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  The Faction System - Scoring, Points, Combat Dec 6 2000 12:39PM CST  
The Faction System - Scoring, Combat, and Points

Part 2: Faction Scoring, Combat and Points

Combat Related Interactions
Players in the faction system are able to freely aggress enemy faction members. However, faction mates are treated as "innocents" unless other circumstances override that status. As the faction system is designed to operate in conjunction with the other existing player-interaction rule sets that currently exist in Ultima Online, the Faction system will account for the integration of different player-interaction conditions. The conditions for Faction combat interaction are as follows:
  • Players cannot be in a party with opposing Faction members
  • The reputation status of a faction player (thief, criminal, murderer, etc) takes precedence over faction status. Example: Although a faction mate cannot ordinarily be freely attacked, a faction mate who is a criminal or murderer CAN be freely attacked.
  • The guild war status of a faction player takes precedence over faction status. Example: Although a faction mate cannot ordinarily be freely attacked, a faction mate who is in an enemy guild (guild war) can be freely attacked
  • There are no faction wars on the Trammel facet, however all guild wars still apply.
The precedence order for lawful aggression is by reputation, then by guild, then by faction. Lawful aggression is any aggression that will not flag the attacker as a criminal. Aggressive party actions are not listed because they themselves never allow free lawful aggression between players.

Faction Scoring and Rank
Faction players are able to gain "kill points" by defeating their faction enemies in battle. In addition, these kill points are used to determine a player's rank in the faction. There are two terms that players need to understand with the Faction point system. The two terms are "kill points" and "deficit".

"Kill points" are earned when opposing Faction members successfully kill someone in an opposing Faction. The amount of kill points taken from the victim is 10% of the total kill points on the victim. The examples below illustrate the results from a battle, where the name "Winner" was victorious in the battle and "victim" was killed by "winner".

For example, assume the victim had 100 kill points and the winner of the fight had zero kill points. 10% of this goes to the victor, from the victim. Therefore the victim moves to 90 kill points and the winner of the fight now has 10 kill points. A minimum of 1 kill point is awarded each time a faction player dies, if the victim's kill point total is 19 or lower.

For non-whole number totals resulting from percentages, the end results are rounded downward if the result is not a whole number.

Example 1: Winner: 85 kill points, Victim: 18 kill points. Result from death of the victim, Winner gets 1 kill point from the victim, moving the winner to 86 kill points. The victim's kill points reduce to 17.

Example 2: Winner has 50 kill points, victim has 21. Result from the death of the victim, winner gets 10% of the victim's kill points, rounded down to the nearest whole number. 10% of 21, or 2 kill points. The victim then has 19 kill points, and the winner of the fight has 52 kill points.

When a Faction player reaches zero kill points and is then killed again, they move into a range called "deficit", where they do not have kill points at that time. Instead they have deficit points.

"Deficit" is the total on a faction player that reflects whether they are below zero kill points or not. The most deficit points any faction member can have are 6. When a Faction member is at 6 deficit points, killing them will not increase their deficit and will result in no kill point gain for the winner. Each time a Faction member dies and they are within deficit, the winner that killed them will get 1 kill point for the kill unless the victim is at 6 deficit.

Example 1: A Faction member with 60 kill points kills another faction member with a deficit of 2. The winner of the battle will get 1 kill point, moving them to 61 kill points. The victim increases their deficit moving to a total 3 deficit.

Example 2: A faction member with a deficit of 3 kills a Faction member with 80 kill points. The victim (with 80 kill points) will lose 10% of their kill points to the winner, or 8 kill points. The winner of the battle moves from a deficit of 3 to having 5 kill points. 3 of the 8 kill points they won were used to get them out of deficit. The remaining 5 kill points the winner earns are added to the kill point total (since this player no longer is within deficit). Now they have zero deficit and 5 kill points. The winner can now be killed 5 times before reaching zero kill points again.

Example 3: A Faction member with 10 kill points kills another faction member with a deficit of 6. No points are exchanged in this example, since the victim is already at 6 deficit (which is the deficit cap). The victim will not gain any more deficit points, and the winner will not gain any kill points. Had the victim been at 5 deficit, the winner would have gained 1 kill point and the victim would have then been moved to 6 deficit.

The following rules also apply to Faction system killing:
  • Points are not given to players who kill friendly faction members.
  • Player score atrophies at a rate of 10% per day (with a minimum of 1 point) at approximately 10am local shard time. This atrophy ONLY affects characters with at least 10 kill points. This will occur whether the character is logged in or not.
  • It is impossible for the kill deficit value to exceed 6 points.
  • It is impossible to have non-zero values for both kill points and kill deficit.
Player's killpoints will atrophy in the morning time local to the shard. The atrophy amount is listed below.
Atrophy works on a 10 day cycle:
Day 1: Players with 90 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
Day 2: Players with 80 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
Day 3: Players with 70 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
Day 4: Players with 60 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
Day 5: Players with 50 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
Day 4: Players with 40 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
Day 3: Players with 30 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
Day 2: Players with 20 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
Day 1: Players with 10 killpoints or more lose 1 killpoint
 Point transfer: Once a day players can transfer a set amount of kill points. The requirements are that both parties are members of the same faction, and that the one who is giving the points must have at least 10 kill points. Once transferred, player A (giver) loses 5 points and player B (receiver) gets 4 points (1 point is lost in the trade).

Titles: Once per day, all faction player scores are recalculated in order to assign faction rank. Titles vary within each faction as described below.

Rank Score Minax Council of Mages Lord British Shadowlords
1 Below 20% Defiler Mystic Defender Servant
2 20% - 39% Defiler Mystic Defender Servant
3 40% - 49% Defiler Mystic Defender Servant
4 50% - 59% Executioner Diviner Sentinel Keeper of Lies
5 60% - 69% Executioner Diviner Sentinel Keeper of Lies
6 70% - 79% Executioner Diviner Sentinel Keeper of Lies
7 80% - 89% Warlord Luminary Crusader Bringer of Sorrow
8 90% - 94% Warlord Luminary Crusader Bringer of Sorrow
9 95% - 99% Dread Knight Archon of Principle Knight of Virtue Agent of Evil
10 99.1% - 100% Avenger of
Mondain		 Inquisitor of
the Council		 Knight of
the Codex		 Purveyor of
Darkness


Death at the hands of a Faction Enemy
In order to add more permanence to the results of faction battles, and add meaning to death in combat without inflicting further economic damage upon the deceased, faction players are subject to a temporary skill loss penalty of 33% when slain by a faction opponent. As described in the time-based operations chart, this penalty lasts 20 minutes. This penalty is also applied if a faction character commits "suicide".

Note: This penalty is not applied when a faction player is killed by a non-faction player, faction mate, or non-enemy faction monster.

Looting Interactions
As a result of the combat-oriented nature of the faction system, many cases will arise in which players have the opportunity to loot the corpses of the fallen. As these rules must also be integrated with the currently existing player interaction rules, the rule set described below defines the complete listing of possible looting interactions.

Looting Rules:
  • Players will not be able to loot each other through the faction system at all while in Trammel. The only possible looting of faction members within Trammel will occur through other systems such as guild war status, not because of Faction status itself.
  • Players cannot be in a party together while in opposing factions.
  • The reputation status of a faction player (thief, criminal, murderer, etc) takes precedence over faction status. Example: Although a fellow faction member cannot ordinarily be freely looted, a fellow faction member who is a criminal or murderer CAN be freely looted.
  • The guild war status of a faction player takes precedence over faction status. Example: A faction member in an opposing guild can be freely looted as per the standard guild war looting rules.
  • In order to remain consistent with other consensual pvp systems (such as guildwar) and in order to prevent "blue looting" exploits, players are unable to freely loot fallen faction opponents unless they dealt lawful damage to the fallen player. Note that "freely looting" means looting without criminal flagging.
Faction Credits

Parts of the Faction Credit system are currently unavailable. When this system becomes fully available, players will be notified.

Factions and faction players can receive "currency" in the form of silver ("silver"-looking coins) that are useable for various faction-specific needs and luxuries. Silver can be earned by both players and factions themselves through a variety of means, and may be spent in a variety of different ways (described below). The lists below demonstrate the sources of silver income and targets of possible expenditure.

Credit Income
Faction Player Income:
  • Slain faction enemies: 40 silver pieces for every 1 kill point received (note: slain enemies who have a kill deficit greater then 0 award NO credits).
  • Slain monsters with faction affiliation:
    • Minax: Ogre Lords - 30 silver
    • Council of Mages: Wisps - 20 silver
    • True Britannians: Silver Serpents - 30 silver
    • Shadowlords: Daemons (not summoned daemons) - 30 silver
Player Tithes are 0 - 100% of all faction player silver income. This is set by Faction Commander in increments of 10%, with no more then one change every 24 hours of real time. Points taken from this tithe are placed into a Faction Treasury stored at the factionstone. The currency can thereafter only be distributed by the faction commander to the individual town treasuries under the faction's control. Once the faction credits are allocated to a particular faction controlled town, the finance minister and Sheriff for that town can use these credits for various expenditures, such as Faction vendors or guards. A successful town capture earns the Faction 10,000 credits.

Players may move and transfer silver in the same way that they manipulate standard coinage. The faction commander may disburse silver to a particular city by using the faction stone, selecting "commander menu", then selecting "transfer credits".
The commander will be given a listing of cities under the faction's control, and after selecting a city, may enter an amount of credits to transfer.

Silver Use
Silver can be used by Faction craftspeople and/or to obtain the following items (crafting the listed items requires the crafting player to have the requisite credits). Faction craftable items can only be crafted in a town being controlled by that faction.

Faction Scrolls: These are Faction Imbued scrolls of heal, greater heal, harm, fireball, and lightning. These scrolls may be used by a pplayer of at least 90 inscribing skill upon a faction-crafted gnarled staff, in order to charge the staff with a number of charges of that spell. The number of charges is equal to 40 divided by the circle of that spell (rounded down). Example: A lightning scroll would provide the staff with 10 charges of lightning, a fireball scroll would provide 13 charges of fireball, and so forth. Staffs (staves) cannot be recharged. A new staff must be created in order to accept a new enchantment.

Faction craftable items addition
In order to craft a faction item other then a floor trap, the player doing the crafting must be in a town under the control of that faction. They must also be in the appropriate shop that normally makes or sells those types of items.

Faction Players
  • Craftable Items
    • Armor (metal types): 1,000 silver
    • Armor (leather types): 750 silver
    • Weapons (melee): 1,000 silver
    • Weapons (archery types): 1,000 silver
    • Clothes: 200 silver
    • Scrolls: 500 silver
  • Items Purchased (from faction npc vendor)
    • Horse: 500 credits (must be rank 2 or higher to ride)
Factions
  • Town Improvements
    • Level 1 Guard: 5,000 silver
    • Level 2 Guard: 6,000 silver
    • Level 3 Guard: 7,000 silver
    • Level 4 Guard: 8,000 silver
    • Reagent Vendor: 5,000 silver
    • Ore Vendor: 3,000 silver
    • Wood Vendor: 3,000 silver
    • Horse Breeder: 5,000 silver
  • Craftable Items
    • Floor Traps (tinker crafted): 1,000 silver
  • Other

Faction War Horses

A "Horse breeder" Sells war horses for that particular faction that purchased it. War horses have the following properties:

  • War horses are hued with their faction's color.
  • War horses cannot be ridden by players in opposing factions.
  • War horses have a high strength, dexterity, and natural higher fighting ability.

War horses have no rank requirement to ride them.

Faction Craftable Items
As described above, players who craft items and are in the faction system may use silver to imbue an item upon creation with "faction" properties.
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