Ranked War Ideas

I tried to think through the details as much as I could, but they can be changed. I just want the ideas out there to see what people think.

I am also aware that some may strongly disagree with the ideas. Rather than being an a-hole, please just provide rational counter points. Thank you in advance for your decorum. 

TLDR: Introduce alternate methods (Objective Capture and Prisoners of War) for scoring during Ranked Wars to encourage higher activity, more excitement, complex coordination, and more competitiveness.

1. Introduce Objective Capture into wars: 
   • Use some amount of energy and/or nerve to capture some sort of opponent objective (think capture the flag) and earn respect toward the war score. 
   • Success rate for objective capture determined by difference in current active players between sides, the capturer's battle stats/ various crime experience/ RNG.
   • The victim team cannot retrieve the successfully captured objective.
     • Instead, any captured objectives are randomly dispersed amongst the members of the faction who successful stole the objectives (could be the strongest or weakest member). Who carries the objective is not displayed, and is only discoverable upon defeat of the carrier. This provides an attacker a respect multiplier upon defeating the member carrying the objective. 
   • Pros: Provides smaller players alternative ways to make an impact in wars. Encourages more activity via the mechanism affecting success rate in capturing objectives. Adds additional complexity and excitement in the war on both ends, capturing objectives, and figuring out which enemies are carrying stolen objectives.
   • Cons: Removes the purity of the scoring system, where killing is king.
2. Introduce Prisoners of War into wars:

• • Any player defeated abroad by the enemy faction may be taken hostage.
  • "Abduct" will be available as additional selection to the "leave/hospitalize/mug" choices when defeating an enemy faction member abroad. 
    
    • No additional respect bonus outside of the standard abroad multiplier.
  • The abductor must fly home within a certain time frame to complete the abduction. A player can only abduct one enemy member at a time. If the abductor is defeated before flying back to Torn, the abductee is released, but remains hospitalized for a length of time similar to the "leave" option, starting from the time of the "abduct" selection.
  • Once back in torn, the prisoner of war may be released voluntarily by the captor faction, after respect/monetary/item bribes, or retrieved by force.
    • I think retrieving by force could be completed in a variety of ways, listed below in order of what I think makes most logical sense to implement. 
      • Combat requiring successful defeat of one or more a randomly selected group of members from the captor faction (as if that selected group were guarding the particular PoW).
        • The number of guards assigned/ number of guards required to be defeated for successful release of the PoW would depend on the battle stats of the PoW.
          • Higher battle stat PoWs get assigned more guards, and require less guards to be defeated in order to escape successfully (stronger PoWs can more effectively aid in the escape).
        • Release of PoWs may occur incidentally during the normal throes of war, though known guards of high value PoWs could opt to turtle in order to keep that PoW effectively out of the war.
      • Combat against a "jail guard" NPC representing the captor faction, which gets easier to defeat as more prisoners of war are collected (more PoW's means more people helping to break out).
      • Non-combat task that uses energy and/or nerve, with success rates determined by the individual retriever's battle stats/ various crime experience/ RNG, and the number of active captor faction members. 
    • I am not sure what would make sense for respect scoring for this idea:
      • Flat bonus for voluntary release of a PoW.
      • Aforementioned respect bribe to release the PoW.
      • Respect over time for successfully holding a PoW.
      • Respect bonus multiplier for successful defeat of randomly assigned guards and therefore retrieval of a PoW.
      • All/combination of the above.
  • Pros: Trying to turtle abroad just got a whole lot more interesting. Gone are the days when you can fly to a far away land and be reasonably safe. This promotes higher activity during wars, as if you get caught while abroad, there are big consequences. Keeping a high value PoW away from the war could require intense coordination of attacking/ turtling, increasing competition.
  • Cons: It is a complex idea. Due to PoWs being temporarily taken out of the war, it could be extremely frustrating for the PoWs. There may not be enough incentive to save lower battle stat players. 

Thank you for reading :)

I love it... If developers look into this, it'll give Torn ranked wars a new complexity.

Idea 1 is already on the drawing board, confirmed in [THIS] interview with Ched by AndyMan (and Cheesus, apparently). Maybe not exactly how you've suggested it, but it's under consideration.

Idea 2 is an absolute no from me. There are very very few, if any, things you can force other players to do. You can attack, mug, arrest, etc players, but you can't, for example, force them to pay you money, fly internationally/home, participate in xyz, etc, and it's really best the game stays this way. You can certainly encourage someone to do something (whether that's positive encouragement or negative encouragement), but forcing a player into an action just makes the other players gameplay experience bad.

#chedging

Thank you for taking the time to read and respond to my suggestion! 

Idea 1) I missed that part of the interview post, so I'm glad you pointed that out! Great minds think alike on that one I guess.

Idea 2) I see what you mean about "forcing" an action upon another player, and I tend to agree with you. However my counterpoint to that is, all is fair in love and war. 

No one is "forcing" a faction to participate in the RW system in the first place. My suggestion about bribes (either war score or monetary) as a method to retrieve a PoW is also not "forced". I provided alternate methods to bribery as well: voluntary release by the captor faction, or brute force retrieval through successfully defeating that PoW's randomly assigned guard(s). 

If the goal is to make RW more exciting/complex/rewarding/active/etc, then I still believe the PoW idea is very interesting. If you're a victim of the PoW system, then #getbetter.