How does my nation become powerful?

Individual and National Power are the only metrics by which “power” is determined.

How do I increase my Individual Power?

Individual Power can be increased through two sources only. The first is through the Nation Core. When you place your Nation Core and, subsequently, found your nation, the area surrounding your Nation Core serves as your nation’s Centre Point. As long as you maintain control over this Centre Point and you are connected to the server, you will passively regenerate Individual Power. As your nation grows in size, this passive regeneration speed will become slower. Any player can max out their Individual Power just through this passive regeneration. However, a player can also obtain bonus Individual Power up to a certain amount through the second source: killing active players.

Your Individual Power can be lost by dying to natural causes, being killed by a citizen of another nation, and through passive decay.

How do I increase my National Power?

National Power can be increased through only one source: Rifts. Rifts are essentially “generators” throughout the map that serve as points of contention. They vary in size and strength and reset biweekly in an automated, server-wide event. As your nation grows in size, and the passive regeneration speed of Individual Power is slowed, it becomes essential to control these Rifts.

Your National Power begins to decay if another nation attacks and claims the Rifts you once had.

What can I do with Individual and National Power?

Both Individual and National Power are used to claim land. When you place the Nation Core to found your nation, you also make your first claim: the Centre Point. Every future claim must be attached to this initial claim. Your nation’s claims are completely immune to any damage from anyone other than your nation's citizens.

Can I lose my claims? What happens if I’m attacked? What if I want to attack another nation?

Three internal metrics exist to determine the viability of a nation’s Power levels. Both Individual and National Power contribute to these metrics, though not equally. You will be able to check where your nation stands in relation to these metrics. The first metric is where your nation should reasonably be. The second metric serves as a threshold that, once passed, every claim save the Centre Point is forfeited and becomes claimable, and the third and final metric is the threshold at which even your nation’s Centre Point is forfeited and becomes claimable.

If your nation’s power level falls below either of these thresholds, you will likely lose your claims. For the attackers, physically claiming a piece of land takes several minutes, so vultures won’t be able to capitalize on your work immediately. For the defenders, you can eventually reclaim the lost land if you drop the opposing nation’s Power level below either of their thresholds.

Your ability to sustain and protect your nation’s claimed land depends entirely on your nation’s Individual and National Power. Unclaiming land will not make your nation any less immune to having your land claimed or taken: it’s all or nothing in terms of vulnerability.

Biome Exclusivity, Resource Gathering, and Regions of Interest

Is there a different process for resource gathering in Ascendancy?

Not necessarily. It is more unique than most Minecraft servers, however. For example, players will not be able to access the Nether nor the End. Therefore, we will be thoughtfully integrating the resources usually obtained from those dimensions into the Overworld.

Wait. Why no Nether or End?

The Nether and the End do not serve any notable utility beyond resource gathering. The pros and cons of the Nether and the End as accessible locations may be revisited in the future.

What defines “more unique than most”?

Every biome will be unique in its balancing of resources, farming capacity, and mob spawns.

What this means is each biome has a different amount of each resource. For example, iron might spawn in most biomes but be particularly plentiful in snow biomes. Additionally, farming will be easier in some biomes rather than others. For example, a cold biome will have an extremely difficult time growing food, whereas a jungle biome will likely always have a surplus. This rule also extends to animals. Finally, different mobs will spawn in different biomes. Mob farms will become incredibly localized. For example, a blaze farm would only be feasible in a volcano biome.

Is there anything else I should know about biome variance?

I’m so glad you asked!

Some biomes will be exceedingly unique and typically carry more hostilities but also more valuable resources. There will be immense risks, but also significant rewards. Some biomes might be so hostile that a player traversing it would be impacted by a passive effect, such as the peak of a mountain-range giving slowness.

Furthermore, these extremely hostile biomes cannot be claimed in any capacity because of the unique rewards they hold.

Other Tidbits and Miscellaneous Information

Will there be /home or /spawn?

No. Upon connecting to the server for the first time, you will randomly spawn within somewhere on the map's unclaimed area.

Okay. How about Elytra?

No. The pros and cons of the Elytra as a sustainable and balanced item may be revisited in the future.

Alright. This seems bare-bones… are there any other features?

We’ve cooked up an incredible amount of content. The issue is not if we’ll have enough— we will. The concern is, instead, how do we deploy content that does not cause our Design Framework to be adversely impacted or fail. Though we have a lot in the oven (i.e., server-wide disease and disasters, a lite MMO-style Skill Tree, lore and its respective impact on the world, etc.) what has been outlined above is a design that we’ve agreed on and plan to actualize.

Sure. When?

Initially, the first feature-drop, related to Nation Management, Power, and Land Claiming, was set to go live on July 26th. This date, unfortunately, is no longer realistic due to the necessary re-organization that impacted our workflow. A lot of matters that simply didn’t need attending to just a week ago suddenly became critical: licensing, domain purchasing and website hosting, expense management, a revised leadership hierarchy, and a great deal of other seemingly insignificant logistical matters. Luckily, I am pleased to say that not only did our entire development team make it to the other side of these unforeseen challenges, but also our team has actually grown and specialized in ways that will make Ascendancy’s launch even more successful.

At this time, I do not have a definitive date to share publicly, but I hope that this Design Framework & “Roadmap” Announcement will give those that come across it something to chew on and debate.

Another logistical dilemma by suddenly becoming unaffiliated with any parent organization is that we are no longer guaranteed a playerbase. Ascendancy is truly a passion project, and we hope that this Announcement serves as the foundation of a tradition of transparency and positive staff-player interactions that will help build our community anew. Thank you for your interest. We look forward to your feedback. ~ connor7000