Look at your guild... now look at me... now look at your guild... now look at me. Obviously, your guild isn't me... heck, if you even thought i might suggest it could be, report to a physician on those cerebral cortices you've got; but it probably has friends like me. Yes, guilds and factions within real worlds may not be a single sentient body, but they still form friends and allies, as is my understanding anywho. So, you have this guild... but... what does it do exactly to ally it? Nothing. War? even more redundant, as any battle you tried to hold would be stormed by other players due to the sheer emptiness of guild LD. So... your relationships can't be official, and can't mean anything. Long have guilds gone untouched, but with the latest economic guild reforms, I figure that they haven't yet simply put them out of their view. That said, let's put out the point to throw this in your head and theirs (since it may still be something they think of). What if i told you YOU COULD have guild relationships... and that they were officially established? Ones that actually yielded benefits for the participating parties? Ones that, maybe, give a bit more role-playing element to the game? and, what's more, that inadvertently add a whole new form of PvP where crap gets real? Well, step right up and i will spill the details to you. Get cozy: this is long.

///>> Basic Concepts (bothered to hold of the lolcontinuitythateveryoneignores) <<\\\
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Let us get started off in our venture of getting to interract with the guilds around us. A new UI button exists now, working title is the SOFL: the spiral order faction listings. Here, one will apply their guild for entrance into the guild diplomacy system. Later, you will be able to use here to view guild standing, or the power which a guild holds in the world of cradle, grown by successful sieges or new alliances and rated on a 100 to -100% scale. using these extremes, you can determine a guild's intentions and notoriety: one being a reknowned benevolent guild, and one being a power hungry guild of conquerors. It shall display any individual guild's allies, and foes; when clicked from the list of any and all guilds registered. This allows people to opt in and out, for when you opt in, you get ALL of it, including lovely little guild sieges from time to time. Opting out will entirely set you as unknown to the world diplomatically. attempting to search will, if fully spelled out, list you as an outsider guild with no clickable info. Note that besides this, as another means of warding out any non-prepared guilds, you MUST have the 300 member upgrade and at least two guild hall upgrades in order to sign up. Signup costs a small amount of materials as well; all to further narrow the numbers actually in to those actually ready to reap the rewards, and face the consequences, of entry.

Now that we've covered signup, and those lovely story links, let's get on to the actual different relations options (and any sub categories). Neutrality leaves one as is now; the two we really want to, and need to, cover are alliances and rivalries

<< Alliances >>
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"the pen is mightier than the sword". The popular saying, when it comes to guild supremacy, may be some of the truest. As allies, you gain many new and unique options in negotiation (i'll cover that later), positive points to guild standing, as well as many alliance perks, such as:
-Shared assets: your guild banks are basically converged debt-wise, you will be able to support them, and them to you; should you not meet your week's payments. Money may be borrowed from another guild annexed by alliance with GM permissions for guild purchases, and guilds will split occupation losses (again, cover it later) to lessen overall burden.
-Combined Military: the two siege weapons (the whole "covered later" thing) are a shared arsenal as long as the alliance is maintained, and if you share foes, you can invite another guild's members to support your fight
-Publicly Lock Hall Access: guild locking options are extended to "lock to public" and "lock to allies". Any guild hall locked to public is still accessible to allies.

This makes your alliances something much more meaningful... more real... and, as such, more precious. You must be selective; wouldn't want to give this out to just anyone... but of course, you can't be friends with just anyone anywho. Yes, we now come to those who you don't see eye to eye with. that special solution to just about all clashes of factions.

<< War >>
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"Great empires are not maintained by timidity." These words of Tacitus do apply here. Man shall always partake in it, and now, your knights as well do. War... the foundation for truly maintaining order for some, and the final word in deciding who is right in a political standoff. When first declared, war shall not be announced by default, rather, only if you select that it be announced... if not announced, the foe will not know, nor be able to launch an attack until you do without declaring it themselves. But wether this is so or not, once it is initiated, a GM or GM approved general may launch attacks. Unlike allies, this is a bit lengthy, so i will break it into sections

==> Guild Hall Upgrades:
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In the words of Aesop: "Against danger it pays to be prepared". Guild hall upgrades are what shall be the first line of defense against your foe. These change the field of battle to potentially tip it in your favor, and make the assault less a matter of latency, more one of who came ready for the party. These effect battle gameplay in your guild during sieges with defenses, offensive structures, and troop upgrades. None have repair costs, and they are independent of upkeep, but each does have a one-time cost to set up, and then a smaller cost to upgrade (they also must be set up by a GM). these costs are low in relative to the consideration that purchases expend guild bank, and a neccesary expenditure to stand a chance. Purchases available are:
-Walls=the most basic steps in defense, these must be purchased, and provide a base wall when such is done.
*Upgradeable (any up to 3) with: Girthy (more health), Twin barricade (two is better than one), Silly climbing k-nig-ths (must be broken, not scaled), Steel Plating (Resists chemical and heat based siege weaponry. Shrugs off mist bombs utterly), Crenelled (Add crenelations gunners can shoot from without getting hit. bombers may also drop bombs from here), Impenetrable (Increases physical resistance, lessening siege weaponry that relies on that's damage. Will also ward off blast bomb damage entirely), Shields up (Projects an energy shield over the walls which can be broken only by knight weaponry and regenerates 1 minute after being down)
-Offensive Setups=the support to ensure your knights aren't in it alone. There is no base unit, but the ability to build these must be purchased
*Upgradeable (any up to 3) with: Autoturrets (Railgun turrets. Cannot be destroyed, and can hit multiple foes many times, but slow load time. Hackable.), Hacked Rocket Puppies (Spawn as T2 variants in a triad. Hold T3 damage values and a stronger fire than normal, and cover an area of effect, but can be destroyed. Hackable (but resistant)), Mounted autogun (5*. Pepperbox or Blitz. Bottomless clip, unhackable, and has bullet spread, but MUST be human manned.), Gremlin mercenaries (Add a full team of emberlight mercenaries to the field; with 2 menders, 5 thwackers, 8 Knockers, and 2 ghostmanes or mortafires (randomized). Menders may heal players on allied team, and invaluable to any field for more numbers, but respawn slowly, and cost more than turrets), Courtyard trojans (Adds 3 T2 trojans to the field. Incredibly powerful support, and great to drive attention, but respawn even slower than gremlins.), War wolvers (adds 6 cages of rabid wolvers. Fast moving support, provides poison, cheaper than turrets, and will only attack when let free, but will not respawn at all in the same siege. Can occasionally go rampant (attack all while in rampancy indiscriminantly)), Murder holes (Will cause oil to be poured and lit ablaze as the foe approaches the wall as well as doing some instant damage with the projectile's collision. Cheaper than turrets, and act on detection of range, but need a 5 second cooldown between drops. Hackable), Ranger patrols (Will send a team of 8 npc rangers of all combat styles to patrol the base. Perform like ghostmanes, and may be armed with a variety of weapons (at least one for each damage type will be held by the team at any given time). Higher defence than gremlins, and have a better AI, but will not respawn during the siege), and Pest problems (grave scarabs shall constantly spawn around the base in reams of 20. Can easily overwhelm foes with their retained T3 damage values, and come in large numbers which regrow fast, but cost as much as trojans and die quicker than clockworks ones)
-Playing Field=these alter the very ground you fight upon. This is by default a flat plain. Does not add anything untill upgrade, but upgrade rights must be bought
*Upgradeable (any up to 2) with: Wild Goose Chase (A maze which shifts each time it is played upon), Minefield (will randomly place mines across the field disguised as normal tiles), Recyclers (creates randomized arrays of status pads based on foe's average weakness), Moat (forms a surrounding hole across which a bridge must be built (using pieces scattered near the site to set up) for foes to cross.), Get to cover! (adds cover points to the field. These will allow knights behind them to be invisible to all on the other side, and block bullets from harming knights in cover), They said i couldn't build a GH in the swamp... (creates more uneven terrain, to an extent normally making building unsafe, that makes navigation take longer due to sloping and barriers), Unknown Terrain (makes the radar of the foes blurred)
-Field Perks=uniquely, these do not need purchasing rights, nor do they add to the base, these directly affect soldiers and apply to all sieges, at home or away.
*Upgradeable (any 1) with: Zerg Rush (Faster respawning), A good smithy (powers all equipment to the fullest of it's ability, star-level wise, in sieges. Any levels not present or already upgraded translate into a damage bonus: low, which stacks up to very high (counting existing boosts, which will affect it as well (nope, chaos cloak will not leave you with any higher damage than a full 5* cobalt this time)), Down but not out (First death will revive you automatically at 1/2 health), Shadow Dwellers (Hidden on spawn until you first attack. Applies to respawns), Hardened (Increases speed and health), Standardize (Set a standard equipment set from within the selector's inventory to apply to all soldiers on the field), Adv. life support (Regenerate passively out of combat), Campers (Can attack with guns from cover (does break cloak to do), and gain cover-based resistances to swords and bombs), Double Agents (Foes appear on radar unless concealed), Martyrdom (drops a charged nitronome on death)

==> Machines of war:
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A good offense is a great defense. So, if you have good defense, then a good offense only makes sense to set you up as a powerful force to be reckoned with. No, not those ones you can just run about with, no... we need those big, lumbering sorts of offensive tools that you've probably heard of if your history class curriculum even remotely covered time before 1600. We're going to need siege weaponry to lay waste and redundancy to those pitiful defenses your foes imagine to be all that matters. Slightly adapted to the time period, these weapons generally fall into 3 categories
-Artillery: Long range, more out of reach, covers more surface area and therefore may hit twice, and can even affect knights caught in the blast, but less mobile and has a longer cooldown
-Rams: Piston driven variants on the middle age originals. Much faster than artillery, and has more concentrated damage, but requires it to get in easy reach of bombs and blades, moves slow, and cannot damage knights.
-Leverage: No need to actually hit anything (therefore much faster), but has an upgrade to entirely negate it from the equation, must move directly against the wall (though faster than rams), and knights going up can be attacked
Each (the exception being ladders) has 2 different variants: a physical damage variant, and a chemical damage variant. Each has a time to shine, and both should be in your arsenal, but each can be resisted, so be careful when deploying.
All are crafted using 4 5*, 8 4*, 32 3*, and 64 2* mats (exact mats undecided) within an amero-style crafting menu in the guild hall available to generals and GMs. No monetary craft cost is present. NOTE: Bombers, it is your lucky day, for you too can actually damage walls, albeit less than siege weapons. What's more, most bombs cannot be resisted. Though, again, significantly lower values mean you still want some of these on hand, even if you are some massive bomber guild

==> New mechanics:
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I believe i mentioned these briefly. Two new mechanics shall (preferably) be implemented to make this possible, but only within this environment
Hacking-Hold down a shift+h to begin hacking a device. Depending on the device, this may take long or it may be almost instant. Only devices which are robotic and unprotected may be hacked.
Cover-Cover will spawn if selected as part of the battlefield setup. To use cover, press shield, and get behind it. you will be merged to the cover piece until you shield again to cancel it.

==> The art of war:
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Now that you've got your big guns at ready, you should probably get to work make that not so for the enemy. If one is a designated general or a guild master, then they may direct an attack. they may perform one of 2 attacks
-Raid=the less organized form of attack, but may be all you need to make your foe know you are not to be trifled with. This will allow you to ambush parties in the clockworks. The general or GM whom selected it shall pick 3 other members, and all shall get a cloak and spawn at a random, unexplored area of the level. Your side may not respawn, however, the foe may do it one time while you are attacking (able to do it again once you leave). The battle goes on until loone still stands. Sparks, or revs used in the attack are paid for by the guild using the former energy exchange rate average of 7.5k per 100 as a baseline; and successful attacks will allow the attackers to gain some negative notoriety as well as add a duplicate of the level's profits to the guild hall (which includes crowns, as well as mats up to 3*). Lower profit than the siege, and a smaller blow; but lower stakes, and therefore more recommendable overall if you just want to get over that you mean business.
-Siege=the single, final word in these wars and the largest battles indeed in all of SK. A general orders these, and subsequently shall bring up to 35 other of his guild members (anything being done shall be resumed after resolution of conflict from last party button (to total 36)) to prepare for a march on the guild hall. Troops are divided into 4 teams of 8 and 1 team of 4 (this team holding the general). All spawn in the camp to discuss any before battle chat (where the 4 shall continue to wait longer until time comes to attack for them later unless they switch to spectator mode until), and await the foe's preparation; for the guild master, general, or one of the highest ranking members on at that time (in that order), shall be recalled to the hall to rally troops (same protocol as last if something is in progress for them) to it's defence, who share team sizes with the other side and gather in the hall's center (where the team of 4 with the leader shall, again, await their time if needed unless spectating). Once this is done and both sides declare they are ready, the game starts. The 4 teams of 8 shall each be distributed among 4 different maps that are, in essence, single point LD maps.... only, no classes, no takebacks. Taking a point claims the defences breached and sends all the players in that map back to their prior action... as they must be to take the point: the walls must be broken through or traversed with siege equipment, or bombs. They have 5 minutes to accomplish this or the invasion shall be declared successfully repelled. No scores or damage values are kept, only the breaches matter. Each wall's defenses act as a map of their own, to minimize lag; and are entirely independent. The results that are kept (the captures) do however chart to the same board... and this board can be viewed by the team captains in the upper left of the screen. And they'd best do such, for if all 4 teams do not succeed in capturing their point, the siege shall be declared repelled in it's entirety. Should the team succeed in breaching the walls, however, the attacker will move his remaining 4 toward the inside of the guild hall and fight those inside in a last stand attack. They must defend their guild console from hacking (a 15 second process) in order to save the hall, and have 3 minutes until they attain true victory at this. No matter what happens, should the victor be the defenders, then all shall remain normal; but if the the attackers win, they gain 3 options:
1. Occupy the hall, adding a 15% increase to the hall's weekly upkeep which feeds directly into your guild's bank. NOTE: The guild may attempt to lift your occupation, decided in a 2 minute 4v4 fight in the central hall by similar troop adding procedure to the initial siege, and that once lifted, you may not launch another for 24 hours.
2. Immediately Take 30% of the treasury (capped at 25k) and distribute among the attackers.
3. Immediately Take 30% of the treasury (capped at 25k) and send to your guild treasury.
Any destroyed siege equipment returns 1/2 of the craft cost mats involved to the winning side, and any destroyed defenses are automatically repaired.

I believe that covers all things war... but we forgot one thing vital to this... negotiation!

<< Negotiation >>
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The basis of this update at heart. Anything that doesn't occur with the "declare war" button happens here. Negotiation gives many options to allow one to grow guild economy, request allied relations be altered, and even end wars. Some are restricted to different relation standings, but a few are indifferent. Any given set can be stacked to negotiate with multiple terms at once. Do note that alliances may freely be liquidated and trade freely canceled any time without consent. To list all available terms:

==> Allies:
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- Request alliance be formed with another guild, request an attack on another guild, request ceasefire with other guild request negotiation with other guild, blackmail with alliance (will liquidate alliance automatically if request is denied), request removal of other ally

==> Enemies:
.......---------.........
-Declare ceasefire, lift occupation (if one is held (occupation removed and no renewal of attack allowed for 14 hours for sending guild if deal is accepted)), become protectorate, demand payment

==> Neutral:
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-Request alliance

==> Neutral + Ally:
.......----------------.......
-Establish trade (utilizes a "wishlist system" to exchange wanted items between guilds daily (any wishlist stating money will only exchange 100)), one-time trade (same as establish trade, but one time only), Request aid lifting occupation (can be direct or indirect. Terms agreed will fulfill once the occupation is lifted if the one given this term attempted to aid in some matter.)

==> All:
.......---........
-Send a gift (disallows terms in return, but other party can accept or deny it. acceptance gives a minor level of positive notoriety. Use this to build relations with reasonable guilds, or to show an ally you care. Goes to the GM inventory if he directly accepts it. (caps at 1k, and draws from guild bank))

Well, that closes up diplomacy, and just aout all the bells and whistles of this suggestion. Like it, do leave a note to get it noticed, and tell me if anything appears wrong (do detail the issue if seen)