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CaptainAhen's avatar
CaptainAhen
Seasoned Traveler
8 days ago

Feature Request: Skirmishes

The idea of a skirmish would be similar to TW in that you would sign up to participate, though it could also be like RotE where the entire guild is automatically involved and it goes right into setup phase. However there would be only two units to place per person. Each participant would place one unit on defense, and one unit on offense. But, you cannot place a character that someone else has already placed. This would be a different way to plan, coordinate, and create teams by cherry picking a couple units from everyone's rosters to form waves of teams. 

You set it all up as waves for both your offense and your defense. When it begins, everyone in the guild gets one attempt at offense with every wave. You must battle in the wave order your guild set up and see how far you could get into the opponent's defensive waves, earning banners depending on how well you do offensively, but also defensively. Highest individual score during an attempt wins. 

This would certainly require rng and luck, but also force people to reconsider their strategies. 

For the sake of simplicity let's give an example with two guilds of 50 members each. This would be 10 waves for defense and 10 for offense. Guild A might have a starting offensive wave made up of:

  • Guildmember 1's JMK, Guildmember 2's CAT, etc

This would mean since Guildmember 1 placed JMK that no other offensive or defensive wave would have a JMK from anyone else, and the only other unit from Guildmember 1 would be in a defensive wave. So if a guild mate doesn't show up and place a unit, there's a missing spot. Guilds can try to prepare for this if they use teams with fewer characters, such as Darth Bane. 

If the JMK team wins against the first wave made up of LV, they roll right into the second wave against CLS, and continue until they are defeated. At which point offense wave 2 comes in and fights until they are no longer available, then offense wave 3, etc.

Let's say that each wave won nets 10 points offensively, and 10 points defensively, but also each undefeated offensive wave nets 10 additional points. Maximum score of 300 points. If the JMK team doesn't survive, but the second team finishes the skirmish, the guild would get 90 points for surviving teams, 100 points for all waves defeated, and if the defense holds at wave 8, then they would also get 30 points for having 3 surviving defensive teams. For a total of 220 points. 

I've also considered the idea that instead of waves, guildmates would each place a unit on offense and one on defense. Similar to the above, but not in formed teams. And as one unit dies another would randomly replace them. This would up the challenge a bit, but might also cause issues with large character placement (like Jabba) when joining the battle, or cause issues with more than one GL to join the team in the battle. So teams seem to make the most sense. 

My current thoughts would be to keep datacrons out of this. But maybe place a datacron in place of a unit. Strengthens one wave while weakening another. I'm also wondering what omicron possibilities could come from this. 

What are thoughts on this idea? If you enjoy the idea, how would you improve upon it? If you dislike it, is there anything you would change to improve it - or is it just another new game mode to take up more of our time? 

  • MasterSeedy's avatar
    MasterSeedy
    Rising Veteran

    I am ... not in favour. I don't think it's a bad idea, I just think that there's a lot of hidden officer work here in determining which teams will be placed by which person. 

    You'd have to find a way to dramatically cut the Officers' work somehow to make this work with the schedules we already keep. 

    On top of this concern, however, I don't see how placing units rather than squads or fleets would work. Who gets to play out the battle in that case? 

    It would still be too much work, but a better idea is 1 defensive squad, 1 offensive squad and 1 "reserve" squad. If your guild doesn't place enough squads on defense, then the blanks are filled with reserve squads, using up the highest GP squads first until all defensive positions are full. On offence, you have to use an offensive squad on your first attack against an enemy defensive squad, but for subsequent attacks, you pull from your reserves. 

    I mean, there's the core of something that could be very interesting here, but I just don't see how it works with donating 1 unit at a time, and with donating 1 squad at a time, I don't see how it's sufficiently different from TWs. 

    If this replaced TWs, okay, but added to a busy schedule? Meh. Not in favour. We just have enough going on in the game and people have real life to deal with.