being nuked by 50 AoE DPS is a nightmare. I don't know if I would call it exploiting by the defenders, but it is definitely cheese-ing the system and a design flaw of the keg's location.

I'm at the point to where I won't even attend Stonewatch anymore. The only way you can take it is to attack during off hours when there is very little defenders on. However, if there is more than like 50-60 defenders up there you are not getting in. Yesterday we pushed Stonewatch like 3 or 4 times and had coordination with morale bombs, and we just couldn't even get up the ramp. Something needs changed.

[madrocks]

Dear Staff,
That Keg on the 3rd floor in Dwarf/Greenskin Forts is the worse mechanic test so far.
It tops the increase of aoe count to 24 people. It is so **** that I have barely words for it.

If the defending realm uses 2 properly placed Stickyfeets/Mistress of the Marsh on the ramp combined with the collision, a pushing attacker warband has the defensive morals run out even before reaching the top of the ramp.

It's a deathtrap by design, and you know it. Impossible to win those forts as an attacker. There is to many people standing in the way, you have to make those ramps way wider or you scrap/change that mechanic the way it is.

What about those levers on the bottom postern? They have no use anymore.

[Goliathus]

There is a way of breaking the funnel on 3rd (Keg room) In dwarf/Orc forts, I know exactly how, as I was the one who organized Order to funnel 3rd room. Thus I know the weakness of it. Instead of just asking the Dev's to "fix" anything that is remotely challenging, try and put your heads together and come up with strategies and tactics.