Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-30638561-20131030195810/@comment-24108228-20131104180720

Thanks, but you have not seen the true text walls I am capable of making, so prepare for the worst... Anyway, your balancing suggestion may be a good idea, but we don't want to start an arms race. For those of you who do not know what an arms race is, an arms race is where features are created in a 'the tank would be invincible, until you get tank explosives, which will destroy a tank, but once you get UFOs...' sort of way. The cannon and cannon proof wall would be a intresting idea, but it is the same thing with bombs and medieval walls. When the bomb proof wall (medieval wall) is added, we want something to destroy them (cannon), at which point we want something safe to hide behind (cannon proof wall), then we want something to destroy the new wall. Then the new player joins, and is instantly wiped out by fallout beacause they haven't got the anti radiation suit that is the safe wall to hide behind for nukes, which got added to destroy the tank proof wall and so on. We need to stop it before it starts.

Assuming we do add them and our players do not start an arms race, we would need to find a balance between cost and power. Here are some rules that would have to apply for the cannons.


 * The power will have to be limited so that it cannot destroy multiple tribes, and it is still a challenge to take a castle down.


 * The cost would have to be limited to be possible to get without being the god of the server, (not 5 mithril ect), though hard enough to get so nobody would ever want to use it on anyone without a castle unless they really hated them, and wanted to really push the definition of overkill.


 * The skill requirement must be very high, so someone with cannons will probably have mithril, and need them to take down the only rival on the server, as they cannot raid them otherwise. Cannons should not be able to be built unless a player has been playing for a long time.

To get around problem one, a single explosive shell should be able to knock down a medieval wall segment, the cannons will not be retoolable, and are extremly slow. (Walk speed 8, slightly slower than the slowest armour in the game). They will take 10 seconds to fire, emit a rather bright light while doing so, and launch a black cube the size of a bomb, that explodes on impact or after travelling 200 studs (not far enough to traverse large oceans, but far enough to hit any tribe on the island or nearby islands if placed next by a coast. The cube will not be affected by gravity and instead fire in a horizontal line. This should hopefully be strong enough to suit peoples castle raiding needs, but not strong enough to terrorise an entire server with a single cannon (we will have to find a way around putting them on boats, but I can't think of any particually good ones right now, and I want a few things open for people to think about, so comments are still posted and all this text doesn't fade into inactive threads, where it is never seen again...)

To resolve the cost issues, we must take a few limitations into consideration. Firstly, it must not be only available to the almighty tribe with the castle you are trying to destroy, yet must not be easy to get to like the original suggestion. So the ideal way of getting around this is the same way we tackled bombs. The small cube that could make the safe medieval house someone is hiding their valuables in not so safe after all, is uniquely tackled by using sulphur and charcoal, two materials useless unless creating bombs, in large quantities. To make a single bomb you need a total of 12 ores, (ten coal and two sulphur), compared to a total of 5 ores to get a steel tool, from absolutely nothing, (two iron for the forge, one for the pickaxe to get your smithing up to level 2, and one coal and one iron to make the steel for the steel tool). If we were to the following recipes for the two cannonballs (flaming is pointless due to the high cost designed for breaking medieval walls, and any tribe that dangerous would fireproof their stuff).
 * Anvil + 4x refined iron = Regular Cannonball (Does 300 damage to any entities that it hits)
 * Cannonball + Bomb = Explosive Cannonball (The stuff for blowing up medieval walls)

The cannon itself would also be very expensive. To reload you would craft the metal part of the cannon with a gunpowder, then your chosen cannonball. To create the cannon itself would be more of a test of skills rather than available resources. The recipe would be: Gunpowder is not included as it is used in reloading the cannon and creating the explosive cannonball, already totalling in 21 ores mined just to reload the cannon with one. (14 coal, 3 sulphur, 4 iron).
 * Anvil+6x refined iron, 2 small bush stumps

The final rule that must be passed to make cannons a balanced and implementable idea is that the skill requirements must be reasonable. Engineering and smithing would be the main importance, and chemistry also required, but not as much. As engineering has so little uses, according to the wiki page, only 4 things require or advance it, the requirement will have to be low, but it will still be hard to advance to that level. The smithing level should be about the same as mithril items, around 5-6, and the chemistry around 4, slightly higher than bombs.

Feel free to comment on the cannon suggested stats, and if your eyes don't hurt, then read on to my cannon proof walls opinions. (If they do hurt, please look away from the screen and don't sue me for any eye damage).

The cannon proof walls are a perfect way of fixing the 'cannons make everything unsafe' problem, and seem extremely good until you look deeper into how you would make them, and if a tribe would use it or not. If you then look even further into base costs, then you see why I come to the conclusion that I have.


 * The first balance problem is that most raider tribes will not get to the cannon point, and the castle tribes never use the cannon proof walls, because they don't feel like they will need one and cant be bothered to get the extra materials to make their castle cannon proof.


 * The second balance problem is that they will be rather overpowered, as it might take 2-3 hits to take a segment down, totalling to 48 or 59 ores, a huge amount, especially considering that it could easily be replaced if the tribe notices the loud bangs and lights going on outside, and decides to just make a new one, which would not take very long. If the cost was to be increased then it would be too hard to make the castle in the first place, and the idea would be pointless anyway. So if the cannon proof wall idea is flawed, how do we fix the problem of cannons being to overpowered?

The answer is that it is already fixed. Obviously a regular cannonball will not explode, for reasons along the lines of, 'FAR TOO OP!', as a projectile explosive that is easy to calculate where it will hit, and using only one gunpowder, that is for actually firing the projectile in the first place would make raids far to easy, so only explosive cannonballs should make explosions (hence the name).

As they use an incredible 27 ores to create (cannon, reload and cannonball), a figure far higher than any other, and roughly the amount of ores needed to mine to get from stone tools to a mithril sword and armour, this instead arises an opposite question. Is it under powered? We could put a gunpowder in the explosive recipe for cannonballs, but that would go too far the other way, reducing it to only 16 ores to create, load, and fire a cannon, only 4 higher than a bomb, of which it is much more powerful than. The problem arises and it requires a new poll to see what you think, so Ill put one in. How overpowered are cannons? Too overpowered to add to the game Very overpowered Slightly overpowered Perfect! Slightly underpowered Very underpowered Too underpowered for the game