Politician Archive

The Idea:
Part of the Politician profession, the ability to build and maintain travel routes between cities is an important part of the Galactic economy. Though the Politician is responsible for laying out the route of new roads, the work is actually accomplished by using his Binary Load Lifter Droid. What better way to bring people to your city than to help them get to it faster and safer!

Types of Roads

Trails
Pounded out with the most basic of materials, trails follow the contours of the land, while providing a much easier travelling experience for both animal and machine. Trails end at the edge of water ways and are unable to be built on steep terrain.

• +30% Terrain Negotiation
  
• 20% Less wear on vehicles and mounts
  
• +10% Burst Run Effiecieny
  
• Upkeep in credits only
  
• Partly degraded Trails don't lose bonuses. Fully degraded Trail sections dissapear
  
• 10,000 units of Low Grade Ore per block to build (Plus Droid power)
  

Hiways
By upgrading upon the original foundation of their trails, Politicians can build great Hiways throughout the lands. Due to their great advantages and costly upkeep, some Politicians choose to put Tolls on their Hiways. Some of the most beautiful bridges in the lands of all the Galaxy are part of the Galactic Road system, spanning large water courses. Travelling the smoothed out, hill free landscape of the Galactic Road System is like a dream come true for many travelling merchants!

• +50% Terrain Negotiation
  
• 70% Less wear on vehicles and mounts
  
• +10% Burst Run Effiecieny
  
• Tolls can be added
  
• Upkeep based on usage. Paid for with credits and repair work
  
• "Repairs" can be done with any afiliated citizen who has a Binary Load Lifter Droid and repair materials (ore/chemical)
  
• Partly degraded Hiways lose bonuses. Fully degraded Hiways sections turn into Trail sections, then into nothing
  
• 25,000 units of Low Grade Ore & 5,000 Chemical per block to build (Plus Droid power)
  

Things to Note:

• Can be built over rough terrain, but not up steep slopes or over lakes. Can fill lanes in a shallow swamp.
  
• 3 Sections of Trails must be built at one time.
  
• In cases where one Trail section is missing in a link, it can be rebuilt.
  
• Can not be built in 'squares', meaning roads can not cover ALL the land.
  
• To access a road, select it and use your radial menu. Otherwise, crossing a road is no different than crossing any other land.
  
• Once on a road, you will not leave it until you select the option from your radial menu (like being on a mount).
  
• Though creatures will not spawn ON the road system, they will spawn near enough to be troublesome!
  
• "Num Lock" running will always keep you on the road, but I wouldn't go too far away incase you're waylaid by foes!
  
• "Ownership" of the road goes by sections built. This will allow Cities to share the burden.
  
• Ownership of sections can be transfered from Politician to Politician.
  
• A reasonable maximum section limit will be set per Politician.
  

Message Edited by falacy on 07-26-2004 12:48 PM

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Jaspor wrote:

Cool ideas.

Though, sadly, I think the Devs have said on more than one occasion that we wouldn't see roads because it would hurt performance. ie, more placeable stuff for the server to keep track of and for the client to draw.

Basically, they are a technical challenge to implement, so we won't get them.

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I've heard this too. It's the same reasoning they used to explain why we'll never be given the ability to alter terrain. Apparently the landscape for every server is drawn from one central file, or something like that(why it was done this way is a mystery to me), so they can't allow permanent changes to the terrain or every server will need to be calculated separately in real-time, which would throttle performance.

My explanation might be off, I'm not reallya programmer.Maybe someone else can explain it more clearly.

Originally, on paper I did have 'Roads' between trails and hiways, but I couldn't come up a reasonable set of bonuses per each level with them in. Also, this is SOE we're talking about here: I didn't want to overload them work! :-)

PsycoticChipmunk,
See that's a great idea you have, but how would the voting system physically work in the game? I don't know enough about the profession to really offer suggestions on this aspect, however I do believe it would be possible to a level of 'sharing' when it comes to the road system. To answer your question about the begining and ending of roads, I think they should be able to begin and end anywhere, except through NPC towns. This would allow a large city to have a highway straight through their middle and have some trails spreading out like spider legs through them.

Truthfully everyone, this is the sort of content that should have been released back when the game went live last year. With 'Space' coming out 'soon', I highly doubt SOE will step up to the plate and add content of this magnatude, even in 2005/06. But, it was worth a try!

Astev_Aris,

Wow!!

I read your post while I was at work and was a bit bummed out. They are correct that it would add a lot of server load to have an entire instanced road system. But then, out of no where on my way into the cafeteria I had an epiphany.

If it's true that all terrain for each world on each server is genetated by a single set of files, then this actually makes the building a road system EASIER! The real challenge would be making the road system meet people's desires. Here's how and why,

The 'Rental' Approach

A long while back, the developers posted screen shots of their admin tools, showing an overlay of all the player buildings on Corellia across each server. Though well splattered, it was cute to see that many of us seem to think alike: Most built up areas are the same across each server! With this in mind, the dev team could chart an Hiway system that would visit most every major loaction on each planet and simply 'hardwire' it's art and properties into the main planet files: The same way they have for mountains and water! At that point, they would show up on every server exactly the same (which in all honesty would be a handy feature). As far as ownership and upkeep, here's how it would work:

• Player Cities would be able to select sections of roads to maintain, anywhere on their planet
  
• Unmaintained roads give no bonuses (save that they're realatively flat)
  
• Maintenance would cost credits/meter (and would be reasonable)
  
• The roads begin with minimum bonues and can be upgraded (artwork stays the same)
  
• Upgrades would require a Birnary Load Lifter and resources to perform
  
• Upgrades are all or nothing for 'owned' sections (to minimize server load)
  
• Tolls can be added (unpaid tolls simply negate bonuses)
  

My reasoning for this aproach is that it would eliminate the need for 'instanced' world artwork and variable world geometry. The only things we would need to 'instanced' on each server would be the numeric values that represent how characters interact with the land, such as the Terrain Negotiaion variable value (which is built into the land).

By building one road template and laying down the art work once, the dev team would really only need to develop an 'instancing system' for a handful of numeric values per server, representing the following variables,

• Type/Level: 0-4 (Four steps to get max bonuses!)
  
• Terrain Negotiation: 0-50
  
• Vehicle Wear Bonus: 0-70
  
• Burst Run Efficiency: 0-10
  
• Tolled: 0 or 1
  
• Toll Amount: credit/meter
  
• Matainence Amount: credit/meter
  
• Matainence State: 0-100
  

If thought out thoroughly before launching into a design, I am positive the team could make this idea work - and work well!

Hey, and the best part is, all your need to do is set up you're own wee little mini server with one planet, make a small road, test it until it works, then spread it all over the planet in a sensible fassion, done! It would make a great 'skunkwork project' for a dev with some free time