Politician Archive
Thread: First Day City Metropolis (A Success Story)
Page 1 of 1
Shaedar
Sat Jul 03, 2004 7:31 am
#1
Greetings fellow politicians,
After many months of hard work I have come to the conclusion that the city I have constructed since November 13, 2003 (Day 1 Player City) is a success. Some key points that have made me come to this conclusion.
1) PVP - We now have the most active PVP city on Sunrunner with 9 HQs surrounding our shuttleport in a tight and deadly configuration. The only location on the server where it is truly safe to run around overt. I haven't been covert in months.
2) Community - A truly thriving community where you actually can find dancers and doctors just hanging out, and people congregating to chat as well as run missions in groups or when necessary to defend our town. Although there are one or two cities on the core worlds that are large and relatively busy, none have the level of integrated community that ours does.
3) Vendors - Our vendors are fully stocked all the time to the extent that not only are they doing well, but opposing faction members are building homes nearby not to fight us but to shop in our market place.
4) Growth - The city is a metropolis and maxed out on decorations, etc.
This in my opinion qualifies as a success as there is little to build or expand upon. Though I do have some ideas on how to improve it I finally feel that my task is complete. Sure there were many times in the past that I would have been comfortable making this statement, but now I can truly say if I went AFK for a long time I'd feel confident that I'd come back and find a thriving bustling city.
Having said this I would like to give a brief review of the effort it took to get here. Followed by a recommendation for the process and commitment necessary to build a city of this sort for prospective politicians, I will seperate the guide from my muscle flexing to make it more useful hopefully as a singular guide. Please note many of these things were a group effort I'd really like to thank my guild and city managers and everyone else that has helped along the way. The following will be told from my perspective however as I believe it will be of the largest help to politicians in general.
New Suntir, Lok --- A History
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
New Suntir, Lok was founded on November 13, 2003 at the southwest foot of Mount Chaolt, Lok. It was founded by a group of imperials based out of Suntir Station, an imperial community controlling and adding to the POI NPC battleground located just west of Bela Vistal, Corellia. Being based on Sunrunner. which had at the time a 2/3 rebel majority, and being based on Corellia the most dominantly rebel planet on the server, we found that we were constantly on the defensive and unable to mount an effective offense because we were always running home to defend our base. After much discussion we determined that we needed a change of scenery if we were to turn the tide of war.
Pre-patch Preparations
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Upon successful agreement that a move was imminent we determined that we had to decide where we were going to settle. The requirements were tough:
1) Isolated - it had to be isolated enough to allow us to build our might without the complication of being attacked on a daily if not hourly basis.
2) Crafting Community Friendly - It had to be accessible for our crafting community to sell their goods.
3) Long-Term Potential - It had to have long term potential when player cities went live. Unfortunately these requirements are easier said then done. As it would turn out only 1 and 3 were immediately fulfillable. I would like to at this point give my sincere thanks to our crafting community for having the foresight to sacrifice customers while we waited on a shuttle.
So the hunt began. Once more details were released on player cities we knew that we would ultimately be looking for an isolated plot of land that was 900m in diameter with good buildable land. I won't go into details of how difficult this was to find and there were several of us searching for a location, however I will remind the readers that we were all relying on our two feet to explore as mounts and vehicles were not released yet to add to which agros were a much more difficult threat.
After several weeks of wandering we found our location. It featured the most extremely isolated location on the server. 11 kilometres from Nym's Stronghold the nearest shuttle/starport (a 45 minute walk through a landscape featuring nearly 100% red con enemies, kimos, pirates, etc.) with the nearest cloning center being 5.5 kilometres away the Imperial Outpost appropriately faction aligned and only 20 minutes or so away.
Location features:
1) 900 metre diameter of glass flat land, perfect for a metropolis, and only one landscape blemish that was minor.
2) A POI (though we didn't know it at the time), a cave with droidekas.
3) Pure isolation, it wasn't worth the enemies time to attack, and should they do it they'd lose three-quarters of their attackers making the walk.
I know what you're thinking... insane... well perhaps... but there was reason to this madness...
D-Day (November 13)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So thursday came, I'd logged off at the Bestine city hall infront of the location that the Politician trainer was supposed to spawn. Word was out on caps and I was really nervous about not being able to place the city hall in time. I'd taken the day off work, so I spent half the day in the soe chat room waiting for the login signal...
boom... the flag was dropped... and their off...
5 min to log in... 2nd person to official become Novice Politician... someone loaded quicker then I... =P... burst run to starport...Nym's... met one of our citizens who had a city hall and mount ready and waiting... and the race was on... it only took 25 minutes now to make it to our location... but wait!... usually there were a few agro spawns in the area... today... 900m SOLID AGRO SPAWNS... they were overlapping each other!... doh!... called for back up... 6 of us spent the next 3 hours doing a running battle across 450m to territory trying to get to the waypoint i'd set for city hall...
Finally a clear spot... while my gracious allies performed perimeter duty trying to seal off the area I placed city hall... and all was good to go... 6 of us planted homes directly beside it... and declared resident... wait... someone says we need 10 now... doh!... several hour mad scramble but we managed to do it... what a horrible day... but we were in... and if the caps became a problem (which they didn't in the end)... we'd be the first city on Lok to get a shuttleport in 3 weeks time... which was what the rush was really about... can't have a city on Lok without a shuttleport... it'd be impossible... but you have to realize this was in the days of walking around planets...
=P
City Growth Highlights
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I won't bore you with the particulars of our growth. But I'll discuss briefly the route we took and some of the unique areas we focused on. First off we aimed from the get go to acquire the cloner and shuttle as soon as feasible. We did this by cramming homes around the city hall, this required us to move out further once the city was larger and required a lot of work but gave us more experience to level quickly. It also gave us quicker mobility. By having a cloner early we were able to half our trip times from Nym's. When citizens require at 3 hour journey round trip through hostile land each direction from Suntir Station to New Suntir its nice to cut off a half hour from the trip especially since some people had to take 4 or 5 trips... as mayor i took literally hundreds moving people... needless to say i became very adept at navigating agro country. =P
When setting up our city we were aiming for a highly defensible metropolis. We knew we wanted a shuttleport surrounded by detachment HQs... but we didn't know footprints and things like that (more on this in the guide to follow)... there were few online tools to map out the city at the time... at first I used grid paper... then someone posted an excel sheet... this worked well because it had the city radius already on it... i used that as a basis and overlayed it in photoshop... there wasn't enough information on the size of structures so it was best guesses but we came out with a pretty solid map to work with...Unique things about our city would be a tent bazaar for crafters... an organized factory area... 4 hqs forming a block around our shuttleport... the POI which we'd finally spotted after settling in... and the most unique feature... every citizen would have a lot the size of a large house... the reasoning behind this was that if everyone had a plot of land like a real city they could expand their home at any time without displacing anyone... furthermore it opened up the possibility of realistate in the far future as central areas would be prefered housing... we modeled our city on a massive central square with 4 broad boulevards (and by broad I mean the size of city hall) pointing towards the 4 points of the compass... each would be lined with gardens, statues, lights, and fountains... to make a truly decorative city...City had its ups and downs... we moved the HQ block and enlarged it because the devs instituted a POI zone which meant we couldn't protect the fourth side of the shuttleport... it was never intended or could have attacked the POI... but we were screwed regardless... bikes came in and made it easier to attack our city... a massive
rebel and imperial war broke out... 60 bases destroyed between january and february for both sides... I personally am not a fighter class, for one thing i'm a Master Politician... for another thing I just suck... =P... but I will mention that I founded during this time (since being a mayor you tend to do a lot of sitting around) a private chat room with roughly 200 imperial guild/city leaders that served to bring together the imperial side of the war, and while I certainly did not lead many raids I believe this had a lasting impact on the direction of the war if only by providing those in charge with enough contacts to provide a competitive edge.
Today - SWG First Year Anniversary (more or less)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Imperials are still only 1/3rd the factional population of Sunrunner. However now we are the overts in the NPC cities, and Imperials have the cities that contain bases that stay up consistantly. New Suntir is the focus of this at the moment, however it may not last and there are other smaller cities with similar systems rising, and the rebels are actively looking to form their own defenses, often modeled on our system. However at the end of the day our plan has been a success. We have acchieved a truly enjoyable pvp city, created an active community, and had a fun learning experience.I want to note that by no means has this been a singular task. I've had tremendous help in this endevour. My guild mates have been rock solid, providing funds, resources, and most importantly time when necessary. But this is a politician saying to politicians this has been an extremely enjoyable experience, and one that despite having a broken profession can truly be rewarding in the long term. As mayors I believe that our chief role is in direction, providing our communities with a vision and putting the time and effort in to reach that vision so that our citizens can have a more throughly enjoyable experience.Best of luck to the rest of you. I hope your experience has been or will soon be as rewarding as this has been for me.
After many months of hard work I have come to the conclusion that the city I have constructed since November 13, 2003 (Day 1 Player City) is a success. Some key points that have made me come to this conclusion.
1) PVP - We now have the most active PVP city on Sunrunner with 9 HQs surrounding our shuttleport in a tight and deadly configuration. The only location on the server where it is truly safe to run around overt. I haven't been covert in months.
2) Community - A truly thriving community where you actually can find dancers and doctors just hanging out, and people congregating to chat as well as run missions in groups or when necessary to defend our town. Although there are one or two cities on the core worlds that are large and relatively busy, none have the level of integrated community that ours does.
3) Vendors - Our vendors are fully stocked all the time to the extent that not only are they doing well, but opposing faction members are building homes nearby not to fight us but to shop in our market place.
4) Growth - The city is a metropolis and maxed out on decorations, etc.
This in my opinion qualifies as a success as there is little to build or expand upon. Though I do have some ideas on how to improve it I finally feel that my task is complete. Sure there were many times in the past that I would have been comfortable making this statement, but now I can truly say if I went AFK for a long time I'd feel confident that I'd come back and find a thriving bustling city.
Having said this I would like to give a brief review of the effort it took to get here. Followed by a recommendation for the process and commitment necessary to build a city of this sort for prospective politicians, I will seperate the guide from my muscle flexing to make it more useful hopefully as a singular guide. Please note many of these things were a group effort I'd really like to thank my guild and city managers and everyone else that has helped along the way. The following will be told from my perspective however as I believe it will be of the largest help to politicians in general.
New Suntir, Lok --- A History
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
New Suntir, Lok was founded on November 13, 2003 at the southwest foot of Mount Chaolt, Lok. It was founded by a group of imperials based out of Suntir Station, an imperial community controlling and adding to the POI NPC battleground located just west of Bela Vistal, Corellia. Being based on Sunrunner. which had at the time a 2/3 rebel majority, and being based on Corellia the most dominantly rebel planet on the server, we found that we were constantly on the defensive and unable to mount an effective offense because we were always running home to defend our base. After much discussion we determined that we needed a change of scenery if we were to turn the tide of war.
Pre-patch Preparations
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Upon successful agreement that a move was imminent we determined that we had to decide where we were going to settle. The requirements were tough:
1) Isolated - it had to be isolated enough to allow us to build our might without the complication of being attacked on a daily if not hourly basis.
2) Crafting Community Friendly - It had to be accessible for our crafting community to sell their goods.
3) Long-Term Potential - It had to have long term potential when player cities went live. Unfortunately these requirements are easier said then done. As it would turn out only 1 and 3 were immediately fulfillable. I would like to at this point give my sincere thanks to our crafting community for having the foresight to sacrifice customers while we waited on a shuttle.
So the hunt began. Once more details were released on player cities we knew that we would ultimately be looking for an isolated plot of land that was 900m in diameter with good buildable land. I won't go into details of how difficult this was to find and there were several of us searching for a location, however I will remind the readers that we were all relying on our two feet to explore as mounts and vehicles were not released yet to add to which agros were a much more difficult threat.
After several weeks of wandering we found our location. It featured the most extremely isolated location on the server. 11 kilometres from Nym's Stronghold the nearest shuttle/starport (a 45 minute walk through a landscape featuring nearly 100% red con enemies, kimos, pirates, etc.) with the nearest cloning center being 5.5 kilometres away the Imperial Outpost appropriately faction aligned and only 20 minutes or so away.
Location features:
1) 900 metre diameter of glass flat land, perfect for a metropolis, and only one landscape blemish that was minor.
2) A POI (though we didn't know it at the time), a cave with droidekas.
3) Pure isolation, it wasn't worth the enemies time to attack, and should they do it they'd lose three-quarters of their attackers making the walk.
I know what you're thinking... insane... well perhaps... but there was reason to this madness...
D-Day (November 13)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
So thursday came, I'd logged off at the Bestine city hall infront of the location that the Politician trainer was supposed to spawn. Word was out on caps and I was really nervous about not being able to place the city hall in time. I'd taken the day off work, so I spent half the day in the soe chat room waiting for the login signal...
boom... the flag was dropped... and their off...
5 min to log in... 2nd person to official become Novice Politician... someone loaded quicker then I... =P... burst run to starport...Nym's... met one of our citizens who had a city hall and mount ready and waiting... and the race was on... it only took 25 minutes now to make it to our location... but wait!... usually there were a few agro spawns in the area... today... 900m SOLID AGRO SPAWNS... they were overlapping each other!... doh!... called for back up... 6 of us spent the next 3 hours doing a running battle across 450m to territory trying to get to the waypoint i'd set for city hall...
Finally a clear spot... while my gracious allies performed perimeter duty trying to seal off the area I placed city hall... and all was good to go... 6 of us planted homes directly beside it... and declared resident... wait... someone says we need 10 now... doh!... several hour mad scramble but we managed to do it... what a horrible day... but we were in... and if the caps became a problem (which they didn't in the end)... we'd be the first city on Lok to get a shuttleport in 3 weeks time... which was what the rush was really about... can't have a city on Lok without a shuttleport... it'd be impossible... but you have to realize this was in the days of walking around planets...
=P
City Growth Highlights
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I won't bore you with the particulars of our growth. But I'll discuss briefly the route we took and some of the unique areas we focused on. First off we aimed from the get go to acquire the cloner and shuttle as soon as feasible. We did this by cramming homes around the city hall, this required us to move out further once the city was larger and required a lot of work but gave us more experience to level quickly. It also gave us quicker mobility. By having a cloner early we were able to half our trip times from Nym's. When citizens require at 3 hour journey round trip through hostile land each direction from Suntir Station to New Suntir its nice to cut off a half hour from the trip especially since some people had to take 4 or 5 trips... as mayor i took literally hundreds moving people... needless to say i became very adept at navigating agro country. =P
When setting up our city we were aiming for a highly defensible metropolis. We knew we wanted a shuttleport surrounded by detachment HQs... but we didn't know footprints and things like that (more on this in the guide to follow)... there were few online tools to map out the city at the time... at first I used grid paper... then someone posted an excel sheet... this worked well because it had the city radius already on it... i used that as a basis and overlayed it in photoshop... there wasn't enough information on the size of structures so it was best guesses but we came out with a pretty solid map to work with...Unique things about our city would be a tent bazaar for crafters... an organized factory area... 4 hqs forming a block around our shuttleport... the POI which we'd finally spotted after settling in... and the most unique feature... every citizen would have a lot the size of a large house... the reasoning behind this was that if everyone had a plot of land like a real city they could expand their home at any time without displacing anyone... furthermore it opened up the possibility of realistate in the far future as central areas would be prefered housing... we modeled our city on a massive central square with 4 broad boulevards (and by broad I mean the size of city hall) pointing towards the 4 points of the compass... each would be lined with gardens, statues, lights, and fountains... to make a truly decorative city...City had its ups and downs... we moved the HQ block and enlarged it because the devs instituted a POI zone which meant we couldn't protect the fourth side of the shuttleport... it was never intended or could have attacked the POI... but we were screwed regardless... bikes came in and made it easier to attack our city... a massive
rebel and imperial war broke out... 60 bases destroyed between january and february for both sides... I personally am not a fighter class, for one thing i'm a Master Politician... for another thing I just suck... =P... but I will mention that I founded during this time (since being a mayor you tend to do a lot of sitting around) a private chat room with roughly 200 imperial guild/city leaders that served to bring together the imperial side of the war, and while I certainly did not lead many raids I believe this had a lasting impact on the direction of the war if only by providing those in charge with enough contacts to provide a competitive edge.
Today - SWG First Year Anniversary (more or less)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Imperials are still only 1/3rd the factional population of Sunrunner. However now we are the overts in the NPC cities, and Imperials have the cities that contain bases that stay up consistantly. New Suntir is the focus of this at the moment, however it may not last and there are other smaller cities with similar systems rising, and the rebels are actively looking to form their own defenses, often modeled on our system. However at the end of the day our plan has been a success. We have acchieved a truly enjoyable pvp city, created an active community, and had a fun learning experience.I want to note that by no means has this been a singular task. I've had tremendous help in this endevour. My guild mates have been rock solid, providing funds, resources, and most importantly time when necessary. But this is a politician saying to politicians this has been an extremely enjoyable experience, and one that despite having a broken profession can truly be rewarding in the long term. As mayors I believe that our chief role is in direction, providing our communities with a vision and putting the time and effort in to reach that vision so that our citizens can have a more throughly enjoyable experience.Best of luck to the rest of you. I hope your experience has been or will soon be as rewarding as this has been for me.
Ithiris
Mon Jul 05, 2004 7:29 pm
#4
As a Rebel, the only reason I've had to wander to New Suntir is to farm faction, soI can't vouch for the rest of the city, but the shuttle and surrounding base setup is daunting to say the least. It will take an army to remove those bases, and even then, when several bases have been succesfully taken down in the past, replacements are up again within 24hrs.
An impressive citadel, befitting the Imperial oppressors.
Vesobe
Tue Jul 06, 2004 5:16 am
#5
As mayor of a neighbouring town, I can confirm that New Suntir is indeed a very impressive piece of civil engineering. Top marks, Shaedar.
Di-Kiem
Tue Jul 06, 2004 10:59 am
#6
What is sad is @ level 5 city you get to place more decoration and 50m extra space in all directions. No other bonus?
Tyronet City Information
Shaedar
Wed Jul 07, 2004 12:33 pm
#7
lol... i'm glad to be of service ithiris, come hang out anytime... =P
and thanks vesobe its nice to have friendly neighbours... =)....
and yeah... the metropolis bonus isn't very good.. though the land helped as it expanded into our military stronghold... honestly the nicest thing about metropolis was getting to place 6 more civic structures... 25 -> 31 is actually a fairly large increase... =P
and thanks vesobe its nice to have friendly neighbours... =)....
and yeah... the metropolis bonus isn't very good.. though the land helped as it expanded into our military stronghold... honestly the nicest thing about metropolis was getting to place 6 more civic structures... 25 -> 31 is actually a fairly large increase... =P
Rogue1970
Sat Jul 31, 2004 3:56 am
#9
Great Post and story.
You hit the nail on the head when you said: "As mayors I believe that our chief role is in direction, providing our communities with a vision and putting the time and effort in to reach that vision so that our citizens can have a more throughly enjoyable experience."
I agree completely. That is exactly what our primary role is, sadthat it costs us so many skill points....
Barbercat
Sat Jul 31, 2004 9:27 am
#10
boy you sure like to talk alot 
/bump to our friendly funk smelling IMPS 
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