Keep/Castle Defenses NEED MORE DEFENSE

[Slypanda 2]

I am getting real sick of having a wall go down by 1 treb in less than 10 minutes. As well as the guards doing absolutly no damage... Whats the point in spending ALL this time gathering the mats to upgrade stuff in the keep and the walls and guards... When it gets taken out in the blink of an eye by 1 treb and 15 dudes. Before trees even spawn.... Something needs to change about this in the next dregs.... Because it will push ppl in smaller guilds away from this game and eventually will lower the player amount in the game. 

I love this game, but we need to increase these keep and castle defenses..... 

[nihilsupernum 686]

5 minutes ago, Slypanda said:

I am getting real sick of having a wall go down by 1 treb in less than 10 minutes. As well as the guards doing absolutly no damage... Whats the point in spending ALL this time gathering the mats to upgrade stuff in the keep and the walls and guards... When it gets taken out in the blink of an eye by 1 treb and 15 dudes. Before trees even spawn.... Something needs to change about this in the next dregs.... Because it will push ppl in smaller guilds away from this game and eventually will lower the player amount in the game. 

I love this game, but we need to increase these keep and castle defenses..... 

• 10 minutes is a long time. That's 1/6 of the total potential siege window, and that's just to take down the first layer of defense in a keep. After that, the attackers have to deal with guards, wards, and of course the defending players.
• Trebs are extremely vulnerable. A well coordinated burst from a group (or even a few players) can burst them down in seconds.
• Trebs cost resources too. It takes time to gather materials to build them just like it takes time to build up the walls.
• Defenders in a siege should be sweeping around their keep to intercept any attackers before they can safely set up their siege. If they wait until the treb is already placed before leaving the keep, they may not be able to get out to the attackers in time to save a wall.

 

It sounds like the real problem you are objecting to is that small guilds can't hold a keep against big alliances. There are plans to address this in future patches, where small keep zones will only allow a smaller number of total players in them during siege windows, with approximately half the player slots reserved for the defending team.

[Stormcrow 148]

10 minutes is a blink in the life of a level 5 keep that takes several real life days to build up for any medium-sized, dedicated guild in Crowfall.

Medieval style defenses were designed from the outset to benefit a smaller occupying force, but this is definitely not how the game mechanics are currently "working."

Short version: I'm in agreement with the OP.

 

PS Bane trees need a buff, too. Fair is fair.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Stormcrow

[blazzen 4,634]

I'm not sure what rank the walls were, but we took down a small keep (undefended) in 4 minutes 22 seconds last night. That's the walls, rez statue, 2 wards and ToL. 

Think we used 2x MK4 trebs. 

The sieges in Crowfall are much more condensed than those in Shadowbane or Darkfall. To be fair, the effort to build up a city is much less than Shadowbane or Darkfall also. 

EDIT: You can see the message in this video here and do the math with what time was left in the siege window. 

 

Edited August 23, 2021 by blazzen

[Pendan 27]

Walls definitely need more defense. Rank 3 walls drop in a minute to just 2 trebs. Rank 10 walls take a very long time to build up but 5 trebs will make a hole in 5 minutes. That gives no time to react to a siege. You either sit in your keep for 15 minutes waiting for the bane trees to spawn or you have no chance to defend.

Waiting for the feature to be designed, tested, and deployed for handshake sieges is not a now solution. Changing some numbers in the database for wall strength can be done much faster for the short term.

Second problem is guard AI comes to a stop in a large siege. Rank 10 guard may or may not be strong but impossible to tell with them standing around as attackers run past because the guards are lagged out by the server.

[PopeUrban 4,338]

Yeah, the defenses are a bit squishy. Its kinda daft that so many sieges end before the 15 minute mark in an event where the bane trees are supposed to be the "quick defense option" for an otherwise hour long event.

Also that you can just clown car more siege weapons out of someone's inventory as soon as the previous one is destroyed is pretty goofy. Basically allows the attacker to just keep throwing trebs until they run out of money, slowly whittling down the wall because there's no corresponding economic sink for the defenders to counter it like shadowbane's water buckets.

The fact you can actually hit the stuff inside before the wall is even down is also kinda stupid. What reasonable monarch would build such low walls when they know the arc of the siege weapons is so high?

You can use you rdefensive advantage from walls to go out and tactical strike down trebs all you like, but all the attacker has to do is put up another one while you have no mechanism to repair the walls so in a war of attrition the attacker is almost always going to breach unless he's broke or your defense group was so overwhelming that its basically pointless for him to come back after the first few engagements.

Unfortunately crowfall sieges almost always end up decided by a fight that could have happenned in a random field, only there's a tree in the field somewhere. The wall siege is just kinda pointless foreplay.

Edited August 25, 2021 by PopeUrban

[Prudenthyaena 17]

Historically castles or keeps acted as force multipliers for the defenders. I feel as though the attackers should need a 2 to 1 advantage to have even a chance of taking a keep, but in Crowfall, the keeps have no force multiplier. If the attackers have a numerical advantage, they can either take the keep or reduce it to rubble.

Suppose the attackers put up a trebuchet and the defenders put up a trebuchet, each with the standard two engineers. The defenders attack the enemy trebuchet, which is 90% shielded by the enemy engineers, and healed by the second engineer if damage accumulates. The attacker hits the wall, and tears a hole in the defenses. The defenders put up a ballista on the wall, and the attackers kill the engineers on the ballista with their archers (who have better range than the ballista), then the trebuchet kills the ballista. If the defenders manage to hold the breach in the wall, the attackers begin reducing all the buildings in the keep to rubble.

To defend against siege, the defenders have to attack the attackers. But if the attackers outnumber the defenders, it's suicide. It turns into a farming session for the attackers. 

So, what's the point of the keep? 

[Retchet 400]

On 8/23/2021 at 2:56 PM, Slypanda said:

 the guards doing absolutly no damage... Whats the point in spending ALL this time gathering the mats to upgrade stuff in the keep and the walls and guards... 

Weird. That Elemental Legions guy nearly had an aneurysm last night over the guards being too strong.

[Soulreaver 2,477]

On 8/25/2021 at 3:37 PM, PopeUrban said:

Yeah, the defenses are a bit squishy. Its kinda daft that so many sieges end before the 15 minute mark in an event where the bane trees are supposed to be the "quick defense option" for an otherwise hour long event.

Also that you can just clown car more siege weapons out of someone's inventory as soon as the previous one is destroyed is pretty goofy. Basically allows the attacker to just keep throwing trebs until they run out of money, slowly whittling down the wall because there's no corresponding economic sink for the defenders to counter it like shadowbane's water buckets.

The fact you can actually hit the stuff inside before the wall is even down is also kinda stupid. What reasonable monarch would build such low walls when they know the arc of the siege weapons is so high?

You can use you rdefensive advantage from walls to go out and tactical strike down trebs all you like, but all the attacker has to do is put up another one while you have no mechanism to repair the walls so in a war of attrition the attacker is almost always going to breach unless he's broke or your defense group was so overwhelming that its basically pointless for him to come back after the first few engagements.

Unfortunately crowfall sieges almost always end up decided by a fight that could have happenned in a random field, only there's a tree in the field somewhere. The wall siege is just kinda pointless foreplay.

Defenders can after the wall is down still use ballistas to a massive effect inside the castle.  Placement is even made in such a manner that the attackers have to make outside dedicated teams to take them down - ppl just dont use em as such and stick to being in face to face situations