Moontower protection screen?

There are several cities that have moontowers, but I have only noticed Owl´s Head to show the protective halfglobe over the city.

Is the moontower in OW something special or is there a reason that the other cities do not show that protective halfglobe on the overland map?

 

I'm just guessing, but I think it probably just got a bit of a unique look on the map because it was one of the first cities in the game.

 

This is one of the "just for flavor" pieces of lore. Not integrated with anything, even lore.

 

Early on there was some talk about making a use for them but really nothing came out of it. Player owned towns also have the building but it counts as an NPC building and the limit in POTS is very low. Wizards Rest had one up but then we decided to put up more devotionals which also count as an NPC building so it is always a give and take situation trying to juggle NPC buildings that were given when you buy a Player owned town. Every POT owner gets a certain amount of NPC buildings, different sized markers to put down lots (row size, village size, town size, city size, castle size as an example. We also get tree and grass removers to remove trees that are in the way. And of course we also get the devotionals to place. Anyway just some extra information for those who care or are interested in more info on that part.

 

There’s in game lore about the moon tower from NPC’s in Owls Head.

 

Moontowers that protect a city from marauding mobs with their protective field are a great thing. But it sounds as if they are currently doing nothing and towns abandoning them for other NPC buildings of limited number that they rival with.

Do the sieges of the cabalists actually do something? I mean if even I as a beginning player can simply chose to "bypass" the siege and enter the town, is there anything that they do? Building shrines and "invoking the wrath of the cabalists" seems more of an invitation to set up some catapults and burning wagons outside the city and do a bit of camping? Not that I would want to try to sneak through a high level encounter to get into a town, but some normal roving encounter with bandits as pickets or a small raiding party foraging for the besieging army that have to be fought or evaded would make sense.

Moontowers need something for themselves that make them somewhat useful to have to be able to compete with other NPC buildings.

 

One of many parasitic features.

 

Sieges could not be bypassed when originally implemented. You had to go through them to enter a town. I can' t remember if you had to go through them to exit a town. I had a favorite siege scene where I could run through on the right side without encountering anything and pick up a couple of bits of silver along the way. Great for a low level character. Now I do the same scene taking care of all the mobs first, then picking up four bits of silver. Anyway, players complained about unnecessary loading screens and such, and the current bypass mechanic was implemented.

Going further back to the early days, as I recall...The thought was that if the Moontower failed then mobs could enter the town and do some good, old-fashioned marauding. The tech of the game couldn't handle it for several reasons. The first is a creating a suitable navmesh through a player decorated town. It can't be done ahead of time, as who knows what is going to be placed where-- especially with the more creative players. Creating one real-time? Who knows how much computing resources would require. Limiting it to the streets and roads and other non-player decorated areas would look funny. "Why are all those wolves running down the street and not going everywhere?" Then there was the question of implementing damage to NPC structures and player homes, so... the siege mechanic was born. My idea of setting up in my knight's keep home during some mob marauding and help defend the town went up in siege smoke.

Now you put a Moontower in your town if you think it looks cool/pretty/neat. Maybe, too, if you like the sound.

 

Pets seem to navigate ok in player decorated environments. Am I missing something here?

On the "must load siege scene to bypass it manually" matter, yeah, that wasn't a neat idea to start with. Both gameplay and lore wise. Because, if you can easily bypass a siege, that's not a siege by definition

The devs, for some reason, thought adding nuisance would increase the game's challenge factor. Gave up after player base backlash and kept a half thought, half baked and half undone feature.

Siege scenes are "kind of nice" once you get the grip to beat them, but they don't do a very good job at positively impress new players.

 

But are loading times for scenes today not far better than a few years ago?

I would have liked that. Even if only a wolf encounter walked into a town (without a moontower) turned into a wolfpack and would only be limited to preying on characters around the exits, outskirts and streets of the town map.

That would have meant that we would see more realistic medieval towns where there actually would be palisades and walls *around* the settlement with gates as the entrypoints preventing hostiles entrace. And outside the walls either only fields to which the farmers go out in the morning or sturdy houses or keeps that are defensible. Most settlements make it sound as if the undead/kobold/elf armies are already on the march to them - and the settlements look like a scattered bunch of houses without any defensive measure in one piece (e.g. Soltown has several palisade walls - just not in one continuous wall but in seperate parts, unconnected to each other and facing differnt ways...

 

Rarely a siege ever perfectly sealed off the besieged town or fortress. It takes far too many men to a) keep enough men facing the enemy inside to prevent a sally, b) keep enough men eating, sleeping, cooking, digging latrines to prevent the worst diseases, weaknesses, c) enough men foraging for firewood, hay for the animals, food taken from outlying farms and huntesd in the forest and d) having enough of a reserve ready in case of a relieving army arriving from outside...

Sure it would be nearly impossible to sneak through the main camp of the besieging army - but the other approximated 2/3rd of the town would be guard posts and picketlines that a single character would be able to sneak through or if fast enough to outrun reinforcements fight through.

 

Every single character in the game is able to easily bypass every siege.

 

The reason they made sieges and passes to be able to be bypassed was to reduce the number of required loading screens per play session:

Release 57

Control Points Voluntary Entry: Control Points can now be crossed over on the Overworld without forcing players to enter the scene. This is part of an overall effort to reduce the number of scene loads in each play session.
Town Sieges Voluntary Entry: Town Sieges can now be bypassed by all level of players, allowing direct access to the besieged town. This is part of an overall effort to reduce the number of scene loads in each play session.

Of note, you can enter these scenes at any time.

 

Not too good as I've seen a pet horse standing in the river that divides Northwood. How big is the pet's patrol area? Scale that up to the area of an entire town up to superduperopolis size (or whatever the largest town size is today) for every mob entity in the scene. The computer might actually cry.

 

It's sad because it actually felt dangerous to go beyond the protection of blue electric sphere a long time ago when I first ventured outside Owl's Head at night. That feeling is long gone.