Special Buildings/Buildables for Towns/Cities? As well as rest-related buffs.
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A thought that crossed my mind, when imagining going to and from cities as one adventures around, gathers resources, what have you, is unique single areas or buildings for a town to have, requiring perhaps special/exotic resources for some, or simply more contributors of a certain type. I'll make a list for some that come to mind:
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Mage's Guild/College - Either several different ones specialized on the training/knowledge distribution gathered by townsfolk, or one big one that simple stores magic-related knowledge. The same idea would apply to A Warrior's Training Camp, or Bard's College. Since Bards are confirmed in game.
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Town Square - This one is far from exotic, really, a wide open, even custom sized area of brick, cobblestone, dirt, or marble, for multiple purposes. A bazaar/market, or perhaps a place where the local bard could do some sort of idle play, (bonus if we can eventually upload midi or abc files to play custom songs,) creating a bonus or two for nearby resting characters.
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Churches to a Respective Deity - This one was rather obvious, given the part divines play in the game's concepts. Could be decided upon by the guild/governor, or perhaps whomever is assigned to managing the building. Whether or not buildings beyond a player's home will be assignable, I don't know. (Nor is is overly important.)
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Specific Resource Processing Buildings - From smelting factories, to Grain Mills, to Saw Mills, manufacturing resources as a group could put a town on a map. A riverside town could work on fishing, a forest town could, obviously, deal in logging and reforesting, and a town near a mountain might have access to a mine, potentially to the point of finding major metal veins, having stone production, or even discovering a dungeon deep within. These buildings would heavily depend on the town's access to resources.
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Network/Trade Hubs- This one weighs upon the last, a set of stables, Log Driving stations, Wagons, Food Salting/Barreling facilities, ways to transport a city's excess output to other towns. Creating trade routes, run by NPCS, to create commerce and growth. Routes that could be attacked, or at least extorted, by the more criminal element, or even blocked by a warring force. That's all beyond this topic though, the buildings are the focus for now.
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Portals - This one I expect already, likely has already been established, (Or established to not be a feature,) I just forgot. An obvious potential feature, for likely larger cities, allowing for the easier, instantaneous travel between different regions of the planet. For a fee, potentially.
Alright, that's what I've got from the top of my head. If anyone else has some comments, ideas to pitch in, or ones to confirm/dispute, I welcome it all!
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A lot of these are already confirmed (temples, resource processing buildings, NPC trade routes between cities). I think resource specialization within cities will be a natural consequence of the way resources are distributed and doesn't need any special restrictions. If a governor of a city in the middle of a desert wants to build logging facilities, let them waste the resources.
As for designated areas, that's up to the governor to decide if they want to designate certain areas of a city to specific activities. Hopefully the town building tools allow the freedom to design and decorate a city as the governor wishes, and it's not as simple and restrictive as placing down a prebuilt town square/crafting area/bazaar/etc.
I don't think player towns will be able to build gateways/portals. We already have fixed locations for these and some limited teleportation abilities. Having too much insta-travel defeats the survival/logistical part of the game.
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@target Fair enough, I remember some at least being mentioned, can't remember full confirmations with so much going on for me lately.
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@target said in Special Buildings/Buildables for Towns/Cities? As well as rest-related buffs.:
I don't think player towns will be able to build gateways/portals. We already have fixed locations for these and some limited teleportation abilities. Having too much insta-travel defeats the survival/logistical part of the game.
Perhaps just a short range portal from my house to a town pub. I'm lazy to walk.
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@gothix Go walk, fatty demon !
I hope there will be altar for sacrifices in Babilis's churches
Why not some arenas, or some entertainment places ? It could be available at a certain developement of the city, and maybe it could give some favor to the mayor, or something like that.
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I love these ideas, @Vinnile!
Since the devs have confirmed that towns will change their designation as the towns grow (hamlet, town, city, metropolis?), I'd love to see different blueprints for the same "types" of structures, with the ability to tear down the old and build the new structure once the town was big enough.
For example, a "place of worship" might be a chapel, church, temple or cathedrale. You could obtain the blueprints at any time, but you have to be a town before you can build better than a chapel, and so forth. Conversely, even if you have a metropolis, you can't build a cathedrale until you have the blueprints.
A metropolis should look and feel completely different than a hamlet, with much larger and better built buildings, and a lot more bustle. Evolving buildings would accomplish that, as well as give a role to skilled architects, whether NPC or player.
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Arenas seem like a good fit, at least on Tartaros. I'd like some theaters/music halls/dance halls as well, if possible. maybe it reduces "stress" on a town's npc population, making the resource processors more efficient, and maybe they improve the town's folk's charisma, making them more likable and better able to get good deals at the merchant posts?
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I'd suggest a variation of the old Almshouse. Basically, players could donate wealth or items to the town. Those would have a chance (could be some variation in %) per coin/item of being stored, with the rest going to benefit (or hurt) the town populous. There would be some minor alignment benefit or harm to doing this. Coin donations would directly shift player alignment to match town alignment.
This could also be on a timer for providing some alignment benefit, and depending upon the rules of the town in question could have some... less than honest donating going on. For example, in an evil human town somebody might donate some food. That food being poisoned, it will weaken the town production if it goes to the town-folk for a short time... but it might also be stored for a player to be given.
For stored goods, a general 'poor or not' system would be needed. How flexible that might be, or if it is just a hard value of money and items, would need some looking at. However, the general idea is that poor people who fit acceptance requirements for the town could get random things given out of the storage (and thus no longer meet that poor requirement, a simple timer could also apply to prevent dumping stuff).
Since the stuff would be random, a player might get something nice, or they might get that poisoned food from before. Maybe they are smart and have the food tested, and then can use it on wild animals instead. Maybe they eat it and suffer a debuff for a while.
There's some open possibilities there, depending on how town rules might affect this. Obviously this is a little more complex of an idea to code in. It requires a few things to be tracked or flagged. It requires storage and rng. I thought it sounded like a fun little "welcome!" package for towns to new people, though...
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Good to hear so much feedback!
I feel some buildings at least visually theme-ing to races is a good idea, and even more like the idea that some planets/races have unique buildings, like Arenas and so forth.
Donating to a town sounds like a Town Hall sort of affair to me, and I don't know about poisoning food and the like. Would be simpler to just sneak into the stockhouses and poison/steal it that way, if one aimed to sneakily harm a town.A thought that recently crossed my mind on the topic of bards, is having different races have different access to instruments and songs alike, with different buffs, even maybe based on alignment.
I may draft another topic on what I come up with there on a later date, we'll see!
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I do like the idea of theme'ing buildings to a locale* and I really do think each planet ought to have it's own style, at the very least. Get the tree-houses/bungalows/huts/yurts (maybe draw from Arabic, India, and Oriental styles for the bigger/more ornate buildings) rocking out on Arboreus, some Proper European Buildings (circa 1920's) with Extra Copper Tubes/Gears On on Syn (because steampunk), and contract HR Giger to architect for Tartaros XD
I'm okay with the idea of different songs/instruments for different Races, but I'm not sure that changing the buffs is a good idea - mechanically speaking, it complicates things for both the devs and the players to have a single skill that varies like that (I mean, to tell a player "you're a demon, you can't buff [Dexterity] with your song," even though Humans can (and must?), seems like you'd be opening a big can of worms. If the devs wanted to set it up so learning a song for a certain stat buff requires listening to it, and that, initially, the only place to find a given song is limited to 1 planet, that sort of has the same effect, but without the same level of restriction. Like, If you want to learn the War Song of Might!, you have to go to the Arena Pits of Tartaros, because that is the single place where that song naturally plays (just before a match). This is, obviously, a Sneaking Mission for the beast races XD Similarly, a demon bard needs to get their rogue on to learn the Heaven's Watch Aria to boost perception, learned only at the Treetop Sky Temples (it's the opening hymn) of Arboreus.
*(but I'd be okay with paying extra in initial costs and maintenance for going off theme, either slightly or a lot for using another planet's blueprints XD - like, okay, you have your city on...Arboreus, to spitball...but you have a small neighborhood of "Little Syn" that uses human materials and/or building types, cause someone was feeling "home sick" and decided to do it (possibly with the governor's permission?))
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Maybe there could even be more variation based on the local wildlife. Like Moss growth, vines, roofing materials and such, maybe different pieces upgradable to better/different materials. At the very least, visually. Since it wouldn't matter that much for say, a home to have red stone from one area, or grey stone from another. Defensive buildings, however, have a lot of potential for variation.
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Maybe an academy, or something alike. Not a school, but a building with old mages/bards/else in it, doing what they want (yeah, I don't really know what they can do, this idea is not really developped x) )
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Tavern where your character can be hired to be entertainment. A stage for a play. Not sure how this could work but still would be cool to have.
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@trelia said in Special Buildings/Buildables for Towns/Cities? As well as rest-related buffs.:
Tavern where your character can be hired to be entertainment. A stage for a play. Not sure how this could work but still would be cool to have.
Imo, such things would be kinda messy with isometric camera view mmo.
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@trelia said in Special Buildings/Buildables for Towns/Cities? As well as rest-related buffs.:
Tavern where your character can be hired to be entertainment. A stage for a play. Not sure how this could work but still would be cool to have.
If we've got taverns, then we have Quests! XD let the governor post quests at a tavern, and the NPCs can have a go at them. To some extent, this turns a tavern into a resource generator (the city needs 50 wolf skins for the next wall upgrade, no players feel like hunting wolves this week - put a bounty on wolf skins up at the tavern, and your local npc hunters will have a go at it), and gives the townsfolk a way of upgrading their gear and experience without it costing the players, but it also risks the NPCs dying or becoming maimed, so a smart leader needs to post quests that their town can handle, and figure out suitable rewards - if quests aren't being done quickly, the rewards are probably too low. Also of course, this means your town NPCs are running around outside of the town, where a rival town can gank them...
And on the third hand, nothing says a player can't take part, either, if they are feeling in the mood to to kill large numbers of whatever - and there is an added benefit that you don't get in most MMO - doing the quest actually changes things! you get those 50 wolf skins, and then over the next week, the walls get an upgrade, or are repaired, or whatever, and you can say "I did that!" as opposed to just doing mindless reputation quests and having nothing actually change.
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A building for inappropriate stuff
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I like this idea, would give towns a true stronghold feeling.
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I'm excited to see all this discussion of town building and flexibility/customization. This subject, paired with a hopefully thoroughly developed governing system, is the biggest interest to me with this game.
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Oh! I almost forgot: Roads. Being able to either have them self generate, or players build them between locations. For faster travel, or maybe programming patrol routes for NPC guards or some such.
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Sounds good.
