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Back in MW4 leagues, this is what we did... you needed to get your forces into position to take that planet via jumpships, and then asssault it. We scheduled battles on the league website, etc.
Now, in an environment like MWO, such a scheduling system won't really work.. because folks want to play all the time.
As such, I would suggest that we leverage a contract system to facilitate units paying for defense of their planet.
Here is how I would suggest it plays out when a unit attacks a planet that another unit holds. Bear in mind, this is really only focused on Merc vs. Merc combat. Given that those units are fighting for actual personal ownership, I think that it will require some slightly more time consuming mechanics, but those mechanics will also be accepted by those players:
1) Attacking unit moves forces around the galaxy via jumpships. Then it can launch attacks on its own behalf from those JS.
2) The current owner of that planet then gets right of first refusal for that battle. That is, they are notified that an attack has been launched on their planet, and they have some period of time to defend it. This period of time would be fairly short, perhaps 15 minutes? I would suggest that even when accepted, it would then go and schedule a fight for some period shortly in the future.. That way, the attackers aren't just sitting around twiddling their thumbs, waiting for the defender. They can launch the attack, and then go fight other matches and do what they like. Then at some point in the future, the results of their attack plans are reported and things continue. Either the defender is ready to go and they drop into a matchmaking lobby, or the following happens using the contracting system.
3) In cases where the owner of a planet is not available to defend their holdings (or simply chooses not to, because maybe they are doing other junk), then the defense will fall to the contracting system. This will work as described below:
- For a given planet, the owner can define a defensive garrison contract. This contract will be defined to have the following qualities: Payment, Required Unit Rating. The payment is self explanatory, it will define the amount of money that, upon victory, will be transferred from the contracting unit to the mercenary unit taking the contract. The required unit rating defines a minimum competency rating for a unit to be allowed to accept that contract. (More on this below) Additionally, these contract parameters could be extended to cover additional features like tonnage, to support different types of defensive (or even offensive) contracts for different purposes, but here we're focusing purely on planetary assault defenses.
- Once a contract is posted, if a unit owning some planetary holding does not choose to defend the planet in the previously described timelimit, then the defense falls to Outreach's contracting office. The planetary defense contract is posted up onto the available job listing, and other units can choose to accept it. This would, again, go for another period of time, perhaps another 15 minutes, etc. So, at most, if someone attacks a planet to take it over, they would wait at most 30 minutes (in this case, those numbers are of course just notional) for them to get some kind of fight going.
- A mercenary unit browsing Outreach's contract listing will see all contracts available to them. They will then be able to select whatever contract they like, and bid on it. For the next 5 minutes, other mercenary units may also bid on that contract, with the highest rated unit ultimately getting the job. Thus, units which perform better will tend to get better contracts, and units which offer better contracts will get better defenders of their holdings when they are not there to defend them themselves. This in itself would help facilitate small but highly skilled groups to still play in the game, and not get rolled over simply due to their inability to field constant defenses.. If they are good, they will earn good amounts of money, which will in turn allow them to hire good defensive forces for when they are not there.
- If no mercenary unit accepts the contract, then the matchmaker finds some PUG group to form a defensive force. There is a good chance this will go poorly for the defenders, but that provides incentive to offer good contracts. If you offer contracts with high Merc requirements and poor pay, you will be out of luck. Other strategies might be to offer contracts with low requirements but high pay, so that even if no high skill mercs are around, some lower skilled mercs are still there to take on the job. But such decisions are left to the contracting unit.
- (NOTE HERE... upon contemplation, it may not be necessary to bother attaching a minmum rating to a contract. All contracts could have no requirement in this regard, and we could just trust that the higher rated mercs will always go after the best pay... This may be preferable, since I can't see any real reason why I would prefer Pugs to defend my planet rather than crappy mercs...although the pug wouldn't need to be paid at all, so you may get lucky there... a point to think about)
- Once the contract is assigned, the two teams are dropped into a matchmaking lobby. Some planetary assault sequence would take place. I'd suggest, perhaps, something akin to what we did in MW4 planetary leagues, although perhaps streamlined to take less time. I'd suggest perhaps a best of 3 or perhaps best of 5 approach, where the victor claims the planet. In the old leagues, we had a more complex system where wins effectively pushed a counter up and down a scale between 1 and 10, with 1 being forced retreat for the attackers (Defensive win with the attackers losing their PA forces) and 10 being a forced retreat for the defenders (Offensive win with defenders losing the garrison forces). But this may be too time consuming, as there were Planetary assaults in the old leagues which took many, many hours played over many many nights as brutal battles of attrition took place. For MWO, a simple best of 3 or 5 may be the best option.
Part of this contracting system involves rating a given mercenary unit, based upon their past performance. I would suggest that this be some measurement based upon their win percentage. Honestly, if you wanted to,you could define an Elo rank for that mercenary unit, or something like that. Ultimately though, such a rating system is required in order to enable a contractor to offer top dollar contracts specifically directed at top units, rather than having some garbage unit continually attempt high paying contracts and fail to deliver results, effectively screwing the unit offering payment.
Some things to acknowledge here:
One thing about such a system is that it's not really a trivial investment of time, if you want to play in the big leagues. In order to actually take and hold planets, we're talking about investing some non trivial time playing the game for a night... maybe an hour or two.
This certainly is not for everyone. Many players would just want to hop on and play some games... and that's fine, although this system isn't targeting those users. There are other aspects of MWO which targets them.
This system would target more serious players who are more invested in the game and its game world. And as such, the time requirements describe seem quite reasonable. For other games like EvE, combat operations are non trivial investments of time for folks. It's reasonable to say, "Hey folks, we're getting together tonight to do this, and it'll be going from X until Y on Thursday."
I think that this kind of system offers much more depth and interest for those players, than simply fighting against random folks and accumulating wins. While such a system works (kind of) in COD Ghosts, there's really no depth to it... you don't actually get any impression that you are fighting against specific units. There's no real rivalry, and there's no real battlefield being fought over. It's more like a ladder system.
So there you go, some additional thoughts for assaults and contracting.
