Map Size Fixes

[Potjeh]

Sorry for dragging it off the rails. I was just trying to argue against this:

You realize, I hope, that all of these suggestions are to solve the problem of a map that's too large? A problem that is only occurring in this iteration of the game and that for every subsequent world generation/server/what have you, it will no longer be a problem. With that being said, why would the Darkness mechanic receive an overhaul for a problem so finite as that it will never happen again? The darkness is supposed to be something you don't go into by design. To spread that everywhere is changing more than what's necessary and outside the scope of this thread as it brings about more issues than what it solves.

IMO the "follow the light" solution to the problem of finding bases on a large map fits perfectly fine with the direction that darkness seems to be heading.

[pistolshrimp]

So thoughts on fast travel based on carriages.

There would be a number of carriage stations throughout the map in specific intervals along radial lines. There would be an NPC in Providence and a simple stone marker out in the wilderness to represent the station. The stations would not be within a certain radius of Providence, say based on the wilderness guide spawn. This would make it less beneficial for raiding newer/weaker bases set up closer to Providence (which no one really has a problem getting to anyway).

Since everything is orientated to Providence, a player seeking justice would pick the radial line corresponding to the direction the scents pointed and then take a guess as to how far out the perpetrator's base is. Because they don't know how far out the base is and because the radial lines cover broad areas there would still be a decent amount of effort put into finding a base, but less so. It would also cost a decent amount of silver (Though day or month passes could possibly be sold in the store.)

Carriage system would be disabled for anyone with a crime debuff and would go from Providence to station, station to station along the same radial line, but not station to Providence preserving the inability to port to Providence with a full inventory outside of your homestead.

Here's a very rough layout of what I'm talking about.

[ImpalerWrG]

A possible small piece of the solution no one has considered yet.

The maps northern and southern edges could be stitched together. This is called an axis-wrap, as we say the map 'wraps around', it's a common feature in Civilization maps because it eliminates edges. Now clearly the coast line prevents the Y axis from being wrapped, but I see nothing preventing the X axis (north-south) from being wrapped, though the seem might be terribly ugly if some clever map generation isn't used, a small additional strip of land might be necessary to make it less ugly.

The net effect of this change is that distance between 2 random points is reduced, without any change in total area. I'm not saying you cant'/shouldn't reduce area, but regardless if you do that, a wrapped axis gives your shorter distances for any given area.

[RonPaulFTW]

You realize, I hope, that all of these suggestions are to solve the problem of a map that's too large? A problem that is only occurring in this iteration of the game and that for every subsequent world generation/server/what have you, it will no longer be a problem. With that being said, why would the Darkness mechanic receive an overhaul for a problem so finite as that it will never happen again? The darkness is supposed to be something you don't go into by design. To spread that everywhere is changing more than what's necessary and outside the scope of this thread as it brings about more issues than what it solves.

How many players do you think a server should support once the game is advertised? Yes the map might be too large now for current player base - but put 10k people on it - is it still too large then?

[Lusewing]

Ron this is not about how big the map will need to be when the floodgates open and new players join after advertising, this is about us, beta testers, being able to test out the games mechanics. As it stands there is just too much space between everyone to be able to properly test rival town gameplay as well as crime and punishment.

[JohnCarver]

How many players do you think a server should support once the game is advertised? Yes the map might be too large now for current player base - but put 10k people on it - is it still too large then?

Yes. The server right now runs with 700 Average Daily users.

Per our Density formula that we 'want' from the map size. That would mean we would be happy with this map size so long as it had. 57,600 Daily users on average. It would still feel 'empty' but at least you would hit another base ever 10-15 minutes of running which is what we consider ideal.

So hopefully this gives a good perspective of the 'issue' for us. Its not that the map would be fix'd if we had double the population or 10x the population. The map size is quite literally 100x larger than we would like for it to be from a density standpoint.

The only reason we are talking about reducing the map sizes by only 70-80% is so that we can retain the 2-3 hour travel time from point A to Point B. If it were not for trying to retain a 'several hour' journey to the end of the map we would be debating between a 85-95% reduction in map size.

For those who remember the previous servers, we found their maps to be much more reasonable in size if not still a bit too large. This map is a good 500% larger than those.

[DarkNacht]

Pack people in too tight and you will lose a lot of players, people like exploring, they like wandering with out constantly stumbling over other people and decaying bases. You are better off giving people faster ways to travel than trying to force them close together.
A good implementation for Horses could greatly shrink the map, especially if you could port with them.
Want to really drop travel time, set up a handful of outposts that you can bind your 'Boston' port to and let people port between them for a price based on the distance between the locations.
Also if you want to encourage them to settle closer to Prov stop making hunting darkness animals profitable. People should be afraid of them not farming them for profit. And make the radius of churches smaller and make them require upkeep of some sort to keep out the darkness. If venturing out into to the darkness was hazardous and settling there was costly more people would settle closer together with out being forced to do so.

[ImpalerWrG]

We have two distinct issues.

DENSITY: How often I encounter another player and/or base when walking randomly through the world

DISTANCE: How much time I have to travel to avenge myself and/or **** on the Top Dog faction and other PvP stuff.


The two problems are both exacerbated by an over-sized map. But under a growing population desired density can always be maintained by map enlargement, but doing so will increase Distance to undesirable levels. I see no way to keep distance/time from growing with a growing player base unless travel becomes faster in direct proportion to the enlargement of the map.

[RonPaulFTW]

How many players do you think a server should support once the game is advertised? Yes the map might be too large now for current player base - but put 10k people on it - is it still too large then?

Yes. The server right now runs with 700 Average Daily users.

Per our Density formula that we 'want' from the map size. That would mean we would be happy with this map size so long as it had. 57,600 Daily users on average. It would still feel 'empty' but at least you would hit another base ever 10-15 minutes of running which is what we consider ideal.

I really don't want to run into someone every time I go bear hunting.

[firefox2026]

I like the carriage idea because it sounds like more fun give the map some more sandbox like personality created by the players. However, I am sort of intrigued by the idea sort of along the lines I see people talking about here like maybe nodes or what we could maybe think of "small villages" outside of Plymouth to make it easier to quick travel to a particular zone of the map. Assuming that be easier to implement than a carriage system. I am not sure if I could personally predict what the side effects of doing that would be either or how that be managed etc.

my two cents anyways..