News

Hi, fellow gamer and MMO enthusiast!

The wait has been long… but city sieges have finally gone live!

We know you have many questions on this new addition to the Spring Alpha, such as “what took you so long” or “why releasing them now”? All the answers can be found below… but before we get there, we have another piece of great news. After more than one year, here comes a new all-backers event!

Yes, you’re guessing it right: from today until the end of the test, access to the Spring Alpha is open to all users with a pledge/founder pack, disregarding its tier! This should revitalize the number of active players enough to test sieges properly.

And now, to the meat of the update…

Why Now

First of all, let us clarify why sieges have gone live so late, elaborating more on what we posted on Discord a few days ago. This is what happened in brief:

• We’ve largely underestimated all the issues that could arise from such a complex system.
• Having multiple developers work on this feature saw very “diminishing returns”, so it was one person who implemented most of it. The rest of the team wasn’t slacking of course – we’ve been hard at work on the Summer Alpha on a different build of the project 🙂
• We’re in a very exciting phase business-wise. We’re planning a new investment round and several new hires – it’s huge! More detailed info will come in due time. For now, it suffices to say that it’s taken away some dev time today to make things a lot better tomorrow – communication included!

As to why we put sieges live now instead of waiting for the Summer Alpha, that was done so we can get feedback on siege mechanics and balancing before things get really “competitive”.

Please note that the option to have a dedicated playtest, suggested by the community, was also on the table. It was discarded because it would have interfered too much with the development of the Summer Alpha.

For How Long

The day we close the Spring Alpha will largely depend on the response of the community to this new update.

We know many of you are done with the current playtest and waiting for the Summer Alpha. If enough of you come back or join in to playtest sieges, we’re going to stay online until June 7 and most likely release a couple bugfix/balancing patches before that.

If not, May 31 is going to be the last day of testing!

Temporary Changes

Since our aim for this last portion of the Spring Alpha is to get feedback on sieges, we’ve decided to introduce the following temporary changes to the siege system:

• The cost to declare a siege and build siege weapons has been reduced greatly, making it (almost) free.
• The siege starts 1 day after the declaration instead of 3.
• If the siege is won by the attackers, the city isn’t actually conquered.

Moreover, we’ve added some (also temporary!) tweaks to city claiming and maintenance:

• Claiming a city requires 5 settlers instead of 20.
• The gold required to rank up a city and the food/cereals/proteins needed for city maintenance have been reduced by 90%.
• The residents requirement is now 10 for all city ranks.

This should make testing much easier. Time to see how sieges work in Fractured!

Siege Phases

A siege comprises four phases:

• Declaration
• Preparation
• Battle
• Aftermath

Let’s discuss them one by one!

Declaration

Both cities and guilds can declare a siege against a city, which will take place on the 3rd day after the day of the declaration (all times are UTC). The attacker can choose the exact starting time within the prime time chosen by the defender.

Given the large potential gains from a successful siege, launching one isn’t something that can be done lightly: it costs a hefty amount of gold to declare it and a lot of resources are needed to build siege engines, which can be destroyed during the fight.

When declaring a siege, the following restrictions apply:

• A city can only attack neighboring cities.
• A guild can attack anywhere on the map, but only hamlets.
• There can’t be another siege already declared against the target city.
• The attackers can’t be already engaged in a different siege that’s going to fall on the same day.

The person who declares the siege must be the Governor of a group of 20 setters. In case of victory, they’ll become the citizens of the conquered town!

Preparation

As soon as the siege is declared, a semi-transparent wall appears on the borders of the siege area around the city so that both attackers and defender can identify it easily. In order to become a defender, a player has to sign up at the town hall of the sieged city, while aspiring attackers must do the same at the siege tent (see next paragraph). The maximum number of combatants on each side is 30.

During the preparation phase, the attackers can (and must) place a Siege Tent within the siege area, plus up to 5 Siege Banners to protect it. Both structures show on the world map and on the minimap. Moreover, they can place catapults to tear down the walls of the city once the siege begins!

To place a catapult, the attackers must turn into a cart and re-assemble it in the siege area. Once assembled, a button allows you to see the trajectory of the projectile to make sure it’s going to hit the walls. Be careful to find the right position, as you won’t be able to move the catapults once the battle has started! Also, don’t forget to load up each catapult with enough stone blocks that will serve as projectiles 😉

The last piece of the preparation is the siege chest, which appears within the town hall (for defenders) and the siege tent (for attackers). The siege chest is a very large container with multiple tabs where combatants can store equipment, consumables and any other item needed for the battle. During the latter, the siege chest is the only container both attackers and defenders can interact with!

Battle

Once the battle has started, all players who have signed up as attackers and defenders are teleported into the city – at the siege tent and the town hall respectively. Any other player in the siege area is teleported out instead. For the whole duration of the battle, no one can enter the battleground: it’s for combatants only!

The battle lasts for 1 hour. The win conditions are as follows:

• The attackers win if they manage to destroy the Siege Banner of the defenders, located in front of the Town Hall, before the time runs out.
• The defenders win if they manage to protect their Siege Banner or destroy all the banners the attackers have placed (the one in front of the Siege Tent becomes vulnerable last).

Aftermath

If the attackers win the siege, the defending city is conquered. Here’s what happens in detail:

• The current Governor and all citizens are expelled.
• The leader of the attacking group of settlers becomes the new Governor, while the other settlers become the new citizens.
• All private land parcels inside the city become unclaimed and lose all their constructions and items (this is something that could be revised in the future).
• The rest of the city (buildings, researches, gold in treasury, etc) is untouched. It all belongs to the attackers now!

If the defenders win, nothing happens: the city is untouched!

In any event, the siege chest of the attackers and that of the defenders plus the siege tent, banners and catapults stay on the field for 24 hours after the battle is over. After that, they are deleted. This allows the attackers to move their siege weapons and stored items back to safety – unless they are attacked and killed in the process, that is.

Bug Fixes & QOL

Here’s a list of few bug fixes and quality-of-life changes we’ve released in the last update:

• We’ve fixed a memory leak in the client that caused RAM usage to go up over time when travelling around the world.
• Farming plots now give the correct output according to the soil’s nutrition.
• The catapult blueprint is now placed correctly when the Siege Workshop is rotated.
• Charcoal piles can now be placed into private land parcels.
• Burning a charcoal pile now correctly requires 16 hours instead of 60 seconds to generate charcoal.
• Items can be now moved correctly from the Enchanting Table to chests and vice-versa.
• Fixed a bug where a town decaying would leave behind land claims.
• Right-click can now be used to move items from inventory to bank / chests and vice-versa.
• The world map zooms automatically on the character when opened for the first time.
• 3 new horse coats (colors) have been added.

That’s it for this update. We thank you for your patience in waiting for sieges – we are aware a lot was needed!

See you in game!

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