» Fri Jan 18, 2013 5:37 am this will be a pretty big wall of text, hoping Bethesda staff reads it, or if not well, maybe some passionate modders will >_<;
So my idea is that after completing the Civil War and Dragon Crisis main storyline quests, you get summoned by Ulfric/Elisif to resolve a crisis in a small village and abandoned castle along the Skyrim border, I was thinking along the lines of the thalmor establishing a beachhead in preparation for the next invasion, but it can very well be something else if that messes too much with lore, like a mysterious draugr lord summoning dead into Skyrim or something.
you are made Lord/Jarl/Military governor/whatever of the castle and village and charged with security of the border.
Like in hearthfire, you now can build and furnish your castle, unlike hearthfire tho you actually have to choose the layout and content of the castle and the walls to better serve your purposes and better protect the village borders.
you will have a steward that will function like hearthfire's you talk to him for all castle and village improvements, a housecarl that you will use to recruit men and train soldiers and a counselor a caster that will run diplomatic affairs and magic training for your recruits these men will be sent on missions or garrison the defense.
the castle will have sections that will behave like hearthfire's wings where you build the outer structure and then you pick for each slot what their content will be:
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*Animal pen, where you can keep and slaughter animals (3 per Pen) that you buy from village or Breed in the pens (new activity)
*Stables, where you store horses (1 per improvement)
*Granary where you plant vegetables and have a mill for flower
*Storehouse where you must place all raw materials needed for siege survival (new activity, description bellow) and crafting materials.
*Greenhouse where you grow alchemy plants
-you can have 2 any of the improvements but never more than 3 total improvements, beside their base use, the stables will decrease the time your soldiers take to complete missions and the storehouse will increase the time that invasion events take to break the siege and start the battle, not by just having them built, but having them filled with food/survival items.
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-Not going into much detail here, it should have a hall and living quarters and you should have multiple choices of different styles of decorations and utility, just like hearthfire without wings but with more furnishing and style options.
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*Training Area, where your recruited men sleep and train as soldiers
*Armory, requires Training Area, where you store equipment, both your personal equipment and equipment you wish your soldiers to get once trained, without this all your soldiers will use only iron equipment
*Archery Range, requires Training Area, where you train recruits into archers
*Arcane Circle, where you can put recruits to be trained as mages, and keep your magical items and enchanting altar
*Summoning Circle, requires Arcane Circle, once you gather enough summoning materials (fire/void/etc salts and the like) and train 2 mages you can use this as an automated defense, where the mages summon daedra and undead to fight
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-towers are places where specific types of soldiers go to when under siege, it also determines how many of each type of soldier will be on the wall, you can have as many towers of each type you want (apart from bell tower) up to a total of 5 towers
*Archery Tower will house 2 archers per tower 1 on the tower and another on the wall
*Bell Tower will raise alarm before the siege on your castle begin, sending you a message that your castle is under attack earlier than if you don't have one (if you are questing very far away having this will give you a message well ahead of time to finish the quest and fast travel to your castle, as if you didn't have it, you are depending on how much food you have in the storehouse for the siege phase to last before the attack starts)
*Garrison places 2 front line soldiers on the wall
*Fire Tower places 2 mages one on the tower and another on the wall, the one on the wall will cast fire/lightning/frost wall spells along your walls (if he has been trained for it) if not he will, like the mage on the tower cast his best rank ranged spell.
-not having any tower will randomly select soldiers and place them on the wall but instead of 10 total will be only 5 (towers house 2 per tower while base wall only 5)
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-unlike your normal housing, you cannot bring outside items to anything in your castle apart from your house, meaning all the lumber, food, stone, metals etc will have to be gathered and purchases/quested for, through your land's village, and your village will not be able to supply everything you need, so you need to establish an economic agreement with another village/s.
the idea is to build improvements that produce things that you aim to use more, and then use that to trade with another village for things you lack.
your steward will deal with goods you need to buy from your village to bring to your castle and your counselor will deal with your village governance and improvements as well as diplomatic/economic relations and quests with other villages.
*Fishing Huts
*Hunting Lodge
*Dairy Farm
*Farm
*Quarry
*Metal Mine
*Lumber Mill
*etc
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everything you setup on your castle comes from your village, when you plant something the seeds come from the village plantations or the General Goods/Alchemist that sell goods traded from another village.
the Idea is to have limited resources early on but plenty to start trade radiant quests through your counselor missions and overtime get both coin and goods to make your land thrive and you castle's stock plentiful.
&--#60;inspired by games like X3:terran conflict style of sandbox economy)
all your men will have to be trained, either by you or the npc you assign as housecarl/counselor, if your skill with armor/weapons/spells is too low you need to spend coin for training soldiers and tomes for training mages, their equipment will whatever you store in their barracks, they will equip whatever is highest level once they are trained.
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at the end of every 4 or 5 game days there will be a X % chance to trigger a radiant quest event, if you have a bell tower improvement you will get a message no matter where you are by courier alerting you the enemy is on the move (and you should finish what you are doing fast and go to your castle), if not you will only get warning once the siege has already begun and your food stock is already depleting, you need to have plantations/animal stock/warehouse stock to garrison men in your castle to begin with but once under siege the growing/production stops and the rate that food dwindles increases.
if you arrive at the castle before all your food is gone you talk with your housecarl to initiate the event battle (like the take the fort missions) if not once the food is gone the battle is started without you and losses are calculated based on your garrison strength and invading force and radial event type.
Improvements and walls are destructible, if the battle goes ok, you will only lose a few men and maybe a tower, if they go badly, you may have a hefty cost of wood and stone to rebuild what was destroyed and replant all your crops and breed/buy all new animals and train all new troops.
This Radiant event should have several types of invading forces varying from small skirmishes to your wall to large raids to your village, to having only basic soldiers to having full fledged armies with archers and mages etc.
all your men including steward, housecarl, bard, even your wife and kids can be either killed or kidnapped for ransom, if you have essential npcs as wife/housecarl/steward they will be kidnapped obviously, the random is a triggered quest that you must do alone (no companions) in a radiant quest cave where you have to pay the coin to have your followers released, and may have to attack the kidnappers if they decide to attack you in spite of your coin.
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-your steward sends a courier to summon you to your castle's hall/throne to listen to your villagers, the villagers ask for favours/help depending on how you resolve you get different rewards
*problems with bandits, you go personally with your housecarl/companion or you send your housecarl with a few soldiers, your soldiers and housecarl can die, reward is a random castle good (cow, chicken, seeds, wood, iron etc)
*villager needs an item you can have your steward spend your coin to buy it (will be expensive) OR if you have the item in your Castle House or storehouse you can choose to personally go get the item to deliver to the villager, reward will also be random castle good.
*villager problem with the law, can choose to forgive or punish
*missions for your men and yourself with your men to attack the aggressors
*diplomacy/economic missions for your counselor to trade items you have with items you need and the like, that end up with feasts with the jarl of the village you befriended/traded with in your castle.
*etc
some changes/tweaks to the current game to support these ideas:
-add random unnamed npcs and houses to villages to serve as recruits for your castle or villagers for your village (there are so few houses and npcs per village )
-either make current food better or create new food to make it even more viable, even with the special recipes and bakery from hearthfire the time it takes to cook stuff is consuming and the healing/buff to weight ratio still doesn't hold a candle to even unperked alchemy.
-create a love/hate and friend/rival system, make radiant quests/events with your spouse and kids to add some depth to your house and companions/characters some ideas:
*crafting a royalty crown/wedding ring
*romantic walk
*jealousy, make it possible to use persuasion checks on opposing six radiant quest targets to get what you want (goods/trade agreements/other ingame quests or events) and these have an effect on your wife, make her show her show she is displeased, cry, who knows maybe even set the castle on fire and then trigger a retrieve item X to get her mood back up.
*I dunno stuff like that.
