What should the success rate of caravans be?

ArchivedUser

Rune_Relic said:

whitedude31 said:

Rune_Relic said:

'If the fail rate is too high.....'

....and what if you cant get above level 4 without resource import ?

Stop being antisocial and join a guild that can help?

Just a thought

Yes Yes. As always you ignore half the equation.

Joining any guild has 0 guarantee of success.

Re-read my comment please. "can help?" I am pretty sure was said in my last sentence . . . OH WAIT! There it is right above this text :O OMG it's almost as if I can read your comment and make a proper reply. (PROPER, not grammatically correct XD)

ArchivedUser

I think 50% will be realistic.

Some people probably won't know the basics of the game and will send their low level caravan right through the middle of an event at bright day without NPC-Guards.
This will result in nearly 0% Success.

Other people will upgrade the caravan, send alot of NPC-Guards and think about the timing of the caravan. 
This will improve Success Rate up to 99%.

Thats why the average will be at 50%.
At least until most people know how to improve success Rate by crafting/upgrades/NPCs/timing.

ArchivedUser

I think a very high success rate fits simply if you have a large player base trying to do caravans as their regular PvE and a much smaller player base actively raiding caravans. 

A prepared raiding group may have a high chance of taking a caravan, but because caravans are hopefully being done aaaaall the time it works out to a small % of all trades overall. This way people are confident in continuing to trade and raiders are confident in succeeding when they put in the effort.

ArchivedUser

Ravudha said:

I think a very high success rate fits simply if you have a large player base trying to do caravans as their regular PvE and a much smaller player base actively raiding caravans. 

A prepared raiding group may have a high chance of taking a caravan, but because caravans are hopefully being done aaaaall the time it works out to a small % of all trades overall. This way people are confident in continuing to trade and raiders are confident in succeeding when they put in the effort.

There is definitely a frequency needed for the caravans. If there are too few then a higher percentage will fall to bandits, which will discourage future caravans... Which will give us a higher rate of banditry and cause the world economy to crumble. Maybe a touch overdramatic, but you get the broader picture

ArchivedUser

IDK. Caravans look kind of stupid to me. I don't like the concept much. I do like most of what this game has to offer so far. But I hope that I don't have to do this to make trade work. Like who isn't going to attack a caravan when they see one? It just screams free loot to me.

ArchivedUser

Well I for one wont attack players caravans because to my mind that makes me a dick. Just like in real life i get up and give old people my seat on the bus and hold doors open for others to go through first. I guess that is just how i was raised.

ArchivedUser

Interesting.
I don't care about profit or economy.

I do care whether enough resources arrive to progress the Node and build the buildings we want. And I think that is going to be the primary incentive for defending caravans.

I'm not sure there is any way to know -especially right now- which specific resources get looted by bandits or destroyed by environmental hazards.
That may also depend on how each caravan is built, in addition to how well each caravan is defended.

ArchivedUser

Dygz said:

I do care whether enough resources arrive to progress the Node and build the buildings we want. And I think that is going to be the primary incentive for defending caravans.

Yeah, this.  I've never been a big crafter or auction house wizard but I don't want to see caravans choked off to the point where my home node can't grow or even regresses.

I wonder what % of gameplay will end up being attacking / defending caravans from other Nodes?

ArchivedUser

Crymoar said:

Dygz said:

I do care whether enough resources arrive to progress the Node and build the buildings we want. And I think that is going to be the primary incentive for defending caravans.

Yeah, this.  I've never been a big crafter or auction house wizard but I don't want to see caravans choked off to the point where my home node can't grow or even regresses.

I wonder what % of gameplay will end up being attacking / defending caravans from other Nodes?

I'm sure it depends on the player. For me, I want to escort or attack a caravan at least twice per week. I'm not horribly active with three young kids in the house or I'd put that number much higher.

ArchivedUser

AngryFan said:

IDK. Caravans look kind of stupid to me. I don't like the concept much. I do like most of what this game has to offer so far. But I hope that I don't have to do this to make trade work. Like who isn't going to attack a caravan when they see one? It just screams free loot to me.

Remember caravans are guarded by PCs and NPCs (mercs and guards). If you are bold enough to attack them and defeat them, then the prizes are yours. But if you fail (which should be higher in percentage than success) then your loot will drop and they will have easy pickings at your corpse. It's like robbing a bank. You don't see banks being robbed every day because the success rate is slim to nothing.

ArchivedUser

PJ_Rydecker said:

I could be completely miss remembering but even if your caravan gets turned over only a certain amount of the traveling resources will be lost.  Now whether the remaining then makes it to the destination or is sent back to the starting point I can't remember.  If it is the later then there might be a case to camp a caravan route and the sending team would never get through so I doubt this will be the case.  As the Devs will have absolutely no control over the success rate of caravans (How much effort you and your associates put into the protecting Vs the aggressiveness of the bandits on your server will decide it) I feel a better discussion should be on the amount you lose should you fail to protect the caravan.  I think if it were my caravan I would find a 60% + of my goods getting through taking into account runs where you are robbed and not robbed would be an acceptable loss rate. At this level I would still keep using that facility.

Fully agree. I don't think you need to make things too complicated with: will the carvan reach the destination or not? Just make it reach the destination but all of the investment in protecting or raiding it will really just determine what % of the goods make it. I feel like not wanting to lose a % of your hard earned resources is a good enough incentive to have people invest in defending their caravans while free valuables and PvP will always be sufficient to attract raiders.

That being said, I think having some non-player risk to caravan transport would be cool: organic goods (i.e. food, leather) decay at some very small rate to incentivize investing in fast caravans, especially for long routes & perhaps some small chance of losing ore from a bumpy ride if the caravan is moving at some speed therefore incentivizing a slower, more well protected caravan. This can also provides some information/deception component to seeing a caravan and trying to figure out what it may contain. To clarify, these natural risks would be very small (you would lose <<10% of goods at most).

ArchivedUser

I want two tiers.

1.) a low success rate and a MASSIVE gain if you complete it. Say 10-20% 

2.)A high success rate with a minimal gain with low/no risk. 

ArchivedUser

@Crymoar, I am under the impression that once a siege has been declared all trade into and out of the node is locked down to prepare for the siege. If that includes player driven caravans, I don't know for sure, but I assumed it would.

EDIT: I would like to see a 50% success rate develop accounting for player action (as assumed the OP meant), not a pre-set value by IS. It's encouraging that ever 2-3 caravans could be successful but having 4 successes in a row would be rare. Imo, that would be nice.

ArchivedUser

Azathoth said:

@Crymoar, I am under the impression that once a siege has been declared all trade into and out of the node is locked down to prepare for the siege. If that includes player driven caravans, I don't know for sure, but I assumed it would.

EDIT: I would like to see a 50% success rate develop accounting for player action (as assumed the OP meant), not a pre-set value by IS. It's encouraging that ever 2-3 caravans could be successful but having 4 successes in a row would be rare. Imo, that would be nice.

That is what I was asking. And obviously sending a caravan one town over should be easier and have a higher success rate that sending it across the whole map. I was just curious where everyone saw the proper balance point.

ArchivedUser

it all depends on the reward, bigger and juicier rewards enable the player to tolerate higher and more frequent fails.

The way it works in my head where the reward is only a bit of profit after expenses the success rate should be around 70% without discouraging people from trying again.

That said; as many have mentioned, there is very few ways intrepid could go around controlling this as it is player driven. Once a big bandit guild decides to rob a bridge or route and camp it for a few hours the success rate of any caravan going through that bridge at that time drops while the other routes that were previously watched by that bandit guild increase.

In the end these rates will most likely fall to intel, scouting ahead and luck.

ArchivedUser

I voted but I think the question is the wrong one. Since being raiding will only take a portion of the goods... the question is how much % of goods on average should arrive at their destination.

ArchivedUser

Hmmm has there been any news on how many times a caravan can be raided? i.e. once the defense fails, does it 'disappear' / become 'inactive' or does it continue to be a PvP hotzone until it reaches destination, losing a % of its goods every time it is successfully raided? I don't remember hearing an announcement on this during any of the streams 

ArchivedUser

@xLangatanGx
I believe if a caravan is successfully raided the ride is over. So all non-raided supplies should go back to where they came from, or the caravan owner might also get "loot certificates" for what's left. I also believe that if you raid a caravan from node A, you have to turn your certificates into node A to gain your loot (raider or caravan driver).

If attacking a caravan only pays off 30% of the time for the PvP focused crowd, you are going to push the PvP focused crowd into other more lucrative and consistent activities. Again, I want all this to be player agency driven, but both sides have to feel like they can equally succeed, if they are equally prepared.

ArchivedUser

Azathoth said:

@xLangatanGx
I believe if a caravan is successfully raided the ride is over. So all non-raided supplies should go back to where they came from, or the caravan owner might also get "loot certificates" for what's left. I also believe that if you raid a caravan from node A, you have to turn your certificates into node A to gain your loot (raider or caravan driver).

If attacking a caravan only pays off 30% of the time for the PvP focused crowd, you are going to push the PvP focused crowd into other more lucrative and consistent activities. Again, I want all this to be player agency driven, but both sides have to feel like they can equally succeed, if they are equally prepared.

I hadn't thought about where to turn in your loot certificates. I agree both sides should have an equal opportunity to win a caravan raid, but if that is equal then shouldn't the success rate of caravans overall be slightly above 50/50 since caravans are hopefully being sent out frequently and raiders probably not know their exact routes?

I've enjoyed this thread, because it's brought up so many more variants of my initial question. Y'all are awesome.

ArchivedUser

i will have a mule, call it Egbert, and go about it that way xD

edit: i dont mind being a caravan guard tho ;D

ArchivedUser

Darksaber said:

AngryFan said:

IDK. Caravans look kind of stupid to me. I don't like the concept much. I do like most of what this game has to offer so far. But I hope that I don't have to do this to make trade work. Like who isn't going to attack a caravan when they see one? It just screams free loot to me.

Remember caravans are guarded by PCs and NPCs (mercs and guards). If you are bold enough to attack them and defeat them, then the prizes are yours. But if you fail (which should be higher in percentage than success) then your loot will drop and they will have easy pickings at your corpse. It's like robbing a bank. You don't see banks being robbed every day because the success rate is slim to nothing.

The yield from looting a caravan will be considerably higher than the loss of resources from an individual player dying as a combatant. In addition to slowing the progression of a rival Node if the caravan raid is a success.

ArchivedUser

Dygz said:
In addition to slowing the progression of a rival Node if the caravan raid is a success.

Oh right, this is a really good point. Not all the resources on this thing are PC loots. Some of or even most of it will be city-scale resources, right? 

You're not raiding only for personal profit, but also to sabotage your rival territories and build yours.

How all that ends up working will have a dramatic effect on how caravans need to be balanced, too.

ArchivedUser

for me 80 - 100%. when i feel i got only 60% succes rate, i will hire some more guards, or ask some players to accompany me with my/our goods.

ArchivedUser

I think a lower success rate would encourage spending more gold on N/PC's or more time with friend/guild-mates in the end. However, not successfully raiding a caravan or making a delivery 3 or more times in a row might also discourage that behavior altogether.

In the end I hope it balances out to 50/50. That means some caravans and some raiders will have a higher success rate, and some lower. This would be considering only the number of caravans actually raided by players. If we only consider MOB's attacking caravans then I think the success rate should be pushed closer to the 80% range.

ArchivedUser

I think the success rate for caravans should come down to the server you're on and the people you have the help defend it.  If there are too many bandits on the road than the economy on the server should suffer, causing more people to get involved with defense.

ArchivedUser

Rate based on success of completion of a run, not a percent chance.

I would like to see player stats in game that could be used as player titles ie;
fastest caravan driver

ArchivedUser

Crymoar said:

Ezenkrul87 said:

Ummm. What? There should not be a set numbers. Whatever happens happens. No need to provide carebear crutches. 

There won't be a built in guaranteed percentage of success.  The way to partially  control the success rate is the number of NPC guards and how tough they are.  That will determine the baseline effort required to take and loot any particular caravan.

I would guess that on top of the baseline protection the players sending the caravan will have the option to spend some coin to  beef up the NPC guards and then of course they can also choose to escort the caravan to its final destination.

The length of the caravan route will determine the length of time the caravan is 'at risk' from attackers.

The good thing is that no matter how much protection the caravan has OR how big the attacking force is either side will always be able overcome the opposition IF they have enough firepower.

Yeah I am aware that there won't be a built in guaranteed success rate. The topic of this thread speaks on the desire to implement it in some way which to me is ridiculous. It is falling on the side of people wanting to be rewarded for the sake of being rewarded. As you mentioned above, I am sure there are going to be options to strengthened your caravans and the NPC escorts, but just because one caravan fails does not mean that the next one you do should be strengthened by default. If your caravan fails then the next time you try the effort to increase the success should be 100% on the players trying again such as getting more defenders, trying a different path or time or spending more gold on NPCs....etc. 

ArchivedUser

Ezenkrul87 said:

Crymoar said:

Ezenkrul87 said:

Ummm. What? There should not be a set numbers. Whatever happens happens. No need to provide carebear crutches. 

There won't be a built in guaranteed percentage of success.  The way to partially  control the success rate is the number of NPC guards and how tough they are.  That will determine the baseline effort required to take and loot any particular caravan.

I would guess that on top of the baseline protection the players sending the caravan will have the option to spend some coin to  beef up the NPC guards and then of course they can also choose to escort the caravan to its final destination.

The length of the caravan route will determine the length of time the caravan is 'at risk' from attackers.

The good thing is that no matter how much protection the caravan has OR how big the attacking force is either side will always be able overcome the opposition IF they have enough firepower.

Yeah I am aware that there won't be a built in guaranteed success rate. The topic of this thread speaks on the desire to implement it in some way which to me is ridiculous. It is falling on the side of people wanting to be rewarded for the sake of being rewarded. As you mentioned above, I am sure there are going to be options to strengthened your caravans and the NPC escorts, but just because one caravan fails does not mean that the next one you do should be strengthened by default. If your caravan fails then the next time you try the effort to increase the success should be 100% on the players trying again such as getting more defenders, trying a different path or time or spending more gold on NPCs....etc. 

... The point of this thread was the balancing point of risk for caravans and how it affects the world economy. Never auto-success. Don't know where you got that honestly.

ArchivedUser

Double post, my bad