Random idea for Ascended combat (long)

[Voyager]

Basically, one day, I started wondering if God conflicts should even be like the battles of the mortal realms. This is an idea spawned from that.

Instead of being attack turn based single action-single events, God conflicts could be a state of conflict. Initiating a god battle against another player would place both of you into a state of conflict, which would continue to proceed every turn, until both you and the player you attacked chose to end it. (Note, this would not involve mortal realm Attack Turns in any way, other than if you were to have your mortal armies try to cut your target's realm out from under them.) One player could only attack one player at a time. However, more than one player can attack the same player at any given time. (More on that later.)

Being in the state of conflict would also entail certain disadvantages, likely reduced mortal realm bonuses, reduced rates of LF/DM exchange, and so forth.

Additionally, gods would have four states: Offence, Balance, Defense, and Ignore. Offence would have increased attack, and reduced defense, Balance, the base stats, and Defense improved defensive stats, a the expense of offense. Ignore is the wild one. You have the offense of Defensive, and the defense of Offensive state, but you recieve no mortal realm penalties from being in combat, and are free to chose multiple targets, though your offense will be divided between them.

These states would be settable both in and outside of combat. When set outside of combat, they indicate the state you will go into if someone attacks your character.

Finally, you could Assist another ascended character, redirecting some of the damage thrown at them to yourself (with the ammount likely determined by one of your ascended stats). If you are assisting, you cannot attack, but you can be attacked. In such a state, you can only maintain the assist if you are set to Ignore combat.

This would probably require a geometic fall off of added damage and added assist per extra player involved in each, so as to slow down ganksquads a bit.

All of this would continue until either the two players at the center both stopped fighting, or one of them deascends.

If the time span is long enough for players to have a chance of mobilizing, I'm expecting this would lead to large rolling battles between ascended forces, as each force tried to maintain a balance between killing the targets, supporting their own, and cutting the defenses out from under their opponents. Throw in that both sides will be trying to destroy their enemy's mortal realm supprots as well, and it should be a recipe for mighty chaos.

Harry Voyager