Faction Wars

Overview

The Faction War system allows criminal factions to engage in organized, objective-based warfare. Unlike spontaneous street battles, these wars are formally declared events with set rules, durations, and clear win/loss conditions. The system is divided into two main phases: the Deliberation Phase, where the terms of war are negotiated, and the Conflict Phase, where the battle is fought.

Phase 1: The Deliberation Phase

Before a war can begin, all participating factions must agree on the terms in a process called War Deliberation.

Starting a Deliberation

To initiate a war, an authorized faction member (typically a leader or high-ranking member) must:

1. Select a Conflict Turf. This is a territory owned by your faction that will serve as the primary battleground. The Conflict Turf is automatically wagered and will be transferred to the winner of the war.
2. Offer a war deliberation to one or more rival factions.

Requirements:

• Your faction must meet a minimum tier level to participate in wars.
• The chosen Conflict Turf cannot be a Core/HQ turf and must have a certain minimum level of influence.
• Your faction cannot be currently involved in another war or deliberation.

Negotiating the Terms

Once an offer is accepted, the deliberation begins. During this phase, all involved factions can propose and modify the terms of the war.

The key terms to be decided are:

• Start Time: The exact date and time (in UTC) the war will commence. The start time must be at least one hour in the future, but not more than several days away.
• Wagers: Factions can add stakes to the war to make victory even more rewarding. These are taken from the faction and held until the war concludes.
  • Money Wager: A specified amount of cash from the faction's treasury.
  • Turf Wager: Additional non-core turfs can be wagered. These turfs must be owned by the wagering faction and have a minimum level of influence.

The Approval Process

A war deliberation is like a contract. Before the war can be scheduled, every single participating faction must approve the terms.

• If any term (start time, wagers, etc.) is changed, all prior approvals are reset, and everyone must approve the new terms.
• Faction leaders can see which factions have approved the current terms.
• Once the final faction approves, the deliberation is finalized, and the war is officially scheduled to begin at the agreed-upon time.
• Before finalization, any faction can choose to cancel the deliberation, disbanding the agreement entirely.

Phase 2: The Conflict Phase

When the scheduled start time arrives, the war begins. A notification is sent to all members of the warring factions.

The Goal: War Points

Each faction enters the war with a starting pool of War Points. The primary goal is to reduce your opponents' War Points to zero while protecting your own.

A war can end in one of three ways:

1. Point Depletion: A faction's War Points are reduced to 0. They lose immediately.
2. Elimination: A faction has a very high percentage of its members eliminated from the war. They lose immediately.
3. Time Limit: The war's duration (e.g., several days) expires.

How to Reduce Enemy War Points

You can drain an opponent's War Points by successfully performing specific criminal activities. However, where you perform these actions is critical. Some actions are only effective on the main battleground, while others can be carried out on any enemy turf.

Actions in the Conflict Turf ONLY

The following high-impact actions must be performed exclusively within the designated Conflict Turf to count towards the war:

• Completing Graffiti tags.
• Killing enemy gang members
• Controlling the active Point of Interest.
• Eliminating enemy faction members.

Actions in ANY Enemy Territory

The following actions provide more flexibility and will drain enemy points if performed either within the Conflict Turf OR within any other territory owned by an enemy faction participating in the war:

• Robbing ATMs
• Robbing Stores
• Robbing Banks

Point Modifiers and Limits

The number of points drained per action is influenced by your character's Criminal Skill. Your faction also has a "point bank" for each action type, which recharges over time. This prevents spamming a single activity for infinite points and encourages diverse tactics.

Points of Interest (POIs)

POIs are special, high-value objectives that appear within the Conflict Turf, providing a major source of point reduction.

• Activation & Rotation: A single POI is active at any given time. After a set period, it deactivates, and a new POI activates at a different location within the Conflict Turf. Factions are notified when the POI moves.
• Capturing: To capture a POI, a faction must have more members inside the zone (on foot) than any other faction.
• Contested: If two or more enemy factions have the same highest number of players in the POI, it becomes contested, and no one gains points.
• Earning Points: The faction that controls the POI will continuously drain War Points from all enemy factions for as long as they hold it.

Understanding Point Banks

To prevent factions from winning by simply spamming the easiest or most rewarding activity, the war system includes Point Banks. This feature encourages strategic planning and coordinated, diverse attacks.

What is a Point Bank?

Think of a Point Bank as your faction's "ammunition" for a specific type of war action. During a war, your faction has a separate, invisible Point Bank for each of the following activities:

• Graffiti
• ATM Robberies
• Store Robberies
• Bank Robberies
• POI Control
• Enemy Kills
• Player Eliminations

Each of these banks has a maximum capacity and a regeneration rate.

How it Works

1. Draining Points: When a member of your faction successfully performs a war action (e.g., robs a store in enemy territory), the points they drain from the enemy are subtracted from your faction's corresponding Point Bank. For example, if robbing a store is worth 1,000 points, your "Store Robbery" bank decreases by 1,000. 2. Limited Actions: You can only drain as many points as you have available in that specific bank. If a store robbery is worth 1,000 points but your "Store Robbery" bank only has 200 points left, the action will only drain 200 points from the enemy. Your bank for that action will then be at 0. 3. Regeneration: Point Banks automatically and slowly regenerate over time (typically on an hourly basis). You cannot perform an action to drain points if its respective bank is empty. You must wait for it to recharge.

Strategic Implications

• No Spamming: Point Banks make it impossible for a large faction to win just by sending all its members to rob ATMs constantly. Once the ATM Robbery bank is depleted, that activity will yield no war points until the bank has had time to regenerate.
• Coordination is Key: A smart faction will coordinate its members to use different types of attacks. While one team is focused on controlling a POI, another might be hitting stores or banks, and another could be tagging graffiti. This spreads the point generation across multiple banks, making your faction's overall damage more consistent.
• Pacing and Timing: The regeneration rate means that wars are a marathon, not a sprint. Factions must pace themselves and decide when to unleash a flurry of coordinated attacks and when to lay low and let their Point Banks recover.

The End of a War

When the war concludes, a winner is determined, and the spoils are distributed.

Determining the Winner

• If the war ends because of point depletion or elimination, the last faction standing is the winner.
• If the war ends because the timer expires, the faction with the highest remaining War Points is declared the winner.
• In the rare case that the top factions have an equal number of points when the timer expires, the war ends in a Draw.

Rewards of Victory

The winning faction receives:

• All Money Wagers from the losing factions.
• Ownership of all Turf Wagers from the losing factions.
• Ownership of the Conflict Turf.

Furthermore, the newly acquired Conflict Turf receives two temporary buffs:

• Immunity: For a period of time, the turf cannot be captured via influence and is protected from influence decay.
• Power Boost: For a period of time, the turf will have a higher maximum power level and regenerate power faster.

Consequences of a Draw

If a war ends in a draw, all wagers are returned. Money is refunded to faction treasuries, and wagered turfs remain with their original owners.

Achievements

Special achievements can be earned by participating in Faction Wars, such as for participating, being a top eliminator, or capturing territory.