Factions Season 17 Pre-Announcement

Hey guys!

We know you all are excited and ready for the next factions season. I'll be honest.. we aren't, haha. BUT we're trying and we're getting there (be real, you all know you suck <3).

Just going to get this out of the way for anyone about to ask:
This is NOT the actual factions changelog or announcement about the timeline for release. NO timeline will be given at this time because we are not far enough into development to actively determine that.
Only SOME of the changes will be announced in this thread. Again, this is NOT the actual factions changelog.

This Pre-Announcement is intended to give you all a quick update on current factions release progress and give you an opportunity to provide some more input or feedback on upcoming changes and our current planned process for the future of factions.


Please use this thread to make some suggestions for factions changes.
Please note any thread on the Suggestion section of the forums involving factions has been fully reviewed and the currently planned changelog has been heavily impacted by many of those suggestions already.


Now, a pre-announcement would not be complete without some feature reveals, so let's go ahead and get into that now. Worth noting -> Some of the below changes are in testing and not fully implemented yet and if they do not flow well, they may be altered or removed

A glimpse of the future:
The factions RULES thread has been updated to reflect next season's rules. Please review these and posts questions/feedback here in this thread. These rule changes include many things, so if you plan on competing, read them thoroughly.

General
+ /f stealth aka /f ninja has been enabled and tested. For those that don't know, there are things you cannot do when an enemy is nearby. Turning on stealth masks you from being an enemy so that you can sneak up on people without warning them an enemy is near.
+ The Ally system has been disabled. Your faction works alone and every fac for themselves. Allying has been made against the rules.
+ Inappropriate Faction Names have been blocked. You are now threatened when attempting to create inappropriate faction names. Inappropriate faction name rules have been strengthened because of this.
+ Faction Names can be pre-registered to prevent name sniping. Instructions for pre-registration will be part of the actual announcement thread.
+ New factions cannot be created after grace period has ended. If you are a late joiner to the season, please find an existing faction to join.
+ Seasons are intended to last only 1 month duration. Faster resets intended to encourage more long-term factions joining.
+ More cannon improvements

Economy
+ Shop priced reworked completely (and dupes fixed, ofc)
+ Shop rework is intended to allow manual-effort farms (primarily sugarcane) to be the most rewarding start economically, but mob spawners produce the most income by far to make spawners bigger risk for bigger reward.
+ Mob Spawners do not spawn in the wild.
+ Mob Spawners are obviously getting a rework to change productivity.
+ Migrated to Collector Beacon system similar to current ones on Skyblock
+ Cactus do not grow anywhere. Cactus only produces drops when inside a faction claim and a collector beacon is present in the chunk.
+ Pistons do not push Mycel, Sugarcane, pumpkins or Melons
+ Harvester Hoes are primarily now a 1x1 hoe, but it is possible to get up to a 3x3.

Raid
+ Includes f1nnster wall limit of 3 chunks
+ When cannon fire is detected in a faction claim, the faction is placed on lockdown.
+ Lockdown mode notifies the faction being raided that a raid has been detected.
+ Lockdown mode prevents players in the locked down faction from using genbuckets, cuboid tools (trench, etc) or mining spawners while in lockdown phase.
+ Lockdown lasts for 15 minutes from the last detected cannon shot that lands inside the raided factions claim
+ After lockdown ends, the raided faction obtains a 15 minute Protection period.
+ During protection the faction cannot be attacked, cannot recieve damage to their faction claims, and ability to use gen buckets is enabled for them to quickly recover.
+ The /lockdown and /raid commands show lockdown phase and time remaining for your faction or another listed faction. the /lockdown <faction> search only searches by faction name, not by player names.

Strikes
+ Strikes and DQ's will gain a public thread similar to the one for Kitpvp.
+ The amount of Strikes a faction has now shows up in /f who
+ Strikes are announced to the factions online members when they are issued.
+ Upon recieving a 4th strike or a DQ, your faction will be taken over by the server. Your claims will be locked and all members removed from the faction. The faction balance will be reset. Claims will be unraidable and untouchable. Your faction title will reflect that this faction has been DQ'd.

Schematics
+ A new item has been created that comes with a pre-loaded schematic.
+ Placing this item generates the stored schematic.
+ Schematics do not replace existing block and only replace air, so you must clear the area first.
+ Schematics will feature some small to medium sized cannons, but not any floating cannons. We want cannoning to still involve cannoners and talent.
+ Schematics will also feature some SOTW farm elements (like a cactus farm).
+ The feature is intended to bring some balance to players that are not familiar with Schematica printer or cannoning and still want to compete, but we anticipate it also having plenty of uses for those that are heavy factions players.

Roam/Freecam
+ /roam or /freecam has been implemented.
+ This literally places you in spectate mode and allows you to experience freecam cheat for a limited duration window of time and within a pre-specified radius.
+ This cannot be used while in combat
+ A zombie version of you is spawned in your place and if it takes damage it will cancel your roam session
+ We feel this change helps mitigate the want to use freecam hacks as well as the potential abuses of those using replaymod, but also helps bring some competitive direction and report possibilities to the regular player base.

Events
+ Not going to announce the new events yet, but there are new events planned. This log section is here because:
+ None of the suggested events (boss monsters, koth clones with minimal differences, whatever) have been accepted. We did create a new event that focuses on factions actually competing that reflects what we hear you all wanting, but we're still possibly open to ideas for events if any can be thought up.

Pre-Season Testing
+ We have a team that will be doing some testing as we develop the changes, but since there always tends to be some bugs that slip by, we're going to have a pre-season period lasting approximately 1 week before the actual season.
+ It has not been determined or finalized on who will be permitted to participate in testing, so please, do not ask to be a tester. We'll announce details of this with the official change log.
+ Testing will feature a short grace period followed by a period or raiding. We hope testers play it like an active season to test as much as possible in order to have as smooth SOTW as possible.
+ We will not be using the same world in testing as we will for actual season release, so ofc, focus on testing.

 

Shoutout to this guy for helping test some of these new features. He can vouch the effort is real xD Also can vouch cannons work, he helped test some pretty big cannons, lol

 

This rule change clearly targets t3. She's probably only one that would be mad enough to do it.

 

Dude.. really.. ruining factions for me before it even begins... wtf