THE BOOK OF WAR (BETA)
A war's main purpose is to conclude or enhance conflicts and allow some interesting story telling. Wars are supposed to be large scale events that take place over a decent period of time (weeks to months.) The flashy part of a war, the fighting, is what we will go over here, but it is also encouraged to do more RP things such as sanctions.
Not every land/nation is capable of going to war so it's important to give them a way out of the war, for a (reasonable) cost. The exact details will vary from war to war, but some examples could be a monetary payment (such as to buy land you believe you own but they occupy) or the removal of an outpost.
This is just the default setup of a war. Most of this can be changed, though the more it's changed the more likely the war will be denied.
During a battles tnt will be enabled in a land and some blocks (such as ladders, sponges, and tnt) will be breakable/placable by defenders. You will also be unable to respawn in/warp to a land during a battle, or walk into the land if you've previously died in the battle.
War points are the solution to limiting the number of "resources" each side gets. Due to the nature of Santoria being a Minecraft server it's not unexpected that there will be plenty of downtime between fights allowing a nearly full restock every time making resources not typically run out naturally.
Each side will start with a certain number of war points based on various factors, including but not limited to:
If the attacking side does not have enough war points for even 1 battle (usually due to the war not really having any basis) then the war is automatically denied.
War points can then be spent on many things which will be gone over in the next couple sections.
Battles are how progress is made in wars. Battles are individual fights between the two sides for control over land/territory. The most often type of battle, a battle over control of a land, is what we'll be going over here, but battles over territory or parts of a land (in land v land wars) also follow a similar format. In battles all players get 1 life and cannot return to the battle field after being killed. Battles also last 1 hour with the winner being being determined by whether the attackers capture all 3 "secure locations" in the land/area they're attacking. If the defenders hold onto one or more "secure location" they win the battle, and if attackers capture all 3, then they win the battle. All is not lost for attackers if they lose a battle however! If they capture 1/3 secure locations they get a 33% discount when re-attacking the same land, and if they capture 2/3 secure locations they get a 66% discount.
At the start of a war defenders will be tasked with choosing the "secure locations" that they will have to defend when a land is attacked. These locations will then be verified by staff so that they can be reasonably accessed.
Reasonably accessible means that no more then a few tnt is required, no hand-breaking blocks is required, and no placing blocks aside from those allowed in a raid (scaffolding and ladders), or utility blocks like sponges is required.
For individual battles defenders often wont have perfect info for where attacks will be happening, so they need to have ways to gain this info, try to rely on earning info through manual means, or just prepare for anything as well as they can.
That leads us to the first thing war points can be spent on, INFORMATION!
The exact costs for each thing can be tweaked by the terms of war, but this is a good starting point:
Extra forms of information could also be added in the terms of war as seen fit.
Defenders can also purchase buffs however such as:
Attackers have their own war points to spend as well, however they mostly focus on actually doing the attacking.
What lands count as outpost/small/medium/large can be deliberated on in the war ticket, but this then leads us to the steps of starting a battle.
After a battle ends if the defenders don't like the outcome they can attempt to launch a counter attack. Counter attacks will only use any remaining forces on both sides, and cost 3 War Points if 1 "secure location" was captured, 6 if 2 were captured, and 12 if all 3 were captured.
At the start of the war all lands/areas are controlled by their respective sides.
After each battle control of a land/area may change, partially or fully.
There are different levels of control that could happen, decided upon by both sides during the deliberation phase. Three default examples include:
If a nation capital is captured the entire nation falls under one of the forms of control and the war ends unless a counter attack succeeds at taking back at least one of the "secure locations". If they fail a civil war could be launched later to regain freedom instead.
A war will end once the attackers run out of war points, the defending capital is captured (assuming a nation v nation war), one side surrenders, the attackers willingly end the war, or some other win condition agreed upon is reached. If one side surrenders the opposing side can create demands that are first approved by staff, then given to the surrendering side. If the surrendering side refuses those demands the war continues until one of other end conditions are met, or a version of the demands are agreed upon.
War Deliberation is how you start a war and is where things such as battle times, extra win conditions, land size classifications, ect. are decided upon.
The first step is to get staff approval for the war. This is mostly just to try and weed out bad actors that only declare war to try and steal other people's items instead of create/expand a story. To start this step, you first create a support ticket ("Create Ticket"), state who you're declaring war on, and why you want to declare war.
EXAMPLE
We would like to declare war on nation SoAndSo because they have recently expanded far into our controlled territory as seen by the conflict area on the Cartography guild's map. Our goal is to push them back and return the territory to it's rightful owner (us).
If SoAndSo do not want to fight this war, we demand they either purchase the land from us for 250k, or move out of the territory within 7 days.
Assuming you have decent motivations your war will be approved which then moves onto stage 2.
While everything in a war can be changed from the section above this, most likely you'll just be clarifying terms, deciding on battle times, and having in character politial talks. The opponents will be added to the ticket at this time so that both sides can work together to make the war fun for everyone. If approved by staff, wars cannot be declined with the only way for a war to be canceled is for some sort of non violent agreement to be reached, the "out" to be accepted, or external circumstances causing staff to cancel the war.
Once the terms are finalized it's time for the announcement.
The attackers will be tasked with posting an announcement in N-Announcements, optionally then followed by a response announcement from the defenders. The defenders will also then work with staff in a different ticket the attackers cannot see to place their "secure locations", while a third ticket is opened that defenders cannot see for private attacker-staff communication. The original ticket will be left open for talks between the attackers and defenders.
After this the war will be run as defined by the terms and hopefully everyone has fun!