Cities And Housing Archive
Thread: Turn NPC cities into Player cities!
for a while i've been thinking that we shouldn't reallyhave player cities. but i think that instead of getting rid of player cities, we should get rid of the NPC cities (in that they would be taken over by, and lived and workedin byplayers)
we as players are the population of the galaxies, so why should there be these hugebeautiful cities out there that we have no access to live in or have control over?
a fun and dynamic system would be something like this:
- player politicians run for various offices, or maybe better yet (to keep it simple)just a city council made up of 9 players.
- the citizens (those living in apartments or who own shops in the city) may vote on the candidates. of course to prevent lag, apartment buildings could be instanced or something. there MUST be a way to pull off the apartments idea.
- those politicians elected to the city council will have long term missions which consist of decision making for things like balancing the budget and so on. each decision would be decided by a vote among the council. they'd have to decide on taxes of all kinds, defense budgets (paying extra Imperial taxes to get protection from the Empire, or creating an independent police force (either NPC or Player made)), healthcare budgets, arts and entertainment, crafting, ect...
- upon success (like keeping the budget balanced for a month straight) the city will be allowed to expand. then the council can vote on how to expand the city. they would add buildingsthatgive certain bonuses.eitherfor defenses, cultural improvements, business improvements, ect... that would make each city have it's own identity. also they would be allowed to add housing to the cityeach time they expand.
- upon failure, the city will fall on hard times. losing some of the buildings that improve certain things.
- some factors that can make balancing the budget challenging and interesting could be: raids by NPC forces, criminal activity, Imperial tariffs, natural disasters, health crisises, rebel activity (that could be good or bad depending on the city).
- the system should keep itself in check. for instance: if a city grows large and adds housing on the outskirts, it should also place defensive measures near the new housing. if the city falls on hard times and the defense budget is cut down, then citizens will not want to live in an unprotected area. thus creating a "slum" area of the city. if the slum becomes too dangerous it can be condemned by the Empire and torn down. that would prevent cities from growing too large and having ghost town areas.
why would this system benefit the game?
- it would provide instant content for Politicians, a profession long neglected to the point of removing skillpoint costs! 
- it would add to the immersion by making cities feel and function more like "cities" and less like "starports with some buildings around it".
- it would boost the community between players, as cities would form neighborhoods, and you'd see more "locals". rather than the current player city system where player are tucked away from each other.
- it would provide easy routes to new and fun content for the GCW. like defending the city, choosing allegiances, ect...
i REALLY hope a Developer reads this and maybe picks up even the smallest amount of inspiration from it. heck you can steal the whole idea if you want! i don't care 
(although i'm sure others have posted similar ideas before me)
i just want the game to be fun, and this is one way i see the game could be A LOT more fun.
Message Edited by GanymedePharuu on 04-08-2005 05:41 PM
I enjoy my break from all this idiocy playing SWG without all that garbage.
glory wrote:
Sounds too much like real life with all the friggin petty laws and rules. Everytime someone sneezes government legislates new laws about sneezing. Our country (USA) has far too many rules, regulations, redtape and laws...just to give the stinking government something to justify the far too many politicians (barf).
I enjoy my break from all this idiocy playing SWG without all that garbage.
hehe well i doubt it would or could get that far along in conveludedness (is that a word?)
the function of the city council would basically just vote on how much to tax the citizens, and where to put the tax money (into hospitals, schools (building with trainers),law enforcement/defense, crafting, ect...)
where they put the money would determine what is so great about the city.
but there should be dynamicproblems that arise that put strains on the budget. sort of like a "sim-city" type overgame so that the politicians can have fun in this game and not just be the person who makes and sets up a player city.
Palad wrote:
This sounds like a lot of fun and wouldnt eliminate player citys. remember not everyone can live in a npc city and you cant expand them so player citys would still be around, just fewer (And thats a good thing, driving 30M between player citys is stupid give us a bit of space).
well in the system i laid out the cities would be expandable. the city council would vote on what types of buildings to add each week or two or month or however they would work it. but in state that the Cities are in right now they wouldn't have to do any expanding for a while. many of the exsisting buildings would be turned into apartments or shops. they would just have to add defense/law enforcement related buildings.
but yes a system like this would trim the fat from the ghost town Player cities, without actually forcing people to leave the Player cities they've worked sohard to build.
GanymedePharuu wrote:
Palad wrote:
This sounds like a lot of fun and wouldnt eliminate player citys. remember not everyone can live in a npc city and you cant expand them so player citys would still be around, just fewer (And thats a good thing, driving 30M between player citys is stupid give us a bit of space).
well in the system i laid out the cities would be expandable. the city council would vote on what types of buildings to add each week or two or month or however they would work it. but in state that the Cities are in right now they wouldn't have to do any expanding for a while. many of the exsisting buildings would be turned into apartments or shops. they would just have to add defense/law enforcement related buildings.
but yes a system like this would trim the fat from the ghost town Player cities, without actually forcing people to leave the Player cities they've worked sohard to build.
bluejanus wrote:
GanymedePharuu wrote:
Palad wrote:
This sounds like a lot of fun and wouldnt eliminate player citys. remember not everyone can live in a npc city and you cant expand them so player citys would still be around, just fewer (And thats a good thing, driving 30M between player citys is stupid give us a bit of space).
well in the system i laid out the cities would be expandable. the city council would vote on what types of buildings to add each week or two or month or however they would work it. but in state that the Cities are in right now they wouldn't have to do any expanding for a while. many of the exsisting buildings would be turned into apartments or shops. they would just have to add defense/law enforcement related buildings.
but yes a system like this would trim the fat from the ghost town Player cities, without actually forcing people to leave the Player cities they've worked sohard to build.
The NPC cities are hard-coded. Getting the devs to allow them to bemutable based on player actions is probably expecting too much. Most of your proposals could probably be set into the politician profession for all cities rather than NPC cities. I also don't see much detail about the cost of running a NPC city. Player cities are relatively small, yet cost quite a bit. How are you going to fund a NPC city?
why is it expecting too much for the devs to make the game more fun for more types of players?
and if they did set my ideas into the Player cities, then why not just get rid of the NPC cities and let a certain amountofPlayer cities on each planet get a starport? and also allow cities that want to be theBigCitiesto have apartment buildings and other such Big City type structures rather than individual houses.(it's essentially the same thing as what i'm proposing)
the only problem with that would be the naming of cities. the devs might have to force names upon certain cities for the sake of continuity. (we couldn't have Corellia without a Coronet, ect.) but i'd hope that someone creating a city wouldbeproud to have their city be THE Coronet, or THE Mos Eisley, and so on.
and i think they'd have to rework the way cities are funded (cost wise). but the larger cities would have taxes to fund themselves (more residents = more taxes collected). it's all part of the balancing the budget game.
GanymedePharuu wrote:
bluejanus wrote:
The NPC cities are hard-coded. Getting the devs to allow them to bemutable based on player actions is probably expecting too much. Most of your proposals could probably be set into the politician profession for all cities rather than NPC cities. I also don't see much detail about the cost of running a NPC city. Player cities are relatively small, yet cost quite a bit. How are you going to fund a NPC city?
why is it expecting too much for the devs to make the game more fun for more types of players?
and if they did set my ideas into the Player cities, then why not just get rid of the NPC cities and let a certain amountofPlayer cities on each planet get a starport? and also allow cities that want to be theBigCitiesto have apartment buildings and other such Big City type structures rather than individual houses.(it's essentially the same thing as what i'm proposing)
the only problem with that would be the naming of cities. the devs might have to force names upon certain cities for the sake of continuity. (we couldn't have Corellia without a Coronet, ect.) but i'd hope that someone creating a city wouldbeproud to have their city be THE Coronet, or THE Mos Eisley, and so on.
and i think they'd have to rework the way cities are funded (cost wise). but the larger cities would have taxes to fund themselves (more residents = more taxes collected). it's all part of the balancing the budget game.
It's expecting too much for the devs tochange hard-coded NPC cities. So, say the players in the city want it to be Imperial only even if the control of the planet was Rebel. How does that work? Theresidentsdon't want newbies to start the game at the city, where are the devs going to spawn newbies?
Btw why is making NPC cities player-controlled any more fun than starting a player city?
Btw taxes largely don't work. The taxes on services and property taxes are the only ones that regularly work. Since there is no property tax on hard-code buildings, how do you expect to pay for anything? Btw, what happens if the residents don't produce enough income for the NPC city to operate? What happens?Automatic shutdown of all NPC city services?
bluejanus wrote:
It's expecting too much for the devs tochange hard-coded NPC cities. So, say the players in the city want it to be Imperial only even if the control of the planet was Rebel. How does that work? Theresidentsdon't want newbies to start the game at the city, where are the devs going to spawn newbies?
It's never asking too much for the devs to provide us with a fun and exciting product. If that means going back and changing a core part of the game, then so be it. That's basically what's happening with the CU, so it's not unprecedented.
If the city was Imperial on a Rebel controlled planet, that could be instant player-basedcontent. The opposite faction would encroach on the city and there would be raids on the city's NPC defense forces. Player residents could participate in defending the city as well.
Why wouldn't cities wants new players to start in their city? if they made the city into a great one then you'd have instant new residents, meaning new customers for your shops, and new taxpayers.
Btw why is making NPC cities player-controlled any more fun than starting a player city?
Because the large cities are iconic places in the Star Wars universe. Because the're the centers of culture and travel, and should be the centers of business as well. Because they'd also be the center of content related events. Because you can't build a Player city up to the proportions of a true metropolis, and you rarely see any players in Player cities because they're all hanging out in NPC cities when they're not out killing or crafting things.
Btw taxes largely don't work. The taxes on services and property taxes are the only ones that regularly work. Since there is no property tax on hard-code buildings, how do you expect to pay for anything? Btw, what happens if the residents don't produce enough income for the NPC city to operate? What happens?Automatic shutdown of all NPC city services?
Taxes work. if you're saying that the game mechanics for taxing doesn't work consistently enough, then they would need to make it work so thattaxes are collected regularly and put into the city's treasury. actuallythere wouldn't be property tax on the "hard-coded" buildings. the apartments would have rental costs, those could generate plenty of credits to run a city alone. so the only truetax would be sales tax. also things like the starports, shuttles, and parking garages would generate income for the city just like normally (you've seen my other post about vehicles and parking garages, so maybe there would be a parking fee to store your vehicle there. on a similar note starports would have a parking fee for ships).
if the city doesn't generate enough income on it's own via city services and apartment/shop rentals, then there is something seriously wrong. the city would fail and maybe run on a bare-bones emergency budget? i dunno.
GanymedePharuu wrote:
bluejanus wrote:
It's expecting too much for the devs tochange hard-coded NPC cities. So, say the players in the city want it to be Imperial only even if the control of the planet was Rebel. How does that work? Theresidentsdon't want newbies to start the game at the city, where are the devs going to spawn newbies?
It's never asking too much for the devs to provide us with a fun and exciting product. If that means going back and changing a core part of the game, then so be it. That's basically what's happening with the CU, so it's not unprecedented.
If the city was Imperial on a Rebel controlled planet, that could be instant player-basedcontent. The opposite faction would encroach on the city and there would be raids on the city's NPC defense forces. Player residents could participate in defending the city as well.
Why wouldn't cities wants new players to start in their city? if they made the city into a great one then you'd have instant new residents, meaning new customers for your shops, and new taxpayers.
I don't agree that doing this would make the game more fun for the majority of players. The point I was trying to make about the faction control of the planet was that when that occurs the NPC cities are patrolled by the winning faction troopers and the opposite faction goes into hiding. A player controlled NPC city could contravene that game mechanic. What is the value of making the NPC player controllable. What can be done in a NPC city (other than the bazaar and starport) that can't be done with the existing system in a playercity. While I would think that most cities would like new citizens from new players, lots of player cities are hostile to strangers. What happens if you have players controlling a citythatare hostile to strangers andare hostile to new people trying to experience the game for the first time.
Btw why is making NPC cities player-controlled any more fun than starting a player city?
Because the large cities are iconic places in the Star Wars universe. Because the're the centers of culture and travel, and should be the centers of business as well. Because they'd also be the center of content related events. Because you can't build a Player city up to the proportions of a true metropolis, and you rarely see any players in Player cities because they're all hanging out in NPC cities when they're not out killing or crafting things.
I oppose the idea, because I think player cities would be greatly diminished if a city had the benefits of a starport and bazaar that the other cities could not match.
Btw taxes largely don't work. The taxes on services and property taxes are the only ones that regularly work. Since there is no property tax on hard-code buildings, how do you expect to pay for anything? Btw, what happens if the residents don't produce enough income for the NPC city to operate? What happens?Automatic shutdown of all NPC city services?
Taxes work. if you're saying that the game mechanics for taxing doesn't work consistently enough, then they would need to make it work so thattaxes are collected regularly and put into the city's treasury. actuallythere wouldn't be property tax on the "hard-coded" buildings. the apartments would have rental costs, those could generate plenty of credits to run a city alone. so the only truetax would be sales tax. also things like the starports, shuttles, and parking garages would generate income for the city just like normally (you've seen my other post about vehicles and parking garages, so maybe there would be a parking fee to store your vehicle there. on a similar note starports would have a parking fee for ships).
if the city doesn't generate enough income on it's own via city services and apartment/shop rentals, then there is something seriously wrong. the city would fail and maybe run on a bare-bones emergency budget? i dunno.
Taxes do not work. You say that the mechanics don't work as well, so how can you say that taxes work. This is incidently on the list of issues that the politicians have been asking about but really not much has been done about it. Not all cities btw are well-travelled. There are always a good number of NPC cities on every server that are seldom visited.
you seem to be thinking as if i'm asking for the devs to throw this system onto live servers tomorrow, without changing core systems within the game. i'm not asking that at all. i realize it wouldn't really work the way the game iscurrently set up.certain thingswould need to change for a system this immersive to work successfully. but once they changed them this system would be a lot of fun i think.