Dynamic POT's

I've been playing with this quite a bit and it isn't that hard if one plans for it when designing the base template. (Problem is of course that I have nil influence on such maps since my town isn't a metro.)
If you look at these images here, if one plans the base right one can easily cut off 1/3 - 2/3 of the map by placing those "soft edges" where it fades to black and you exit.
https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...suggestion-ronda-pic-heavy.34222/#post-397815
Check out the pics there and you can see that the base 1 is built to host a whole metro with great variety. But that by adding height of water level and by using the layout properly you can remove 2/3 of the map for the holdfast pic. If one would just create three in total of such smaller variant templates you'd cover about 85% of the wish/need of such smaller footprints.

My other solution with the existing templates and the existing tech I already mentioned up-topic. For each template the designer designates X number of entry points, lets say 8. Then depending on size you can only pick from 3 of those. Where the small get to pick entry points closer to center and large get to pick at the edges.
Think of a spiral on the map and place the 8 points at logical/fitting places where 1-2-3 is at the roads on edges and 7-8 is closer to center.
Metropolis can pick from 1-2-3
City can pick from 2-3-4
Town can pick from 3-4-5
Crossroads village can pick from 4-5-6
Hamlet & Village can pick from 5-6-7 (they have almost the same footprint)
Holdfast can pick from 6-7-8

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saxe-Coburg_and_Gotha
The current queen of the commonwealth is of german stock though, so....

Also by population and if you subtract Imports from Exports then it is the Danes that are on top (and the US at the bottom).
If you only go by exports then its the Netherlands.

 

Ah didn't think of that.. you wouldn't need to change the literal scene size.. just simulate it.. It does seem like designing the area would be somewhat restricting but there are clever and creative ways to deal with that I suppose.

 

Yea, looking at the paxlair template one could easily see three different holdfast areas with fade-to-black edges. And that one isn't evens designed to support such tech.

 

The one problem I see with the idea is what if the town owner wanted to use a different area? Though I don't suppose that would be too difficult to accommodate. Devs would have to change entry points or else have some sort of system in place to support that. Only other option is to say 'tough luck, if you want to use the other areas you have to upgrade'.. I don't imagine that'd be very popular.

 

So all the DEV's work On the Cities, Towns & Villages in SotA completely break the immersion of the game for some POT owners. I'm sure that will please them no end.
I would have to Take the opposite view, although the Player lot set out in most are a complete eyesore, I would have preferred them hidden in a nested instance/instances entered through a Town gate exit point and the actual NPC town Buildings and Layout expanded with NPC housing maybe a few Player lot's that were a static house type that fitted in with the Cities, Towns and Villages architecture.

 

I also actually prefer the static towns and disagree with Spoons opinion on this one. Towns that are well planned, like Serenite are towns where I remember where things are. I've been to that town several times and unless something drastic has happened to it, I expect to know where things are at the next time i go there like any real town would be like. The Dynamic towns seem more chaotic in how they are laid out and after the next full wipe, you can bet those will change alot. A house or building can not be torn down and moved in a day but in dynamic towns they are.

Now, this does not mean I like them less. That is not it at all. I like them just fine.

 

Question: Can we upgrade our dynamic POT after launch? If so then can we use store credits?

 

Having just had our holdfast placed, I can say i don't see the need for the amount of superfluous and unusable space. We wanted a small town for a reason and with the limited numer of npc houses you get with a holdfast (decorative statues count as one) it seems quite empty. There is a nice island off shore that you can walk to after crossing two bridges. It would be a nice place for a decorative lighthouse as our town is named Hawkwind Harbor, but we can't place anything there. It seems you can place housing only on this vast rectangle of stone ground, which is unsightly. It is not like that in other instances. It also seems to be way too far from the entrance point to the town portion of the instance itself. We asked for walls to give shape to the town itself as well but that wasn't done either. Exiting onto another part of the map is also odd as well. We are a considerable distance from kingsport so why emerge from there? I'm not sure what the point was with providing a map and design ideas of the town when when purchasing a POT if all we will be getting is a one size fits all cookie cutter instance. Hopefully things will be more customizable and scalable as things progress.

 

The rest I don't know about since I am not a POT owner, but this part sounds like a bug and I suggest you put in a bug report about it. *Gives Malchor1 a hug!*

 

Are you in a POT that has no Overland map access? that could be it.

 

I really don't like how owning a player town morphed into the current state we have now. I purchased my town with the the promise from SOTA that I would get a one-on-one design session to customize my town. So reading through this thread it sounds like I can potentially have a HoldFast town placed into a Metropolis sized scene? That sucks! I had specifically wanted a small scene for many reasons. But I will live with what this has morphed into on one condition: Allow us to Dynamically flatten land in areas of the scene so that we can specifically place our lots where we want. I'm sure a one-on-one design session could satisfy this, but with the way things are going, not so sure any of that will happen. I wanted a centralized settlement, but practically impossible in some of these metropolis scenes....and then you have to run great distances to get there.

 

But with th meteopolos sized soace you are only allowed to use the square footage of a holdfast. Hopefully this is just placeholding

 

Exactly. For some, those wild reaches are attractive. They don't have to be leveling zones, just wildlife zones to make the landscape come alive.

 

Never understood the desire to make the world smaller.

 

This makes no sense at all. The dialog here was about dynamic POT towns, in which the owner and stewards move lots around.
The whole point of dynamic POT towns are that they save a lot of dev time by placing the ability and responsibility of placing land lots in the hands of the player.
We are not talking about NPC towns where the devs have worked hard to create immersion.

...and you assume that this option will break immersion when the data points to the opposite.
Take PaxLair as an example they are role playing their arrival on these shores.
First they have a small community built close on the beach.
Then they expand with some housing inland.
Then some of the grand buildings around.
Until after months a city takes form and expands in all directions.
THAT is sandbox immersion.
The tech supporting the player story so that we can create our stories in the game.
Without that tech that kind of pioneer type of settlement growing into something much much larger would have been much less immersive.

 

You have the choice between dynamic which will probably remain in such large templates and a static dev design.
Sounds like you'd prefer a static.

In the latest info Portalarium talked of a minimum of two templates per biome. If so we will see a lot more later on.

I really hope they do something small to fill that need as well.

 

You'd still recognize towns and find your way in them. Like I outlined above no town owner will move things around frivolously - it is simply too much work. So the layout of the town remains the same, it's just a few lots that would/could change to accommodate the current event. Since those are in specific planned areas you would recognize them as such.

For instance for my 'the magic movers' event I had to change a city lot sized area into one town lot and two village lots.
However my citizens wouldn't know the difference since that city lot sized area has always been 'the event area' for them. They don't care where the lot borders are since they recognize all the buildings surrounding that area.


...and buildings being torn down and replaced by a new isn't limited to dynamic towns it's inherent to all player housing in SotA.

....and isn't Serenite built dynamically?

 

Yes but they have a city planner and they worked out their layout in advance.

 

I don't get it then? Must be Monday getting to me here.
But that doesn't prevent city planning for every one else nor does it prevent Serenite to change something down the line if the city planners chose to do so?
If you had used vengeance which are static I would have understood the example but now I'm just confused.