Raiding Practice / Test Clan Mazes

Test Raiding / Test Clan Mazes:
For the last couple of months, we have been working on some new raiding code to allow for multiple practice raids against the Wolf clan. This includes almost immediate raider flag pardons and a selection of mazes to choose from.

Although the mechanics of a real raid haven’t really changed, a lot has changed behind the scenes to allow for a raid to target a specific area rather than a clan. Some of the changes below also impact real raiding.

There’s a lot to cover so either skip the rest of this note if you’re not really interested in clan raiding, or read carefully (twice) if you are! You can read shorter / simpler versions in ‘help testraid’ and ‘help mazeinfo’ although some details here are not covered there.

The main changes associated with test raids are:

• When you form a raidparty, you now need to enter either ‘raidparty create test’ (costs 20qp) or ‘raidparty create real’ (100qp). The need to enter ‘create’ twice has been removed.
• Forming a test raid party will immediately target you towards Wolf but you have not picked your maze yet. Your maze is selected when you first invade. You are advised to choose a maze as soon as possible so make sure one is still available by the time you ‘invade’.
• You can use the syntax ‘raidp mazes’ to see which test mazes are open and available. There are 6 test mazes here so far.
• The ‘mazeinfo’ command will show some stats related to a specific maze. The stats being tracked are:
  
• Raids that never get targeted to a maze do not count in this. Times are based on when the raid starts (first invade) not the creation of the party.
• The test mazes are located 2s2ed then down from Aylor recall. You have to be level 200+ to be able to see and enter the room.
• Once the raid is under way, the ‘raidparty’ command has an extra field showing which specific maze you are targeting.
• The Wolf clan never gets a timeout – this was necessary to be able to have concurrent raids.
• When a raidparty against wolf expires, or is disbanded, or a member quits or any other action that would have previously set the RAIDER flag timer, it is now 5 minutes.
• We discussed a theoretical issue on live where you could be stuck with a raider flag if the mud crashed mid-raid because there would be no timer set. This is more likely to happen with test raids so it is fixed when you login. Another reason we need to check regular raids to make sure this is still good.
• Creating a raidparty will assign a random color to the party which is displayed whenever someone would see the normal @R(Raider)@w flag. You can set it one time using ‘raidp color [color]’. The colors accepted are those shown in ‘colorset colors’ or you can use the regular letter color codes. The color itself is attached to the raid party, once the party is over flags revert to the standard bright red color.
• ‘Raidp list’ will show when raids are a test raid. Also cleaned up the double lines when there is more than one raiding party.
• Raided items will now show the @R(Raided)@w flag in inventory as well as identify.
• Each raidparty now has a unique ID that shows in party status. When you loot keys on a raid, this ID is stored on the keys. You can only use a key on the raid during which it was acquired. This prevents hoarding keys when the keys last for 8 hours but flags are pardoned in a couple of minutes. This applies to both regular raids and test raids.
• In some mazes, each time the maze is targeted for a raid, any portals in the clanmaze rooms will randomize their order.
• On average, every 60 minutes any graffiti in a clanmaze room in a testmaze area will be auto-removed. There is actually a 1/60th chance every minute so in theory it could be 3 back to back minutes or it could be hours, but will average 60 minutes. Number can be switched as needed.
• There are just some very basic rewards for now – the point is to attack the mazes to learn how to crack and to see if you can breach the clans. We may add more meaningful rewards later once any loopholes have been found and ironed out and we get a sense for the balance, but right now do this for the challenge and the distraction as there is no real reward.
• Defenders don’t really have any part in this. If you usually play raiding as a defender it is still worth your while to try out these mazes as you will learn more about maze design and what is and is not effective.

There’s a lot of potential for enhancements to this and a lot of new code that can be used in other areas, but this is a good point to stop and get the feature in and see how popular it is.

Also expect that at some point stats will probably be reset. There are no player level stats for this at all right now so if we end up with any kind of longer-term rankings or counters, these early raids will not
apply.

There are more mazes ready to come and clan leaders / builders are welcome to build their own test mazes on the test port then see how well they fare here.

Last of all, a lot of people helped with building, brainstorming and testing these areas. This could not have happened without them so many thanks to everyone involved.