Caravan Balancing Idea/Mechanic
Core of this idea is introducing some sort of financial loss for attackers, which can also translate to a gain for defenders.
I've have several potential ways this can happen:
One idea for this a a bounty system:. Attackers needing to pay bounty for source <-> destination targets of caravans and be blacklisted there until bounties paid. Make the bounty amount based on the overall value of the caravan being attacked and put on when the attacker dies.
To add more flavor to it and actually provide some benefit of beating attackers, can make a portion of the bounty be paid off to defenders as "compensation".
Another one is durability loss which translates to gold loss: lose all durability on all their equipped gear when killed by defenders, and gold cost of repair be given to defenders as loot. No gold being dropped from the attacker directly, but ends up being the attacker loses gold to defender since they need to spend the same gold to repair their gear. This I think brings a bit of Albion flavor into the mix where attackers coming with better gear potentially will lose more "gold", but similarly provide more gold to defenders. This incentives high quality defenders beating high quality attackers. Similarly, attackers that decide to zerg with more people, worse gear, has challenges of having more people for once, and their disadvantage against smaller numbered but more powerful defenders.
Cost of forming Caravan attack party/raids:
This takes some of the social aspect out and makes it more of a hard mechanic, but it's another way attacker risk/loss can be balanced.
Have Caravan attackers needing to form a raid fund, the size of this fun corresponding directly to the value of Caravan they can attack.
Based on some of the methods of attacker loss vs defender gain I mentioned, instead of bounty and durability, gold loss can be directly from this fund for each attacker death.
In a nut shell:
-Attackers lose $$ if they die.
-Defenders get extra $$ for beating attackers.
How it can be balanced:
We can look at some of the balance here by how the value of the caravan is calculated to the attackers losses. For example, calculate it based on # of defenders:
For 10 defenders, each attacker death has a repair/bounty cost of %10 of Caravan value.
Where as for 20 defenders, it's a %5 cost.
Meaning attacking a caravan that has more defenders, hast less of a loss for attackers that die, but more if attacking caravans with less defenders.
For attackers, the less numbers they have, the higher their share will be, but based on the # of defenders, the higher or lower their cost will be. Makes a small group of strong pvpers have less loss dying to large groups of defenders, while having higher potential profit from winning, but a higher chance to lose from being out numbered.
On the flip side, attackers dealing with a smaller group of defenders have a higher chance to win, but also higher losses if they die. Making small groups of elite defenders also viable. If they're getting attacked a larger group of attackers, each of those attackers will have a very high loss at death due to low defender count.
We can further balance this by locking caravan attack and defender groups so this can't be abused.
Caravan defenders locked to "x" number of defenders when the Caravan form, who GAIN BIG BOUNTY for betraying the caravan. Implement pvp damage tracking so defenders who are throwing, are counter as having betrayed the Caravan.
Same for attackers, where their Caravan group is locked at "x" number, as in within the group/raid limits of the game, as well as the number being locked in for some maybe 15-30 minutes prior to being able to attack Caravans.
