1.2 yl_cities public discussion #5009
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This issue deals with the
1.2 cities and invasionsupdate. The technical name is planned to beyl_cities.Please use this issue (#5009) to discuss the cities update. If questions arise, we will try to answer them and also add those that may be of interest to the general audience to the QnA (Questions and Answers) right below this post. Experts already added a couple of questions, find those answered below.
The admin issue is your-land/administration#105
There is no scheduled release date, we'd first like to get your opinion before we start coding. We'll discuss city services in a separate issue and we'll add information to the QnA as we go. Should we have to change something in the draft itself, we'll mark in bold and increment the version number.
1.2 Cities and invasions (draft 1.0)
The cities and invasion update deal with cities, their creation, services, lifecycle and on the other hand the invasion of those cities by monsters. Many of the things we do manually right now will be automated.
Founding a city
When a group of adventurers who meet the necessary requirements bands together and wants to create a city, they can do so by placing a Banner in the geografical center of the intended area. Other founding members may place their supplemental banners nearby. If the place is good and no other cities or private areas are nearby, a temporary quest area appears. This quest area and the Banner needs to be defended for 24 hours to complete the Founding of the City Quest. Not only the founding members may help in the defense - every warrior is needed, most likely monsters want to challenge the emerging city. Other adventurers may visit the Banner and speak their mind: Is this a good place for a city?
Rules
Every city may release rules of their own and police those rules within their sphere of influence, but a city rule going against the server rule is null and void. The city rules must be displayed publicly in an understandable fashion.
City crown
If the city survives those first 24 hours, the Founding of the City Quest, the quest area becomes a real city area and is handed over to the mayor. Then citizens need to build a City Crown, upon which the Heart Of The City crystal spawns. The mayor uses this crystal to access the city settings, everyone else may touch it once per day to certify this city is still alive. This yields a small amount of xp for the city and the visitor. This crystal need to be protected from invading armies, if they manage to break it, the city is theirs. A city crown can be moved once it is built, but it has special placement rules and needs to be present every other check which occurs about once per day.
Level
A city reaches a new level when it accumulates enough xp. Those levels can be used in city skills or to level up a building, the economy or the defense. A city receives xp when a citizens shares their xp with the city (max 50%) or when an adventurer visits the city crown. A city cannot lose levels, but the xp beyond the current one are reset to zero if the city is conquered.
Services
After the Founding of the City Quest, citizens may want transport, death portals, guild houses and other conveniences. To get one of those going, the citizens need to create the associated building and invite many adventurers to vote on it. If the vote is successful, the city service starts working, most often by sending an NPC to provide the functions of the service. That may be a priest for the church or a mayor for the Town Hall or similar. Some services add more, better or cheaper offers with increased level. Some city services require upkeep payment.
Decisions
The mayor picks a map style, a coat of arms and an economy item for the city. The maps are extendable, but the coat of arms, the city name and the economy item cannot be changed afterwards. map comes from yl_livemapping, coat of arms from the castle_shields, economy item from yl_cities (or even a more specific mod).
Economy
Each city produces one specific good that cannot be obtained otherwise. The mayors decides what that might be, at the latest when it comes to creating the economy building. That may be a fishing hut for a special type of fish, a quarry for a special type of stone or similar. The more opulent and fitting the economy building, the better the chance for a good harvest.
The economy of a city depends on various factors - the number of citizens, tourists, citylevel, caravans and other commercial traffic.
To boost economy, a city may decide to assemble a caravan (on top of the ones travelling by themselves). This is a costly undertaking and should be well guarded, but it also has a great effect for all cities which are visited by that caravan.
Plots
A city may choose to hand out plots to adventurers, where they are able to build their own house according to the city rules. The mayor hands out those plots either manually or via Town Hall. Plots can be saved, wiped and reset, but they can only be restored once. After a wipe, they can be given out to a new adventurer.
Citizens
All NPC citizens beyond the ones for the city services are hired in the tavern, move in after city population levelups or are settled in during quests or events. They populate the city, but they also need a place to stay, food and something to do.
Defense
To defend a city against monster invasions, a city employs guards of various types and ranks. New citizens can be recruited from the hangarounds in the tavern and assigned duties. Those who don't become bakers, smiths or gardeners can be given weapons and armour and assigned to guard the city during peace and defend it in times of war.
Capture
If a monster invasions manages to break the Heart of the City crystal hovering over the crown, the city is theirs. Citizens will try to escape, city services will not be available, local adventurers will spawn in a random city when they die and transportation will not be available. The conquerors will pillage the city and roam the streets. Plots are not affected - adventurers owning plots can still use them, if they manage to sneak in and out. Should an army of adventurers capture the city back by breaking the Heart of the City crystal, the remains of the city will return to the control of the previous mayor.
Death
A city project may be given up by the adventurers. There are various outcomes, some cities will return to nature, some will live as a dead shell, some will live on under the rule of their citizens.
QnA
Eventually the update will release. From then on, the new city creation mechanic will work. All other cities at that moment are considered "legacy cities". They get to keep what they have, but if they want to have any of the new stuff, they need to become a city under the new rules. To accept the new rules, they need to dig and place again the centerstone of their City Crown, they are considered to have survived the Founding Quest. That's how they could proceed:
Ignore all of it and stay the way they are. Never dig the centerstone. Nothing changes, nothing new is added. Voice doesn't care much our legalities, the city
Dig the centerstone and from now on comply with the new city rules (Except things that cannot be changed, like distance to other cities)
Remove the city altogether and start fresh, on the same position if new rules permit.
So far, all I know is there will be a villages status with limited services and transport affected by chance. I'll supplement as soon as I have more info, but most of the balancing happens according to the villages issue your-land/bugtracker#2997
There will be a skilltree kind of thing, composed of prerequisites and what that skill allows. Those are not yet set in stone. The progression is quadratic 1000 * level * level (due to balancing), there is no max level.
This is not a one-off or recurring event. Each player can decide that from now on they are citizen of city X and donate between 0% and 50% (due to balancing) of the xp they earn from this point in time onward go to the city they want to support. This affects all future XP after the decision, not the xp of the past. Ofc this decision can be changed (either anytime or after a timeout, due to balancing). Those who for some reason (creative, lvl 80, ...) cannot lose xp, also cannot contribute.
Those who want. Everything yl_cities offers comes on top of what we already have - only additional services will not be added to legacy cities. If a legacy city has a church and it somehow becomes mandatory that before the church you need a smithy and a stonemason, then we will not take the church off of that city. Cities need to have time to adjust to the new update, there is no pressure to jump at it right from the start.
They will exist in the state they are in now. They cannot take part in the new mechanics, they still need a crown, Voice will most likely still attack in the same fashion this happens right now. But they do not get any new services. Existing services will adjust to the update or offer what they promised: Repair, bells, library bookshelves, death portals. Those who also want a homeportal in their church or an economy item will have to upgrade.
Pillaging will not result in any destruction as in "destroyed plots/buildings" or "plundered chests". Defensive structures like walls may be damaged, but every place that is about to be changed by invaders gets a Questarea and a snapshot taken right before, so that the extent of the damage is limited to the Questarea and can be restored easily.
Future Quests may revolve around "the favourite cow/the mayor's hat/the key to the treasury was taken, let's recover it from the fleeing army" or similar, but the city must not suffer "real" losses, except xp: Those are reset to the beginning of the level, much like when an adventurer dies repeatedly.
That's done by the invasion mechanics and depends on a lot of factors. The Quest area is forceloaded, so that the "Let's leave the area, nothing can happen to unloaded areas" trick doesn't work. There won't be a 24h active battle where the whole thing goes down when one gets tired. But yes, asking others to defend one's own city attempt may be a smart idea.
It's certainly a smart move, not to create a city as a lone wolf or when one can be sure the whole server will not come to aid.
So far there is no limit, but those 24 hours may be pretty taxing on the stamina of oneself and goodwill of others, plus those who failed may want to analyze their failure and solve the problems that led to the defeat.
Yes - if those rules do not go against the server rule and were displayed properly. We'll notice if rules were crafted in a malicious way and we won't start going through the log to see whether some "walk 3 times around the Crown before allowed to leave" rule was fulfilled, policing those rules in their own city is business of the cities.
Yes, as part of the succession plan and also to delegate tasks
Yes, that's possible. Every mechanic we add may increase lag. Ofc we'll try to make it as unlaggy as possible. It certainly will not surpass the lag during Voice Battles. Most of the NPCs will not need more expensive functions than walk around, stand and look, with look being the most expensive.
A cities NPC population will not increase by the amount ducks do. A mayor can decide not to settle in additional NPCs and can also contain the number by not hiring any more in the tavern. During Quests or Events more NPCs may request citizenship, but they can be denied.
That is up to balancing, currently touching the city crown is more a tourist mechanic and only a minor discriminator in the decision whether a city is active. Anyone can touch the city crown. Last-login of Mayor, Co-Mayor and Citizens play a much larger role.
City services that don't "produce" anything by themselves, like barracks, provide nothing they can "sell". They also need food (either delivered or bought), but on top of that they need to pay for repairs and materials to sustain the guards. Those need upkeep.
A smithy will buy coal (or other fuel), ores or send adventurers out for rare materials. The smith needs to eat and sleep, but on top of that, he can happily sustain himself through his enterprise. Those need no upkeep.
The economy item for a city needs to be new and unique, it is an item that does not yet exist. Parsley and Parsley icecream already exists, but a city could decide on a Parsley Cake. Those cakes are then obtainable only through this one city.
There are two types of caravans. One type that is paid, stocked and put together by the citizens of a city and also most likely guarded by them. The other type that travels by itself and is put together by NPCs. Both types travel by themselves, have most likely guards and they also travel while no player is watching them. If they are not attacked, they silently reach their target city and benefit the economy of both. Caravans however are a profitable target of robbers, NPC factions or even Voice. The more reach their destination unharmed, the better for the economy.
There may be all kinds of NPC citizens in a city, some affiliated with the city itself, some affiliated to players, standing on plots trading, guards and many more.
NPCs that come with a city service, traders, guards and those affiliated to players already have a task.
NPCs that need a task are "new citizens", those recruited from the tavern additionally or those who reach the city by themselves and ask for citizenship during quests and events. Those tasks may include "tend to the garden" (given a flower and a basket and told to roam the gardens). Of course they can also be made traders, guards, assigned to a guildhall or given a broomstick and told to walk the streets (giving the impression of a street cleaner for example). That's a bit up to the flavour of the city. This is not a "real" economy simulation, more a way to have an alive city.
The way every NPC is assigned a task is via a "NPC plan". Those are items their master can use to decide on what an NPC is mean to do over the day. A NPC generally has 8 hours sleep, 8 hours work, 8 hours leisure time. In their sleep they will attend their bed, which must be set by the plan. In their leisure time they will stroll the city, go shopping, go pray or meet others. You can suggest them activities like "watch the arena", but they are not bound by that. In their worktime they will do what they are told: guard duty, "help" in the smithy, clean the streets, ... it is up to their master to find some duty. If they have none, they will fall back to "leisure" mode. In this plan, the master can also set conditions, like "city is under attack" or custom ones like "town meeting" (to give the impression of a crowd gathering), to define what they should do in such cases.
They also need shelter - while a smith lives in his smithy and a guard sleeps in his barracks, those "new citizens" need a bed to stay in the night. They can be given gold for their services, then they will go shopping for food or they can be given food directly.
Civilians will defend themselves when attacked, but generally those not armed or trained will barricade themselves in the citadel, at home or maybe in the church, depending on what they were told to do in case of an attack.
When the city is given up in a conscious act or when certainy activity conditions of mayor, comayors and citizens do not match anymore. If only the mayor vanishes for a certain time, the comayors can fill the duty, but if they also vanish, then a succession plan is carried out. This succession plan must exist for every city and may include "staff decides on a new mayor", "return city to nature" or "Use as Quest area" or "Remaining citizens vote new mayor" or anything reasonable.
No, that's not planned, but a nice idea.
this is going to be a very big jump into the voice's lore and story!.
it is pretty well done and answered all of my questions, i see nothing wrong with it
So basically a 24 hour non-stop shift? That might be problematic if you have friends or co-founders only in same timezone - getting volunteer for night shift would be hard.
What if all people in/near the area disconnects? Area would stop being active (so no ABMs or other logic is run for the relevant blocks, any monster invasion is paused and the blocks may even get unloaded shortly after.
Or is it one game day, i.e. 20 real-life minutes? (that would be reasonable)
What is the sphere of influence? Will the city get technical help with enforcing the rules (i.e. if they for example forbid planting certain kind of tree in the area, would the city have a server code that will detect and punish offenders?)
Defense is leveled and not built, i.e. no building of actual city walls?
What would motivate citizens to give part of their xp to the city?
Also, can the major transfer their function to some successor willing to take the duties onwards?
So the city will receive that item (periodically?) and may then (or may not, based on their decision) put it into some smartshop? Or would selling/gaining of this item be somewhat more automated?
this is limit of one restore of a certain plot, or one restore of a certain plot and certain plot's owner?
So in state of "being conquered", there is no protection outside of plots? So that would allow the conquering adventurers to dig through walls or build improvised barricades to help them with re-conquering the city? Or how exactly would that work?
@sixer : Some of those questions were answered in the QnA, in this case I'll point there.
answered by
Q: How do you plan to balance the 24hrs while establishing a new city? People need like sleep and attend work/school...
A: That's done by the invasion mechanics and depends on a lot of factors. The Quest area is forceloaded, so that the "Let's leave the area, nothing can happen to unloaded areas" trick doesn't work. There won't be a 24h active battle where the whole thing goes down when one gets tired. But yes, asking others to defend one's own city attempt may be a smart idea.
Q: Or do newly established cities depend on strangers to defend them?
A: It's certainly a smart move, not to create a city as a lone wolf or when one can be sure the whole server will not come to aid.
See above: The Quest area is forceloaded, so that the "Let's leave the area, nothing can happen to unloaded areas" trick doesn't work.
No, it's full 24 hours, but "There won't be a 24h active battle where the whole thing goes down when one gets tired."
"Sphere of influence" is the various areas a city has various levels of influence in. A city may decide to disallow planting of oak trees on a plot. Then they can blacklist oak saplings in the plot area. That's technical help, this mechanic already exists. If a city decides on a non-policeable rule, then it is their responsibility to make it policeable. YL will not add API to detect player parties via player party detectors only because a city decides to not allow members of a certain party inside the city. But if a technical need arises from such a rule, they could bug it and it would go the usual way. See also
Q: As a pure side note, will city rules be staff-enforced?
A: Yes - if those rules do not go against the server rule and were displayed properly. We'll notice if rules were crafted in a malicious way and we won't start going through the log to see whether some "walk 3 times around the Crown before allowed to leave" rule was fulfilled, policing those rules in their own city is business of the cities.
From: Defense
"To defend a city against monster invasions, a city employs guards of various types and ranks."
Of course city walls also add to the passive defense, those are built. Active defense, like guards, can be levelled.
What motivates people? The wish to better their own city, a share of the economy, defending their city better, having a new or better service in their city, ...
I'm pretty certain a mayor who now attempts to bleed the citizens off their xp will not have many citizens.
From: Death
[...] If only the mayor vanishes for a certain time, the comayors can fill the duty, but if they also vanish, then a succession plan is carried out. This succession plan must exist for every city and may include "staff decides on a new mayor", "return city to nature" or "Use as Quest area" or "Remaining citizens vote new mayor" or anything reasonable.
Periodically and automatically: Yes. All the city officials, the mayor, the comayor or whoever they appoint needs to do is collect the items either from a chest or an NPC located at the economy building. They may decide to sell it, they may decide to keep it, they may decide to trade it, they may decide to trash it. Up to them.
If they wish to sell it somewhat automatically, I'm fairly certain there's a way to set that up.
A stored plot can only be restored once, to avoid duplicating items. You cannot fill up your plot with rainbow, ask it be stored and then restore it ten times. The number of stores/restores is not limited per person or plot, only "per file" or what you want to call it. This is an anticheat measure.
The protections will all stay in place and protect blocks from being broken, only additionally from the previous owners. Walls that once protected the players now protect the occupiers. Areas that were open previously will stay open, like a public farm or treefarm, but that can be used by the invaders as well.
Then if you have 1 hour window out of 24h not covered, you may get lucky and have no invasion in it .. or if unlucky, you may lose the city, right? I guess with good passive defenses (moats with lava, huge walls, ...) the amount of people necessary to defend the city would be lower ...
And with forceloading, wouldn't that allow tricks like trying to create a city next to a mob farm or alike?
So at most one load for every "save + remove from world" ...
This will probably make incentive to put some kinds of backdoor into defenses ... like fast access tunnel protected by named steel doors instead of shared ones, or structures that mobs will have difficulty passing/navigating, but humans can do so easily
Correct
I doubt Whatever attacks will be dumb enough not to have a solution for obvious obstacles. Ofc, placing a sentry who can raise the alarm sounds smart.
I think a mob farm will be the least of their worries and the last they will want on scene is more mobs.
Yes. There obviously is a better way to phrase it, I only didn't find it yet.
You mean, a secret passage, like many medieval fortresses had? Sounds reasonable, but need to be concealed pretty well. If I had to guess, the place will swarm with scouts.
So when the city-start-quest is started and quest area appears - will that be open area, where you can build additional walls and defenses after start (and then also some mobs may tear them down), or a protected area, not giving you chance to do any changes or improvements to passive defenses of the place until the founding quest is over?
So if you have done /sethome in your plot before conquering a city (probably a fairly common case), you can usually do /home to get in that plot even if the city is conquered (and then you do not need to fight the hordes to get in, but you may need to fight the hordes if you want to leave your plot and go elsewhere). Or will that change?
Also, what would be new distance rules for new cities? Same as old, or would there be changes?
For xp city transfer (or xp tax :), who decides how much to give? Would mayor impose (minimal) tax rate on citizens, or would citizens voluntarily decide how much would they want to donate?
It's a locked Quest area with teleport allowed. No other areas may exist nearby or inside. If it were an open area, everyone could devastate it. Where destruction takes palce on the side of invaders, there will be a smaller, open quest area so taht defenders have a chance to fix a breech in a wall (and so that we can take a snapshot for later reconstruction, should the need arise)
Teleport inside the conquered city (including death portals) will most likely not be allowed, much the same like most other quest areas. Same goes for death portals and the new home portals. Else it would be plenty easy to set home with a second account near the crown and then reconquer at any time.
Distance rules are not planned to change much, espeically with the caravan mechanic there needs to be some distance to cover.
The citizen decides how much he gives, but the amount given is on public display.
So if a small house exists too close to the planned city location (whose owner would give consent to founding the city, or possibly could be owned by one of the city founders), would that prevent founding the city?
Would there be consequences, if there would be no successful attempt to reconquer the city for some longer time period?
So if adventurer has (the only) base inside the city in a plot and has set home there and then dies when conquering that city once it gets invaded, he would not be able to open death portal there, he would not be able to use /home to get home to the plot to retrieve some spare equipment, and would end up naked and without equipment in some random city far away. That sounds a bit cruel and frustrating.
Forbidding death portals will make conquered cities even more cruel than nether.
The set percentage, or the total of xp actually transferred this way?
I guess that could motivate some mayors to give rewards to top contributors :)
There is also disadvantage that characteds on lvl 80 can't give xp this way. Would there be way to voluntarily degrade to lvl 79 to be able to start contributing?
How to stop a player from burying the banner in cobble to stop mobs taking it?
So citizen NPCs are just decorative?
You said the Smith will buy coal and other minerals. Isn't this basically staff setting the price of coal to be... whatever they give in exchange?
I understand the 50% XP thing now... but will it be shared per level achieved or constantly? A player might share XP to a city and die. Does the XP get subtracted from the city or persist? Either choice that comes with constant XP sharing seems to have a problem.
How do caravans travel when no one is watching? Force loading? And the robbers and factions mentioned as well, how do they come in? How will anyone know the caravan is under attack if it is an NPC caravan, and how long do they have to protect it?
Sphere of influence: I assume this is just the city for now, until the faction areas are here?
We know XP: used for city services; what does economy do?
Is city economy a standalone attribute?
I would like to have an individual post just explaining everything you can think of on the following topics.
Cities and their attributes, which I'm guessing has
XP, Economy, Services
etc.
and their individual uses/impact (eg. does it give player benefits or just deco)
NPCs
What NPCs do what, where they come from, what they need
Yes - we don't want private areas popping up near other people's private areas. Even less do we want someone to return to their small forest hideout and have a city at their doorstep.
The alternative is to allow teleport, but what would prevent city owners have an emergency alt account with a death portal directly to the Crown?
This will also happen to larger Quest areas. We could probably make it that people keep their items when they die inside Quest areas. Does that help?
"Downgrades" are not planned. Until the classes update, the level of the character will not have any effect on the combat abilities and even after, I don't expect much effect on the mining and building abilities.
But in this case we assume consent of the area owner (in some cases it could be even a private house of one of the city founders that would join the founding with their banner).
The idea is that few house owners agree to build a city, planning their houses to eventually become a part of that city. With assumption that ALL nearby area owners would at least give consent to the city, or even directly join the act of founding it with their banners, still not possible?
They could have alt that will walk to the crown (while the city is not conquered) and then logout. On conquering, log in back ... and they are where the crown is.
No death portals or any teleportation or /home involved.
How long would it take to reconquer the city back once you reach the crown? Just few secs for digging the block?
It could. Otherwise (especially if that quest area involves hostile mobs or fall hazards) those areas may end up littered with bones that are too hard to retrieve for many people. And with consequences implying from that (banshee infestation ....)
Is there any other mechanism planned so that lvl 80 chars (or generally maxed-out chars in case the max. lvl will raise in future) would be able to contribute to city xp?
The banner will check whether its placement conforms to some rules. This cannot remove each and every chance for cheating, but we'll keep an eye on things. Should we notice a cheeky setup, that doesn't go against the technical rules but somehow spoils the quest, the city creation process will not continue. People who make it a sport to find loopholes will probably have a hard time successfully creating a city if they employ their skills. Also I expect the invasions having a word or two in this as well - cheaters cannot expect quarters given.
Not entirely, they can be given a job to assist somewhere, but mostly they are meant to populate the city. They are not meant to be "put to work" like slaves where the city suffers economical losses when not a perfect setup is achieved.
Yes - in a fetch quest style. Items do not come out of nowhere, the city has a say in what the smithy offers to buy coal.
When a player decides to share their xp with a city, he can use a chatcommand to define his taxrate. Like
/share_my_xp_with_the_city_I_m_citizen_of 50, which causes the player to share 50% of the xp they earn with the city. Once the player decides they do not wish to share anymore, they can use/share_my_xp_with_the_city_I_m_citizen_of 0to stop sharing their xp with the city. Once xp are donated to the city, they cannot be taken back. xp get subtracted from a player when he dies, xp get subtracted from a city when it gets conquered. Neither event has an effect on the other.When noone is watching, caravans and robberies and other events on the road will happen in a background thread, much like "calculated battles" in strategy games. Usually, those calculated caravans have a lesser outcome and a higher chance of failing than when guarded by smart and geared up players, but that's to be expected.
Not all factions are hostile to caravans - if a goblin village faction believes a caravan benefits their goals, they might even come to aid when a hostile faction tries to attack it.
When a caravan is under attack, they might raise the alarm and send their position, much like a player would when there's an attack on them.
How long players choose to protect a caravan is up to them. Such a caravan is certainly slower than speedy adventurers with crystal boots zipping from one city to another. Caravans require roads, caravans require rest.
Yes, this extends entirely on what can be considered part of the city.
Ecnomony upgrades will help produce more of the economy item per cycle.
Factions also have a economy value and I'd like to keep it similar, but it could also become a simple buildings "upgrade" via XP and not a standalone value. That's not entirely decided and due to balancing.
Neither xp nor economy (if it's a standalone value) are "visible" per se, but ofc cities may celebrate a new level on the goblin by adding a bigger or a second catapult. Or refurbishing their economy building, when the output increases. Services are buildings/NPCs which are visible.
The services writeup requires a topic of its own, the poster in the Haven Town Hall hints at the general direction.
Please take a look at the QnA section "Citizens: How are going the Citizens NPC going to have assigned tasks? Are Priest and Traders considered NPCs with tasks? If not this type of tasks, what tasks, food and places to stay are we talking about? Can this NPCs be also considered part of the Defense?"
Good point. We could make it that the owner of a nearby master area, which would otherwise prohibit founding a city nearby, would have to craft an "Affiliation Banner" and place it in their area, to proclaim their intentions. If all otherwise prohibiting master areas have such an Affiliation Banner, the city can be founded.
Yes, but that's a most likely a single alt-account which cannot sneak an army of re-conquerors to the Crown.
True. It is most reasonable to assume whoever logged out in this city should not respawn in it when he returns. That prevents an alt account logging out near the Crown and also solves the problem of sudden death for an unsuspecting player who just didn't notice the city was conquered while he was gone.
I expect the occupation forces guard the Crown very closely and with utmost caution. I expect them to place their Elite Guardians on and around the Crown, fighting them down wil most likely already take minutes, while all the others rush to the defense, should those Elite Guardians raise an alarm near the Crown.
Death is expected more often in such quest areas, noone who has xp to lose will take part in such an endeavour. That might lead to noone playing the quest, that can't be what we want. So - like everything else - this needs to go through balancing.
No. They will also not be able to contribute to faction xp with the 1.6 War update. With 1.4 magic there is a Reincarnation Quest planned, where lvl 80 players can sacrifice it all, start again at lvl 1.
Sometimes it may be hard to tell a boundary between very well built defenses (lot of layers of stone walls, lava moats, water moats, deep pits ....) and exploiting loopholes.
Does the city have to provide the resource that the smithy will offer in exchange?
Would we need fractional xp now? Now you get 1 xp for placing a block. If you define 40% sharing with a city, you would get 0.6 xp for that and the city would get 0.4 xp too. Or would that work differently?
Would players be able to "join the dark side" and become robbers of those NPC caravans?
No need to sneak. He'll be standing right next to crown when relogging. Question is, can he break the city core to reconquer the city in the short time before the forces standing near it manage to kill him?
Plots in cities that do have less than perfect defenses will become quite risky - you could (even though temporarily) lose access to your plot and your home position there. If there would be trouble conquering the city back, that situation could take days or possibly even weeks. More people would want to join cities with good defenses like haven and people will be much less willing to go to a city with inferior defenses.
Add to that punishment of losing items and having difficulty getting them back (no death portal) ... and even less motivation to try quests
Yes, of course. If you do
/faq crownyou'll see the outline of the city Crown rules. There i a technical detection behind it, but there are limits. Especially in a game where the player has so many creative ways of doing things, there is no way we can foresee, let alone code in all the ways one could cheat. Is that what you're pointing at? ;)We'll most likely set in code what we can, we'll manually judge what we can't set in code and then there's also the hostiles and the rule "Whatever we get, they also get".
Yes and no. If the city wants the smith fully stocked and ready to repair everything and act on their services, they will need to provide additional material one way or another. There are "automatic" options as well: Smithies in cities that have a lot of tourists may have a higher turnaround (read: many visitors, many caravans, lots of action). Smithies that are operated by a whole family may have someone who occasionally goes to the public farm and harvests food, so taht you don't need to supply the smithy yourself (read: more NPCs)
Please note: This is not a full fledged trade simualtion with tracked items and actors in the tens of thousands. If we could do that we'd probably do it, but that's not the scope.
This is a rather technical question that will find a technical answer, without fractional xp. Even if, as long as players do not need to calculate with fractional xp, we could do it. Floats exist.
Yes, in the same way they could currently help Voice, sabotage quests or not replant.
No. That'd be a pretty not-so-smart if we designed it like that. The re-conquering army needds to break the Heart of the City crystal as well, simply digging the centerstone does nothing (if at all possible - since it's a protected Quest area).
There is certainly some incentive to have your city defended. If you live in a city with inferior defenses and suspect (or have witnessed) Voice abusing a weakpoint in the wall, maybe tel the mayor and help fix it or patrol the area early and often. I don't know how exactly Voice chooses the target, but look at cities that do not have that marvellous a defense Haven has and count the number and severity of Voice attacks on them compared to Haven.
Yes, but that would deter everyone from going to the nether or even outside cities as well. You can die there. High risk, high reward. Low risk, low reward. No risk, no reward.
There was a "domination" game mode for ancient game called Unreal Tournament. IIRC to capture a control point and gain a score, player from your team needed to stay inside a control point zone for some amount of time, and if someone from opposing team entered that zone, the timer would reset, or something like that.
Maybe same can be done with crown (and maybe even multiple additional points?) - players would need to stay inside the zone and keep it free from voice mobs for some time?
Question is, would that be considered part of game/lore and tolerated by staff, or would it fall to kind of actions that are usually punished (like not replanting or griefing)
I have never seen attack on a city. I saw some army about 500 meters from sacramentum while exploring, could that be an attack on the city that was caught early?
This will make city plot (usually considered a safe and low-risk place) possibly more dangerous than nether (both considering availability of death portal and monster roaming in/around the location). People will learn to live with that eventually, but newbies that considered the cities to be a safe place may be ... very disappointed.
What could be a legit reason why YL would consider attacking a city's caravan an excellent and positive move, which should be tolerated?
In YL, we try try promote cooperation, that's why there are by design no wars between cities or hostile takeover mechanics for cities.
Of course, if some hostile faction like Voice managed to capture two adjacent cities and then tried to run a supply caravans back and forth, those should be legit targets within the quest.
It's fairly hard to guess the intention. Noone knows whether that was an attempted buildup for a more thorough invasion - spoiled by you, the adventurers - or a mere scouting operation with no backup.
How do you come to this conclusion? Sure, if you add up the worst of the worst outcome, cities are possibly a very unsafe place. Then again, Your Land is what You make of it.
In real life, if I look at the city I live in, there are also places I'd rather not go at night. The overwhelming majority of my city is pretty neat.
There is milestone 1.6 war - so I assume that attacking a caravan that supplies/belongs to city or faction with which you are at war may become a legitimate military operation (and probably with small risk that by mistake or bad information, the attack could be done on a different, "innocent" caravan and not on the originally chosen target).
Although I've not found the description of the milestone, so I may be mistaken in how the wars are supposed to work.
So, there could be at least one legit cause to attack a caravan.
In most servers, if you protect an area, it is usually yours and (almost) untouchable (with usually very few exceptions, like when you build something grossly inappropriate and admins/mods intervene). Invasions as planned this way would change that ... so then players should be aware of possible invasion implications to availability and their their access to the plots - so they would have a backup plan, emergency base in wilderness or some other way to deal with the situation (usually trying first to help with defending the city).
I wouldn't worry that much. I can imagine most of the core players taking a conquered city as a personal insult, and the city will probably be quickly liberated. Of course, people will feel differently about different cities, and cities generally considered ugly, or for example uninhabited, will more likely receive "let's deal with that on next Sunday" reaction, while conquered Haven will be immediate problem with immediate solution.
I also don't think "look at other servers" is a fair argument to make: if YL staff did only what other servers do, I seriously doubt the server would live as today. I (for one) think that having cities and plots in danger of voice invasion would bring the balance back to survival server, as currently we live pretty much in player-provided-creative.
Yes, for cities relatively far from others (10km or more from nearest other fast travel option) and new (small number of inhabitants), this could become a tough problem.
Small number of inhabitants will cause relative lack of interest in reconquering and necessity to walk 10 km for the assault (and every time again in case of death) would make it very hard once you gather enough people willing to help.
Maybe allow opening death portal at the city outskirts in case of death inside the city if inside the city the portal would not be possible?
This is not to not do it. This is to make people aware of that specific difference - so that they'll be aware of it and not rely on their plot to be 100% reliable safe haven at all times.
Not unsolvable problem, and not unbalanced problem either. Most attacks today aim for cities with some service of fast travel or short walk distance. If the city is "not enough" for voice, it's almost certainly "not enough" for players, and hence "not enough" a city.
If I may be blunt on this occasion: see Zarahemla. Trying to get onto the airship network, what, third time? Unfriendly terrain, crown placement on the very edge of the rules, and with no unifying architecture elements. I'd be happy to join a group of adventurers for a quest to liberate it from voice and take it as "event". But I won't be in a rush to recover the city right this evening.
And as it turns out, the amount of known voice attacks on Zarahemla is to my best knowledge zero.
If it finally forces players to create a cooperating group instead of "the pointy bit stabs the enemy, right?", so be it. Some people die in battles with voice, but it rarely happens to me. I know what my share of enemies are, I know to carry and use my gapples, and I don't charge in the center of the enemy raid.
As I said on other occasions, we need soldiers, not heroes.
As I understand it, portals would only be disallowed into the area of the city. Seems to me there is enough world right next to the city area.
My point exactly - it's a survival server, stuff should not be considered safe by default :)
make the classes first, scrap the caravan idea and prioritize performance over everything else. don't incentivize players to store all their stuff inside the cities, if anything make them as bare-bones as possible. no shops, no farms inside city walls, no petz. test performance in advance if possible, don't put work into features that might be unsustainable.
It took time to translate and understand all this. My questions until then:
1. Why should a city try to collect as many XP as possible? I have not been able to read out the advantage.Can a player share XP with more than one city, and what about their alts?
Our city has a keep right next to the crown and a citadel not far from it. If the crown falls to the enemy, then not even such structures, perhaps even just manned. Or? I'd rather ask beforehand.
Of course, the update will lead to an arms race. Cities don't want to be conquered, so (according to the current state of knowledge about the possibilities of voice) they build insurmountable bulwarks that resist even boom blocks and ramps. Voice then has no choice but to recruit or train new troops on its part. Where will this end? I only ask this because beautiful cities should not lose their character for this rearmament. Just imagine Maravillosa with lava-flooded very nether basalt walls...
I know I am very late, I hope not too late.
So far I am really excited what will come!
Some questions remain for me:
There are guards which defend the city. So the NPC's can be killed by monsters, right?
Will these Citizens come back once the crown is recaptured? Can the Owner of the NPC's define what they shall do in case the city is captured (like "hide in that specific cave, we will send a message once it is safe outside again") Something like the "Schwedenhöhlen", which can be found nearly everywhere in Germany.
Can these caravans only travel on land or can they also go by ship? (Otherwise many citys will be unable to trade)
Where do the NPC's come from which travel with a caravan. Do we need to recruit them from the citizens when sending out a caravan?
I guess most caravans will take roads... What are the requirements for a path/road so the caravan can travel on it?
If caravans could travel on boats, will there be pirate ships added? Or some other ways to attack ship-based caravans?
Runy wants to know what happens to the NPCs, during and after an invasion. He hopes that they will not disappear or even die in the process, but will "only" be captured and freed again when they are reconquered.
The plan is that NPCs in cities (and those not in cites as well) get
actionsthey execute on certaintriggers, the owner can define those actions and triggers. One of those triggers could fire when the alarm bell for that city is rang. Then it is up to the owner to say what the NPC shall do: Go to some shelter on the plot, hide in the church, run around screaming, pick up arms and fight, ...Only those that fight can get hurt. What happens when they are defeated? Most likely some resurrection mechanic for civilians. Not sure about military personnel.
Other triggers include "run away from enemy" or "go to healer when hurt" or "get food when hungry"
I'd appreciate if even soldiers got resurrected, eventually. Respawn timer should be large enough so that dead soldiers cannot affect the "same" battle twice - something like 10×, and should restart each time city is player-captured from monsters.