Politician Archive
Thread: A How To: Planning A City Commerce Area
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Meplorium
Fri Dec 03, 2004 5:21 pm
#1
This question was asked on the Starsider boards, and before I knew it, I ended up writing a "How To". So I figured I might as well put it here as well. I hope this is useful for anyone trying to do this.
The Metro of Crystal Hollow, Starsider has a commerce area. ‘CH’ is spilt up into several 'quarters' by the terrain of the city and one of the flat plateaus is completely for commerce/city services. The other areas in the city are for basic residential or industrial areas. We have a very successful 'Tent Bazaar' commerce area that I planned out. So with that experience, here are some things to concider.
Getting Traffic
Being organizedis key. Plan out the area before setting up shop. Firstyou needto get people toyour commercearea. Traffic, it is pretty simple.City services get a lot of foot traffic so placing them all in the commerce area like the shuttleport, clone center, a bank, medcenter, cantina and skill trainers is ideal. Second is some kind of attraction draw, like a POI, a major NPC city or even just an improved job market specialization. For CH it is the abandoned rebel base that serves as a beautiful backdrop to the commerce area. Also you need to have something people want to buy. A few top-notch crafters is required. Even a group of the best crafters will gettraffic all on its own.
Planning the Overall Area
Once you have all your services in a centralized area and close to something that will draw people in, then plan on room for both shops and parks. You want the area to both be functional and look nice. I wouldn't exactly put all the services right together, then the shops and then the parks. I've seen some cities do this and it makes for a rather bland-uninteresting area. Salt and pepper your services, shops and parks in an orderly fashion that still concentrates the traffic. In this regard too much room is bad. Basically you should be able to see everything there is to see no matter where you stand in the commerce district. This also means you can walk from place to place without need for a vehicle.
The Shops,Mall or Tent Bazaar?
Now there is a debate as to what to use as a shop. The big PA hall type malls work well as do open air tent bazaars. Both have advantages and disadvantages which I will talk about below. What doesn't work well is a bunch of houses. When I see a medium naboo house I don't think 'SHOP'. I think ‘private house, don't bother’. Maybe if I look at the house at the right angle I will catch the shop sign that says what is it. That leaves you with two options, tents or big single PA hall/large house, that is usually situated in such a way to get notice, like right in front of a shuttle port with maybe a few statues and some street lights.
Now there is a debate as to what to use as a shop. The big PA hall type malls work well as do open air tent bazaars. Both have advantages and disadvantages which I will talk about below. What doesn't work well is a bunch of houses. When I see a medium naboo house I don't think 'SHOP'. I think ‘private house, don't bother’. Maybe if I look at the house at the right angle I will catch the shop sign that says what is it. That leaves you with two options, tents or big single PA hall/large house, that is usually situated in such a way to get notice, like right in front of a shuttle port with maybe a few statues and some street lights.
The PA Hall Mall
Now the single PA hall mall has a great advantage, and that is you or some trusted citizen owns this PA hall. It will never be there for a long time empty. Also you can pretty much accommodate anyone any time that wants to place a vendor. A secondary advantage is that it only takes up a 9x7 space. So if you are tight on room, this is ideal.
The down side to the mall is that it is both boring and overwhelming at times. You can have too many vendors in one spot. Instead of vendors barking ads or important messages, you get hit with tons of spam. Basically you lose that vendor skill this way as your message is drowned out. Second it is confusing to see so many vendors. If the customer ever gets confused during a sale, you lost that sale. The work around is to have the space divided up and very organized. You also can decorate the space near where the vendor is with what they sale. I've seen this done to great effect when someone with good interior design skills is allowed to work their magic.
Now the single PA hall mall has a great advantage, and that is you or some trusted citizen owns this PA hall. It will never be there for a long time empty. Also you can pretty much accommodate anyone any time that wants to place a vendor. A secondary advantage is that it only takes up a 9x7 space. So if you are tight on room, this is ideal.
The down side to the mall is that it is both boring and overwhelming at times. You can have too many vendors in one spot. Instead of vendors barking ads or important messages, you get hit with tons of spam. Basically you lose that vendor skill this way as your message is drowned out. Second it is confusing to see so many vendors. If the customer ever gets confused during a sale, you lost that sale. The work around is to have the space divided up and very organized. You also can decorate the space near where the vendor is with what they sale. I've seen this done to great effect when someone with good interior design skills is allowed to work their magic.
The Tent Bazaar
Malls can and do work but no matter how much you dress them up on the inside, from the outside it is just another PA hall. That is where the tent bazaar has one of its greatest strengths. You don't decorate the inside of a shop with the tent bazaar but rather the outside area. You have choices of parks and lights and statues and all can be inter-mixed with your city services. If done right, this can make for a very interesting area that people will enjoy. If people enjoy their time in your city, they will remember it and come back. Any long lasting business is successful because of repeat customers. The key to repeat business is that they enjoy their time shopping. That means a good product at a good price in a friendly and warm environment.
Since a customer will not be walking in the door and have everything in front of them like in a mall, you end up counting on the tent signs to display what they sell. Now whenever some one sees a tent, they think 'SHOPPING'. This is a much more desirable impulse thought than 'Private Home'. Some feel that tents are ugly but even if you feel they are ugly, you still have that 'shopping' thought if you see one. It is great advertisement without having to do anything at all. People will go out of their way to look at your sign to see what it is you are selling. They won't do this with a large house or even a PA hall. There are too many of those without anything to sell for that to be a natural response.
Another great advantage to tents is that each merchant has their own personal space. This is huge to gain trust of important merchants. No one is going to place a vendor with 10-20 million credits of product in some house that they do not know will be there tomorrow. They also get to decorate or hold personal inventory in that space. 75 items isn't much, but that tent doesn't need many items to be fully decorated. 250 items is just enough to fully decorate the main room in a PA hall. The area to storage ratio of tents is very attractive in this regard. I personally can fully decorate a tent and have enough space left over for a full back pack.
There are downsides to the tent bazaar and why you don't see them very often. First from a city point of view empty tents are bad. They take up room and their maintenance is such that they never go away. They also tend to put off shoppers who waste time by walking into an empty tent. This used to be a major problem with the Malls with empty vendors. Now vendors will disappear after 1-2 months after being ignored. That may seem like a lot of time still, but tents can easily be paid for up to a year. This can be worked around by simply having a select few merchants in the city put up tents for multiple people to use. This works best as you can manage the tents to have stocked vendors. This is similar to the PA Mall and 7 lots gets you 7 tents and 525 item storage.
The last downside is you need Eff. 4 of merchant to have a tent. Not many have this skill. However your big time crafters that would require ownership of their tent to move into your city have this skill. If you have a citizen hold all or some of the tents on their lots, then this tends not to be a big deal. You can also sprinkle a few houses in with the tents, parks and city services to help with this problem and still maintain that 'SHOPPING' thought.
How to Plan Out the Area
How much land will youl need? Well you need 9x7 grid space for the PA mall, and 5x6 for the shuttleport. More is better though. Each tent is 3x3, a clone center is 5x5, a bank is 3x3 and parks are 3x3, 5x5 or 7x7. Cantinas run at PA hall size, so 9x7. You can plan out your area by using those sizes as guild lines. Grid paper or cut out paper squares work great for mapping aids.Keep in mind every city structure, shop and park should be within walking distance from each other. From there try placing a structure to pull up the over head map and 'map out' the area. This is need to take any unbuildable land into consideration. Any nice looking trees, rocksor pools ofwater will need to be accounted for. Once you have the buildable area made out, then simply arrange the structures on that map and rearrange them until you have the area set up in an interesting and attractive way. When you start placing structures, it is often best to start with the center point structure, like a shuttleport, or something that can hold the place of a shuttleport until you can place a shuttleport. Then you can start putting down tents, parks, a cloning centeror a Mall.
How much land will youl need? Well you need 9x7 grid space for the PA mall, and 5x6 for the shuttleport. More is better though. Each tent is 3x3, a clone center is 5x5, a bank is 3x3 and parks are 3x3, 5x5 or 7x7. Cantinas run at PA hall size, so 9x7. You can plan out your area by using those sizes as guild lines. Grid paper or cut out paper squares work great for mapping aids.Keep in mind every city structure, shop and park should be within walking distance from each other. From there try placing a structure to pull up the over head map and 'map out' the area. This is need to take any unbuildable land into consideration. Any nice looking trees, rocksor pools ofwater will need to be accounted for. Once you have the buildable area made out, then simply arrange the structures on that map and rearrange them until you have the area set up in an interesting and attractive way. When you start placing structures, it is often best to start with the center point structure, like a shuttleport, or something that can hold the place of a shuttleport until you can place a shuttleport. Then you can start putting down tents, parks, a cloning centeror a Mall.
Message Edited by Meplorium on 12-03-2004 04:37 PM
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