I saw a thread mentioning turrets as a way to get rid of pesky griefers (or "invaders, as I'd prefer to consider them). While turrets our nice and all, I don't really like the idea of having an automated weapon system in minecraft... What will it shoot? Certainly not bullets or lasers, and an arrow turret just seems odd.
So I'd like to suggest guards. Guards would have some sort of guard model, and attack players who try to destroy your work or modify the land within a certain range. The guards would be obtained by constructing a tower, or some kind of decently hard to make token. After construction you would proceed to plant the block. The block would spawn up to a certain amount of guards that would chase down enemies.
Alright, so on to the specifics.
Properties:
Destruction: The tower can be destroyed, the tile would be easier to blow up if a player had a blunt weapon like a maul, or multiple explosives. Upon destruction the tower would not turn into an item, it would be permanently destroyed. This also means that the creator could not reclaim the item and bring it else where. Even with the specialized tools to destroy the tower, it would still be an effort to take out.
Materials needed: Wood, stone, iron. Diagram:
| 50x planks | 50x planks | |
| 50x stone | 50x stone | |
| 20x iron | 20x iron | |
Guards: The guards would spawn default with no armor and a wooden sword. You would only get one or two of them, so the enemy can take them out pretty easily. The guards will travel about 20-30 blocks to attack an enemy, but will not aggro them unless they are within 10 blocks, or firing arrows at them. The guards would be upgradable, with three different upgrade slots. Weapons, armor, and number.
Weapons: Assuming we have more then the basic set of weapons we have now by the time this feature came out, the guards would spawn with a random weapon. They would range in tier based on how much you've upgraded your tower, between wooden and diamond. To upgrade a weapon you would have to right click the tower. An advanced crafting box would show up (3x3), where you would need to drag the items for the weapon over. You have to make the same amount of weapons as the number of guards you have. If you want your guards to have a variety of weapons, then you need to make multiple sets. Say you had five guards at your tower and you wanted them to all have iron swords. The weapons you want them to wear would be made with twice as many resources as the one you wield. This means for 5 guards to have iron swords, you would need 20 iron and 10 shafts. If you wanted them to have bows, you would need to make 5 bows (25 strings, 25 shafts). If you want them to have a variety of weapons, you need to make multiple weapons at the guard tower. If there were spears in game you would have to make 5 spears to put into the tower, however, if you only ever wanted one of your guards to have a spear, you would only need to make one. If there is an excess of weapons then the guard will be assigned one randomly. You only have to make the set of weapons once (tell me what you think about this, not sure if it would be too hard for people to keep giving their guards new equipment when they died). The weapon would not break (and this too).
Armor: Armor would be similar to weapons, except the ratio to make the armor would be the same as if you were making it for your self. You would still need to make the armor for each guard, so 5 sets of iron if you want all of your guards to wear that. Guards will take the best armor available.
Numbers: If you want to get more guards you have to hire them. You would have to hire them with gold or something (not sure what...). If gold was used to hire them you would need to put in 1 gold block per guard (9 bars). You would be able to hire up to a maximum of 6 or 7 guards.
Other upgrades: Maybe you could upgrade the guards them selves, but I haven't thought very deeply into this.
These blocks would have some advanced features. You can decide what is ok and what isn't in your area. Say Notch adds fishing, well you can decide if you want random people to be able to fish in your area or not. You could say if they were allowed to mine, wood cut, or change the ground. You could also tell your guards to allow certain people to do different actions. For instance, you could select an option to make guards ignore actions done by certain people (by type in their name, or, if we have a friends list, selecting that they don't attack friends). You could tell your guards weather or not they were supposed to attack hostile creatures, such as spiders/zombies/or skeletons.
Restrictions: You would only be able to have a certain amount of these towers within a range of blocks. Guards are limited by the path they have, so if they can not get to an enemy, they will not fight it. They will only be able to attack people they notice (so if you're destroying a block they'll hear you.) Guards will destroy tiles if there is no way to get to an enemy, and change the ground so that they may reach certain areas. If they were block by a wall, they would make an entrance large enough for them to get through. If they were in a pit, they would dig the dirt around them until they could jump out. Not sure how the other mechanics would work.
Respawn Rates: They obviously wouldn't spawn instantly, but if all the aggressors have to do is kill them once, then they're really not great guards. Some balancing would have to be implemented for this, I'm thinking maybe 1/4th of your available guards will spawn at one time and come back out to fight, but only after a period of time has passed.
Example: You have eight guards protecting your fortress. Some one comes and starts destroying your place. Unable to deal with the guards them self, they call in some friends. They're killed by the enemy, who have suffered some wounds, but continue to attack. In one minutes, another two guards come to fight again, stealing a few more hearts from the enemy. After another assault by the guards the invaders are forced to retreat, as they have no food to heal them selves. If they're gone for more then 4 minutes, all the guards will have re-spawned, and they'll be forced to kill them again.
I'd like to have one guard with good gear equivalent to a player with good gear (IE, if they were both AIs, it would be a fair fight). However I still want it to be possible for a lone but skilled player to take a few of them out on his own.
Anyway, that's my suggestion. I think it would be a fun and interactive way to prevent briefing/invasions. I believe that upgrading your guards and building the tower would be a sort of challenge you would face as a player building up your base. You would not need a guard, however they would be quite useful. Anyway, tell me what you think.
in before "this ruins minecraft due to mmo/rpg/npcs/automation/im an idiot who hates new things
i actually kinda like this idea, but maybe instead of a tower, a barracks, and instead of some super complex thing to make just make it fairly simple and make guards take gold or what have you to produce / employ
I've always liked the "cohort" idea for protection while your offline. but I can see it being easily over complicated.
I think they should get a stone or iron sword, a bow with unlimited arrows and an iron breastplate, with perhaps half as many hearts as a player.
I agree with the spawn block thing - I think you should be able to set the block that it spawns atop /replaces and then aggros on anything hostile (Firm hope in a friends list for terms of hostility tags) that comes within 10-15 blocks.
attacking with mob AI - chasing with sword if a path is available - bow and arrow if not.
I think there should be a limit - such as one per player, which would make co-operative play that much more beneficial due to higher guard numbers. However here is something I suggest that I'm sure many would dispute. I think there should also be severe respawn limitations, perhaps even to the point of needing to be replaced.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"So we step away from the mainstream and live like vagabonds and common dropouts. A psychedelic rhapsody for someone just like you."
I really think there should be some friendly mob for you, that can be a number of things (soldier,guard,farmer, ect) just for if you only have 10 regular players at a server it can still seem very much populated, and it would make it for people could be kings and have large castles and wage war with their mob armies and such. Every player could have a really high position, either a king or a general or the head farmer or head guard in such a society if they so chose. But the main idea of just having friendly mobs sounds fun.
I really hate the idea of one per character, I think it just cannot be explained in any form of logic beyond game balance, which is very important but if it has no basis in logic at all I do not desire it, they should be expensive, though, so that having more than 1 to guard each entrance of a base would be prohibitive, and maybe mobs would aggro on the tower itself, I'm thinking creepers in particular, and try to destroy it.
To add to the expense of the guard you would have to feed it and/or pay the guard in additional gold bars. Perhaps as they kill more enemies they can have their A.I. increase until they can defeat most enemies with out a problem, however as they increase in skill their upkeep would also increase. Perhaps you could feed/pay the guards by right clicking their spawn block and put in food/gold bars.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Starcraft 2 is the Brawl to Brood War's Melee
Quote from Doug Hug »
Let's kick ass and eat granola and lucky for you I brought lots of granola
I don't particularly like the idea of this since you should just get real people to guard your castle, but there should be a some friendly mob that is designed especially to guard you and your domain. Not particularly a human, but maybe some other species.
I really think there should be some friendly mob for you, that can be a number of things (soldier,guard,farmer, ect) just for if you only have 10 regular players at a server it can still seem very much populated, and it would make it for people could be kings and have large castles and wage war with their mob armies and such. Every player could have a really high position, either a king or a general or the head farmer or head guard in such a society if they so chose. But the main idea of just having friendly mobs sounds fun.
I really like this idea. Back in medieval times kings and knights basically owned the land and the workers on it who were called serfs. It would be cool to see 8-15 NPCs collecting resources or doing jobs. They would obviously be much slower and could carry less.
I really think there should be some friendly mob for you, that can be a number of things (soldier,guard,farmer, ect) just for if you only have 10 regular players at a server it can still seem very much populated, and it would make it for people could be kings and have large castles and wage war with their mob armies and such. Every player could have a really high position, either a king or a general or the head farmer or head guard in such a society if they so chose. But the main idea of just having friendly mobs sounds fun.
I really like this idea. Back in medieval times kings and knights basically owned the land and the workers on it who were called serfs. It would be cool to see 8-15 NPCs collecting resources or doing jobs. They would obviously be much slower and could carry less.
Such would be the reason to have many.
I love this idea and hope that it gets implemented so he can have an army of near-surface dorf workers and guards with a hidden hole with a ladder wall the way down and a door at the bottom.
It's agreeable, but I still don't think it should ever be able to outdo just mining it yourself. Tortoise and the Hare, you know? Edit
To Clarify: Not being lazy should pay off in spades.
That's not on topic, nor is it prudent to correct someone's spelling mere seconds after the typo, the only reason you caught that was due to my having hit submit slightly after you did.
It really just makes you look like a pretentious weasel.
And mind pointing out why you haven't opted to go through the entire thread listing every typo?
I suspect harassment.
I didn't want to, but I'm going to voice the same angle, I've seen time and time again on topics like this to get it back on topic. Besides, it'll help build a stronger argument.
What happens when someone signs on, places it, upgrades it, then forgets about the server? Can an admin just stroll right in and remove it easily? If so, how will it defend itself if the player happens to be an op, but intends to disable it like a player would normally?
If all those resources are put into this thing and it's destroyed, shouldn't there be some kind of payoff?
What do guards drop? That's horrible if a player survives an encounter but gets no reward.
Guards killing any player that wanders into the territory would quickly become item farming, how would this be addressed?
And you only need one weapon to arm multiple guards? I can see why rearming the same dead guard over and over would be irritating, but what if placing one weapon on the block took some health every time it had to outfit a new guard?
That's not on topic, nor is it prudent to correct someone's spelling mere seconds after the typo, the only reason you caught that was due to my having hit submit slightly after you did.
It really just makes you look like a pretentious weasel.
And mind pointing out why you haven't opted to go through the entire thread listing every typo?
I suspect harassment.
I didn't want to, but I'm going to voice the same angle, I've seen time and time again on topics like this to get it back on topic. Besides, it'll help build a stronger argument.
What happens when someone signs on, places it, upgrades it, then forgets about the server? Can an admin just stroll right in and remove it easily? If so, how will it defend itself if the player happens to be an op, but intends to disable it like a player would normally?
If all those resources are put into this thing and it's destroyed, shouldn't there be some kind of payoff?
What do guards drop? That's horrible if a player survives an encounter but gets no reward.
Guards killing any player that wanders into the territory would quickly become item farming, how would this be addressed?
And you only need one weapon to arm multiple guards? I can see why rearming the same dead guard over and over would be irritating, but what if placing one weapon on the block took some health every time it had to outfit a new guard?
Dude, I had to duck that! anyways, it is merely coincidence that I replied to your post second after you posted it. And the Hair/Hare thing stuck out considering that you should know the spelling since it is a children's story. I need to get that sieg hiel Spellcheck thing into my sig...No, All Hail Spellcheck because I am useless when it comes to anything other than English.
I like the idea of minions in general as a way of expanding gameplay. One concern though is that this would shift the whole game into a Real Time Strategy, which may or may not be a bad thing. I imagine it being somewhat like this game (You'll notice that it, too, is a game by Notch)
The concept is about all I like, though... The details on how to make them seem like it would be needlessly complex (having to make the right size tower, for example, would be frustrating for players and programmers) and doesn't make much sense. A type of mob (say, gremlins!) that can be caught and tamed would be amusing. Or steampunk robots. Something that's crafted/gathered more than spawned, you see.
I imagine this would be an excelent way to make claim flags work. People don't like the idea of claim flags being strict, but if the flag had the effect of allowing npc's to work within it's radius, it would control the power of npcs (thus balancing them some) and also allow for land protection with the use of patrolling soldier npcs.
Tokens and towers for guards? Did you perhaps play Wurm?
Yes, I knew you in Wurm as well.
Of course "block of guard spawning" does exactly ring like "guard tower" :tongue.gif:.
Anyway, to address some concerns...
The guards would not attack any player that comes into range. They would attack people within a certain range of them, but only if they did specific hostile actions. For instance, if they started digging at one of the tiles within range of the guard, it would come over, and perhaps warn them. If they continued, which they're fully obliged to do, they will be attacked by the guard.
There probably wouldn't be a reward for killing guards, or else players (including the owner) would just stand around and kill them for whatever they dropped. If anything they'd just drop a stone sword or something, other wise they'd just become item farms.
Next, I did not say you need one weapon. If I remember my suggestion correctly (I think I do), I believe I wrote something along the lines of having to make weapons equivlant to the number of guards you have, and each one of the weapons would use twice the resources of a normal weapon. They reason I said this was so that it didn't become ridiculous and tedious to have a useful guard tower. If every time they died you'd have to fetch them more weapons, it's quite possible people would just ignore the matter entirely, or you'd never see a guard with better then a stone sword- making the concept quite boring. Maybe this could be fixed by adding life regen to guards, so if your guards survive a fight with their gear, they'll regain their health and not be killed in one shot next time the assaulter comes back.
@ Winner
To address you're concern, Winner, I'd like to point out that most people don't know friends that are willing to stay up all night and protect a castle, especially not in such a versatile game as Minecraft. It changes so quickly that always trying to preserve your things with all of you're time would be a massive waste of time. It doesn't take long to destroy something in Minecraft, so you would have to have multiple people protecting your fort at all times, or else the thing would crumble whenever you logged off. Guards would be a partial solution to this. If a large group of people come and they want to siege you, the guards aren't going to hold them off for long. If the assaulter is not so adept at the game or lacking proper equipment, it's possible that the guards will completely hold them off. The greatest functionality behind the guard would be to protect your estate from griefers. If no one is online to fight them off one person can come and demolish an entire base, especially in a game where lava and water flows. If they're alone though, and you have a guard tower, the guards will probably over run them before they can do any significant damage.
Next, I didn't say anything about auto-mining mobs or farms or anything... The idea had crossed my mind, and it sounds cool, but perhaps a bit over powered. If there's nothing for the player to do the game becomes stale. Regardless, the suggestion should be posted in a thread of it's own.
Thanks for the feed back, I'll update my original post with some more stuff.
Edit: Forgot to mention this. It looked like a few people thought you actually had to build a "tower". It's more like a station or a token or a hole or something... It would be made in an crafting box like any other advanced object in the game.
I like the behavior of guards being that they only attack when people are misbehaving, much like on the turrets thread. It's a good mechanism.
I realize you didn't say anything about farmers or miners, but, having a specific type of npc JUST for guarding didn't make much sense to me. building NPC helpers in general does, and guarding strikes me as one of the more obvious duties.
And yeah, if there are NPCs that do multiple things, there may have to be something else for a player to do other than see how big of an army they can amass. I don't know. maybe it is a new topic, but as I say, if there are guards, why not other things?
perhaps guard dogs would make sense in this role.. they'd act the same way, and you wouldn't expect a dog to be able to do much more than guard or herd sheep.
I like the behavior of guards being that they only attack when people are misbehaving, much like on the turrets thread. It's a good mechanism.
I realize you didn't say anything about farmers or miners, but, having a specific type of npc JUST for guarding didn't make much sense to me. building NPC helpers in general does, and guarding strikes me as one of the more obvious duties.
And yeah, if there are NPCs that do multiple things, there may have to be something else for a player to do other than see how big of an army they can amass. I don't know. maybe it is a new topic, but as I say, if there are guards, why not other things?
perhaps guard dogs would make sense in this role.. they'd act the same way, and you wouldn't expect a dog to be able to do much more than guard or herd sheep.
Hahaha, I was reading through here and thinking, "How about something simple, like a dog that would follow you and guard your things". Then I saw your post.
So I'd like to suggest guards. Guards would have some sort of guard model, and attack players who try to destroy your work or modify the land within a certain range. The guards would be obtained by constructing a tower, or some kind of decently hard to make token. After construction you would proceed to plant the block. The block would spawn up to a certain amount of guards that would chase down enemies.
Alright, so on to the specifics.
Properties:
Destruction: The tower can be destroyed, the tile would be easier to blow up if a player had a blunt weapon like a maul, or multiple explosives. Upon destruction the tower would not turn into an item, it would be permanently destroyed. This also means that the creator could not reclaim the item and bring it else where. Even with the specialized tools to destroy the tower, it would still be an effort to take out.
Materials needed: Wood, stone, iron. Diagram:
| 50x planks | 50x planks | |
| 50x stone | 50x stone | |
| 20x iron | 20x iron | |
Guards: The guards would spawn default with no armor and a wooden sword. You would only get one or two of them, so the enemy can take them out pretty easily. The guards will travel about 20-30 blocks to attack an enemy, but will not aggro them unless they are within 10 blocks, or firing arrows at them. The guards would be upgradable, with three different upgrade slots. Weapons, armor, and number.
Weapons: Assuming we have more then the basic set of weapons we have now by the time this feature came out, the guards would spawn with a random weapon. They would range in tier based on how much you've upgraded your tower, between wooden and diamond. To upgrade a weapon you would have to right click the tower. An advanced crafting box would show up (3x3), where you would need to drag the items for the weapon over. You have to make the same amount of weapons as the number of guards you have. If you want your guards to have a variety of weapons, then you need to make multiple sets. Say you had five guards at your tower and you wanted them to all have iron swords. The weapons you want them to wear would be made with twice as many resources as the one you wield. This means for 5 guards to have iron swords, you would need 20 iron and 10 shafts. If you wanted them to have bows, you would need to make 5 bows (25 strings, 25 shafts). If you want them to have a variety of weapons, you need to make multiple weapons at the guard tower. If there were spears in game you would have to make 5 spears to put into the tower, however, if you only ever wanted one of your guards to have a spear, you would only need to make one. If there is an excess of weapons then the guard will be assigned one randomly. You only have to make the set of weapons once (tell me what you think about this, not sure if it would be too hard for people to keep giving their guards new equipment when they died). The weapon would not break (and this too).
Armor: Armor would be similar to weapons, except the ratio to make the armor would be the same as if you were making it for your self. You would still need to make the armor for each guard, so 5 sets of iron if you want all of your guards to wear that. Guards will take the best armor available.
Numbers: If you want to get more guards you have to hire them. You would have to hire them with gold or something (not sure what...). If gold was used to hire them you would need to put in 1 gold block per guard (9 bars). You would be able to hire up to a maximum of 6 or 7 guards.
Other upgrades: Maybe you could upgrade the guards them selves, but I haven't thought very deeply into this.
These blocks would have some advanced features. You can decide what is ok and what isn't in your area. Say Notch adds fishing, well you can decide if you want random people to be able to fish in your area or not. You could say if they were allowed to mine, wood cut, or change the ground. You could also tell your guards to allow certain people to do different actions. For instance, you could select an option to make guards ignore actions done by certain people (by type in their name, or, if we have a friends list, selecting that they don't attack friends). You could tell your guards weather or not they were supposed to attack hostile creatures, such as spiders/zombies/or skeletons.
Restrictions: You would only be able to have a certain amount of these towers within a range of blocks. Guards are limited by the path they have, so if they can not get to an enemy, they will not fight it. They will only be able to attack people they notice (so if you're destroying a block they'll hear you.) Guards will destroy tiles if there is no way to get to an enemy, and change the ground so that they may reach certain areas. If they were block by a wall, they would make an entrance large enough for them to get through. If they were in a pit, they would dig the dirt around them until they could jump out. Not sure how the other mechanics would work.
Respawn Rates: They obviously wouldn't spawn instantly, but if all the aggressors have to do is kill them once, then they're really not great guards. Some balancing would have to be implemented for this, I'm thinking maybe 1/4th of your available guards will spawn at one time and come back out to fight, but only after a period of time has passed.
Example: You have eight guards protecting your fortress. Some one comes and starts destroying your place. Unable to deal with the guards them self, they call in some friends. They're killed by the enemy, who have suffered some wounds, but continue to attack. In one minutes, another two guards come to fight again, stealing a few more hearts from the enemy. After another assault by the guards the invaders are forced to retreat, as they have no food to heal them selves. If they're gone for more then 4 minutes, all the guards will have re-spawned, and they'll be forced to kill them again.
I'd like to have one guard with good gear equivalent to a player with good gear (IE, if they were both AIs, it would be a fair fight). However I still want it to be possible for a lone but skilled player to take a few of them out on his own.
Anyway, that's my suggestion. I think it would be a fun and interactive way to prevent briefing/invasions. I believe that upgrading your guards and building the tower would be a sort of challenge you would face as a player building up your base. You would not need a guard, however they would be quite useful. Anyway, tell me what you think.
Other suggestions:
Guards that are not human.
Having to pay guards.
i actually kinda like this idea, but maybe instead of a tower, a barracks, and instead of some super complex thing to make just make it fairly simple and make guards take gold or what have you to produce / employ
I think they should get a stone or iron sword, a bow with unlimited arrows and an iron breastplate, with perhaps half as many hearts as a player.
I agree with the spawn block thing - I think you should be able to set the block that it spawns atop /replaces and then aggros on anything hostile (Firm hope in a friends list for terms of hostility tags) that comes within 10-15 blocks.
attacking with mob AI - chasing with sword if a path is available - bow and arrow if not.
I think there should be a limit - such as one per player, which would make co-operative play that much more beneficial due to higher guard numbers. However here is something I suggest that I'm sure many would dispute. I think there should also be severe respawn limitations, perhaps even to the point of needing to be replaced.
spell check died today...
I really like this idea. Back in medieval times kings and knights basically owned the land and the workers on it who were called serfs. It would be cool to see 8-15 NPCs collecting resources or doing jobs. They would obviously be much slower and could carry less.
Such would be the reason to have many.
I love this idea and hope that it gets implemented so he can have an army of near-surface dorf workers and guards with a hidden hole with a ladder wall the way down and a door at the bottom.
My Pathfinder Campaign for the denizens of MCF: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1939035-where-are-we-sandbox-pathfinder-campaign-ooc/
Edit
To Clarify: Not being lazy should pay off in spades.
tortoises don't have hair, the tonic never works.
"Ontopic" : Its spelled 'Hare'
My Pathfinder Campaign for the denizens of MCF: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1939035-where-are-we-sandbox-pathfinder-campaign-ooc/
It really just makes you look like a pretentious weasel.
And mind pointing out why you haven't opted to go through the entire thread listing every typo?
I suspect harassment.
I didn't want to, but I'm going to voice the same angle, I've seen time and time again on topics like this to get it back on topic. Besides, it'll help build a stronger argument.
What happens when someone signs on, places it, upgrades it, then forgets about the server? Can an admin just stroll right in and remove it easily? If so, how will it defend itself if the player happens to be an op, but intends to disable it like a player would normally?
If all those resources are put into this thing and it's destroyed, shouldn't there be some kind of payoff?
What do guards drop? That's horrible if a player survives an encounter but gets no reward.
Guards killing any player that wanders into the territory would quickly become item farming, how would this be addressed?
And you only need one weapon to arm multiple guards? I can see why rearming the same dead guard over and over would be irritating, but what if placing one weapon on the block took some health every time it had to outfit a new guard?
Dude, I had to duck that! anyways, it is merely coincidence that I replied to your post second after you posted it. And the Hair/Hare thing stuck out considering that you should know the spelling since it is a children's story. I need to get that sieg hiel Spellcheck thing into my sig...No, All Hail Spellcheck because I am useless when it comes to anything other than English.
My Pathfinder Campaign for the denizens of MCF: http://www.minecraftforum.net/topic/1939035-where-are-we-sandbox-pathfinder-campaign-ooc/
The concept is about all I like, though... The details on how to make them seem like it would be needlessly complex (having to make the right size tower, for example, would be frustrating for players and programmers) and doesn't make much sense. A type of mob (say, gremlins!) that can be caught and tamed would be amusing. Or steampunk robots. Something that's crafted/gathered more than spawned, you see.
I imagine this would be an excelent way to make claim flags work. People don't like the idea of claim flags being strict, but if the flag had the effect of allowing npc's to work within it's radius, it would control the power of npcs (thus balancing them some) and also allow for land protection with the use of patrolling soldier npcs.
Yes, I knew you in Wurm as well.
Of course "block of guard spawning" does exactly ring like "guard tower" :tongue.gif:.
Anyway, to address some concerns...
The guards would not attack any player that comes into range. They would attack people within a certain range of them, but only if they did specific hostile actions. For instance, if they started digging at one of the tiles within range of the guard, it would come over, and perhaps warn them. If they continued, which they're fully obliged to do, they will be attacked by the guard.
There probably wouldn't be a reward for killing guards, or else players (including the owner) would just stand around and kill them for whatever they dropped. If anything they'd just drop a stone sword or something, other wise they'd just become item farms.
Next, I did not say you need one weapon. If I remember my suggestion correctly (I think I do), I believe I wrote something along the lines of having to make weapons equivlant to the number of guards you have, and each one of the weapons would use twice the resources of a normal weapon. They reason I said this was so that it didn't become ridiculous and tedious to have a useful guard tower. If every time they died you'd have to fetch them more weapons, it's quite possible people would just ignore the matter entirely, or you'd never see a guard with better then a stone sword- making the concept quite boring. Maybe this could be fixed by adding life regen to guards, so if your guards survive a fight with their gear, they'll regain their health and not be killed in one shot next time the assaulter comes back.
@ Winner
To address you're concern, Winner, I'd like to point out that most people don't know friends that are willing to stay up all night and protect a castle, especially not in such a versatile game as Minecraft. It changes so quickly that always trying to preserve your things with all of you're time would be a massive waste of time. It doesn't take long to destroy something in Minecraft, so you would have to have multiple people protecting your fort at all times, or else the thing would crumble whenever you logged off. Guards would be a partial solution to this. If a large group of people come and they want to siege you, the guards aren't going to hold them off for long. If the assaulter is not so adept at the game or lacking proper equipment, it's possible that the guards will completely hold them off. The greatest functionality behind the guard would be to protect your estate from griefers. If no one is online to fight them off one person can come and demolish an entire base, especially in a game where lava and water flows. If they're alone though, and you have a guard tower, the guards will probably over run them before they can do any significant damage.
Next, I didn't say anything about auto-mining mobs or farms or anything... The idea had crossed my mind, and it sounds cool, but perhaps a bit over powered. If there's nothing for the player to do the game becomes stale. Regardless, the suggestion should be posted in a thread of it's own.
Thanks for the feed back, I'll update my original post with some more stuff.
Edit: Forgot to mention this. It looked like a few people thought you actually had to build a "tower". It's more like a station or a token or a hole or something... It would be made in an crafting box like any other advanced object in the game.
I realize you didn't say anything about farmers or miners, but, having a specific type of npc JUST for guarding didn't make much sense to me. building NPC helpers in general does, and guarding strikes me as one of the more obvious duties.
And yeah, if there are NPCs that do multiple things, there may have to be something else for a player to do other than see how big of an army they can amass. I don't know. maybe it is a new topic, but as I say, if there are guards, why not other things?
perhaps guard dogs would make sense in this role.. they'd act the same way, and you wouldn't expect a dog to be able to do much more than guard or herd sheep.
Hahaha, I was reading through here and thinking, "How about something simple, like a dog that would follow you and guard your things". Then I saw your post.
absolutely perfect idea.