Hey there folks. This post is intended to give a bit of insight into our thoughts for the next event. A lot of this is intended to be somewhat experimental, and the results for it may influence what we do in the future for the game. We fully expect and intend to tweak and adjust the event as it occurs to provide the best gameplay experience. This thread gives a glimpse into the basic building blocks of the event's gameplay. It does not go into the specifics of what the enemy npc will be doing.

The basic gist, is that all players will be working together against an NPC threat. The individual players will be working against the threat, as well as providing commodities to the factions. The factions in turn, will be able to use these commodities on special powers.

The Hidden War will be a war of the Skytopians versus an NPC threat. During this event, the usual method of faction's gaining control of skylands will be disabled. At the beginning of the event, the factions will divide up control of Skytopia on a per-skyland basis. During the event, factions may cede control of a skyland to another faction if they so choose.

The mood modifier on influence running will also be disabled for this event.

Each skyland has the following characteristics. Not all of these may be visible to the players.

• Skytopian Offense - A modifier to the player influence earned here.
• Skytopian Defense - A modifier to the npc enemy influence earned here.
• Controlling Faction - The faction in control of the skyland
• Skytopian Influence - Amount of influence that players have run
• Enemy Influence - Amount of influence that npc enemies have run
• Neighbors - A list of skylands near this skyland.
• NPC Aggression Level - The likelihood that the enemy will attack here.
• NPC Presence - The amount of the enemy that is here. Proportion of influence earned here by the enemy is also earned on all neighboring Skylands.

*Each* Faction on a Skyland has the following:

• Workforce - work power that the faction has
• Supplies - commodities the faction can use

Additionally, the NPC Enemy will have the following characteristics:

• Overall Power - This value will represent about how much influence the NPCs can run in a day.

Individual Skyrates may do the following:

• Skyland Patrols:
  Players successfully completing patrols on a Skyland will raise the Skytopia Defense value of the Skyland. The level of the patrol will affect the amount that the Defense raises by.
• Trading:
  Selling goods on a Skyland will create Supplies. The amount of Supplies created will depend on the commodity being sold. For faction members, 50% of the Supplies will go to the faction controlling the skyland, and 50% to their faction on that skyland. Independents will have 100% of their Supplies go to the controlling faction.
• Mission Running:
  Running influence on a Skyland will create Workforce. These work similarly to the Trading section above (proportion to the factions, etc). Some missions may provide little influence, but in return may raise Skytopia Offense/Defense.
• Legendary Combats:
  Fighting and winning against certain legendary combats will lower the Overall Power of the NPCs.

A Skyland will generally be either Skytopian controlled, or NPC Controlled, based on who has the higher influence at the start of the day.

Skytopian Controlled:

• Workforce & Supplies earned normally here.
• Every day, a proportion of Workforce & Supplies will be awarded to the controlling faction.
• The offense/defense values may very slowly lower over time. They will lower faster when the Skyland is being attacked by the NPC enemy.

Hidden Fleet Controlled:

• No workforce & supplies earned here.
• Every day, any offense/defense values here lower sharply. Any workforce/supplies on this Skyland will also lower sharply.
• The tavern will be in a 'refugee' state. Offering a special line of missions to take the SKyland back.
• *Potentially* disable the Mechanic & Trader here.

So what are workforce/supplies for? That's for the player selected faction leaders. They will have access to a special webpage where they will be able to make use of these commodities.

Each faction can use various support/attack abilities from a Skyland they control. Abilities are used from Skylands to Skylands. The amount of time that it takes to use an ability depends on the ability and the distance from the start Skyland to the end. Support abilities can be used on ANY Skytopia controlled skyland, including themselves.

Example:
The Earthen Order finds out that an attack is coming in from the North. The Azure League currently has holdings up in the North, but they aren't well protected. The Earthen Order may use a Support Ability from any Skyland they control on Azure League skylands to help them.

Each faction will have a few basic Support Abilities.
The following abilities can only be used if that leader's faction controls the Skyland.

• Fortify: Convert manpower & supplies to Defense.
• Arm: Convert manpower & supplies to Offense.
• Transfer: Turn control of this Skyland over to another faction.

All faction leaders (even those whose faction is not in control of the Skyland), will be able to:

• Transport: Move workforce/supplies that the faction controls from one skyland to another.

Each faction also has attack abilities that can be used from a Skytopia controlled Skyland on a NPC Enemy controlled skyland.

• Raid: Convert manpower & supplies to Skytopia Influence

Beyond these basic abilities, each faction will also have faction-specific abilities that they can use. Each faction will have two support abilities and one attack ability.

Potential Support abilities:

• Increase the aggression level of the NPC enemy on a target skyland.
• Lower the aggression level of the NPC enemy on a target skyland.
• Convert manpower & supplies to Offense & Defense on a target skyland.
• Raise the ratio of influence -> workforce on a target skyland.
• Drop a load of goods onto a target skyland.
• Transfer offense/defense from one SKyland to another.
• Provide a beneficial StatusEffect to anyone who flies through the target skyland.
• Raise the number of missions provided by a target skyland.
• Make it so a proportion of Skytopian influence earned on this skyland is earned on neighboring skylands.

Potential Attack Abilities:

• Reduces the rate at which NPC Presence raises, and reduces influence earned on target skyland from neighboring skylands.
• Raise the number of missions offered herer when NPC controlled. Raise the Offense/Defense value of the skyland.
• Lower NPC Presence, discover the aggression level of this skyland and all neighboring skylands.
• Take a proportional cut out of the NPC Influence here.
• Manpower & Supplies -> Influence, plus Influence earned on all neighbors to this skyland.

Additionally, each Faction may gain certain RP Story bonuses that may come into play.

The overall intent of the gameplay is that players will work to assist their own factions (and occasionally other factions). The factions themselves will work together because their individual abilities support one another (like a group of adventurers in an RPG). Independents who feel the need to assist will generate supplies & workforce for the faction they choose to assist. Lower level players will be able to guard the homefront as well fighting against the lower level legendaries.

Awesome. This Sounds Awesome.

The first question that comes to mind is: what about alts?

Will Hunting around a skyland or completing combats generated within a certain Zone of Control around a Skyland produce a similar effect? If the rates are adjusted suitably, then it could be far more efficient for focus purposes than requiring people to use the Patrols system.

Factions... working together?! This will be a very interesting experiment indeed, to see who players hate more: the evil computer or each other.

The only question I have is: When do we start?

Any further developments regarding wings?

Unsurprisingly, I am opposed to shutting down traders. I recognize that ordinary influence running is shut down during this event, but I think that the devs should consider very carefully whether they want this event to be Skyrates for the duration, or if they want trade and combat to proceed normally.

The gist I'm getting is that they will - it's just that they will coincidentially generate additional resources for the factions in the process of doing so.

For example, Fred the Trader sells a pile of Diamonds at Kadath. He generates Supplies on that Skyland as well as the normal profit from the usual trade transaction. The Supply generation is a side effect, not a replacement.

This way, literally everybody is contributing to the war effort in some form, meaning that factions are not solely reliant on just their members to provide their hitting power. This means that factions with a smaller player base are not set back in the game as much compared to larger, more organized or more efficient factions. It neatly balances out the differences between player tiers as well - the war effort will not be won by the actions of just the tier nine pilots, but also the pilots working up to their next plane by trading or fighting.

This is a really good question. Independents can contribute heavily to a faction by choosing whose skylands to run on. On the one hand, it gives Indies a /great/ mercenary ability that I think they've needed for a long time, but on the other hand, it removes one's ability to run an indy alt just to, say, hold the governorship of a particular skyland.

This.

Some very good ideas here- I'm looking forward to seeing how it pans out!

Yes, let's get it started.

General Message to the Hidden Fleet: Get ready, ya worms. It's ON!

This looks fantastic.

I am referring to:

I'm also opposed to shutting down trader/mechanic for NPC-controlled skylands. I can think of two reasons it could be bad: it slows down new kids trying to tier up through trading, and the massive amount of queue-related bugs it's likely to cause.

Sunrunner, you exactly nailed down why I'm hesitant to do that. I *believe* in the end, we won't disable mechanics/traders. That way if players wish to abstain from the event, they may still play the game. Thematically, we can say that players are 'smuggling' and 'sneaking' in.



Not for this event. Depending on how this works out, we may consider moving some of the faction qualities of the event to wings.



While this would be nice, at this time it would be a good amount of work for not too much gain. We will try to get a sense of it via legendary combats and the patrols.



A good question. I'm going to think on it for a bit.

My first thought is that players will still able to use alts, but that aggressive 'swarming' will still be looked down on. Let's try to keep it to one really active player per household.