Cities And Housing Archive

In every server i have characters in I stumble onto the same annoying problem : Everywhere i go I end up playing 'house slalom' as I have to dodge building after building after building ..in some servers even as far as 5km away from the starport.

When taking missions I find my mission hopping upwards of 6 to 8 times because the new WP appears inside a building and it 'hops'.

When I got to player cities i find them to be devoid of any real purpose. You go there, see a lot of houses and a few shops..but thats about it. If you want to go shopping you go the hundreds of houses surrounding the starports...thats where all the shops really are.


My solution to all this is simple:

1- Remove the ability to build structures (except harvesters and camps of course) in all but player cities.

2- Remove the ability for players to own more than 1 house (cantinas, medical centers are not houses)

3- Remove the ability of players using factories as storage.

4- Grant Merchants the ability to build +1 merchant tent and +1 lot per merchant box in 2 branches and in master box, thus allowing a merchant to have a total of 1 house and 5 merchant tents and have a total of 16 lots avaliable (making merchant a very good thing to have to run harvester-acquired resource bussiness).

5- Allow player cities to place a shuttleport from the very start.

6- Add a new type of player-purchased starship to be crafted by shipwrights: Planetary Shuttles. Each planet will have its own shuttle 'type' just like houses, there will be no 'generic' shuttle type. Players can buy shuttles for each planet and use them to hop around player cities and starports without waiting for shuttle. The city fee for landing in the player city will still apply (think parking fee).

7- Increase bank storage space to 500 items.

8- Make the Binary Lifter droid be able to become a 200 item 'storage' droid

With the above changes, planets will no longer be festered with buildings all over the place, player cities will become hubs of commerce and services, travel will be quick and easy. Players will not pollute the landscape with multiple houses (which is one of the reasons of the overbuilding problem now) since they will have storage space avaliable in the form of bank or Binary Lifter droids. Merchants will flourish in the player cities as they place stores in many of these cities..or they use their extra lots to become resource vendors, lowering the price of resources overall.

I have to disagree with point 2.
Especially for RolePlayers it is often important to place further houses, just to have a Hotel or other special houses with RP interior design, just to create a certain atmosphere and environment.

Furthermore, point 2 should be divided in

2.1 Remove the ability for players to own more than 1 house

2.2 Give Cities as institutions lots, over which the Mayor decides and can place medic centers, cantinas, theaters etc. as city-held structures.


I would also add some ideas:

9 - Make it possible for neutral cities to place one-of-a kind structures that add
a) a special look to the city
and
b) grant some special bonus (example: Weapon Experimentation +10)
to attract players who need the special bonus.
These structures should be entered or used in another way to receive the effect of the bonus.

10 - Make structure updates possible, with whom you could extend your items-per-house for an extra fee added to your maintenance. (see thread "Solution to item limit in houses" or something like that)

11 - Make fortresses available to Imperial cities and hideouts to Rebel cities. (The faction accumulated version of 9)
These "Faction-Upgrades" make it interesting for faction players to live there, for cities to declare themselves for a special bonus, at the risk of being attacked.

guys point #1 and #2 are the very source of the problem the game is in now. Players owning 5 houses+ ..multiply that by the entire server population and you will see just what the problem is. Ever wondered WHY theres so many player structures 5km+ away from every starport in corellia, dantooine and tattooine? Its not that theres that many players, its because every player can put multiple houses down anywhere they feel like it (mostly).

Resource shifts happen and all the sudden the areas where theres a high % of resource are overbuilt by player houses. Most of those houses arent even 'houses' they are storage depots.

"Especially for RolePlayers it is often important to place further houses, just to have a Hotel or other special houses with RP interior design, just to create a certain atmosphere and environment."

you can RP with your 1 house. Having more than 1 house only causes the overbuilding problem. Want to make a hotel or RP interior design? Fine, do it in your own 1 house. You can remodel the house as many times as you want, anytime you want and even change your house type anytime you want. But 1 house is all you will get, otherwise everyone will be building multiple houses all over and overbuilding IN player cities.

I have to disagree.
I am needing 2 houses. Why should I have a hotel as a roleplayer and my character has no house to live in?
Basically I am devoting possible item space and a lot to the general atmosphere and the enjoyment of other players.

If you insist on the 1 house rule, here is a compromise, maybe:

2.1 - Players can build only 1 house in cities. Mayors can make exceptions to this rule in a limited margin for every city. (Means: Only so and so extra houses per city -> forces mayors to think about the use and makes RolePlayer Cities get more atmosphere)

2.2 - (Same as above)

once you start making exceptions you start to screw things up. To make a mayor decide who or how many extra houses per player in the city will only cause his own city to get overbuilt and players looking for a city to live in will find it full because people have more than 1 house. Remember, under these changes you cannot build outside a player city.

If you want to make a hotel for RP purposes (cause it serves no purpose in the game other than RP really) then you can do so in your own house. Just because you want to RP doesnt mean you should get special treatment and not others.

People have already suggested that houses have variable storage depending on how many 'lots you spend' on a house. That coupled with possibly a housing tax on people with more than one house would stop all those people who just wanted the storage.

Imagine - they want storage.
Currently that means they must find a convienient space, place a bought house and pay the maintenance on it. Repeat for all lots.

With changes, they could have one house, with all the storage they could normally have in total, pay less for maintenance, pay no housing tax, and clean up the environment.

Those who wanted extra houses, would have to pay a fairly steep housing tax for the second and subsequent houses, but it would still be possible. (I'm sure fellow rpers will understand.)

People are cheap and lazy - if they don't have to have extra houses - if it's cheaper for them to only have one, then that's what they'll do.