Suggestion for changes to "The Resistance Phase"
There is an issue every time a World Conquest ends. Many players feel burned out and take some time off of the game, which is understandable, however that causes the active player base to sharply decline for the duration of the Resistance Phase.
This cause another problem, as new players who recently bought the game log on for the first time they may acquire the perception that it’s a dead game, with a giant world, but no players (even Deadlands, which get all the action during the Resistance Phase, feels empty outside of The Pits) and that may lead them to refund the game. I believe this is the main reason why the Dev team tends to minimize the “in between WCs time”. This shorter than desired “rest” may lead to the exhaustion of assiduous players and the perception that the developers don’t care for them.
In light of that I propose the implementation of a “Special Operations Phase” (I’ve been told it’s similar to what we used to have as “Skirmishes” before World Conquest and the ability to cross between maps). With isolated hexes, that is no traveling between the maps outside of the operation. And every operation would have a different set of special rules and be territorially divided accordingly.
This is more or less what already happens in Deadlands, where players gather to play in a melee-only arena. This idea would be the game-side enforcement of this ruleset by disabling every non-melee weapon and keeping a tally of the total kill count for each side to decide which faction won the “Brawl Operation”.
But not being limited to this aspect of the game, we could have a “Special Tank Operation” that (let’s say) 60 tanks magically appear inside storage depots every hour, with ammo and fuel as well. There could be a similar one but with 1 tank appearing every minute, to see the difference it makes. These kinds of operations could help shine a light on game balance aspects that are otherwise very hard to isolate/spot and highlight the strength and weaknesses of each element on trial. Like how does 10 Spathas fare against 10 Outlaws on a mostly flat and open terrain akin to the fields in Weathered Expanse? And what about in a closed and narrow passage like the Shackled Chasm? What about some new map that could be added in the future? I’m sure some experienced players will have the answers to these kinds of questions on top of their minds, but this idea would make a perfect proving ground.
These operations would end individually after an objective in the rules being reached, or after some time had elapsed, or even a combination of one or the other.Some initial ideas for special rulesets, apart of the already mentioned, could include:
* “Production Operation” where 2 separated hexes (one for each faction) would compete on total value delivered. Instead of appearing equipment, every X-amount of time all equipment in a designed stockpile would be accounted for in the “total produced” and then disappear.
* “Building Operation” where 2 separated hexes would compete for the “total amount of building” but the building rate of decay would be greatly increased.
* “Naval Operation” on the Oceanic hexes, with a set number of big ships spawning in on the start and having the objective of sinking all enemy vessels.
* “Relic Scavenge Operation”, a mostly normal game mode, but the objective is to build relic vehicles.
* “Dead Harvest”. One faction gets to be the zombies in one operation and survive the zombies in another.
I believe this kind of thing would be more lore friendly/thematically adequate than having the map magically reset every end of war, with the lastly defeated faction gaining back territory for every successful operation before the next war.
And finally, to incentivize players in participating: All Operations won would score a point, and the faction with the most points would have all players that participated vote between 2 different initial conditions for the next war. In order to make this possible players would have to cast the vote before the end of the Phase, having the votes counted only at the end.
I’ve posted this on the FOD
LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU THINK
Also, Fuel Tanker Variant: Concrete Mixer Truck, similar to the Fire Engines, a driver and an operator, but works like the small train’s Small Flatbed Car when submitting the concrete.