Town Issues/Discrepancies & Bugs
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The following was written, extensively researched, and tested by Korgath. I am posting as he is unable to log into the forum.
Space:
Towns on Terra have different amounts of usable space compared to towns in Aerhen. Our town on Terra, for example, has a 40x40 grid of usable space. Towns in Aerhen seem to have 48x48 of usable space. Of that 48x48 space for Aerhen towns some of that is used up by walls and roads around the perimeter, reducing the usable space to match the Terra towns at 40x40. The problem however is that whilst Aerhen towns have the same space for buildings and plots they get the additional road+wall around the perimeter meaning it's significantly easier to place buildings and residential plots on the outskirts of the town as they will always have a nearby road to snap to. For Terra we would have to place temporary roads to then place the building or plot and then remove the road afterwards.
In future I can see this being an even bigger problem as I think it's fair to assume that placing a temp road so you can put down a plot only to then remove the road is not exactly an intended feature. I imagine this will be patched at some point to prevent the deletion of the road or if it is deleted that any adjacent plots/buildings become invalidated/unusable.
I suggest that the towns on Terra are reworked and increased to 44x44 so that we may also benefit from a perimeter road without significantly reducing the usable space of the town, as having a road currently would limit Terra towns to 36x36 of usable space which is an almost 20% reduction in total usable area.
Prestige:
Towns in Aerhen seem to have no issues accumulating the necessary prestige required to maintain a high rank. For example the town of HellZ Kyrpt currently has a total prestige, at Rank 15, of 2725. This is split between it's Public buildings such as the market place and bank and the 16 residential plots currently allocated.
Those residential plots are a bit of a problem for towns on Terra as we seem to get different buildings and prestige associated with them. In addition it appears that the UI doesn't show the accurate building layout nor do the buildings with the wrong layout on the UI appear to have what should be the correct Prestige associated with them.
From looking at the above we can see that on Aerhen the below values are the most prestige that can be obtained from a residential plot of each size.2x2 = 50
3x3 = 75
4x4 = 140
5x5 = 150In comparison on Terra it looks more like this, according to the UI.
2x2 = 50
3x3 = 75
4x4 = 100
5x5 = 100Now after testing we can see that the larger buildings can grant more than 100 prestige which indicates this is just a tooltip/UI issue. The main problem though is that on Aerhen and Myr the 3x5 T building is available which gives the best prestige along with having a large amount of outside space remaining on the plot. That space can accommodate, amongst other things, charcoal pits which none of the larger buildings can do on Terra.
Please at a minimum can the correct values be updated on the UI and the 3x5 T building be made available on Terra?
Bugs and other issues:
Farming plots & Packaging Stations
Farming plots don't seem to snap to the same grid locations as all other buildings or plots. If we take a residential plot and use the 'tiles' on this as a reference you can see that other buildings and things like Paved Roads snap within this 'tile' arrangement. A paved road, for example, takes up a 2x2 space and it could be placed one after the other with no overlap so regardless of how many paved roads are placed they will always be placed in a way which means any single road will always require the same 2x2 tiles of space.
Farming Plots and Packaging Stations seem to not fit within this tile arrangement. When placing them they seem to be out of position by ~0.25 tiles of space as can be seen in this screenshot.
If we assume we have a 5 paved roads going in the North East (relative to the minimap) and on the 5th road we start placing more going in the South East direction. This should allow for 8 tiles of space alonside the paved road before we meet the new road going South East. I can fit a market place or bank in there along with a 3x3 residential plot and it all aligns perfectly proving we do indeed have 8 tiles of space. When we add farming plots to the situation though things change.
In that same 8 tiles of space we can only place 3 farming plots. You would think this would either take 9 tiles, which it clearly doesn't, or take 6 tiles. But at the space left over between the third farming plot and the road heading South East we cannot fit another Paved Road or a 2x2 residential plot meaning we have less than 2 tiles of space between the existing road and the last farming plot.
We can prove that the farming plots are indeed 2x2 however by placing a number of them one after another. As an example let's say we have 6 farming plots placed in a row and walk over them with a paved road we can see that on every farming plot the paved road snaps to the exact same position relative to the farming plots. If the farming plots were simply 2.25 tiles in space then we would see the paved road snap to a slightly different location on each farming plot until on the 4th farming plot it was snapping one full tile behind where it initially started from.
This leaves the only sensible conclusion that the farming plots (and packaging stations which I also tested) are snapping out of alignment with the rest of the building system. These two items conveniently share the same subcategory (Farming) on the City & Building > City building menu.
Plot Ownership
We had a player who has been active for a long time suddenly disappear with no warning. We had granted them a 5x5 residential plot and they built a temporary 2x2 building which was to later be deleted and a larger building created instead.
Since the player has left we are now unable to do anything with this location. We cannot change owner nor can we remove the plot. Governors and Vice-Govs should be able to do this, no questions asked not to mention it can potentially be abused by bad actors to try stop towns from achieving prestige required for rank.
Carpenter building
Our town on Terra had a Carpenter shop which was unable to be completed due to a bug. This has subsequently been removed, visually at least, but although the game indicates we can build here whenever we try to do so the building or plot does not place. I assume on the backend somewhere the game still sees the old building.
In Summary there are a few differences in the towns on Terra when compared to Aerhen leading to a lack of quality of life. One difference comes with a loss of 20% of the towns usable area in order to correct. That combined with issues surrounding poor information supplied by the UI for building residential houses, poor alignment on farming plots and the inability for Governors to revoke land ownership (along with phantom building bugs) puts unnecessary stress on those running towns and could, given enough coincidental issues, cause significant progress to be lost as it may be deemed better to abandon a town and start over.
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@Prometheus @OlivePit @spoletta @Arcahem @Kralith @LordSkykal
Let us discuss
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@Junkie The inability to revoke plot ownership in town is also on Syndesia, not just Arborea.
Also, from a role-play/story standpoint, it would make more sense that the more naturalistic Wildfolk would work around the environment more, and thus possibly have less overall space given their particular architectural styles.
Right now, the only 'benefit' that humans have really is their Tech, which one would assume is mainly interpreted as their more efficient house styles, and the current ability for them to make necklaces. Wildfolk, on the other hand, have the ability to take on their Primal Form, as well as controlling the main travel resource.
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I think that it is totally intended that farming plots take up a 3x3 space physically but visually only look like a 2x2 space. I think this is intended so there is an aesthetic path between the
hedgescrops.I did not notice the reduction in town size, good catch.
I actually very much dislike the restriction of road only on the outer edge of Syndesia towns as I would rather place crops or houses there and a supporting ring of road further inside.
However. I do believe that the reduction of the size is intended to reflect the reduced need of space that Tera has for it's towns due to no need or use for a prison or siege workshop... It would be nice if we had some other specialty shops for Arborious which would then justify the larger area.
While the road bug does make city planning a fun game of Tetris, I think it is certainly not intended. I also would agree that a 42x42 space would be considerate once the bug is fixed such that there is space for buildings, roads, crops and the aesthetically lovely huge trees and boulders (which I feel we should be forced to build around and not able to place things over).
The house issue is a real bother. I accommodate by placing 3 of the 2x2 houses on a 5x5 plot, but even then the game wont let me place more than two furniture pieces (workstation/chest/bed/fire) in each 2x2 house despite there being room (reported). It would be nice to get the 3x5 T.It will be interesting to see how the 3rd crop will effect space demands on towns and I expect it to become quite the bother unless veggies/leafy greens nicely replenish legume nutrients.
Jacopo has repeatedly said that the intent is that you can either have a self sustaining town or a dependent city. He even gave the example that a rank 15 city should need the support of two farming towns (or sufficient raiding income) to sustain itself.... This may be enforced either by increasing the prestige needs such that a town has to be full of buildings to reach the target, and thus no room for crops, or to increase the crop need such that there is a steep tradeoff up to rank 10, or simply limiting the space available such that you cant have both.
My guess is that Myr was on the small side, Aerhen on the large side, and Tera somewhere in between. At launch we may find that this is all just them testing to see what size is best and have all towns follow that format.My ideal city would be on the large side, with optional wall, obstructing aesthetic elements (ponds in Myr, giant trees in tera, lava pits in Tartarus, and big boulders in Aerhen) for character, and no requirement to put a road where the wall meets the town.
In my opinion the biggest issue that you mention is the fact that there is no way for a house plot inside a town to be removed other than by the owner... This could very well create a town full of dead residences. I urge the Devs to apply some insubstantial rent on these plots (say 10g/week) and a modest cap (say, 2 month supply) such that extended absences can be cleaned up and more active players can take the space.
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Hi @Junkie @OlivePit, a reply to the issues you brought up:
- Something went wrong with those last 3 Arboreus houses in the list for sure. It's not only prestige, there are more issues there. We are investigating and we're going to have them fixed in the next patch.
- Terra cities do require less space given that you don't need the whole military side. Overall you should be able to get enough prestige to reach rank 15 easily. I can see your city indeed has enough for rank 14 and you have only a little missing for rank 15.
- Farming plots snap in a different way indeed. They do so everywhere though, not only on Terra. As @OlivePit pointed out, this is done to have some walking space between each plot, but not as large as that between buildings.
- We are studying a solution for the abandoned private parcels issue. We agree that governors should be able to evict unwanted citizens in some way. Hopefully we can get this live in the next patch too.
- The occupied carpenter space is a mystery. There's no more carpenter entity there, and there has been one server restart already since we fixed the issue, so any leftover object in the server should be gone. This requires more investigation - we'll get to it ASAP, please have a bit more patience
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@Prometheus From Korgath#7058 via Discord
Getting the prestige with the houses fixed is priority - they might find they need to check each towns buildings and set the prestige manually given the amounts added on building and deleting seem to be different.
As for the space - that's fine that we don't need walls but having the road around the border, which the Human towns get for 'free', is a huge QOL when trying to fit residential plots. If you take our town for example we could have as many as 30 or more 2x2 paved roads accommodating plots that could potentially have been served by having a Paved Road border around the town. That reduces our usable plots for stuff other than roads from 1600 to 1480. So yes, whilst it isn't crippling it does still need to be recognized that as far as space is concerned the Terra towns are at a distinct disadvantage.
For the farms - If the farms are suppose to have a little path for A.E.S.T.H.E.T.I.C.S then that's fine but they are clearly 2x2 in size as I demonstrated when you place one after another it only takes an additional 2 tiles for each one you place. The same applies to the packaging stations as well.
I don't see how moving the snapping point so they actually take 2x2 tiles when they are 2x2 in size would impact on the fact there's a little grass between them, if that was the case then the grass between them wouldn't show when you place one next to the other. I think either have them be 2x2 or 3x3 so it's at least easy to plan how many fields can fit into a given space and if that means increasing them to actually tile in a 3x3 pattern then just increase the yield to account for the fact we can't fit as many.
I'm happy that we may be getting a resolution for the private plots. At least this gives us a bit more flexibility with rearranging the town and can keep it fresh with active players.
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You cant compare Terra and Myr towns to Aerhen town size, There is no farm plots in Aerhen so most of the town gonna be filled with farm plots compared to terra and myr who can get by with the farms provided where aerythen doesnt get that luxury at all.
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@Veeshan Actually, didn't they say farms in Terra were like those in Aehren? Don't they take up town spaces?
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@Veeshan @GamerSeuss The farm plots on Terra go inside town just like those of Aehern. however, we are able to place whatever we'd like up to the very edge of town. At first we were kind of screwed for prestige, until we mapped out the entire town area and did a bunch of math and got it to a point where we will have more than enough farms and just enough prestige to get to maximum rank. I will say, after having built towns on all 3 continents now, I think the easiest and most forgiving may have been Aehern. Terra is just a bit different, as I should of expected it to be going in. But my habit of building things whilst on Myr and Aehern stayed with me.
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@Junkie I thought so, thanks
