Politician Archive

Howdy everybody,

Here's my impressions of Player Cities after the first week. What do you guys think?

The first question that needs to be addressed is caps on Player Cities. While right now they are mandatory (as required by the program), I think in time it should be viewed as each planet can only support so many, as the difficulty of each planet and political makeup of the planet would become natural limitations of how many cities there needs to be. One thing I would like to stress here is that faction affects everything, especially with guild based towns. People will PvP out of their homes, especially if they're in towns. It is ridiculous to assume otherwise. Also, people will set up bases around their towns and will try to defend them as best as they can. This goes well with the continuity of some planets; however, directly subverts the entire view of others. I'm going to try detailing a few here, but I don't have the time to hit them all.

Also, I think a clear distinction between an outpost and a city needs to be made. They're two fundamentally different things that call for different structures. The clear difference in my mind is that Outposts are places where people come together to survive because of harsh environmental conditions. They should be relatively weak, but contain the few basics (mission terminals, a shuttleport at least until the space expansion, cantinas, hospitals, and maybe cloning centers. They should be not be able to have all of them, but merely access to them and the ability to place all of them. This would cause the politician to make hard decisions about what the community really needs. However, I also think that outposts should be fairly undemocratic. Things get done better with a prime head, which would be chosen on a much rarer basis than a city's politician. As for their experience, I think they should advance much slower; however, most of what they need is in the first few boxes.

As for cities, they are environments that exist because of what I'm going to call human problems. Either they come together because they want to live in the same area or they have the same beliefs (ie faction or PA), these are denoted to be more civilized. The current system does not reflect this at all, something that I believe is destroying the SW feel of it.How it should work, is that eachplanet is ranked on its civility. It shouldn't be that hard torank, make it a one to 10 scale and allow a certain number of cities of different rank per. Also,put caps on the number of outposts. A highly civilized planet should not have many outposts (unless you're talking more about suburbs, which would be a whole different topic).

Ultimately, the goal is to represent the feel of the planet. In this regards, the GCW and factions in general should be the dominating effect. Certain planets should be in contention, but others should have a pervading sense of who's in charge.

For example, Corellia is a relatively neutral planet, with a large population and not particulalry daunting animals or aggressive factions. It would be a prime place for cities of any faction. The continuity would not be broken by having several small towns and a few of the larger ones. However, having outposts here would be almost ridiculous. Corellia is mostly civilized and should reflect that. A few outposts wouldn't be unacceptable, but having them dot the map would be hard to believe.

Naboo, on the other hand, is closely monitored by the Empire. It should be of extreme difficulty to establish a Rebel player city on Naboo. Granted, there is Moenia; however, this is explained not as an outright Rebel town, but a small community that cares little for the Empire yet is tolerated by the Empire because it is so insignificant. In this way, the Rebellion can carry on its activities within the confines of Moenia; however, it is not an outright overt town. However, I've digressed.Naboo is a welcome home to any Imperial and should be regarded as such. Rebel players should feel that they have to be on their guard on Naboo. Having a base set up would be downright stupid for the Rebellion to allow, and therefore I'd say that Rebel bases should only be allowed in certain areas of Naboo (the south mostly) where the Empire's presence is not so overwhelming. I don't think it would be terribly hard to implement either, as it is already possible to restrict building in certain areas, but I'm no programmer and I know how especially difficult a game of this magnitude is.

Finally, I'd like to address my home, a special planet known as Lok. Part of this has been based off of my experiences on Lok on Eclipse, which have totally broken any feeling of Star Wars-iness for me. Lok is supposed to be owned by Nym. Nym hates the Empire and has ridden Lok of most of them, excluding an outpost in southern Lok managed by a total buffoon. My friends and I decided we liked the planet and the freedom it granted and decided to move in. We've been there forever and have deemed ourselves the Guardians of Lok.However, with the advent of Player Cities, many people have been forced off of their traditional homes and onto "lesser desired" ones such as Lok. On Eclipse, there has been a huge influx of Imperials, all of whom have threatened our home numerous times. Granted, players should be able to live where they want. Howevever, on a planet such as Lok, Nym rules alone. In an ideal world, these Imperials would be allowed to live there, but Nym would run them off the second they went overt. Instead, they travel around Lok overt, passing through it's only star port, in Nym's Stronghold of all places. On planets such as these, where the Empire has no presence for a reason, it should be extremely difficult for them. There are far too many planets that the Empire dominates already, but this one is supposed to be different. Therefore actions need to be taken to ensure that these planets keep their feel, as prescribed by the SW EU. Personally, I'd like to see lots of Nym's pirates around, attacking any overt Imp. I'd love to see kimo raids on towns, even our fledgling one. Huge cities on Lok should be non-existent, as it should be on Endor and some of the other more advanced planets. Outposts would be the norm, and even then they would be few and far between.

So that's my biggest gripe right now. I'd love to hear your thoughts, and please feel free to share. I know this may be a bit biased, but I think it's truth is evident. Also, I know this may be a daunting task, and I'm definitely not expecting it on the second or even third pass, but I think this should be the direction that Player Cities should be headed.

Representing a large Imp only city......to serve as a staging ground for Moenia troubles, I must say I love your post

Pray, my friend, that we can set up properly to go back and forth between us. I'm trying my friend.........really hard

Techno City still doesn't officially exist. I'm very happy for you, Florian, Dom, and the rest of the gang. I want you to be strong out there, as I imagine you want strong Imp targets.

my only thought on this is.. if your a thought to rebel only planet.. and a city of imps appear... and Nym hasn't dealt with them.. It is in my opion that a player such as yourself pick up where Nym left off and rid the planet again of the invading imperials.

You can't let them take you over. It's war after all.

It's a war, but so far we're one Rebel guild against 7. Granted, we've got the firepower and experience, but no one can hold off 7 Imperial guilds of about equal size forever. Right now, I'm merely trying to get the rules of engagement straight so we can eliminate possible griefing, a topic I completely skipped on my post. So yes we'll step up, but there's no way we can dream of driving them off. Instead, that's what the planet should do. The environment itself should not be warming to these little guilds that want to set down and cause trouble. I want Nym getting involved and Kimogila raids. I want the advanced planets to be hard, essentially. They should all be hard for different reasons, whether it be their remoteness or an imposing faction, but right now it's a very weak system.