Archived Factions Expansion (2nd Ed.)

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Mecharic

I'm tempermental, deal with it.
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At the suggestion of @Omnomivore, I am making an updated version of this thread for new review & comment, since the [old one] is nearly a year old now. The idea, however, is the same. I've even copy/pasted parts of it over because there's no reason to change them. In order from least important to most important, here's the updated thread:
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TL:WR - Add Cooldowns to prevent Relations Abuse, Empires to make politics more functional, add the ability to ignore Faction Notifications like claiming, and for the love of the Dark Banshee can we please get more faction ranks?!
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Relation Cooldowns
Much as the name implies, this would enforce a cooldown before relations could be changed by the faction that has changed the relation. This would prevent relation abuse by factions that ally others, then attack them from within their faction home. This would be able to function as an enforcement method in-game for ending wars (enemy to truce would have a 30 day cooldown before the one that sent out the truce request can enemy again) as well as prevent spamming factions with high-speed relation changes or requests, which can get very annoying. It would also make sense in character, as nations that enter peace with each other rarely went to war immediately after they entered peace, and relationships in the real world (during this age) tended to change slowly due to concepts of honor, integrity, and all those things the internet has forgotten (lol). Actual cooldown limits can be discussed in the thread.
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Ceasefire
A new relation, which has a 1-month cooldown, that is used for factions that have surrendered. The faction that proposes the ceasefire cannot terminate the ceasefire, the faction that accepts it can. Right now it is not possible to have a plugin-enforced ceasefire, only a staff-enforced one. This would change that. It would also make it possible for factions to know who they're enemies are among the truced without keeping a list.
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Empires
Empires is pretty simple in theory, probably a lot harder in code. It consists of the following:
  • Imperial Factions: Factions that are upgraded so that they can have true Subfactions. The price to this would be 2,000 regals for the upgrade. There would be no tax upgrade for Imperial Factions (unless normal factions go back down to .1r per chunk).
  • True Subfactions: Instead of subfactions being entirely up to the subfaction, this plugin would create true subfactions. They would be unable to decide their own faction relations, instead having the same allies, truced, and enemied factions as their Imperial faction. These factions would have a lower tax rate than normal factions, preferably half of what independent factions would pay.
  • Imperial Chat: This chat would be access via /c join I or i: and would allow subfactions and their Imperial faction to communicate outside of allied chats.
  • Imperial Tax: Subfactions would pay a tax out of their bank daily to the Imperial faction, no more than 20 regals.
  • Imperial Bank: A bank into which all taxes taken by the Imperial faction from Subfactions is sent. Any shortfalls in faction tax by the Imperial faction would be paid out of this bank. A permission would be added to allow the Imperial faction to withdraw the Imperial Bank (probably called "ImpBank").
This is mostly because I've always thought that there should be more groups of factions that are a coherent group rather than the loose collections that can exist now. With such a change as this, large scale wars would once again be possible, as would building massive empires and nations that, you know, actually work. Currently its just sorta... meh. Nonexistent. This is mostly just to add depth to factions overall and to give "Empires" an actual status in the game.
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Block Faction Updates
This is easily the most requested thing I have from my roleplayers. Whenever a faction claims, changes relations, changes name, or any other faction-based update, all players get a notification "You have claimed a chunk in so-and-so world." which cannot be blocked, ignored, or otherwise avoided by leaving a chat. Every time my faction wants to claim I either need to make sure nobody is online who roleplays or notify them all and then reinvite them afterwards so they can roleplay without interruption. This should be a blockable notification - something like "/f ignore notifications" to ignore faction stuff that spams screens.
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More Ranks:
This should be pretty easy to code, but naturally that means it'll be a pain to do so. The idea is to add more ranks to the faction plugin in order to allow more customized perms for players to have. This would result in the following ranks for all factions:
  1. Leader - The faction owner.
  2. Deputy - The faction owners most trusted player, probably having perms equal to the leader.
  3. Sheriff - A higher rank of officer that can handle all sorts of things.
  4. Officer - Lower rank of officer that would likely be given recruitment jobs or similar.
  5. Member - Used for people who are trusted, but not management trusted.
  6. Recruit - Generally used for new players or people that aren't trusted.
This would enable faction leaders to have more complex ranks, adding more layers of security into a faction. Currently, with only Leader, Officer, Member, Recruit factions are forced to decide if they want to trust only their leader to claim, or trust all officers to claim equally, or to give recruits 'member' level perms to use member rank as a lower officer rank. It's really not ideal and if this can be changed easily I'd suggest - am suggesting - that it be changed.
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Thank you for reading and considering! My reasons for this are assorted, but a big one is that Factions had a tax mechanism added, which only makes sense if the end goal is to make it more of a government plugin rather than an anti-grief plugin. This also includes some ideas that people have wanted since forever (I'm talking about more Ranks lol) and ideas that would help support faction diplomacy and security.
 
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I had a suggestion that i feel is.. related to this. I suggested a 5th relation. One that is reserved exclusively for war surrender enforced truces. Because then you can better differentiate which factions you are actually truced with, and which ones you are forcefully truced with.

I do like this idea, can I add it to the main post?
 
Alright, time to do my big ol' post relating to Empires.

For those of you who don't know, before massive I played on a towny server. To give a quick rundown of what towny is, it's essentially factions, but different.

For example: Using the factions plugin, you... well you know how factions work already. Towny works the same way, so to say. You can claim chunks, and set different perms per chunk. Great stuff.

However, what towny does better than factions is how growth is done. Towny essentially is a "Grow your empire" kind of plugin, where you start as a leader of a "tribe" (meaning basically those 1 person factions) and as you gain more people your name changes until you're a Metropolis (or basically 30 people faction) But, this is only the start. At any time, you can create a nation, which essentially turns your town into a capitol city. While you lose the Metropolis, Vilage, City, etc. rank, you now are able to invite other towns to your nation.

Example: My town Delphi becomes a capitol of the Holy Delphinian Empire. I can now invite other towns to join said empire.

The benefits of this empire? First off is easier trade with other towns in the empire, as well as a private chat. But the biggest benefit comes in terms of towny war.

Towny war essentially turns on pvp in towns, and rival nations can duke it out to see who wins. If you capture a homespawn chunk, the city becomes part of the new nation. Continue until the enemy nation's capitol is captured. While this is a very generic explanation, it highlights the main part of it.


So, bringing this stuff back to factions:
The way I see Empires on factions is very similar to how nations work in towny. Somebody's faction becomes the capitol faction, and other people can be invited into this empire (or join automaically if enabled) When factions go to war, the entire nation goes to war. Each faction in the nation is important, because they all contribute to the nation in some way (power, tax, trade, etc.) each faction battle now has meaning, as you do not want your nation getting attacked.

But Fire, how is this any different from how we do alliances nowadays? Well, I'm glad you asked.

When I first started Minecraft, I played on faction servers. I wasn't the best PvPer, as I was more into the defenses and tactics of raiding bases (getting cannons, watering the corners, walls, gucci spikes, etc)

The #1 rule of faction relations I learned was never ally anyone. If a faction wanted an alliance, they were truced with one another. If your enemies wanted to surrender or conclude a raid, you negotiated, and you both went back to neutral-ing each other. So what was ally used for? Alt buffers.

So unlike Massive, most faction servers handle bases based on cobble boxes. tnt cannons blow up said cobble boxes easily, so you do what you can to prevent that from happening (watering the box, swapping cobble to obsidian, making layers of walls with water in between, adding pancake slabs, watering them, and most importantly: claiming long stretches of land away from your faction to prevent tnt from hitting the base.)
To get into a base, you just built better cannons. hybrids, sand stackers, noob cannons, leinarchers, etc. One you were in, then you PvP'd the enemy into submission. If they hid, you kept blowing up the base until they came out or surrendered. There was no leaving to spawn, because the base would be leveled by then.

So back to ally. alt factions basically added an extra layer of safety, as they could claim additional land around your faction as a buffer, at times even becoming part of the defense walls if the faction was large enough (which believe me, they are used a lot on other servers.) The ally perm basically indicated that this was a buffer alt faction, or secondary main faction, instead of your typical "truce allies" or a raider.

So why do I support this nation addition? because even though Massive is not HCF where you build cobble boxes, it still is very universal to the plugin in general. I think many non-massive faction players could benefit from having a hierarchy added to the plugin, as most of the time alliances and empires are really based on pms and out of game interactions. And this basically extends to Massive, as the only way to tell who's in what empire is by their description, which In my opinion is kinda limited. I like having my goofy description, and I probably wouldn't add in a "nation tag" to it because it wastes space.

So that's my take on nations. I'll agree that a lot of my snippets aren't pertinent to Massive at all, but figured that I should provide some background to show what kind of atmosphere I came from and what this suggestion actually means to myself. If anyone wants to know more, just ask me.
 
I can't say I like the relation cd, as I think it'd be abused way too much. I'm all in favor of a 5th relation specifically for surrenders, however.

Other than that I support everything on this thread 100% other than
HCF where you build cobble boxes
because HCF servers actually tend to have really nice bases since there's no tnt cannons on HCF :P I'm mostly kidding but ya know
 
because HCF servers actually tend to have really nice bases since there's no tnt cannons on HCF :P I'm mostly kidding but ya know
you know you haven't done true factions in a while when you can't even get a name correct :p man it's been what, 2-3 years? yeah, I'm out of it :)
 
I would love this , I also think more ranks in faction and Empire would be real good.
 
We will be reviewing this information for consideration as we continue to review feature suggestions for Factions.
 
We will be reviewing this information for consideration as we continue to review feature suggestions for Factions.
I understand this is a necro but I believe this issue is something that is vital to factions and I believe discussion about this suggestion needs to be reinvigorated.

When my associate faction players and I seen this suggestion, I believe there was unanimous praise with such a suggestion. This is something that has been talked about by countless faction members for years and we love the idea of empires and more ranks. My faction officers and I have always wanted an update like this to come but sadly due to the declining activity of Tech staff and also due to their dedication to other projects, there has been little to no information on the status of this suggestion that has been made public.

With CoK well under way and the server trying to rejuvenate factions, I believe this is a perfect time to start discussing this suggestion again. I understand this may be a pain for you to hear us moaning about little things like this but I think that if this was implement, it would be the greatest change to factions and Massivecraft since Factions 2.0 and the sharding project.

TL;DR I believe there needs to be more discussion on this matter as I really believe (along with many others) want to see such a feature implemented in the future. I understand Massive is tight for tech staff right now but if it was possible, could this feature be implemented?
 
What about instead of making more ranks we add the option to create custom ones.

/f rank create (name)
And then set the perms for the rank of "name"

"Name" is your variable much as "officer" or "leader". Shouldn't be to hard to code but nothing is ever easy to code.
 
What about instead of making more ranks we add the option to create custom ones.

/f rank create (name)
And then set the perms for the rank of "name"

"Name" is your variable much as "officer" or "leader". Shouldn't be to hard to code but nothing is ever easy to code.
From a coding perspective, it would be much more difficult and time consuming for them to add custom ranks, than it would be to add some more universally
 
From a coding perspective, it would be much more difficult and time consuming for them to add custom ranks, than it would be to add some more universally
I agree with Zac. I believe that adding universal ranks would be far easier on our tech staff. All I really want to see is some more ranks added as it would allow for a far better structure then the one we have now.
 
Then perhaps add a wider array of ranks then? Why restrict it to six? Why not have 10 ranks? Or even 15? This would make it much easier to give specific officers individual permissions based on trust. Also, can we perhaps add a tribute system for wars? Wars can be used to extort tribute, or to vassalize. Also, about the war dynamic, when a member of an empire goes to war, unless it is the "Emperor," no nation should have to join. However, if the vassal is attacked, then all members of the empire have to join the war. Of course, it might also be the perfect time to revolt. Also, why not scale the maximum tax for a subfaction based on its size? There should be a way for subfactions to feel indignant at the oppressive taxes and tariffs of their overlords.
 
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One thing I really want to see improved is horses. Historically, they were the tanks of the time, allowing greater mobility, powerful attacks/charges and more. Sadly, in Minecraft mounted combat is awkward and almost impossible. :(
 
From a coding perspective, it would be much more difficult and time consuming for them to add custom ranks, than it would be to add some more universally
That's true however it's not as difficult as you may think. All you are doing is checking what they typed in, defining a variable, and then calling the variable again. The ranks we have now just don't allow for the defining a variable portion which shouldn't be to hard to put in
 
That's true however it's not as difficult as you may think. All you are doing is checking what they typed in, defining a variable, and then calling the variable again. The ranks we have now just don't allow for the defining a variable portion which shouldn't be to hard to put in
And I would imagine all the storage it would take for every faction to be able to have custom ranks, as opposed to default
 
And I would imagine all the storage it would take for every faction to be able to have custom ranks, as opposed to default
This is true I will agree on that. But in the grand scheme of things unless people made a ridiculous amount of names it shouldn't make to much of a difference. However your point is valid. As to how much of an impact it would make I'm not sure but my estimate is rather low.
 
This is true I will agree on that. But in the grand scheme of things unless people made a ridiculous amount of names it shouldn't make to much of a difference. However your point is valid. As to how much of an impact it would make I'm not sure but my estimate is rather low.
My point is, lets say.... the tech staff add a UNIVERSAL 5th and 6th rank. That would be less taxing on the server, than if all the factions created just 2 new custom ranks each. In both scenarios, each faction has 2 ranks, but in the latter.... its more taxing on the server
 
First, I will tag my friend @AerionTargaryen incase he'd like to comment here; secondly, I will say that my ideas will take a lot of code, but I think it, or something similar, will be worth it.

1. Capitol Cities. Capitol cities are cities are the only thing that can be claimed by the empire faction.

2. The Empire faction has separate ranks. Emperor, hand of the emperor, court member, citizen, etc.

The Emperor owns the empire
The hand of the emperor has all the abilities of an emperor, except for the ability to rename, or disband a faction
The court members function as the officers for an entire empire, they manage things for the empire that the king is too busy to manage. A visit from a court member to the lands of a subfaction might be a huge affair, it might not.
the citizens are the players who live in the capitol city.

3. regular factions get a rank update. Leaders can be kings, officers can be lords.

4. Empires can be overcome. @TMI_Lord_Khan made a suggestion in this thread. I am piggybacking of of some of his ideas, and expanding them here:

Doors have HP, and enemies can break them, this would take 1 minute of uninterrupted hacking, with a massivemagic axe, or pickaxe depending on the type of door. The axe is somewhat hard to make, and has sucky durability.

Gates have HP. Wooden portcullises can be burnt down with massivemagic fireballs with a minimum power level of (insert some high number that takes about 30 seconds of sneaking). Iron portcullises can be blasted through with the explosion massivemagic spell, it will take a large amount of mana to do so, and multiple castings.

A certain block formation will be used, much like the alters, maybe some sort of 5 by 5 floor mural? If an enemy can stay within five blocks of it for twenty minutes, portals and player homes within all connected faction land are disabled for as long as an enemy is within a five block radius. all connected faction chunks that number more than 10, have to be a city. when all cities are taken, the faction leaves an empire and joins the attacker's empire. If the attacker is not an empire, then they can choose to become one, or not be able to do anything until a relief force arrives. Once absorbed into an empire, raiders can leave the city center.

Once all factions within an empire are taken, the empire becomes a normal faction, all players except for the Emperor (now king) becoming regular members.

Once an empire city is taken, the empire faction reverts to a normal faction and becomes a subfaction of the enemy, the subfactiions become normal factions. If they want to, they can form an empire, or stay separate, and free the former empire faction, fight the enemy empire, do whatever they want.
 
First, I will tag my friend @AerionTargaryen incase he'd like to comment here; secondly, I will say that my ideas will take a lot of code, but I think it, or something similar, will be worth it.

1. Capitol Cities. Capitol cities are cities are the only thing that can be claimed by the empire faction.

2. The Empire faction has separate ranks. Emperor, hand of the emperor, court member, citizen, etc.

The Emperor owns the empire
The hand of the emperor has all the abilities of an emperor, except for the ability to rename, or disband a faction
The court members function as the officers for an entire empire, they manage things for the empire that the king is too busy to manage. A visit from a court member to the lands of a subfaction might be a huge affair, it might not.
the citizens are the players who live in the capitol city.

3. regular factions get a rank update. Leaders can be kings, officers can be lords.

4. Empires can be overcome. @TMI_Lord_Khan made a suggestion in this thread. I am piggybacking of of some of his ideas, and expanding them here:

Doors have HP, and enemies can break them, this would take 1 minute of uninterrupted hacking, with a massivemagic axe, or pickaxe depending on the type of door. The axe is somewhat hard to make, and has sucky durability.

Gates have HP. Wooden portcullises can be burnt down with massivemagic fireballs with a minimum power level of (insert some high number that takes about 30 seconds of sneaking). Iron portcullises can be blasted through with the explosion massivemagic spell, it will take a large amount of mana to do so, and multiple castings.

A certain block formation will be used, much like the alters, maybe some sort of 5 by 5 floor mural? If an enemy can stay within five blocks of it for twenty minutes, portals and player homes within all connected faction land are disabled for as long as an enemy is within a five block radius. all connected faction chunks that number more than 10, have to be a city. when all cities are taken, the faction leaves an empire and joins the attacker's empire. If the attacker is not an empire, then they can choose to become one, or not be able to do anything until a relief force arrives. Once absorbed into an empire, raiders can leave the city center.

Once all factions within an empire are taken, the empire becomes a normal faction, all players except for the Emperor (now king) becoming regular members.

Once an empire city is taken, the empire faction reverts to a normal faction and becomes a subfaction of the enemy, the subfactiions become normal factions. If they want to, they can form an empire, or stay separate, and free the former empire faction, fight the enemy empire, do whatever they want.

I think you mean capital cities, not capitol, a capitol is a common name for a building that is home to the legislative branch of a government. Anyway, I attended the most recent CoK meeting on the 4th February. I distinctly remember Tokuu mentioning that capital cities would be implemented for the CoK factions, but not in a technical sense. To put it simply, there would be a portal to all the main/capital cities of each CoK nation in Regalia. I know this is not really what your thinking of and sadly it doesn't apply to all factions, but it will be interesting to see and provides a far easier way to implement said suggestion. Originally boats to each capital city were intended but apparently the roleplaying community don't want that, according to MonMarty.
 
It seems that there has only been discussion between members of the community. I don't like badgering staff about these kind of things but I would like to get a @Game staff perspective.
 
Boats would be much more realistic wouldn't they tho?
Indeed but it appears the roleplaying community are stubborn about this, this is what I have been told at CoK meeeting. It's kind of annoying that roleplay members don't want to see this introduced, it is in my view that the integration of roleplay and factions is something this server needs and to get rid of the fragmentation of the community. Anyway, the portal idea I am still happy with, but yes, a boat would be unbelievably cool and realistic.

I'm also going to tag @ulumulu1510 and @Madus and @Cayorion because at the end of the day, these guys will have to make this, if the decision to implement this feature is taken of course.

Psst @CS_Birb, please give us your opinion as well!
 
I think you mean capital cities, not capitol, a capitol is a common name for a building that is home to the legislative branch of a government. Anyway, I attended the most recent CoK meeting on the 4th February. I distinctly remember Tokuu mentioning that capital cities would be implemented for the CoK factions, but not in a technical sense. To put it simply, there would be a portal to all the main/capital cities of each CoK nation in Regalia. I know this is not really what your thinking of and sadly it doesn't apply to all factions, but it will be interesting to see and provides a far easier way to implement said suggestion. Originally boats to each capital city were intended but apparently the roleplaying community don't want that, according to MonMarty.

Boats would have been awesome. This is definitely a step in the right direction though!
 
My point is, lets say.... the tech staff add a UNIVERSAL 5th and 6th rank. That would be less taxing on the server, than if all the factions created just 2 new custom ranks each. In both scenarios, each faction has 2 ranks, but in the latter.... its more taxing on the server
I think the best approach would be to supply as many different ways of doing things to tech staff and let them decide the best one... Unless you have coding experience, then speak up (and sign up for tech staff plz)
 
I think the best approach would be to supply as many different ways of doing things to tech staff and let them decide the best one... Unless you have coding experience, then speak up (and sign up for tech staff plz)
I have zero coding experience. I just know that custom ranks require storage. There has to be a place to store all the individual info, and then the server having to search for that info will take resources. A world that has universal ranks doesnt have those downsides.
 
I have zero coding experience. I just know that custom ranks require storage. There has to be a place to store all the individual info, and then the server having to search for that info will take resources. A world that has universal ranks doesnt have those downsides.
Very true.

I think the best approach would be to supply as many different ways of doing things to tech staff and let them decide the best one... Unless you have coding experience, then speak up (and sign up for tech staff plz)
I have plans to become world staff in future. I do know some Java, I am familiar with Minecraft moding, and I am in the process of learning C++, I might try my hand at making a few plugins someday... If that goes well, I'll probably apply for technical staff. Me becoming staff is still a few years away though.
 
I remember recently I tried to implement with my allies, when I did have a port city, a series of boats with portals to link us together and it proved popular! They add realism
I think these boats were to be like those cool ones you see at the world spawns, the portals are just invisible and whatever plugin they use just recognizes a player is standing there and teleports them to whatever region the boat is going to. It add so much realism and would be a good addition to the server.
 
Very true.


I have plans to become world staff in future. I do know some Java, I am familiar with Minecraft moding, and I am in the process of learning C++, I might try my hand at making a few plugins someday... If that goes well, I'll probably apply for technical staff. Me becoming staff is still a few years away though.
I think you mean tech staff? If you did mean it, let me just correct you on a few things. If you do have ambitions to become tech staff, proficiency in Java would be a requirement. Factions is a complex plugin, coded by people with years of experience. Also C++ isn't really applicable to the Java Edition of Minecraft, hence the name. If you do want to become tech staff, having experience in Java and the Spigot API is essential.
 
I think you mean tech staff? If you did mean it, let me just correct you on a few things. If you do have ambitions to become tech staff, proficiency in Java would be a requirement. Factions is a complex plugin, coded by people with years of experience. Also C++ isn't really applicable to the Java Edition of Minecraft, hence the name. If you do want to become tech staff, having experience in Java and the Spigot API is essential.
Tech is short for technical, but yes, I meant tech staff. I am well aware that C++ isn't compatible with Java, I simply plan to learn C++ before I go back and re visit Java (I plan to go to a technical college and major in videogame art design. C++ is commonly used in vidoe games, and it will help me to know the language even if I'm mainly doing the world building and 3D modeling side of things.) Having knowledge of one language can speed up the learning of another, the principles are the same, all the languages will include if/then statements. The way they are executed, is simply different.