Stronghold and Outpost Changes

Mar.08.2018 BY KIXEYE_Chris

Commanders, there are several changes coming to Strongholds & Outposts within the month.

CURRENT BEHAVIOR

At the moment, Outposts are single-hit targets that disappear from the War Zones once defeated and respawn after a certain time. They account for about 7.5% of the hexes in a given Zone.

Strongholds, on the other hand, are multi-hit targets that are persistent in the War Zones even after they are defeated. Only one type of Stronghold is available at a given time, and the available Stronghold type cycles in accordance with a timer. Strongholds account for about 1% of the hexes in a given Zone.

However, the game has changed in several ways since this behavior was created. Unit Criticals (available in Strongholds) and Unit Commons (available in Outposts) play a more equivalent role in upgrading units, yet target availability is still skewed significantly towards Outposts; multi-hit targets incur greater oil losses now that there is an up-front cost to attacking a target; etc.

To get Stronghold behavior more in line with the newer versions of the game, here are the changes we are making moving forward:

STRONGHOLDS ARE CHANGING TO SINGLE-HIT ONLY

When Control Points launched, the difficulty of Strongholds was significantly reduced to the point that, so long as a player is hitting the Stronghold at their appropriate level with up-to-date units, these targets can be done in a single attack. Now that everyone has had a chance to get used to that difficulty, we are formally removing the ability to multi-hit a Stronghold. They are now single-hit, just like Outposts.

Additionally, once defeated, the Stronghold will despawn and will respawn at a random hex within the ZA in a similar time frame to Outposts’ respawn times.

MORE STRONGHOLDS, FEWER OUTPOSTS

Strongholds will still only spawn one type at a time, in accordance with their existing timer. However, the amount of hexes that Strongholds occupy in a Zone is raising from 1% to 3%.

The amount of hexes that Outposts occupy in turn is decreasing from 7.5% to 5.5%. This should provide greater balance of target availability for obtaining necessary upgrade components, while keeping the overall amount of PvE targets that spawn in the War Zones roughly the same.

Here’s what it looks like from one of our development builds: