Politician Archive

According to Plinka in her goodbye note paving is on its way in for Player-Cities. Now is the time for us as Polticians to contribute our thoughts to the Dev Team while it is still in the works so we can get our ideas across before (rather than after) it is patched into SWG. I have some ideas on this.

In this post I will cover the following issues:

1. What should pavement look like?


2. How should pavement be placed?


3. How much pavement should each Player-City get?


4. How will pavement be payed for?


5. Where does pavement fit on the Politician skill-tree?


6. How can we use pavement?

What should pavement look like?

Pavement for Player-Cities should carry the same appearance of the available building types for each Player-City planet. Just like the civic structures they should come in three flavors: Nabooian Pavement, Correllian Pavement, and Tatooinian Pavement. Any Player-City that can place a Nabooian style building can place Nabooian Pavement, just as any Player-City that can place a Tatooinian style building can place Tatooinian Pavement, and so on. Certain planets like Dantooine that can host multiple building styles have a choice of pavement options.

The look of each of these pavements will correspond with styles currently seen in theNPC cities. Nabooian Pavement will have a cobble-stone look to it. Tatooinian Pavement will have the look of the broader reddish bricks/tiles you can find in NPC cities on Tatooine. Correllian Pavement will look like concrete. All the pavements will look like the pavement you find in NPC cities.

When placed in a Player-City it should be placed per single grid-square (1 x 1). If a single Pavement Square is placedthe pavement graphicsshould not look perfectly squareor take up the full volume of the 1 x 1 single grid square. The edges should blend into the grass or sand just like they do in NPC cities, so if you place a single Pavement Squareyou may see more rounded corners than straight edges. If two or more Pavement Squares are placed adjacent the point at where they touch will not be rounded or blended, but instead will continue seemlessly into each other so they look like a large paved area instead of two seperate pavement-grids next to each other. If you have a large group of Pavement Squares all adjacent to each other (5 x 5 for example) only the outside edges will be rounded/blended and any edges facing the interior will have graphics that extend to the edge of the grid square. Entire Pavement Squares sorrounded by other squares will have graphics that fill the whole of the grid square. [Sidenote: If any of you have played with the map builder in Age of Empires/Mythologies what i am describling looks like it does when you place pavement, or any other ground covering in that game.]

Pavement should have unlimited placement tolerances in regards to the pitch of the land.It should flow with the contours of the land just like it does throughout other areas of SWG. Pavement should not be used as a levelling tool. Many Politicians are asking for some sort of levelling of the land, but I feel that would be better served to be accomplished with structures and not in paving if the Dev Team were to implement that feature.

How should pavement be placed?

Pavement shoud be placed per single grid square (1 x 1) with a combination of the existing Structure Placement Screen and Decoration Placement Commands. It should not be allowed to be placed in any grid square that is occupied by an existingstructure or decoration.

When a politician wants to add a Paving Square they can go to their CTRL-A menu under the "Misc" tab and click on the option for Pavement or just type the command /InstallPaving. This is as you would doto place a Skill Trainer using /RecruitSkillTrainer or a Mission Terminal using /InstallMissionTerminal. The next screen that would come up would give you a choice of available paving-styles for the planet where your Player-City is located. Again, this would be similar to the screen that appears having you choose what type of Skill Trainer or Mission Terminal the Politician wants. The next step is where it differs from the Skill Trainer and Mission Terminal Placement. Instead of "dropping" the Pavement Square where you are standing it would take you instead to the Structure Placement Screen. The Politician would then be able to place the pavement in any "green" area that is in their vicinity on the screen. Areas that will show as "red" are any areas occupied by a Garden, Structure, or Decorations such as statues, fountains and streetlamps just like it is now. After the Pavement Squares have been placed they occupy that land and will show as "red" and unbuildable for any other structures that use the Structure Placement Screen.

Items that can be placed on pavement would be any "droppable" items such as Mission Terminals, Skill Trainers, Streetlamps, Statues, and Fountains. Anything that uses the Structure Placement Screen like Houses, Civic Structures, Guild Halls, Faction Bases, or Gardens cannot be placed on squares occupied by pavement. Camps should also not be allowed to be placed on pavement.

To remove a Pavement Square it would be much like the steps in placing them. A simple command like /RemovePaving would take you into the Structure Placement Screen where you would only have to click on the Pavement Square for it to be removed.

How much pavement should each Player-City get?

The actual number of Pavement Squares can be calculated using the same formula that is being used for quantity of Civic Structures: (X * City Rank) + Y. With a Pavement Square the grid-size of 1 x 1 I could easily see a fair formula like (30 * CityRank) + 20 base adding 10 more per City Rank

Broken down per level it would be the following:

• Outpost Rank 1: (30 * 1) + 20 = 50 Paving Squares


• Village Rank 2: (30 * 2) +30 = 90 Paving Squares


• Township Rank 3: (30 * 3) +40 = 130 Paving Squares


• City Rank 4: (30 * 4) +50 = 170 Paving Squares


• Metropolis Rank 5: (30 * 5) +60 = 210 Paving Squares

These numbers are an example and you can see how they can be played with or adjusted as needed. The type of formula itself seems like the the best way to go in my opinion since it is working for them elsewhere. 210 Paving Squares may seem like a lot, but they really aren't when you have a Metrpolis with a radius of 450m. Pavement should not be counted as a decoration and should not have anything to do with the decoration limit.

How will pavement be paid for?

Pavement can be paid for, like all Civic Structures and Decorations through tax revenue by charginga credit amount per Pavement Square. Using my formula above if you charged 200 Credits per Pavement Square the maximum taxpayment per Player-City Rank would be the following:

• Outpost Rank 1:50 Paving Squares * 200 = 10,000 cr


• Village Rank 2: 90 Paving Squares * 200 = 18,000 cr


• Township Rank 3:130 Paving Squares * 200 = 26,000 cr


• City Rank 4: 170 Paving Squares * 200 = 34,000 cr


• Metropolis Rank 5:210 Paving Squares * 200 = 42,000

As before with the calculation of how many Pavement Squares the price per square can be altered as well. I think that 200 Credits per Pavement Square is fair and I believe the above calculations of maximum tax payments per rank is in line with current taxes for structures and decorations.

Where does pavement fit on the Politician skill-tree?

The best place I can see for pavement to go on the Politician Skill Tree is in City Customization II. I have no formulas to back this one up, just opinion.

How can we use pavement?

Well, the most obvious use for pavement is to create clear and recognizable streets in our Player Cities. They can also be used to create an area that stands out for Mission Terminals and Skill Trainers. Another less obvious but still useful way to use pavement is using it to block off space for future expansion. There are more uses I'm sure but those are the immediate ones that come to mind for me.

In Closing....

I'm sure I missed something somewhere. Please comment and add anything you wish to this. I feel it is important that we communicate our ideas with the Dev Team Before this is implemented rather than after. We will be the ones using it after all so it effects Politicians uniquely.

Thanks for your attention.

Great work Tempel!


-Marc

A very well though out post. The only point I disagree on is that pavement should terraform. I am getting sick of the all the gullys and ravines between the structures in my city. The areas in between, when paved, should raise to "street level".

Great post.

You are right, road tiles are in progress. While in progress is certainly the perfect time to make the developers aware of your desires. I think one thing we would all like to know is whether the tiles will count against our decoration total, which is already very tight. I will include the results of this thread in Thunderheart's response thread on the correspondent forum, and will hopefully be able to get some answers back on this one.

I know we are all tired of the "little space city on the prairie" look.

Great post mate... i have one great objection... your number of pavement squares per city is ridiculously low... on a metropolis it amounts to 4 1/2 city halls... i couldn't even fill my main square with that... but overall some excellent ideas mate... and i agree with the ground leveling... that should be a seperate tool entirely... and there is such a thing as knowing the ground you are on before placing your city hall... i don't believe mayors who just planted anywhere should have their hand held because there are natural formations obstructing their city... one thing i would go for however is a cost associated with leveling terrain... much like with enough construction you could level a hill or fill ina crater... and it should be delayed so that it feels like you're actually clearing up the terrain...

Yay! Tempel!

You know, Unisom works pretty well bud .

Someadditional thoughts...

what about several sizes of pavement blocks... 1x1, 2x2, 3x3, 4x4, 5x5, 6x6, 7x7... this would limit the number of objects necessary to pave an area, much like the cost to the decoration count is the same for a streetlight and an exotic garden... it would also allow us to merge areas that have different sized streets together more seemlessly... i'd also like to see diagonal blocks... so we can pave diagonal streets without using too many 1x1 blocks to fill in the raggies...

simplify the whole problem... and a "pave all" command... paves the city at maximum city cost till the border of your zones... it would institute a terrain change thus hopefully easing the number of objects present in the database...

and i have a question... if you have a main square... with say tents and the like... could it be made so that the pavement would go under the structure? so you don't have patches in the pavement... may not work... but i'm curious...

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Shaedar wrote:

Great post mate... i have one great objection... your number of pavement squares per city is ridiculously low... on a metropolis it amounts to 4 1/2 city halls... i couldn't even fill my main square with that... but overall some excellent ideas mate...

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The numbers were examples that can be changed, but I think you all understand were Iwas going with it. I'm more interested in a fair and balanced formula than the exact number at this point. An Outpost shouldn't have more than it needs just as a Metropolis shouldn't be ridiculously low. If players have a built a Metropolis it'd better well look like one.

Why go through all this trouble with pavement as placed items. Just change the code a bit to any area under a cities influence get a "pavement texture" and spare us the bugs and bother of "placing" pavement squares. Lots of concerns...the small areas in between buildings wouldnt be paved, footprints, etc etc. Just change the texture lol. Flattening the ground or at least filling the gullies would be nails, but no need for the devs to spend too much time on asphalt when there are things like player garages, apartment buildings etc etc that would offer more bang for the buck so to speak.

Your limits are a little tight, and with database issues it may not be possible to tracka sufficient number of "tiles". Instead, I'd prefer to see an option to tile areas around all existing city structres (say 5 radius?), or to define paved areas. Both would be easier on the database to implement, one would think.

But then, I'm not a dev, am I? :-) Great post here if it's workable with higher limits.

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Seneardon wrote:
Why go through all this trouble with pavement as placed items. Just change the code a bit to any area under a cities influence get a "pavement texture" and spare us the bugs and bother of "placing" pavement squares. Lots of concerns...the small areas in between buildings wouldnt be paved, footprints, etc etc. Just change the texture lol. Flattening the ground or at least filling the gullies would be nails, but no need for the devs to spend too much time on asphalt when there are things like player garages, apartment buildings etc etc that would offer more bang for the buck so to speak.

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I agree but since the Dev Team has chosen not to tell us how they are proceding with this I had to assume they would make them placeable like other Player-City decorations/structures.

I think that it should be auto terrain to texture as pavement.. although i think that the percent of the city that is paved .. should be deterimined by city rank...

with rank 1 getting.. 10-20% of total area paved.. (being number of meters around city hall) and increasing to full 100% of radius at rank 5...

bridges and walls.. though that could be a tile thing

City Tiles would be crappy. The lag created woudl be intense. It really needs to be a code change. I say all or nothing, and then let us place GRASS tiles out if we want a patch of green. And of course there are gardens. I'd like to make little ponds too, while they're at it.