Game Guides Archive

Now, the complicated part.

Take Corellia. Corellia is supposed to be like a mini Coruscant. Its Coruscant, but with gaps between the cities. While Coruscant may be like New York or London, where various sub-districts have been formed when things were swallowed up, or perhaps Japan, where the cities are almost never ending, Corellia is more like a wider view of a whole country.

I think the main drive for people setting up "Guild Cities" is so that they can a) have an area in which they can charge taxes, b) have an area with their name on it, and c) have a few useful civic amenities like a Shuttleport, Cloning Center, Medical Center, Cantina, etc. Surely, if there was a way of setting up a small settlement with those things in, it would keep the size of a player "City" down. If, rather than taking a specialisation, you could build a structure, like a Research Lab, that would be better. If, instead of having a set city radius, it was determined by where abouts in your city people lived, it would be much better.

When I think of Starports, I think of Train Stations. In the States, this probably isn't as big an issue. But in the UK, the rail network is one of the major forms of public transport. Villages, Towns and Cities can all have Train Stations. They are put where they are needed, rather than where people want to put them. A lot of Stations have closed recently, but there are still a heck of a lot of them around...and thats just in England. I don't know how big the planetary maps are, and I can't be bothered to work that out. However, if you were to take an area that size of a country like England, I can guarentee I would be able to find more Train Stations than there are starports.

First and foremost, allow people to Declare Residence in an NPC city. What you need to do is visit the head of Civic Planning, converse with him/her/it, and get zoning rights to place one structure. You may only get zoning rights once per day, and you may only place a house, merchant tent, or shop (see below). Why bother doing this? Well, take a look at the amount of settlements close to Mos Eisley, for example. People set up those cities to be close the the Starport. Those cities aren't needed really, and are taking up space. If players had the ability to actually live in Mos Eisley, or in Bestine, or wherever, they could use the local medical, cloning and shuttleport facilities. To enforce this, the "you can't have a city this close to an NPC city" radius should be made bigger. I know there are already established settlements close to cities. Unfortunately, not much can be done about them. However, people may be compelled to move closer to the Starports, especially now JTL has hit our screens. I know I'd like to have a house close to a Starport...even if it was just a place to store all of the items I've salvaged from space.

With Player Settlements, what I think should happen is, rather than buying a City Hall, a politician buys a "monument". This monument would be like the center piece of the city, in a market place, or inside a guild hall, or whatever. It acts as the center of the city. Incorporated into its design is the "city" management terminal.

Next step, someone constructs a building within the "city" limits (20m?). Lets say this was a house. As it is within city limits, it may become part of the Settlement. To do this, the structure must be declared as part of the city, via its structural management terminal.

Someone else comes along. They build their house next door to the first house. However, House 1 was located right on the edge of the city radius. Provided that part of House 2 is within 10 meters (for a small house) of House 1, it may also declare residence within the city.

A third person comes along. If they were to place their House 3 beside House 2, within 10 meters, it could be declared as part of the city. A player could only declare ONE Residential structure (Small/Medium/Large) house within a specific city. This is NOT the same as declaring residence. In this case, you are merely registering yourself to pay council taxes to that city,not necessarily to live there (you may well live somewhere else).

As more people come to live in the city, and settle down, its radius begins to grow. It doesn't matter what status the city is...as more people move to that city, the city gets bigger. City Status would be something a little different, which I will come on to later.

Houses and buildings would havea different "radius" surrounding them, in which a building could be placed, and be part of the same city.I reckon this should bebased on 5m/lot. Since Guild Halls have now dropped in lot size, this means that a GH has an "influence" of 35m, which isn't obsenely over the top, IMO. As a guild, or someone who can afford a big house comes to live in your settlement, its "cultural influence" would expand. Civic structures, like Cantinas, Hospitals, Cloning Centers, Shuttleports and so forth would all have influence radii as well. This would be based on how "important" they are. A Cloning Center for example, would gain you more prestige than a Tavern, perhaps.

Additional civic structures should be added, such as a Tavern, and a Police Station. Gardens, Fountains and other decorations would all add size to your settlement. The idea is featured in Civilisation III. As you get better things, and more citizens for your city, its "cultural influence" expands.

There are, in my opinion, several types of building that belong in a city:

Residential
Small House

Medium House

Large House

Merchant Tent

Shop (a small house, but set up to look like a shop, with a back room, basement, counter, etc)

Guild Hall

Factories

Resource Harvester

Warehouse (A small house-sized structure, accessed via a terminal, in which items can be stored)

Bank

Tavern

Vehicle Garage

Police Station

Cantina

Gardens & Fountains

Theatre

Hospital

Cloning Center

Shuttleport

Residential, Business and Industrial structures are all player-owned. There would be options, from the Settlement management terminal, fora Mayor to create Residential, Business and Industrial districts, in which only those structures could be placed.

Civic Structures could only be placed by appointedMinisters of the city - individuals appointed by the Mayor into roles such as Minister of Commerce (business/industry), Minister of Development (housing/civic), Minister of Security (police), Minister of Medicine (tavern/hospital/cloning), Minister of Entertainment (tavern/cantina/theatre).

Settlements would be able to set several types of tax:

A tax for having a building within city limits. Cost is based on how many lots are used up with that building.

A tax for having Declared Residence within a Residential Zone.

A tax for having a shop/merchant tent constructed within aBusiness Zone.

A tax on using the Shuttleport.

These would be the four main taxes issued by the city. They would be set by the hour (or use, in the Transport Tax case). All taxes would go into a special Bank Account, created for the settlement, and accessed via the SMT. This account is where maintainance costs would be taken from. It is also the account into which all paid fines would go.

This works, quite simply, on a points system.

You can spend these points very much like you would spend Experience Points elsewhere. The way in which City Levels and Specialisations are calculated would have to be worked out differently. Every development would be cumulative, rather than in set stages.

Residential Rating. From 1-5. As you moved up the residential levels, there would be a discount in maintainance in your city, as you would be trying to improve things for your citizens. You would get better NPC repairmen, there'd be less polution, etc. You would be able to expend Residential points in order to increase this.

Business Rating. From 1-5. As you move up the ratings, players with vendors in your city gain more XP from each sale, and have to pay a little less for hiring those vendors. Think of it as having a good "workers union" locally, with good benefits for local staff. Mission terminals would also give better payouts in these areas.

Industrial Rating. From 1-5. As you move up, Crafting and Experimentation becomes more reliable within your city. Harvesters also become more efficient.

Civic Rating. From 1-5. This is the "name" of your city, and is connected with publicity and so on. These aren't "Cities"...they're just settlements. Outpost, Colony, Settlement, Village, and Township and should be the maximum ones. The planetary governments pay out money to Cities, into their Account. This is to help them support themselves, pay maintainance, and so on. The better your rating, the more money you get payed.

Special Specialisations. In addition to the four ratings, there are other specialisations you can "buy" for your city. These would be like cross-rating specialisations. If a rating helped out industry AND business, it would require both IP and BP. Some specialisations, based on RP and CP, might increase the number of Police NPCs given to your city. These titles would "stack"...they'd be like little awards your city had earned. They'd be displayed on your City Monument (they'd be listed, if you examined it), and would just make your city better.

Points would be issued monthly, or something like that, and would be judged in the week before that month. It would take the lowest level during that week, and calculate points from that. Costs would have to be worked out so that cities aren't getting top level improvements every week.

Since everyone wants to have a Shuttleport in their City (which I have to admit, you can't really blame them for...it is fairly convinient), my system allows them to have that, but *should* cut down on the over-abundance of cities on the planet. Eventually, cities might expand so that one flows into the other, like the districts/areas in New York and London. When that happened, little Settlements would turn into more realistic, big, chunky cities...but we would have far less of those than the "Metropolis"-sized things we have now.

A"District" rating would issued be for when two cities join together. "City" would effectively be "size 6" in the Civic Ratings, and would be formed when a Township and a smaller settlement joined together. When two houses, which are part of the two different settlements, come within each other's influence range (ie. their borders are touching), the Mayor of the Township may invite the Mayor of the smaller settlement to join with him. The Township would become aCity, and the smaller one would become a District of that city. For example, the Mayor of the Township of "New York" might contact the Mayor of the nearby Settlement of "Brooklyn", and invite his settlement to join with New York. If the Mayor of Brooklyn agreed, Brooklyn would become "Brooklyn, District of New York", and New York would become "The City of New York". The District would run itself, as before, expanding in other directions. New York City would run itself, expanding in other directions. However, the Mayor of New York would gain new abilities. Because he has a District under him, he gets extra money based on the size of that district, and extra Civic points. With enough Civic points (and enough Districts), a Player City would be able to build itself a Starport. However, we're talking about a pretty expansive Player City needed to do this.

NB. The Mayor of New York would have to be a Master Politician in order to do this.

For this to work, the cap would have to be removed off player cities...but setting up a city, and where you could set up a city would have to be more strictly calculated. I think it would be fun to introduce a more active political role for the Politicians, and to start getting a climate established in which all kinds of government-type things could happen.

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