Towns,Claims and Economic Activity

[DangerousLee]

As I understand it now, pClaim and vClaim share a lot in comon and do not offer a very different set of possibilities (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2882). And it seems to me (by reading the forums) that the siege mechanics is not working so well as it is now. Raiders can exploit loopholes to destroy anything given they have enough time to do so. (I have some idea to solve this later in Town Protection section)

In my mind a pClaim should be more or less what we already have, that is a place where you live and produce most of your goods and craft your inspirationals and food.

A vClaim however should be more something that you want everyone in Salem to come in and participate. Following the idea of a thriving economy I discussed (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3045), I imagine the vClaim being a sort of trading place where people would do what is done in Boston principally that is trade. Players would be able to buy/sell through their stalls or be there in person (Stalls cost money to operate). Now to avoid people spamming towns everywhere I propose that the economy (and raiders) take care of which town is successful and which is not. It would be a simple effect that comes from the dynamic of the people playing Salem. A misplaced town with low or no trade would see the stalls empty and its economic activity plummet. That would in turn means that it costs money to the player-owners to make it live, hence it will eventually collapse or at least it will drain those player pockets until they are bored. (To have this effect, one needs to have higher upkeeps for vClaims and less on pClaims. More on how to achieve this later.)

A town (vClaim) would be able to levy some tax. The tax can be imposed on stalls, trade (seller side) and nearby pClaims (Tax area could be like 20 times the vClaim size or whatever is suitable). A pClaim player would have the possibility to not pay the tax to the town (vClaim) but this player may well expect that the player-run town will not let him live a peaceful existence for a very long time if he chooses so. Therefore, a well placed town could very well turn profits without ever needing to add extra money to pay the upkeep (That is an incentive to create a vClaim instead of a pClaim). If a town can generate enough trade and the money flows in its coffers, it will be able to expand and levy even more tax (Or the owners may very well put that sum in their very deep pockets if they wish so!).

Towns would have the ability to make contracts for player to build structures on its claimed area and to construct roads connecting other claims and towns. Contracts could consist of building new stalls, wagons, mills, roads, walls, etc. The road system would be needed in the economy system proposed earlier (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3045) for goods to be transported efficiently to the next town and toward Boston (for exports). Raiders could intercept wagons/caravans on roads and loot the stuff, which I think would add a lot to the game dynamics. (Some feature would be required to balance things up and make it fair among traders/raiders. I have some idea, but I will keep that for another time.)

So basically a town would act like a living organism where it grows or dies based on its player activity (trade and money concentrating capacity). But with the given upkeeps one could say that both a vClaim and a pClaim can be payed for quite easily and that is absolutely right. So I propose to change this, basically the price per tile of claimed land would see no change, but the buildings we have on claims should cost some upkeep. I propose that buildings one should find on pClaims, house, fields, stove, bakery, stuff like that have a low upkeep so that players can have them on their pClaim. However buildings like windmill, forge and expensive to run buildings (Community like) would have a high upkeep, making it hard for pClaim owners to have them and therefore we would see them more often on the vClaim. (They could have it on their pClaim, but its costly). Having those service on a vClaim would increase player traffic (Could even add a tax per use on those) and player activity within a town.

Having a church (high upkeep) would push darkness away (viewtopic.php?f=12&t=1738) and donations in silver to that church would increase the light generated by the town. More successful towns will be able to raise more tax because of vClaim area and mainly trade/stalls etc. Furthermore they would also be able to light more if the owners decide to pour some of the profits into the church (money sink).

Towns would be able to build a Town Hall which could be used to store the money the city generates and the Uniques and limited edition items (expensive imports) that give small buffs to their citizens. (To be developped in another thread, a similar suggestion exist already viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2416)

Town and pClaim protection

Now I guess everyone that read up to this stage must ask themselves how the hell are we going to keep raiders from getting that load of money stored in the successful towns… Well I have a simple idea for this. The sieging mechanics is a hard thing to balance and I think skilled individuals will almost always find some way of performing their evil deeds by exploiting/abusing the current defense mechanism (walls, torchpost and braziers mainly). Furthermore, the actual mechanics make it so that your claim may be raided while you cannot do a thing about it. I think it is not fair for players owning those to lose them because they were AFK and that the defense mechanism are less than perfect. So my suggestion is simply to be able to pay some sort of guards (virtual) for protection. It could work in the following way.

In fact it is very similar to the actual drain in BB ones gets when on a claim one does not own. The town owners (pClaim too), could pour money (like an upkeep) into some bar and that bar reflects the money spent on defense (Expensive). Players would be able to set a level of security on their claim by changing the intensity of that BB drain one gets when a criminal is on a claim. Level1 security could cost like 0.05 silver per tile and drain 5 BB per second. Level 2 cost twice as much and provide 10 BB per sec, etc (This needs to be balanced, but you have to pay it even if there is no criminal activity on the claim). But the idea is that a successful town (earning a lot money) could spend a big part of that money on security and therefore make it almost impenetrable to raiders this way. (I can hear the raiders out there crying because they think that is too powerful, but think about it and tell me why in the middle ages a large army could not get into a town so easily? And why would they instead lay siege to starve the people out? Why should not it be possible for a town to have enough protection to have the raiders stay out? The same strategy used in the middle ages could be used in this system, except that instead of starving the people, you have to starve the town from its revenue. That is hit the roads and hurt its economy and kill the trade if you want the owners to lower the security level inside and then perform some attack on the city hall and stalls…). You could also hurt its tax payers situated nearby (pClaims). If enough raiders are present I think it is fair that they would be able to storm the place and go straight to the town hall. The defense intensity I was talking about should spread the damage onto all the raiders thus lowering each raiders drain per second. (Level1 security drains 5 BB per second, but if 5 raiders are on the claim, that makes 1 BB each… which is pretty manageable) This would also mean that the static defense system we already have should be used. (Could have a few braziers around that town hall for example.)

Notes on Town connected to Road network and Wagons

Road network could be set up like when expanding ones claim, road would be 6 tiles large and could go on any terrain. The system would check if the road has any too steep slopes beforce becoming open. Land needs to be flattenened a bit to make it ok. Paved road would see an increase in speed and reduced maintenance of wagons. Would be considered a criminal act to encumber the road with unpassable object like logs (raiders ambush) and changing terrain elevation if road is finished.

I think the overall system I proposed here is very intuitive and would lead to some very interesting gameplay dynamics.

Please make sure you read the other related threads before posting and if you feel like this would be more fun than what we have now, make sure to show your support, the devs might try to do it if they see enough community support for an idea.

As always I will answer my best if you have questions about this system or other systems I have posted about.

Thanks for reading.

[Dallane]

Why make a new thread? Could a mod merge this plz

[MagicManICT]

Could you please do a little homework and find the existing threads on a subject? I think everyone one of your ideas here has an existing thread.

Town claims vs personal claims: viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2882

Roads: I am not seeing a specific thread about these, but the subject comes up constantly.

Churches: the devs already have a plan for them, but just haven't gotten to implementing it yet. I've heard some musings, and I think some of those have been public (IRC, here on the forums). I don't want to say something that might not get implemented, though.