Politician Archive
Thread: Repost: Some info from my last TC Thread
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Plinka wrote:
City Radii are:
Class I: 150m
Class II: 200m
Class III: 300m
Class IV: 400m
Class V: 450m
Those are, we assume, the buildable areas for inclusion in your city. We don't yet know how that relates to distance from other cities.
[Edit] We now know that a Player City Hall must be 1km from another Player City Hall.[\edit]
Plinka wrote:
Ooops, I just checked the Dev's terminal. I made a mistake on the taxes. They are income tax, property tax, sales tax, and a shuttleport ticket fee.
Property tax and sales tax look like they are percentage based whereas the others are flat fees.
Plinka wrote:
The maintenence cost of a City Hall (and conversely your city's base cost) is 50K per week.
[Edit]I have good reason to believe that this will be changing. No word yet on what that change will be.[/edit]
Plinka wrote:
Another player city fact.
All types of mission terminals are available for placement. That includes faction terminals for rebels and imps.
[Edit]Only a politician with Faction IV can place Faction terminals.[/edit]
Plinka wrote:
One politician tidbit: One vote = 100 exp. Since the first block is 1000, that's ten votes. The block with shuttles in it is 5000 exp. or 50 votes. It's tier II. So, in order for a city to have a shuttleport, the mayor will hvae had to had recieved 60 votes then to train the appropriate blocks.+
Plinka wrote:
I've been reporting about player cities and Politicians on another thread here in the Test Center Forums. I thought I'd consolidate some of that knowledge into one post. Keep in mind, the QA department has not yet finished testing that will allow us Test Center players to perform these tasks, but by examining the QA Player City and talking with some of its residents we've already learned quite a bit.
Before I cover City infomation let's first look at Politicians.
To become a Politician you need 500 apprentice experience from training other people. After all, you can't expect to become a mayor without pressing the flesh, so to speak. (For all those none-americans, "Pressing the Flesh" is a term used in american politics meaning to shake hands during a campaign.)
Once you have 500 apprentice experience you need to find one of the three Politician trainers. They can be found in the capital buildings on Naboo, Corellia, and Coronet in the capital cities.
To gain Politician Experience you need to get votes. So you'll need to be a declared resident in a city and you'll need to add yourself to the ballot for Mayor. Each vote you get will earn you 100 experience. That's the current rate on Test Center subject to change. Votes are presently the only source of experience for a politician and elections are held once per week. The tiers in Politician run at 1000, 5000, 10,000 & 15,000 experience each so you'll need 10 votes for a tier one block, 50 votes for tier 2, etc.
What does a block get you? It allows you to perform differing city tasks IF you are mayor. That's right, you have to actually be a mayor to perform any of the politician functions. You can accumulate experience without being a mayor but a mayor does things like set taxes, place buildings, and determines the direction and focus of the city. There are currently no non-mayoral skills. A politician is the only person who can place a city hall and a mayor is the only person who can place many of the other city structures like Shuttleports & Cloning centers. Mayors may grant permission to certain others to place a few player buildings such as cantinas and hospitals.
The Mayor makes money for the city by regulating taxes. The taxes that can be regulated are Income, Sales, Property and a shuttle fee. These are set by the mayor by way of a termainal in City Hall. Sales, and property taxes appear to be percentage based. Income tax is a set weekly fee.
Ok, that's a brief overview of the Politician, let's move on to what we know so far from Test Center about cities. Keep in mind that as of this time there's been no official documentation.
Player cities start with the placement of a City Hall. City Halls take zero lots as they are asscciated with a city, not a player. Also required, we believe, are 5 declared residents. That is to say, 5 people have placed houses (This could include the interim mayor who placed the hall) and declared themselves residents. That's the recipe for a Player City Low Calorie version. Oh, also needed is a lot of credits. At this time it is anticipated that a City Hall will require 50k a week in maintenence money. City Halls cannot be re-deeded, they can only be destroyed so place wisely.
City Halls come in three version: Naboo, Tatooine,and Corellia. While there are no generic city structures, player buildings have been expanded as to what planets they can be place on.
Corellia: Corellia and Talus
Tatooine: Tatooine, Lok, and Dantooine
Naboo: Naboo, Rori, and Dantooine
This looks to also apply to homes now as the corellian home in my pocket (Next to my city hall) is now buildable on Talus. Note that pre-patch built homes do not currently show multiple planet compatability but this may change in the weeks before this goes live.
The size of the starting Player City is 300 meters in Diameter, or 150 meters radius. The radius is the distance from the City Hall to the edge of town. So the different classes of cities diameters are as follows:
Class I: 300m (150m radius)
Class II: 400m (200m radius)
Class III: 600m (300m radius)
Class IV: 800m (400m radius)
Class V: 900m (450m radius)
We don't yet know how many declared residents are needed for each class of city, but we hope to learn this soon.
We've also learned that Trainers and Mission terminals (all types) add 1k each to city maintenence per week.
We've gotten to see many of the Tatooine structurs in place in the QA city. They are, to my mind, much nicer than the ones in NPC cities.
I'll be using this thread to report more information as it becomes available so you might want to float it.
[edit]Politician Trainers can also be found in around the city halls on other planets than the big three. Talus and Roir have Politician Trainers and there may be others, I've not actually looked for them. [/edit]
Plinka wrote:
Had some time today to chat with GreenMarine a bit and managed to get a few of the answers we've been looking for. I still have to go throught the transcript and look for tidbits but here are a couple of things:
City Sizes:
Outpost 5 citizens, 150m radius
Village 10 citizens 200m radius
Township 20 citizens 300m radius
City 30 citizens 400m radius
Metropolis 50 citizens 450m radius
These numbers are still subject to testing (Like all of the information I've been providing) and may change before this goes live.
Also, in the politician tree people have noted the empty box at Martial IV. While it's not yet noted, that box is the one that will grant the ability to place faction mission terminals using /installmissionterminal commands.
I'll be back with more information a bit later.
Plinka wrote:
When it comes to placing your hall, it's not the present size of your city, it's the maximum size that is checked. The hall has no way of knowing how many residents you will have as you place it, so it checks against the minimum distance to another city hall, 1km. If the distance is greater than 1km, then you'll be allowed to place your hall there.
In that regard, player cities are going to be first come, first served and there will probably be some anguish and wringing of hands.
An important thing to keep in mind is that cities aren't design to be small, private enclaves. They are instead intended to foster a new dynamic of cooperation and competition within large groups and it's going to be fascinating to watch how these new dynamics play out.
There may not be room for all of the cities that are being planned and you cannot exclude others from your city. Politicians will be competing for the votes that give them temporary control of a transitory office.
[Edit]Distance fixed in the above paragraph[/edit]
Plinka wrote:
Shakers wrote:I have a question. How does terrain work? Does it level the terrain for the entire area the city covers? Will the mayor be able to alter terrain to make more buildable space?
I think these are my biggest concerns as its pretty tough getting that many houses that close together unless you on the plains of Naboo or Tatt.
One of the things I asked GreenMarine about was relaxing the tolerances on houses so that they might be placed on slightly rougher territory. He said he'd look into that. (Just a reminder for those who wish to take that as gospel, he didn't say he'd adjust anything, or that he'd even get back to us.)
In other news, faction bases are not going to be allowed within player cities. Turrets and possibly minefields will be however so you can build a faction based city.
Any of the city enhancements, such as Stronghold (which gives higher defense rolls in PvP), will come at the cost of higher maintenence fees for your cities.
Oh and Red Light District has been renamed to Entertainment District.
There's a shuttleport now in QAVille, but don't take the shuttle to there, or you'll get stuck in the port. Little bug there. The building is odd in that you board the shuttle there from the arse end. I suspect that may change.
[Edit]QAVille has been moved and we've not seen a shuttle since.[/edit]
Plinka wrote:
FortunatusXIX wrote:And one last question which im suprised noone else has asked...how do you name a city?
When you set a city hall the first thing that comes up is a window saying that you cannot redeed a city hall and asks you if you're sure you want to continue. If you continue a window pops up asking you for the name of your city. After that, I don't know since we cannot yet start a city on test.
That should change soon.
Wala wrote:Construction I
Bank (Difficulty 16)
(Corellia (Talus), Naboo (Rori, Dantooine), Tatooine)
- 1550 Low Grade Ore
- 750 Metal
- 3 similar Wall Modules
- 3 similar Structure Storage Modules
- 1 Generator Turbine
(Maintainence Rate 150cr/h)
Merchant Tent (Difficulty 13)
- 400 Metal
- 600 Hide
- 200 Low Grade Ore
- 20 similar Fiberplast Panels
- 4 identical Reinforced Fiber Panels
Gungan Head Statue (Difficulty 15)
- 2000 Low Grade Ore
- 1000 Gemstones
Streetlamp (Difficulty 15)
- 300 Metal
- 2 similar Electronic GP Modules
(Streetlamps come in 4 styles, with 4 colors white,red,blue and green light to choose from)
Construction II
Cloning Facility (Difficulty 23)
(Corellia (Talus), Naboo (Rori, Dantooine), Tatooine)
- 1250 Metal
- 2350 Low Grade Ore
- 8 similar Wall Modules,
- 4 identical Power Core Units
- 2 identical Structure Storage Modules
Shuttleport (Difficulty 22)
(Corellia (Talus), Naboo (Rori, Dantooine), Tatooine)
- 1550 Metal
- 2700 Low Grade Ore
- 12 similar Wall Modules
- 3 identical Power Core Units
- 3 identical Structure Storage Modules
Small Garden (Difficulty 16)
- 1000 Flora
- 500 Low Grade Ore
- 4 similar Wall Modules
Fountain (Difficulty 15)
- 1000 Low Grade Ore
- 300 Metal
- 500 Water
Construction III
Hospital (Difficulty 26)
(Corellia (Talus), Naboo (Rori, Dantooine), Tatooine)
- 1650 Metal
- 3050 Low Grade Ore
- 8 similar Wall Modules
- 2 identical Power Core Units
- 1 Structure Storage Module
Theater (Difficulty 24)
(Corellia (Talus), Naboo (Rori, Dantooine), Tatooine)
- 1500 Metal
- 2300 Low Grade Ore
- 8 similar Wall Modules
- 1 Power Core Unit
- 3 identical Structure Storage Modules
Medium Garden (Difficulty 16)
- 1000 Low Grade Ore
- 3000 Flora
- 10 similar Wall Modules
Cantina (Difficulty 25)
(Corellia (Talus), Naboo (Rori, Dantooine), Tatooine)
- 1700 Metal
- 2750 Low Grade Ore
- 10 similar Wall Modules
- 1 Power Core Unit
- 2 indentical Structure Storage Modules
Construction IV
City Hall (Difficulty 50)
(Corellia (Talus), Naboo (Rori, Dantooine), Tatooine)
- 1800 Metal
- 4400 Low Grade Ore
- 20 similar Wall Modules1
- 6 identical Power Core Units
- 6 identical Structure Storage Modules
- take 0 lots
- maintenence cost: 50K/week
Large Garden (Difficulty 16)
- 5000 Flora
- 2000 Low Grade Ore
- 16 similar Wall Modules
Master Architect
Dantooine Meditation Area (Difficulty 16)
- 3000 Dantooine Fruit
- 1500 Extrusive Ore
- 13 similar Wall Modules
Dathomir Obelisk (Difficulty 16)
- 3000 Dathomirian Vegtable Fungus
- 1500 Siliclastic Ore
- 14 similar Wall Modules
Endor Huts (Difficulty 16)
- 3000 Endorian Deciduous Wood
- 1500 Endorian Evergreen Wood
- 14 similar Wall Modules
All types of mission terminals are available for placement. That includes faction terminals for rebels and imps.
Plinka wrote:
Shander wrote:
Thanks for the great info.. Quick question.. Have you ran into a cap of number of player cities per planet?
We cannot even make cities yet, and since there are far fewer players on test center than on live servers, it's doubtful that we'd ever run into any cap like that.
The cap will, in all likelyhood, be the landscape and the player distribution. You need a large are for the largest cities, there really aren't that many large areas of good buildable land.
Plinka wrote:
Mkappus wrote:Yup people are gonna be able to do that. One thing I heard someone mention is that people may not be able to vote until they have been a resident 7 days. Not sure if that is true or not. If it takes them 7 days, you at least have some time to do things to defend yourself.
Actually, I think that may work a bit differently. You cannot vote unless you are a declared resident. You can only declare residency once every seven days. Someone moving into a city can declare residency and vote, but they cannot redeclare residency elsewhere for seven days.
When the city hall is placed, the politician placing it becomes the first mayor, then one week later the first vote is held.
Plinka wrote:
Shakers wrote:I got a few questions.
I saw some very large radio tower lookin things in QA. Are those going to be placeable? I am assuming the lamps are.... I hope... Is there any list on the little things that are being added to place around town?
Those are part of the city hall structure.
[Edit]Tatooine halls have these posts, Naboo halls have obelisks, Corellian Halls have footstools (For lack of a better word)[/edit]
Plinka wrote:
TaimaishuYun wrote:
i got a question, do u get to furnish these buildings?
Indeed you do.
Plinka wrote:
Kyroneus wrote:From what we know , it can and MUST be placed in a location with five residents (not just a house , but a place where a player has declared residence) including the Politician. I could be wrong , but that's the way I read it.
If you're planning on moving , do it soon and declare residence as fast as you can. As soon as this hot potato show's ANY sign of stability , it's going live. FInd a nice empty spot , lay out your houses , and leave enough room for a PA hall sized building and a line of small harvesters on one of it's narrow sides. This is about the size of a city hall. I measured it earlier , but I'm at work and can't remember it's exact dimensions.
Actually, once you drop the city hall, you have 24 hours to get five declared residences in your city radius.
Plinka wrote:
Couple of tidbits tonight. I'll probably start a new thread tomorrow:
Registering your city costs an extra 5k per week. That puts your city on the map.
At this time all the options show up on the city terminal in spite of your not having those skills. I expect that may change before this goes live.
Once you become a mayor, your mailbox become Spam Central Station. You get an email when someone places, you get an email when someone declares. It all adds up fast.
Voting exp is cumulative. People can change their votes so you don't get any exp until the city cycles over the election. We might expect a tweak in this area, time will tell.
That's it for tonight, It's been a long evening as mayor and I'm hittin the sack.
Plinka wrote:
As we don't have a Politician Forum, I'm posting this here in the Test Center forums. This is where I play and this is where Politicians are currently happening.
Yesterday I set a Corellian City Hall upon the face of Corellia. I have survived the experience and am now ready to talk about the joys and the sorrows of a first day Mayor.
Placing the hall is an exciting experience. Searching for and clearing the right spot needs to be done. Placment is a one time deal so the pressure is on to get it right the first time. You don't get a second chance unless you're carrying a second hall in your pocket.
You name your Outpost during the placement process. The outpost must have a name that is unique to the planet upon when it is created. So while there can be a New Austin on Corellia as well as on Tatooine, there cannot be two New Austins on the same planet. I chose to name my outpost New Hope. It's a name with many many meanings and no two people are likely to think of it in the same way, but it seemed to me to be a very fitting name for the first player built city in the universe.
Here's where you run into your first problem. For the next week your city will be an outpost, with only a 150m radius. If you're not on absolutely flat unbroken ground, then you're soon going to run out of room and any city planning you did will be out the window. This is what happened to me. The players moved in, we had a start on a semblance of order, I turned my back and houses were placed where I didn't want them to be. Then I went to bed. When I got up 10 more houses were there and the areas I had planned for features were covered.
This may not be a problem for city halls going down where player housing already is, but for new outposts it's a problem.
One possible solution. Provide a grace period for housing placement. For the next 12 hours after city hall placement, recalculate the radius based upon the number of declared residents appearing. So in after 2 hours there are 10 residents, then the city would become a village with the 200m radius. Thus allowing a bit of planning in placement to take place as the city is first created. At the end of twelve hours, lock the city down for its first week.
Currently New Hope can be described as Urban Blight.
Immediately after placement, the Mayor is going to have one question on her mind: How much maintenence money should I put in. Well to judge by the display at the City Management Terminal the answer is "I dunno."
The Terminal currently displays neither the maintenence rate nor the time of the next election. Hopefully this can be looked at and added to the displayed information.
For those wondering, maintenence is currently expected to be on a weekly schedule instead of hourly. So once a week the full maintenence for your city will be debited against your treasury. Currently that amount is 50k plus add-ons. Planetary map registration is an 5k per week add-on. A city specialization is a 20k per week add-on. Add-ons add up.
One of the next things the mayor notices is all the new email. There's a new email to the mayor on city creation. There's a new email anytime anyone sets something up in the city, there's a new email whenever someone declares residency. In other words, there's a lot of email. It's times like these you wish you had a more full featured email client that could sort things into a city mailbox.
One wonderful feature that I was asked about many times last night is that spawns do not occur within the current radius of your city. No more lairs on your front doorstep.
Those are just some of my thoughts after my first Mayoral experience. I'll be bring you more as time marches forward.
To recap the problems I've seen so far:
1. City radius does not take into account influx of residents immediately after creation.
2. No way to control building placement
3. No display of maintenence requirements
4. No election/maintenence clock display
5. Your mailbox becomes Spam Central Station (See number 5 below)
And to recap the delights:
1. It's a city! Yipee!
2. No more front door spawns!
3. You sell a lot of houses!
4. Tourist Traffic increases!
5. You get a lot of mail. (See number 5 above)
6. It's a city! Yipee!
GreenMarine wrote:A few comments:
1. City radius does not take into account influx of residents immediately after creation.
We noticed this being an annoyance with Leetville also. I'll probably increase the size of the outpost to compensate, but the max size of a city probably won't increase.
2. No way to control building placementThere are two reasons why. One, we were worried about it being a hassle to implement in the time we had for the initial player city development. Two, we were worried about it being griefable. There is a way you make your city require zoning rights for others to place structures, allowing you to control who places structures to prevent one group from griefing another group's city with harvester blocking, etc.
3. No display of maintenence requirementsIn today's code push to TC, you will see a maintenance report on the management terminal. I'll add a clock to that at some point.
4. No election/maintenence clock displayI can probably add a clock to the maintenance report. Elections, maintenance, and city growth/shrinkage all happen at the same time.
5. Your mailbox becomes Spam Central Station (See number 5 below)There isn't too much I can do about that at the time being, given how our mail system works. If I get time, I can probably add toggles you can set at the management terminal to reduce the mail the city system sends out.
GreenMarine wrote:A mayor with Civic Policy I can set the city to "require zoning rights." When a city requires zoning rights no one may place a structure in the city without permission. The mayor and the militia can grant a person permission to place structures for 24 hours with /grantZoningRights. Using /grantZoningRights again on someone that already has rights to your city will revoke the rights.
Plinka wrote:
Ah, with every day comes greater understanding. Today's nugget of information concerns city growth.
Do not expect to place your city hall and instantly be a Level V city simply because you have 50 residents nearby.
Grown your political muscle takes time.
When you first place you're city hall, you will be an outpost.
If you've got 10 residents at the next election, you will become a village.
If you've got 50 instead of 10, you will still become a village.
City growth is a ladder in which you must climb every rung. The rungs are far enough apart that there are no shortcuts, no double steps.
You must progress in order from 1 to 5, with an election marking each stage of growth.
There are no instant metropoli.
Plinka wrote:
Communist9137 wrote:This is all well and good, only trouble is, what happens when you have already started a city and the mayor's house is not in the 150m radius of the city hall?
The politician who places the hall and becomes mayor, is automatically a resident of the city hall and cannot declare residency elsewhere while in office.
Plinka wrote:
Lol. I'm getting a kick out of you all. I put the email thing in just as a factoid. I put it as both a plus and a minus and everyone's focusing on it.
Ah well, I needed a good chuckle on a Saturday morning. Silly humans.
In other news, someone in another thread asked about Battlefields. Since I'm trying to have only one thread I'm responding to at once on City quesitons, I'll answer that here.
Yes, you can place your City near a battlefield and yes, your radius can intersect battlefields. However any part of your land area that is inside a battlefield will remain unbuildable. I don't know, though, what that means for being able to call pets/droids at will from there.
Plinka wrote:Another question from another thread:
Anyway how will item's work? Can Mayor 1 decorate the town hall then Mayor 2 comes along and throws out all the furniture? Can you admin folks into the town hall and let them decorate? Will town halls be cluttered up by sloppy mayors that leave backpacks of crafting materials in them? Oh the horror!
The mayor is the admin for the city hall and as such and pickup, drop, and move things inside. There is no way to admin anyone else to the building.
Plinka wrote:
In response to a question in another thread, no there will not be player Starports. Shuttles are as far as they go.
Look at it this way, you really only need one starport per planet and we've already got several on most.
Plinka wrote:
Joshai wrote:Consider this as well:
Plop down a city hall next to the house of someone you hate
As long as you are mayor, you can eject that person from the town until they give up and their house decays. Not many people would go to such lengths, but some people would, as scary as that is.
You cannot eject someone from town.
You can ban them from using town services like shuttles and cloning centers. You can have keep the militia on their tail driving them from town whenever they are outside. That's about it, really.
Plinka wrote:
LVDogma wrote:This garden thing is messing with our planning!
If you think the garden thing is interfering with your planning, wait till vehicles go in and the garage thing happens.
No, we're not getting vehicles soon, but garages will be part of vehicles and everyone will want to place their garage in the city.
Plinka wrote:
Every opportunity for griefing that we can come up with is being looked at and discussed.
As I continually reiterate, we're in testing. Everything is subject to change and there will, most likely, be changes.
I wish I could offer you a more satisfying response, but I too am simply a player.
Question (repost):
Can you find out if there are any plans to make player HQs redeedable? Since you said that cities cannot be build with their radius intersecting a player HQ, there will be immediate problems with city location. I'd appreciate it if you could find out how they plan to adress this issue.
thanks for the repost Pinka 
and yeah i think it does deserve a sticky
Do you think you could include, in yourQA thread,building foot-print sizes forthe city structures,for all those city planners out there by chance 
? Thanks!
Also, a question... How many lots does a cantina and hospital take? What does a theatre do and does it have any benefit over a cantina? (and why did they spell theatre [made it er instead of re] wrong in the shematic? 
) {if i'm mistaken and theres various ways to spell it, please correct me =x }
Night Storm, I believe that theater is the American way of spelling it, and so probably the most common usage in SWG.
I could be wrong here.
And Plinka, ace man. Thanks for putting all the time and effort to get this stuff out to us. It means a lot!
Ragnoraq wrote:
/bump
all should read this.
-Ragnoraq
/agree
maybe it should be a sticky? It keeps falling to page 2-3...