Game Mechanics and Settlement Design

[kobnach]

I think I've found the root of my maliase, and it may be that the answer is for me to stay away from alpha tests. In a game like this, I get very attached to the things I build. I like my settlement. I don't want to pick up and move - but changing game mechanics may make this necessary.

My area is organized as interdependent homesteads. many people are kin to their neighbours, and allow kin access. One neighbour is basically my partner - he's higher nature than me, so I do all the metal work for both of us. We routinely use each other's lumber , crops, food, etc. That neighbour has three dependents. All basically live in his homestead, though one or two have claims of their own - in what would appear to be "his" area. They play rarely, and are essentially semi-supported newbs. If this were a role playing game, one could think of them as my neighbour's partly grown children, still living at home and being partly supported by their parents, but already contributing somewhat to the household.

Between the two of us, and some other neighbours, we've developed the area extensively. We have a shared woodlot which we harvest and replant, and a gigantic wheat field in an area that might otherwise be another homestead. We've also got a bunch of other common facilities in what amounts to common land. There's a mine nearby, but in no one's homestead; we share it with a large group of other people. This works well for us.

It also appears to be inconsistent with the way the game is moving. Being farmers, we've got sprawling fields. Because of the game mechanics when we built this, we've each got our own core area, _not_ a central village surrounded by common fields. Because we are careful, we're leaving the local woods as undeveloped as possible - once we realized that woodland could never be restored if damaged. (It becomes grassland when you try.) And with lag being what it is, we have sprawled somewhat intentionally.

We want to protect this. But are the village mechanics any use to us? As far as I know, they are not - we'd need to rebuild with what amounts to a common claim, probably centered on the mine, and then make that into a village. Of course we'd also need villages to allow more than 5 people - presuming they work kind of like claims. And not all of those sharing the mine want to share resources quite as closely as some of us choose to do.

So can we go on as cooperating yeomen? I fear not. It appears that villages are the implementation of "shared claims" - which probably means allowing kin to make free of our claims will soon become obsolete. Then where are we? Quite possibly picking up and moving, because there's no way we're going to be able to include the right group of us in any kind of rectangle, even if villages could be sufficiently large.

Being able to tear down structures would help some. But when will we see that, and will it be before or after villages become the one and only way to share territory and resources - at least when people aren't all online at once?

One virtue of this game is the amount of variety we have - there are many ways to do things, and the result is beautiful. I fear that this may not survive - but perhaps I'm just mourning my beautiful homestead, that's already been revised once due to changes of theft mitigation methods, and looks like needing to be completely revised once again.

[Rift]

my understanding is that there is a intent to do various things with claiming to allow it to be for more specific indivduals then kin, and that village claims can be expanded to cover incredibly large territory[relative to most settlements sizes] and that the lawspeaker can set the laws for that territory...
In addition, RIGHT NOW, you can add more then 5 people to a village... the chieften and lawspeaker can add whoever they want [provided the person accepts].
Is this not satisfactory?
What exactly do you need to make your situation continue to work?

[loftar]

I think many of your worries are unnecessary, given how we are currently planning the village system. To begin with, having a village will not exclude the possibility of personal claims -- rather, the purpose of "village claim" is that all people not part of the village will be considered as trespassing on village ground (with the more finely grained mechanics involved), but village members will certainly be able to continue having personal claims inside the village territory. The major difference you would see from forming a village would be that outsiders would be leaving clues if they try to steal from your "commons" (like the woodland, the mine and the "common facilities" of which you speak). Another difference is that the lawspeaker and chieftain will have some special powers to coordinate the village and protect from insurrections, external invasions and similar issues*.

Therefore, the village system also does not make shared claims obsolete. The mechanics of sharing claims will, however, be changed, but only to make it more fine-grained rather than allowing all of one's kin. Since we added the Oath of Allegiance recently, villages now also support more than five members.

That said, however, we are still not entirely certain just how the village system should work. If you have some resource usage patterns to share, please do so, so that we may take it into consideration.

* The general outline is that the lawspeaker will be able to regulate things at home (for example, maybe disbanding claims inside the village territory or removing hearth fires of people not part of the village, or similar things), while the chieftain will gain special military powers that will help protect the village from internal or external force.

[kobnach]

Ah, I hadn't realized that Oath of Allegiance had been implemented or how it worked. That certainly helps somewhat. For the rest, well, we may need to play with things a bit, and try out the village thing. Of course our first problem may be getting the materials - I'm not sure whether any of us hunt bears ;-(

One set of questions - how big can a village be, must it be rectangular, what does it cost to grow it, and do village members' personal claims need to be in the village boundaries?

[loftar]

One set of questions - how big can a village be, must it be rectangular, what does it cost to grow it, and do village members' personal claims need to be in the village boundaries?

Those are issues that are a bit in flux right now. We were working on one implementation last night, but it turned out to have problems, so we'll probably have to redo at least parts of it. I can pretty much guarantee that personal claims will not need to be inside village boundaries, though.

[kobnach]

One other question - what about public roads? As it happens, there's a public thoroughfare running through the middle of our area - and we like it that way. We're quite happy to have travelers passing through, and would not want to block off the huge area we share. We just want them staying on the road, or in designated tourist and trade zones (Seriously, there's a shrine to the developers by the side of the road, and we'd like its access to be public.) I _don't_ want my claim full of trespass clues, with random newbs wandering around in it, and I imagine I'd feel the same way about a village.

With the current setup, we can have claims running up (almost) to the edge of the road, and all is good. If we tried to set up a shared village, though, it would almost certainly include the road - and that wastes what's probably a limited resource (area in village) and probably blocks traffic.