Caravans: How often (frequency) can you find and engage one?

" The caravan system is designed to be initiated by the player. Which means, information of the caravans launch time and route, should be a closely guarded secret. Routes will also be diverse, and the world is large, so it might behoove you to scout the route ahead before a launch. Fast travel in our game is also limited, which means unless the guild had knowledge of your plans before hand, it is likely that they will be unable to organize and travel to a location. As far as mass guilds securing trade routes, there is always a bigger fish in the pond. Also caravans will have limitations on carrying capacity and launch windows that will segment mulitiple caravans by several minutes, which would space out the caravans, making it difficult to "zerg" a defense.[12] – Steven Sharif"

So my question is how often do you think there will be caravans in transit? As stated in the quote above they might be difficult to detect if not ready for them. Will there be major downtime between caravans?

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Dygz

Caww wrote: »

AoC could do a generic system wide notice in chat stating something like "A caravan has left a node in the Riverlands" and give people a heads-up in a general fashion but not specific enough for the entire server to jump it.

RazThemun

I hope it is at least a weekly occurrence option.

Ayeveegaming1

RazThemun wrote: »

I hope it is at least a weekly occurrence option.

I think it will be more often than just the weekends. People will need to move gathered supplies all the time. What I am wondering is if it will be worth it to be a pvp guild trying to attack caravans. The frequency, the ability to intercept, and so forth. I think A2 will provide many answers for this.

RazThemun

"I think it will be more often than just the weekends. People will need to move gathered supplies all the time. What I am wondering is if it will be worth it to be a pvp guild trying to attack caravans. The frequency, the ability to intercept, and so forth. I think A2 will provide many answers for this."

I would assume a guild could still function on that manner. As each node will likely have caravans running at different times. So Node A- may do a run Monday at 1:00. Node B- Tues 2:00. Node C- Weds 3:00. I doubt all nodes would have caravans going same day and time. So because there are so many nodes, I would assume there would be 3 or 4 you could realistically create drama for in disrupting their caravans as a guild.

Noaani

Ravicus wrote: »

RazThemun wrote: »

I hope it is at least a weekly occurrence option.

I think it will be more often than just the weekends. People will need to move gathered supplies all the time. What I am wondering is if it will be worth it to be a pvp guild trying to attack caravans. The frequency, the ability to intercept, and so forth. I think A2 will provide many answers for this.

This is just opinion, but I do think this will be viable.

The thing is, you won't just be waiting around for them.

In order to do this, information is key. Bribes, spys and scouts will be your actual bread and butter activities, the PvP will likely be secondary to that.

tautau

And Raz just gave me an idea...coordinate with nearby nodes to all run caravans at the same time (probably something like a Monday morning when player load is low). Doing that would increase the odds of a spy knowing of the caravans but each one might be individually safer since attackers would have difficulty hitting more than a small number.

Percimes

tautau wrote: »

And Raz just gave me an idea...coordinate with nearby nodes to all run caravans at the same time (probably something like a Monday morning when player load is low). Doing that would increase the odds of a spy knowing of the caravans but each one might be individually safer since attackers would have difficulty hitting more than a small number.

Cicada survival tactic, but weekly instead of a 17 years cycle.

CroakerRPG

Ravicus wrote: »

Hehe that would be fun but can you imagine the PVE playerbase would go nuts. They want to get their resources home and safe

Just touching on this real quick.

PvE players won't be the only ones interested in caravans getting home safe. Supplies need to move regardless of playstyle. A PvP guild will still want their caravan of potion ingredients to make it to their alchemist, or iron to their blacksmith, so they can gear up and continue warring with other players. I fully expect caravans to be carefully guarded by interested parties and you may find yourself defending your own guild's caravans just as often as you may be hunting down rival caravans.

There will likely be a lot of potential opportunities for caravan battles, but your relationships with other guilds will influence your own approach.

Kilion

I think that'll depend on the area. Around a major node (Tier 5/6), I suspect there will be multiple caravans daily to and from vassal nodes. To the major node because it requires large amounts of resources for maintenance alone but also for construction and the high level artisanship. From the major node to its vassal nodes because there will be players requiring the superior gear produced in "the big city" and at a later point in time the outflow of resources produced by the relics. Also, there is a case to be made that guild migration between these two will be happening.

There will also be caravans from "the frontier", vassal nodes at the edges of the capitols ZOI. These will probably be mostly raw materials but depending on the location (a "safe" edge of the ZOI for example) it might also be a place where high quality processing materials come from, produced by a guild of players who prefer a less PvP heavy game style.

To conclude: The primary factors in my opinion will be the area we are talking about, the "phase" the server is in (there is strong evidence that there will be periods of more and less PvP) and the general activity of players on the server.

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