Mailboxes

[Axehilt]

Well the important thing is that the building has at least one scaling value.

So if mail radius is fixed, perhaps Delivery Time is what gets better as a result of investment (and again: requires a certain amount of constant investment to maintain.)

What I'm suggesting are basically area of effect benefits. The idea that individually sure I could run that post office and get the exact same benefit as a village. But in a village only one person runs it and all reap the benefits. And if many such AOE benefits stack together, the village becomes much more than the sum of its parts. Everyone in the village becomes that much more efficient.

The continued upkeep part of the suggestion is also crucial to the mechanic I'm suggesting. If you play 40 mins/day and keeping the Mail building running takes 10 mins, that's doable. If there's 3 other building types at 10 mins/day it's still doable but eats up all 40 mins.

But since these are village-wide effects, in a 4-man village each player only has to spend 10 mins/day on the stuff for everyone to get the benefit of all 4 buildings.

(Buildings wouldn't be the only way for these effects to exist. Perhaps the chief automatically provides an Inspiration Bonus to his village when he works hard each day (earns a certain number of LP). So it's not a building, but it is the same game mechanic at work.)

[Axehilt]

And of course there are plenty of other ways to implement this encouragement in different ways, from the uber-simple but uber-arbitrary "Villagers get 1% stamina discount for each member in their village, up to a max of 10%" to more complicated version where you get one "Colossal Effort" each day and use it on AOE-benefit buildings (of course the value of your colossal effort has to be proportional to your total LP accumulation, to avoid people just spamming alts for the things.)

[fenrirfenix]

Well,that's one complicated way to do it. Instead of stat-based teleporting items, you could just keep items needing to be hand delivered. If it's worth sending a message in the mail, it's worth sending by hand. A post office could just be a log cabin inside a long wall studded with mailbox cornerposts where said post master is the only one with the key to the gate.

He could organize and distribute mail where it needs to go if people don't know where to take the mail or are just too lazy. Or handle receiving all incoming mail from outsiders that don't know where certain villagers live.

Mail worked by either state funded postmen or strangers going the same direction as your letter. Postmen were paid by the state and were more likely to get your letters where they needed to be, and carried important documents that probably needed to be defended from thieves. They carried weapons to keep people from taking important shit because the mail always gets through.

Random people carrying letters for other random people had the incentive that all mail was charge on delivery. They found this person's house, offered them the letter, and got a handful of money for the effort. Because mail was important. People found going through other's mail/sending bogus letters to get CoD's were generally shot in the chest.

All of this is easily made useless by the forums, but it's going on the idea that in-game documents have uses and purposes not duplicated by posting on the forums. Like maps, navigational charts for boats, deeds to property, recipes, what have you.

[Devour]

navigational charts for boats

THIS is a good idea, a in-game map from charts to determine which way rivers flow.

[fenrirfenix]

Sea charts are for, well, seas. Rivers are pretty plain, and lakes are just lakes. Sea charts show currents and winds on the sea, as well as where the dangerous waters are. Like shallows, and rocks, or sea serpents and sirens.

Not that I expect H&H rivers to have boring rivers and plain lakes. I'm sure boat-eating river monsters will be around eventually.