Architect Archive

I propose a new housing structure that can be build by architechs and used in player cities only (like cantinas) The apartment. They would be multi unit housing structures that would take 5 to 10 lots to place depending on size. (for instance, a 5 or 6 unit apartment complex would be 5 lots to place, a 10 - 12 unit complex would be 10 lots.) The complex I propose should be 2 floors, so some units would be on the ground floor, and others would be above with stairs to access the door. The interior size should have the same basic square footage and storage as a small house, but since the complex is 2 floors and will be all one building, you could place a 5-6 unit apartment that takes less space that 3 small houses (since there must be a gap between houses). The owner of the complex, "landlord", will have to pay all maintence on the building, but would also be able to set rent for his tenants. Therefore the landlord should be able to make a profit by leaseing out the complex units to other players.

To make a profit, the landlord would likely have to charge rent that would cost much more than maintence on a small house, however there would be some benefits that would make this worth the extra cost to tennants.

1. No lot cost to move into an apartment, freeing up at least 2 lots for other uses


2. Arenter could move to another apartment and be able to, with one click of the mouse, to move all their belongings to the new apartment and have their stuff appear in the new apartment arranged the same way. This would make it easy to move from city to city, planet to planet without the bother of having to pack up and re place all your furniture.

I think this will be a great idea for a few reasons, (a) It will reduce city sprall, and keep more open free space. (b) It gives architechs another building to build and sell (c) It will allow players to put unused lots to work for them by becoming landlords (d) It will allow faction players andcrafters to put their lots to better use (e) It adds diversity to city layouts and the city skyline (f) It will help make player cities feel more like a real star wars city, as opposed to the "pack of houses" huddled around a city hall that we have now.

Please comment on this idea, and add suggestions that would be helpful. Please keep any complaints constructive. Thank you.

I am sure all the architects will applaud any suggestion that garners them something new to construct.. no greater satisfaction can be gained then to see your creation in use... but I have a question (or suggestion as it were) canthe rents be paid through each apartments terminal?.. assuming each apartment would have a maintenance termial of course. Then if the tenant doesn't pay his rent the terminal will evict him(?) that would be hysterical

The ability to move from one apartment to another is a great idea.. would the apartments all be the same size? or would higher floors have larger apartments? (penthouse suites?)

As you can see I like this idea.. fabulous potential

owke devs hire this man! this is one of the best and most inventiveideas i've heard here since launch...

this is an excellent idea... and would allow crafters at least one extra slot if the chose to reside in a building...the terminal within each apartment is also a good idea to pay "rent"....to expand on this idea there could be different types of buildings lower income(small house size) to higher income medium (condo?)...plus the planet specific design and generic

Im not sure about having pre-allocated lots for one of these.

How about have it as a city structure with just 1 lot, but alot of city maintenance. and the owner of the structure can add people to each floor. once they add people to the floor then 1 lot is taken from the new tennant, a weeks rent would be taken at that point(to stop people leaving just before the city tax and therefor getting a house for free for a week) the rent of the building would be balanced with the tax, so if its full then you will get some nice city profit, if you dont manage to fill it then you will loose money.

As millitia are pritty useless for now the politicians can make people councilmen/women who will be able to place appartment blocks.

really do love the idea of these and it will give the cities a much needed new look.

the tatooine ones would be accesed via traditional steps, and the others would be elevators.

Like i keep saying there is so much potential in this game, i wish they used it a little more.

What happens to all the items left by someone who would be evicted and it would be easier if the landlord was able to set a access fee to each room like you would in a house. also would the owner also have to be a merchant to run it.

Better soloution for eviction:

1. Players are given normal strutural Terminals and pay maintence like normal, in addition rent islike city property tax, rent is set by the landlord.


2. Automatic Eviction takes place if player owes more than 2 days in maintence.


3. Manuel Eviction can be issued by the structures owner, the renter is given 2 days to leave.


4. Players who wish to rent most have a declared bank

In addition:

• Players also have a withdraw maintence on the terminal like with venders


• If evicted all money in maintence is returned to bank account


• Rent is like city income tax or property tax.


• Items left in a house when a player is evicted either




• Placed in the players safty deposit box (reason for a declared bank)


• Placed in a bag and appear in players inventory - more logical approach


• This may be a nice addition to merchants as a store front idea also, or a Mall

Apartments could be a great addition, but the Devs are picky at adding new systems to the game. A suggestion for anyone else who post is to capitalize on exciting systems in the game and apply them to the apartment idea, maybe they will be a reality soon. Maybe even after the 4 expansion pack

Egeis, Bloodfin

AWESOME idea.. I love it.. I thought about that myself, but never posted the details when we got into a discussion on why we cant' rent buildings in SOE cities..

Actually have3 different sizes of appartments like you do with housing:

1. Small Apartment could be a 2-story ( 2 apartment ) building using an elevator like in PA halls to get to the upper apartment.. each apartment would have 2 small rooms, slightly smaller in total square footage then a small house.. Each apartment has a max inventory limit of 125, instead of 150..


2. Medium Apartments could be a 2-story (4 apartment ) building using elevators again, to get to the upper apartments.. Each apartment lower and upper would have a porch/balconey to view the outside surroundings.. Each apartment would have 3 rooms and have a max inventory limit of 125.. I'm using this number because SOE treats small and medium houses the same in regards to inventory space..


3. Large Apartments could be a 3 story ( 8 apartment ) building using elevators again.. Each apartment on the first 2 floors would have 3 rooms and have inventory space of125 per apartment..This isthe same limits as a medium apartment.. The only different is that a large apartment gains you 2 more medium size units and 2 large size units (which the large unitis would allow 175 max inventory).. The 6 mediumunits would be located on the first 2 floors..The 3rd floor would be usedfor the 2 large penthouse 4 room suites.. All units would have porch/balconey for outside viewing.

However there are 2main concerns that have tobe addressed for this towork .. Both involvegriefing and/or cancelled account by the owner of these buldings..What we don't want is a landlord that imposes personal power over a rentor that would be considered griefing, which could lead to eviction and loss of inventory.. OR A landlord that cancels their account making the building go poof again causing undo hardship on the renter and their inventory.. Here are some addition things that can do to help those matters:

• A personal landlord would have to gain permission by the city mayor to place "said" structure inside city limits ONLY.. The ownership of this structure belongs to the city, and counts towards it's cost and building limits.. This prevents this structure from destroyed upon cancelled accounts..


• Once the structure is placed by the mayor as a City owned building it can NOT be redeeded or destroy as long as inventory is present inside the apartments.. In the extreme case that a city hall being destroyed, or city downsized, or any other possibilities of the building being in jeopardy of destruction a default 2 week countdown to destruction is given to each renter.. This gives the renters a 2 week notice that their inventory and housing is being destroyed..

You ask now.. who does the owerner landord make money on this, and how to finances work.. let me try to clear that up below:

• Once the building is placed the mayor then goes to the control panel and makes the deed owner "Landlord".. This is much like giving him the "admin" rights to the building.. Once a landlord is named, the landlord will receive a daily income for each occupied apartment..


• The landlord will NOT suffer any maintenance cost since it's the city thatown's the building and being charged for it.. This will allow the landlord to recover his initial cost in the deed.. After that is paid for it's all pure profit..


• Each renter will have a control panel to allow him the ability to give admin/entry rights just like housing.. This is where apartment maintenance is paid by the renter, which will be a moneysink paid to SOE at a lesser cost then housing..


• If the landlord sells his building, he can change the status to the new landlord by typing/transferlandord to the new person..


• If landlord cancels their account then the Landlord status defaults back to the city control, and the mayor can once again make anyone they deem fit as the new landlord.. The mayor can NOT change landlords while the current landlord account is active..


• If the landlord "original" deed owner determines they wish to relocate the apartment structure, they can either sell landlord status back to the mayor,, or give a 2 week notice that building will be relocated.. This should give renters time to move inventory out..


• The landlord has NO control over who can rent the apartments.. However, the landlord can go to the control panel and view who the apartment owners are.. If an apartment is vacant it will be displayed as vacant..


• If a potencial renter is looking for an apartment to move into they can also access the info panel to see if any apartments are vacant.. If there are, the person can move in and declare the apartment and start paying maintenance, thus occupying the apartment..


• If potential renter wishes to take over an apartment he may email contect to the apartment he is interested in and try to come up with an agreement to buy the rights to that apartment.. This can be done paying the current renter an incentive to move out and allowing the new renter to move in.. or if they want they could use the new feature of /transferrenter


• Maintenance cost on apartments can be added or withdrawed just like vendors.. so if you have 30 days paid and wish to move, you can simply withdraw all money's and move, thus making the apartment vacant.

I'm sure there is more that can be added to this, but this is only the basic of brainstorm.. What we all need to keep in mind is that players need security knowing they can't lose their inventory by griefing, yet give incentive to either rent or own, and to make sure everyone in the loop is protected from exploiting and undo hardship, yet add flavor to the game..

Great Ideas folks... I tossed out the basic idea, but most of everything that you guys have posted is more or less what I was kinda thinking, and some great stuff I did not think of. I didn't want to post every thing I had in mind if this gets implemented, it won't be exactly as I would like to see it, and I wanted to leave plenty of area open for discussion. I had many ideas of how to do this, but if this comes into game with any logical combination of the ideas posted above it will be great. I hope the Devs see this and like the concept, it seems to be a popular idea so far.

With a minor variation on this idea the devs could create mini storage centers. If the mini storage renter doesn't pay their maintence the owner of the storage center shouldtake ownership ofthe mini storage contents. Along with the ability to create these structures should be the ability to create boxes to sell to the mini storage renters. All this leads to random auctions of various neglected goods.

--Andrew Profit

As an architect, I would love to see apartments in the game, I believe it would be a great addition. I myself would move into one, because I use the lots for so many other things, and would like somewhere that I did not have to give up a lot to live.

From the first day I set foot in this game, I have wished for apartments. Back when neither mounts nor vehicles were in-game, hoofing it the 2000m to my house was TOUGH (esp since that trip took me both up and down theed's HUGE cliff and through two rivers). It's better now, but I really wish we had had some apts in major cities...maybe where the archs could craft the apartments and people could buy them and place them in slots in HUGE NPC cities.

Anian

I love this idea. HEY devs, how about it?