Staff:Anti-Zerg Mechanic
The bane anti-zerg system is designed to make smaller forces more competitive against larger forces to help mitigate the mass zerging in Shadowbane. It applies strictly to banes. The system applies a bonus or penalty to damage against other players to offset force size in the fight. This is an innate bonus applied at the time of damage based on who you attack, there are no icons to show the exact bonus/penalty as it is constantly changing and based on who you are fighting. It does not currently apply to anything except damage to others. You still heal for your normal amount and all buffs and debuffs work the same.
How it works is everyone within two times the radius of a city grid is counted as being at a bane for the system (so it extends past the city limits during an active bane). Each person within the bane is counted one of three ways. They are either an attacker of the bane, a defender of the city, or a crasher at the bane. Here is how people are grouped:
1) Any character who is not within the range of the city is not counted as at the bane for this system (not counted towards the totals).
2) Any character who is in the attacking nation at a bane is considered an attacker at the bane.
3) Any character who is in the defending nation at a bane is considered a defender at the bane.
4) Any character who is in a nation allied to the attacking nation is considered an attacker at the bane.
5) Any character who is in a nation allied to the defending nation is considered a defender at the bane.
6) Any character who shares an IP, shares a master account, or is grouped with a player from the attacking nation is considered an attacker at the bane.
7) Any character who shares an IP, shares a master account, or is grouped with a player from the defending nation is considered a defender at the bane.
8) Anyone left over is considered a crasher at the bane.
The damage modifiers is based on taking the highest number of one group compared against another the highest number of another group over the last 5 minutes. A new sample of the totals on the bane are taken every 15 seconds. Only the highest sample of each group over the last 5 minutes is used to calculate the damage modifier. Any sample that's more than 5 minutes old is rolled off and the highest of the remaining samples is used. So if 40 defenders engage 60 attackers and the numbers fall throughout combat, the total will not change from 40 vs 60 for 5 minutes. However if either side adds to that total, it is instantly bumped to it's new high for 5 minutes. The totals for each side are calculated as such:
Defenders
When a defender damages another defender they do normal damage (no modifier).
When a defender damages an attacker then we calculate the highest defender total over the last 5 minutes against the highest attacker total to get the modifier.
When a defender damages a crasher then we calculate the highest defender total over the last 5 minutes against the highest crasher total plus the highest attacker total to get the modifier.
Attackers
When an attacker damages another attacker they do normal damage (no modifier).
When an attacker damages a defender then we calculate the highest attacker total over the last 5 minutes against the highest defender total to get the modifier.
When an attacker damages a crasher then we calculate the highest attacker total over the last 5 minutes against the highest crasher total plus the highest defender total to get the modifier.
Crasher
When a crasher damages another crasher they do normal damage (no modifier).
When a crasher damages an attacker then we calculate the highest highest crasher total plus the highest defender total over the last 5 minutes against the highest attacker total to get the modifier.
When a crasher damages a defender then we calculate the highest highest crasher total plus the highest attacker total over the last 5 minutes against the highest defender total to get the modifier.
To explain crashers better, they always receive a penalty on the bane field since we can't know if the crashers are helping attackers, defenders, or no one. If there are 40 defenders, 60 attackers, and 30 crashers at a bane, then crashers would count as 80 (30 crashers + 60 attackers) vs 40 when fighting defenders, and as 70 (30 crashers + 40 defenders) vs 60 when fighting attackers. In other words it's never beneficial to bring crashers to a bane to get around this system. If you want to bring other nations to help you at a bane, make sure they're allied to you so they do not receive a crasher penalty to damage.
The damage bonus/penalty is designed to give each side a fighting chance. The modifier based on the assumption that each player on both sides will average an approximate equivalent amount of damage. So if the fight is 40 vs 80 (1 to 2 ratio) the side with 40 will do half the damage of the side with 80.
The system modifier is designed to help normalize the damages between the smaller and larger force. In order to not be a hard counter to numbers, the system does not completely normalize damage until the ratio of small force to large force grows extreme. What this means is that if the difference between a small force and a large force is only 15%, then there will be very little normalization of damage (both sides will do close to what the would normally do without the system). However as the difference grows extreme the normalization kicks in more and more. At 4x difference in force size (20 vs 80, 40 vs 160, etc) the normalization kicks in to fully match the two sides. At this point if both sides are doing equivalent damage per average person, then they will do equivalent total damage. What this means is that the system will kick in less when you bring 50% more people than your opponent versus twice as many people than your opponent. The more someone tries to zerg the more this system punishes them.
Here are some sample modifiers:
Bonus to Smaller Force
1.15x: +18% damage
1.5x: +20% damage
2x: +46% damage
3x: +98% damage
4x+: +150% damage
Penalty to Larger Force
1.15x: -1% damage
1.5x: -12% damage
2x: -21% damage
3x: -32% damage
4x+: -37.5% damage
Some additional rules:
1) The modifiers don't kick in until at least one of the two groups (group of person attacking, or group of person being attacked) reaches at least 20 people. So very small banes are not affected by this system at all.
2) There is no system modifier until one side is at least 12% larger than the other side.
3) Attackers and defenders never receive a penalty for attacking crashers, even if their totals are larger than the crasher totals.
4) Crashers always receive at least a minimum 20% damage penalty when damaging attackers or defenders.
