Surveyor's tools

"Surveyor's tools" would make POT planning & construction so much easier.

The simplest form of these would be to set a "spacing plot" or "survey plot", which would be empty land without decoration, except for surveyor's stakes on each of the four corners.



These plots,

- Would come in different sizes; row, village, town, city, keep, castle, etc. For each size, the ribbons attached to the stakes could be a different color.

- Would show their bounding boxes when you enter into design mode, allowing you to easily align housing lots with them.

- Wouldn't require you to put down housing plots just to pick them up and move them somewhere else. They could be left in place until all the design work is done.

- Because its empty land, would have no facing entrance, so would be agnostic in terms of entrance locations. You could click on the stakes to edit the settings or remove the plot, just like you would click on a home lot marker. In your inventory the item that would appear is something like "City plot surveyor's stakes," etc.

- Because its empty land, it would have no lot marker in front of it and wouldn't need the lot marker location taking up space.

- Because its empty land, could let you place a plot the size of a row lot without putting down a row lot building.

- Because its empty land, could be placed regardless of if you've met lot limits in the POT.

- Because its empty land, could be less restricted in terms of not needing 100% flat ground, and possibly overlapping other lots like at lot markers -- the only thing that would be necessary is for the four corner stakes not hit other objects. But maybe even if they're placed, they could have an indicator telling you whether its flat ground and acceptable to put a normal lot there. Like a red ribbon attached meaning "no".

- In settings, the plot when placed could have "snap to" features enabled or disabled, which automatically would adjust the rotation of lots placed right next to it.

Any other tools that would be helpful?

 

"Snap to adjacent lot" would be a wonderful tool, too.

 

Also I'm thinking maybe some smaller ones (like the length of two adjacent large pavers) would be also useful for more narrow contexts, both in POT design and also in yard design inside of lots.

 

FWIW, we (at Tantalus) said something similar in a feedback document that submitted to the devs. Essentially we asked for lot placement to be easier and for more options.

Here is a link to that document:

https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f.../tantalus-consortium.21514/page-7#post-418311

 

I would just like some flatter groud so the lots will go down. Too many little terrain bumps right now on the templates.

 

I just realized another use of 'survey plots' that might be practical, which is landscaping.

So, for instance, you might have three options,
- Original landscape
- Clear trees
- Paved road

Of course, you'd no longer have the stakes as a "handle" to drag them if they were permanently used for landscaping. But, its perhaps a visible feature that could be turned on/off using Town Management tools.