Clans and Warfare

I am finalizing the last few details of the server plugins now and I figured it would be a good time to explain how pvp will work and maybe get some feedback on it incase I've gone crazy and this is a terrible idea or something .

First, clans will be created very similarly to how they are made in factions, via command. Claiming of land however will vary, instead of claiming by chunk, as in factions, each clan will set designated control points marked with a diamond block and 4 lapis blocks surrounding it which will claim a large radius (yes, circular radius) around it, likely a few hundred blocks. Clans will be limited to a set number of control points based on how many members they have (undetermined how exactly these numbers will correspond as of yet).

You can expect many of the same control options you have in factions to be present in the new clan system, kicking people from the clan, promoting them to officers, etc. with more added over time (its unlikely we'll have unique rank tags in front of names for a bit for instance but its definitely planned for later). In addition, there will be ways to gain abilities, magic spells for instance among other things, for people not in a clan these abilities will be tied directly to them, they will keep them until they get killed by someone else at which point one of their abilities will be transferred to the person who killed them; however, if they are in a clan, these abilities will instead become clan abilities, accessible by any member of that clan. Which brings us to.....


Warfare
This is where the major departure from past clan systems like factions comes in. First, a clan can only be at war with one other clan at a time; this does not prevent multiple clans from attacking a single clan, but only the clan that is officially at war with them gains rewards such as new clan abilities and other fun things. Allow me to provide an example to how this system works on the whole (if you hate long examples, skip to the end and I'll bullet point key things):

You dislike the Dryad clan (fire to the trees!) so, as clan leader or someone ranked high enough within the clan, you declare war on them.

At this point both your clan and their clan are given a warning that you are each at war both immediately and each time you log in. When war is initially declared the declaration is broadcast across the server to everyone.

Now, you mount up your horses, grab your diamond armor and sword, and run off to the enemy base, army in tow. Additionally, your allies, the members of the Kemen clan join up with you to aid in the battle.

Upon arriving at the enemy base you meet immediate resistance and kill 2 of the enemy clan members while your Kemen allies kill 1 more. You receive immediate confirmation that your two kills have gained your clan 6 points in the war while the death of the enemy by your ally's hand has gained you another point bringing your clan to a total of 7 points.

As you move further into the enemy base, breaking through a wall at their outer perimeter since you are now at war and their outer protections are disabled, you run into their cleverly disguised traps and lose 2 of your clan members and one of your ally's members to flame turrets, your enemy gains 2 points for the death of your clan members, there is no negative effect for your ally dying.

Meanwhile, back at your base one of your members who decided not to come foolishly digs downward into lava and dies horribly, your enemy gains one point for this, bringing them up to 3 points.

Back at the enemy base you and your allies manage to push the enemy back and reach the first of their control points, getting within 60 blocks of it. You hold that point for several minutes before the plugin confirms that you have captured the control point and your clan is awarded 10 points, bringing you up to 17 points. Additionally, now that the control point is captured, your enemy can no longer use it as a warp point to move quickly around their base. You consider destroying the aesthetically pleasing treehouse they've built around this control point and looting all of their chests but quickly remember that, while outer protections are disabled in times of war, the inner protections, even of captured control points, remain active within 50 blocks of the control point, preventing griefing and looting.

At this point you and your allies consider the day a success and decide to log off. Your clan's land gains offline protections 3 minutes after you all log off, as does the control point you captured.

The next day, some of your clan logs in and goes about their business mining and crafting, as if they thought a game called minecraft had a focus on these things, The enemy takes advantage of this and retakes their captured point, they gain 10 points for recapturing it, bringing them up to 13 points while your clan remains at 17 points. Unconcerned about this event, your members ignore it and continue what they are doing, leading to a fairly uneventful day.

On day 3 of your campaign you decide to go back on the warpath and retake that control point you lost yesterday. Your enemy is ready for you this time though and manages to fend you off, killing 4 of your members for a gain of 12 points on their side but you manage to retake the control point, gaining 10 points and leaving your score at 27 points while the enemy sits at 25 points. Later in the day you catch a few of your enemies exploring the air temple and manage to kill 1 of them for an additional 3 points; another of the enemy in the temple who managed to evade you falls into one of the temple's many traps and dies, giving you another point and bringing your clan to a total of 31 points while the enemy remains at 25 points.

As the 3rd day of your campaign ends, so does the war, 72 hours after you started it. The server compares the scores of your clan and the enemy and discovers that you have a 6 point lead. Unfortunately, this is just below the 10 point threshold for victory and is considered to be a draw and thus your clan is given no reward for this war and the enemy clan loses nothing (if you ignore the damage you've likely caused to the outer segment of their base). The control point you captured reverts back to being the enemy's (as it would even if you had won the war).

Frustrated at your loss, you decide you want to attack them again, sure that you will beat them this time... unfortunately, the plugin tells you that you can't as you have just left a war with them; you will have to wait either 3 days before declaring war on them again.


Summary

• A war always lasts 3 days, unless all control points are captured by a single clan, in which case the war ends immediately (note that the clan that captured all of them may not necessarily win in this case)
  
• A clan can only be in one war at a time
  
• The winner of a war is determined by which clan gains more victory points during it; there must be at least a 10 point difference in score between each clan or the war is declared a draw
  
• Enemy block protections are disabled around each control point for your clan only, and vice versa, with the exception of a 50 block radius directly around the control point, which retains its protections regardless of what happens during the war. However, blocks that share the exact x value or the exact z value with the control point are not protected, allowing the enemy to dig a straight line to the control point if necessary.
  
• Enemy control points can be captured by remaining within a 60 block radius of them with a larger number of players around the control point than the enemy has around it.
  
• Points are given to a team during war as follows: An enemy dies - 1 point; An enemy dies because one of your clan members killed them directly - 3 points; Your team captures a control point (retaking your own or taking an enemy's) - 10 points.
  
• The clan that loses the war loses one of their clan abilities (selected by the plugin) to the winning clan, the losing clan can no longer use that ability, the winning clan gains it as an ability.
  
• The result of the war is recorded for each clan as a part of the clan's statistics which any other clan can view at will. Good overall scores may lead to additional clan-wide benefits.
  
• During war, control points can not be created or destroyed by either clan
  
• At the end of a war control points remain a part of the clan they originally were created by regardless of whether they were captured or not, captured control points are no longer captured.
  
• You can not declare war against a clan you have been at war with anytime in the past 72 hours.
  
• All of your clan's land gains full protections 3 minutes after all of your clan members log off.
  

Lastly, before I end this already overly long post, I suppose I should address what happens when a clan dissolves. If you choose to end a clan every member of the clan becomes clanless, but more importantly, clan abilities are reassigned to other clans (Not your own clan members!). 1 ability is assigned to each other clan in turn, starting with the clans with the lowest scores. If enough abilities exist to give an ability to each clan with more abilities left over, the cycle begins again, with the lowest scoring clan gaining a second ability, then the next lowest and so on until all of the abilities have been assigned to new clans. All members of the disbanded clan no longer have access to any of these abilities (unless of course they go join a new clan that has them or make a clan and go win a war to regain some of them from clans that got them).

Clans are only disbanded under 3 conditions:
1) The clan leader disbands their own clan
2) An admin disbands the clan because of a rule violation of some sort (such as naming your clan something obscene)
3) No members of the clan log in over the course of a 2 week period



Thus you have the basic outline of the current workings of the clan system. I am still finalizing some of the code and bits and pieces may change here and there (I've gone back and forth on the way control points are captured a few times now..), but for the most part I'm pretty committed to this general direction; however, I would love to hear some feedback and I could be persuaded to change things if provided with good reasons, so please leave some comments in the thread about whether you like, dislike, or would somehow change this system.

Sounds interesting. What kind of rewards do you have in mind for winning a war, besides an ability? And what is to stop a clan from not logging off during a war so that they can't lose? Since you can't break into enemy territory unless they are online. (Assuming I read everything correctly.) Not sure anyone would do that but you know Correct me if I'm wrong

There will be a leveling system for clans as well, winning wars will be one of several methods for gaining experience which leads to several other things, generally speaking though I do not plan on giving rewards outside of various permissions/abilities because blocks tend to become meaningless quickly, note that not all abilities are things like magicspells though, it could be that your clan levels up and gains the ability to build telepads or new types of airship, or gains priority access to the server when it is full, or gains access to a new tier of quests (at some point i should probably explain the full idea behind quests here ); additionally, in the long run, when a map ends the clan with the most experience/highest level will be considered to have won that map and will gain some reward to carry over to the next one, whether this is a certain ability completely unique to them that can not be lost or simply saving some of their items.

As to the logging off problem, its a tough one to solve, I have a few ideas on it but haven't settled on the solution. One thought is that some amount of points would be awarded for how long players of a faction are online in the day, so if one clan logs off and doesn't show up until the war ends they will have lost, perhaps 1 point is gained for every continuous hour a faction has someone online. Over the course of 3 days this should make the more active faction that isn't logging off to avoid the fight win automatically.

Unfortunately it does less to address clans that avoid battle by logging off and then get on late in the night, perhaps I could tie some of the other experience gaining methods into gaining points during wars as well, would allow cold wars then where each faction has tasks they can complete outside of destroying each other in order to gain points, completing temples, opening a new portal, or successfully completing a minigame for instance..

Honestly though, my ideal solution for this issue would be to allow a clan to open up a secondary battlefield of some sort on the second or third day of the war, giving each clan the first 2 days to set up defenses there, and have control points on that secondary battlefield that can be captured at any time regardless of whether or not people are online, if they don't defend it they'll have to rely on traps, monsters, and npcs to defend it for them, but it would only be open for that short period of time with ample warning that they needed to defend it. This definitely won't be implemented before server launch though as it would require a massive addition to the plugin to work effectively that would take quite some time to complete (since worlds would have to be dynamically created for each war and removed at the end of wars plus each world would have to have preset control points and rules governing it...)


At the end of the day, I assume most clans won't log off whenever an enemy comes on, but if it becomes a serious issue with a particular clan over multiple wars it is possible an admin could step in at that point and provide some sort of penalty to the clan, such as loss of levels, or redistribution of their abilities among the other clans as though they had disbanded.

I like the idea of how war works and the problems sound managable but you need some way to encourage battles more, defenders defend because they don't want their stuff wrecked, or in this case, they don't want to lose their abilities, but people will be more likely to defend and engage in combat if they gain additional reward for defending. would also stop people from declaring war too often against clans they aren't sure they can beat as they have more to lose.