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Bioxx

Kingdoms Brainstorming

899 posts in this topic

Exactly. While I'm not a stickler for this, this has been suggested several times in this thread by many people. I hate to say it, but read the whole thing before posting.

I don't think I should be expected to read 35 pages of posts before posting myself, and if these things have been mentioned before then I support them.

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Yeah, 35 pages is a bit much, it would be nice if a bulleted list could be added to the OP.

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Yeah, 35 pages is a bit much, it would be nice if a bulleted list could be added to the OP.

You don't need to read the whole 35 pages. We get off topic at several points. Furthermore, a lot of the points consist of arguing back and forth about specific aspects of specific posts. The general consensus is:

There needs to be some form of block protection that makes it hard for people to grief.

This form of block protection should be bypassable, but not easily bypassable.

There needs to be a tool to allow someone to be placed into a "jail"

It should be possible for the jailed person's friends to "break them out"

The protections should be put in place mainly to deter people who have been on the server for five minutes from just stealing your stuff, and to make it hard to destroy a whole town in warfare -- that is, you shouldn't be able to destroy a town 10 people took days to make in just minutes.

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The jail idea is weird to me, and I sorta want to go back to it.

I get that this is primarily for the experience of breaking people out of them. Simply imprisoning others is a terrible idea and would just lead to player frustration. So the system would have to be built around breaking the jail being somewhat simple from the outside. Due to terrain deformation and the massive amount of rock underneath us that discourages random time-consuming mining jails would probably have to be restricted to aboveground. Possibly some form of courtyard. Underground vaults would just be too difficult to deal with, as cool as a dungeon would be. Jailbreaking would have to be made really easy if such jails could exist.

And to keep a jailbreak from overrunning a base while most of the players are offline, freed prisoners would probably have to return to their village tbefore attacking other villages.

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the point of jails was more so that thieves had an actual risk

the jail break was an add-on and is supposed to be extremely difficult just like in real life

some sort of protection has already been discussed for when people are offline though but you have a good point that would definitely have to be tweaked to acomodate jails.

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The jail idea is weird to me, and I sorta want to go back to it.

I get that this is primarily for the experience of breaking people out of them. Simply imprisoning others is a terrible idea and would just lead to player frustration. So the system would have to be built around breaking the jail being somewhat simple from the outside. Due to terrain deformation and the massive amount of rock underneath us that discourages random time-consuming mining jails would probably have to be restricted to aboveground. Possibly some form of courtyard. Underground vaults would just be too difficult to deal with, as cool as a dungeon would be. Jailbreaking would have to be made really easy if such jails could exist.

And to keep a jailbreak from overrunning a base while most of the players are offline, freed prisoners would probably have to return to their village tbefore attacking other villages.

Jail breaking should not be easy. It should be possible only under the following conditions:

1) There is no one on to stop you, so you can just get into town and let them out since they're unguarded

2) You have a bunch of people with you and can overwhelm the town's defenders.

The only way out of jail is for someone outside to let you out. If you get caught stealing from a town, they may very well let you sit in jail for a whole day before they let you out, and if they catch you again they might not let you out at all. That's what you get for being a thief.

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This post (which will be a very large wall of text -- consider yourselves warned) is the product of my previous views on city-building, combined with personal observations of being part of a city, and events related to the city in regards to griefers, of the server I am currently on.

In other words: this post is about my ideas in regards to real world data. My views on certain subjects have changed.

Town Size

The size of the area claimable as a town either needs to be initially very large, or needs to be expandable as more and more people become residents of the town.

Our town had about ten citizens, and occupied an area of approximately twenty-five thousand square blocks, maybe closer to forty thousand square blocks (between 150x150 to 200x200 in size). So somewhere between 100 chunks to 160 chunks in size.

So, just estimating, an average town of 10 people will need an area of 121 chunks (roughly 31000 meters^2) or an 11x11 chunks space.

So, if you take the chunk in which the SpecialBlockUsedToClaimAnAreaAroundItselfAsACity Block is placed in, it would need to take the area five chunks to the north, south, east and west of the chunk in which it is place. Or, the area could be defined as (x+1)2 chunks, where x is equal to the number of citizens of the town. 1 Citizen would result in a claim size of four chunks (2x2), five citizens would result in a claim size of thirty-six chunks (6x6), and 10 citizens (which is approximately the size of the town I was in) would claim an area of 121 chunks (11x11) which works out to be approximately the size of the actual 10 citizen town I was a member of.

I originally suggested that the size claimed should be smaller. I feel I was wrong about that.

The size of the town should either scale as more people join, or should be fixed something large (at least an 11x11 chunk area).

Town Placement

As to the placement of towns, I think the following would be good guidelines, which could probably be configurable to the server owner's tastes.

No town may be created within 500 meters of spawn. There are multiple reasons for this. Firstly, under no circumstances should it be possible for a user to create a town at spawn. Due to the nature of the Criminal Justice System I envision, placing a town at the server spawn would, unless the town was created by the administrator, allow for easy griefing.

I give 500 meters for the reason that most people don't go very far from their town to gather resources, except when mining or looking for very particular things, such as specific kinds of trees or fruit trees. By forcing people to settle away from spawn, we leave a large area where people new to the server have a chance to gather resources before setting out, without having to worry that everything has been picked clean by everyone else (which is often the case).

In the event an administrator wants a town at spawn (which they would have control over) they are still able to create such a town, to provide a safe haven for newly arriving players.

Furthermore, I feel that no town should be able to be founded within 1000 meters of another town. This avoids a problem: namely, what happens if two towns are close enough to each other that they each attempt to claim the same area? If towns are forced to be at least 1000 meters away from each other, then firstly, it's about a day's journey from one town to another, and secondly, using the above suggested equation to determine the size of a town, you would need sixty people joining a town to cause it to have even a chance of coming into conflict with another town over claiming the same chunks. In fact, you'd actually need something like 120 people, since two towns would have to do this, in addition to being placed as close as possible to each other.

This would allow a town to claim, exclusively, a reasonable area of land that would be able to scale upwards as more people joined the town, while still allowing large "no man's land" regions where two towns, even ones placed as closely together as this scheme would allow, could fight over resources, both mineral and otherwise.

This would also reward players who take their time scouting out a large area to find the best possible combination of resources to found their town at, as they would be given a small area of exclusivity which would allow them to capitalize on a particularly scare resource. For example, a town could be founded ontop of a newly discovered (and very rare) mineral vein, such as of garnierite, which would allow an economy for the town that focused on exploiting that resource and trading it to other towns for what it needs. Given what I have read of changes coming to biomes, a town could be founded in a very inhospitable area, where it is difficult to impossible to raise crops, on the idea that they could trade the other resources in the area for what they need. Also, under the system of town protection I envision, while there would be a measure of security in the claimed area, this would not be absolute security, and it would be entirely possible for another town to conduct raids, to take by force what they don't want to trade for (or to take back what was stolen from them).

Another reason for requiring towns to be such a distance from each other is to avoid someone creating a town pretty much right on top of another town, to try to supress that town from growing by causing conflict over the ability to claim chunks for one town.

Block Protection

I believe a system of block protection should work as follows:

Firstly, only people who are citizens of a town can place blocks within a town's limits, or open any doors other than plain wooden doors. This allows players to have walls that are effective. Walls serve very little purpose, since anyone can pile dirt up and climb over them. If, however, you are able to put a large enough buffer of protected area before the wall, the height to which you would have to pile dirt to get over the wall would result in a fatal fall. And if they do manage to get in, the wouldn't be able to get out easily.

A city-founding-stone block can, for the citizens of the town, dispense a Reinforcement Tool. The Reinforcement tool, when used by a citizen of the town on a block within the area protected by the town, will consume an amount of blocks of the same type from their inventory. For each block consumed in the reinforcing process, the block so reinforced must be broken a number of additional times. For example, if an unreinforced block need only be broken once to actually break the block, one that has been reinforced with extra blocks would need to be broken additional times.

I suggest the following method of reinforcement:

Each block have two internal values, one called Reinforcement Level, and one called Reinforcement Amount.. They are, by default, 0. To reinforce a block, one must expend blocks of the same type equal to 2^(x+1), where x is the current Reinforcement Level. Thus, if a block has not been reinforced, its first reinforcement would require 2 additional blocks of the same type, its second reinforcement would require 4 blocks, its third reinforcement would require 8 blocks, etc. Each reinforcement level would double the number of times a block must be broken to actually destroy the block. A block reinforced once would require 2 breakings to be destroyed, one reinforced twice would require four breakings to be destroyed, and one reinforcedeight times would require 256 breakings to be destroyed.

When a block is reinforced, its Reinforcement Level is increased by 1, and its Reinforcement Amount is increased by the resources spent. Reinforcement Amount, therefore, corresponds to the number of times the block must be broken to actually be destroyed. Each time the block is broken, this amount is decremented by 1, and, when it falls below zero the block is destroyed.

Attempting to break a block with the reinforcement tool would instead display its current Reinforcement Level and Reinforcement Amount. This would allow one to monitor blocks for damage (attempts to break them). A block could be repaired to its current reinforcement amount by expending resources equal to the number of times it was broken.

Circumventing Block Protection

Block Protection, as envisioned above, serves to discourage casual griefers. If someone realizes that, while I may live in a 5x5 wooden shack, I have spent eight times as many resources as required to build it to reinforce it, and that it will not be breaking quickly with their stone ax, they will (hopefully) get bored and go do something else. It should be noted that Reinforcement requires a substantial expenditure of time and resources on the part of the person doing the reinforcement. Reinforcing every block in 5x5x5 hollow cube (simple wooden house) so that it would take 256 attempted breakings to destroy any block in the house would require twenty-two thousand, eight-hundred and seventy-three blocks(!). Assuming you have a saw, and your average tree is 7 wood blocks in size, that would require the harvesting of one thousand and ninety trees. If someone is willing to spend the time and energy to harvest nearly eleven-hundred trees, which would take many hours, then I think it should take a large amount of time to destroy their house, approaching the amount of time they spent to reinforce it.

But, anyway, this section is about circumventing block protection.

Your average griefer has a short attention span, and when they realize they can't just run in and smash windows and rifle through chests, they will get bored and leave. But what about determined griefers (PvP players)? What about war between two rival cities? "How can I raze a city", you ask, "if it's so hard to destroy something that is reinforced?"

This is my solution:

There would be a class of tools called siege tools. There would be a Siege Axe, a Siege Pick, and a Siege Shovel. These would require metal to make them, and they should be complicated to make, probably requiring, not only a double-ingot to make the tool head itself (as these are heavy duty tools), but an ingot or a double ingot in the form of a metal haft to go along with the tool head.

When a siege tool is used against the block it is designed to be used on (pick on stone, axe on wood, etc), the first time it "breaks" the block it counts as having broken it once. The second time it would, instead of simply being an additional, single break, would count has having broken the block two additional times. The third time would count as three additional breaks, the fourth as four, and so on.

Example:

A granite brick block reinforced four times would normally need to be "broken" 16 times to destroy it. With a Siege Pick, you would actually need to "break" the block 6 times to destroy it -- less than half the time if you used a normal pick. By not completely bypassing block protection, we do not invalidate completely the work done by the person who did the reinforcing. By partially bypassing it, we reward the player or faction of players who spent the time and resources to create the proper tool for the proper situation. A city at war that wanted to quickly destroy a rival city would be able to do so at the expenditure of a large amount of resources, to match the large amount of resources spent protecting the city.

A further example: A granite brick block reinforced eight times would need to be "broken" 256 times with a regular old pick to destroy it. With a Siege Pick you would only need to "break" it only 23 times to destroy it. Considering the huge amount of resources required to reinforce a block eight times, I feel this is an equitable solution. To reinforce a wall around a 98x98 area (making the wall 100 blocks long in any cardinal direction) would require over half a million blocks. Let me repeat that for you: To reinforce a wall around an area 100 blocks long in any direction would require five hundred and eight thousand, eight hundred and sixty blocks. If a group of people are willing to spend the amount of time required to dig half a friggin' million blocks to reinforce a wall (around a relatively tiny area), you should be perfectly happy with it taking 2 minutes to go through that wall. That's assuming you're going at it alone. If you had two people, both with Siege Picks, working on the same block would only take each of you 16 "breakings" to destroy the block, or roughly a minute and a half to go through the above mention wall which took half a million blocks to make. With four people, all with siege picks, it would only take each person 11 "breakings" to destroy the block, allowing a four person group, appropriately equipped, to go through the above wall which took half a million blocks to make in just about 1 minute and 6 seconds.

To recap: A typical "I joined the server and want to do as much damage as I can in five minutes" griefer will not sit around and spend 25 minutes with a pick axe (assuming he managed to find one, since you sure as hell can't get a pick axe in five minutes in TFC) trying to go through a wall, while a coordinated group of players taking part in City versus City PvP combat would be able to go through the same wall that takes the griefer nearly half an hour to go through in a minute or so. The neatly solves the problem of making it extremely hard to impossible for casual griefing to occur while still allowing for Player Versus Player combat. For servers where the administrator does not want any City versus City combat, there could be a config option that disables the creation of Siege tools, just as there is a config option that enables the creation of vanilla tools.

Criminal Justice

I propose the following system of criminal justice:

The founder of a town (its mayor, potentate, sultan, president, or otherwise its despot) has the ability to remove citizens from a town. Removing a citizen from a town revokes their privileges but does not cause the town limits to shrink. The town will retain its current boundaries, but must be restored up to its previous high number of citizens before it can expand.

The founder of the town can also cause the town-creating-stone block to dispense a special Jail Block. Only one Jail Block may be created by any one town-creating-stone block at a time. If there is a previous one in existence and a second is dispensed, the first one is destroyed.

When someone not a member of a town breaks a block within the city limits or opens a locked chest (if locked chests are implemented) in the city limits or assaults and/or kills a citizen of the town while within the town's limits, they receive a Criminal Flag. This is a variable that is part of the player's game data, and not visible in the client (their name doesn't turn red, etc.) This flag persists for as long as they are in the limits of the town they violated, plus one minute.

Any citizen of a town may have the town-creating-stone block dispense a baton. The baton is a melee weapon which deals a fixed amount of damage. Any person who is currently flagged as a Criminal of the town that a Citizen is a member of and has a baton linked to that town's town-creating-stone block, may use that baton to deal damage to that criminal. Otherwise, it does nothing. Anyone knocked out by a baton (killed by it) has their home point set to the location of the town's Jail Block, as though the Jail Block were a bed that they had slept in (they respawn next to it exactly as if it were a bed.) If there is no valid jail block set up, they respawn where they were slain.

The Jail Block would create an area around itself that stops people who have it set as their spawn point (read: been knocked out with a baton after committing a crime) from being able to open doors. This allows the town to designate an area where criminals will be detained, and prevents the criminals from being able to escape. Someone on the outside must let them out or break them out.

This means that someone caught stealing from a town can be detained until the town members feel like letting him go, or he can be detained until an admin comes to deal with the problem, or he can be detained until his friends come and rescue him. This would allow for Player Versus Player/City Versus City interaction in the form of rescue missions -- breaking into an another town to rescue your friend. This could be as simple and walking into the town and opening the jail, or require Siege Tools to break through the town's walls and through the jail.

This system also, in only allowing players who commit a crime to be jailed, avoids the use of the baton as a tool of griefing. If you can only jail someone who has broken a block (or attempted to open or opened a locked chest, if these are included), then you cannot use it to grief innocent players who are simply passing through, sight-seeing, or there to trade. Furthermore, it could be possible to allow citizens to be flagged as criminals, if, for instance, they kill a fellow citizen, or (if locked chests or "owned" chests are implemented) if they steal from another citizen.

Personal Observations:

The town in which I lived on the server in which I am currently playing was griefed at least four times. One time, I and another player were online when someone began to steal from us, and when they began to try to kill us. The two of us were able to overcome the other player, even though he had stolen weapons from us and had armor (which neither of us had), and kill him, and then to keep on killing him whenever he came back (when we found him, that is.) We were able to hold him off until an admin came along to deal with him.

Another such incident occured when I was offline. Other players were online however, and they were able to deal with the situation.

So, when there are multiple players online and active within a town or in close proximity to it, they are able to deal with lone griefers.

However, there were incidents that occured when no one was logged in (which was a window that only occured for a few hours) where in large portions of our town were destroyed. Had there been a system of block protection and area claming in place, such as I suggest above, the person would never have been able to get into town, let alone destroy it. And that's what the system is designed for: stopping lone griefers from being able to destroy what people work so hard to create, while still allowing for City versus City combat. Furthermore, with the ability to jail a person, the lone griefer mentioned earlier could have, instead of respawning at spawn, spawned inside our nicely decorated jail, and been forced to wait there until one of us let him out, or until he got bored because he couldn't get his quick fix of chaos and logged out -- that would have taken the need for an admin out of the picture, which is another goal of the system I propose: to allow players to moderate themselves.

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So, just estimating, an average town of 10 people will need an area of 121 chunks (roughly 31000 meters^2) or an 11x11 chunks space.

That is a little over the top, 3100m²/inhabitant? That sounds like a small farm for everyone.

What about if the town gets richer but with the same amount of denizens. An example: town A belongs to a server with 10 users, 5 of them are citizens of town A( by your math 5²+1 = 26 chunks), it begins as a small settlement but with a very big space for everyone, as it grows the number of inhabitants stays the same even though they are at the last tier, lets assume they are xenophobic, and the space for farms and charcoalpits may be very scarce now.

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Cevkiv, on mobile so no quotes for now, but there are not enough like buttons for your post. As the owner of (the only ?) Faction based war server, I feel this would be just right :)

Serious, serious +1

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what about adding the ability to be a mercenary so that if a thief has stolen from a town and is killed by a hired mercenary/s, maybe designated by some sort of cape like what was talked about earlier in some thread, they go to jail

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That is a little over the top, 3100m²/inhabitant? That sounds like a small farm for everyone.

What about if the town gets richer but with the same amount of denizens. An example: town A belongs to a server with 10 users, 5 of them are citizens of town A( by your math 5²+1 = 26 chunks), it begins as a small settlement but with a very big space for everyone, as it grows the number of inhabitants stays the same even though they are at the last tier, lets assume they are xenophobic, and the space for farms and charcoalpits may be very scarce now.

31000 square meters equates to an area roughly 180 meters by 180 meters. And you need to remember that the space isn't being evenly divided amongst all the persons in the town. For example, a large portion of the town I lived in was devoted to tree farming, fruit trees, crops, a town hall, a communal foundry, and animal storage. Our town was also built into the side of a mountain. When you take into account things like having nice roads, areas set aside inside the town walls for your crops and fruit trees and animals, and not going overzealous on flattening everything out, that's not a lot of space per person. My house in the town was like a 13x13 tower.

If you managed to find a nice, perfectly, completely flat area to build in, and managed to strong-arm everyone into following a precise building code and fixed housing size, and fixed dimensions for roads, etc, you could fit it in smaller. Still, I would say that tree farming, fruit trees, and crop farming took up easily 1/5th of the more or less usable area in our town.

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Okay, but what about if the town wants to expand and there is no one to enlist?

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...Jail Block.

I'm very much against any block like this, it's very immersion breaking for all it's benefits and I think it would be better established by the way it works in the real world, jails aren't made of a magical substance, and they work here just fine, we don't need to make new systems we need to better replicate systems that do exist.

We need a way to physically take control of another person, and a way to lock doors behind them.

Okay, but what about if the town wants to expand and there is no one to enlist?

they expand anyway just without protections I'd assume, you'd just have to manually protect them with your citizens instead of using the walls.

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Snip

That was partially why we had a palisade around the town, it was easy to re-arrange, if we needed it, but point taken.

Also, to the wall of text,

HOLY SHEET SON

that is quite the impressive formation of ideas you have there sir :)

Edited by Scooterdanny
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I think the clock protections should be a bit more exponential in upgrading so that you don't have to spend all your time just trying to defend a tiny piece of land and so that there are not massive craters dug up everywhere for two medium towns.

I think block protection should be hard but not so tedious that it rules your every waking moment of the game

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clock protections

I got told that the most effective way was to get renter's insurance.

:P

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I think the clock protections should be a bit more exponential in upgrading so that you don't have to spend all your time just trying to defend a tiny piece of land and so that there are not massive craters dug up everywhere for two medium towns.

I think block protection should be hard but not so tedious that it rules your every waking moment of the game

I, personally, think that the method I outlined above is too hard on the side of block protection. I shouldn't have to dig an 80x80x80 cube of rock to reinforce a rather small wall. The problem is that if I suggest making block protection even remotely feasible, people get pissed off because it makes it too hard to grief. With the advent of specialized tools for overcoming block protection, it should be easier to reinforce blocks.

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I understand the want for some amount of risk in thievery and generally being a douche, but things must be considered from the angle of each player in the exchange. There is little reason to let the thief out of the jail once they are in there, essentially being the equivalent of banning the player from the server. The thief has little reason to stay in such a jail and just leave the server. Thus why jailbreaking should be easy. A jail won't work if you can escape from the inside, and jailers have no reason to free them, so power must be placed in the hands of the prisoners friends to let them out.

Easy is a weird term here though. Of course the jailers would 'guard' the jail(Only thing more boring than being kept in a jail is guard duty, so by guard I simply mean keeping one guy in the base to do minor tasks and can take on a dude going for the jail), and block protection would prevent somebody from just tunneling into the thing, but if somebody makes their way to the prison door the prisoners should all be free. Making the system more secure than that would functionally be the same as a deathban server.

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Have NPC towns been discussed, particularly for Single-player games?

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I mentioned a problem in another thread that I see with most of the MC servers I've been on: any sort of area protection leads to massive builds that the owners/builders eventually get bored with and abandon. There they sit until a map wipe. Tacky noobshit lava castles, anime pixel art, deranged multi-colored acid-trip cities, crazy (and sometimes awesome) redstone contraptions, wooden ships, jet fighters, dragons, and hot air balloons... frozen in time, invulnerable, uninhabited. Builds that still have active participants often have to be copypastad into new maps with worldedit, causing server admins to spend days and sometimes weeks just making their player base happy again when new versions require a new map.

Most of that (thankfully) doesn't exist in TFC. It's meant to be more realistic. Harsh. Little remains of entire civilizations in the distant past because the world is both creative and entropic. Stones are removed from old buildings and walls and used to build newer ones. Wars are fought over miserable patches of earth for the resources beneath them, or for the people who have been scratching a living out of the dirt there for countless generations, causing many of them to be killed or displaced. So any talk of block or area protection in TFC just seems silly to me. Granted, we all get very emotionally attached to our builds and want them protected, if nothing else so others can OMG at them. I'm proud of some of my builds too. We all hate shitheads who trash our creations and steal our stuff for teh lulz or over petty disputes just because they can. Even creepers and enders are widely considered griefing and often get nerfed. One of the first things you do in practically any survival mod or server in MC is banish those damned creepers with torches as much and as far away as possible. I get that, really.

However, if TFC is going in the direction Bioxx has made pretty clear for B3/Kingdoms, you're going to have to deal with an inherent lack of permanence. We've gotten too used to choosing an area of blocks, stacking more blocks on top of it, having everything we need within a short walk or a long mineshaft directly beneath it, and calling it home sweet home, perfectly safe and cozy. Ideally there will be widespread trade and wars over resources; kingdoms rising and being invaded and falling; real world geology, economy, and politics, simulated in harsh and confrontational game setting. Maybe that's too grand or unpleasant to seriously consider, but most of us have played and loved many other games that are very confrontational. Some of us are PvP veterans in MC too. TFC should be no exception. We value most what is hardest to get... and keep. If you get to keep everything you find or build, trade eventually dies and players get bored and go away.

I think you guys need to start thinking more in terms of frequently fighting for what you've built, gathered, and claimed. Rebuilding after an attack (or a griefer), taking losses, even having to start again far away and leaving your home behind. Planning and executing your own invasions and razing cities to the ground. Conan! What is best in life? Crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women! Survival. PvE and PvP. Walls that can be climbed over or dug under, doors kicked in, wooden structures burned, animals slaughtered, chests and decorations and your bloody corpse looted. Safety in numbers and vigilance... instead of (nearly) unbreakable structures, containers, and players for that matter. Otherwise, it's just another mod with more blocks to choose from in creative mode.

Having carefully read Bioxx's topic post and skimmed through most of this thread, here's my suggestion: code a system of simple messages or alarms when an area associated with a Home Stone is trespassed or damaged. The players in that area can choose to respond appropriately, or violently, or not at all. Because we can't all be on 24/7, maybe that would be a very good reason to have npc guards that require a lot of resources to arm and maintain. Or maybe not... if a village, home, or a dwarf fortress is left unguarded, it's simply fair game. No Home Stone or faction means little or no security. Going solo would be much more risky. Sporting any sort of steel could get you followed and killed. You might log in and find everything gone, or being murdered by new occupants. And after you ragequit, you come back and make your way to a hidden stash of weapons and armor, and start plotting revenge.

Whitelists and custom mods for rules enforcement might be necessary to slow down or stop random kids from going completely apeshit on servers, but TFC has some built-in protections simply because it's custom code that most mods and h4x don't work on. It takes some effort to load the correct mods just to log in to a TFC server. New players on non-whitelisted servers can't do serious damage to anything or anyone until they put in some time and effort to make (or beg or steal) metal tools. Reinforcing blocks to some nth degree is pointless. Thieves don't care about obsidian they can't break if there are other ways through or around it. Griefers can't use lava buckets. TNT is still a problem, but that could be easily restricted. And a determined invasion by a number of players to take out a rival faction should be swift and devastating, not like standing there whacking away at one stone block like Steve punching a tree. Seriously? :huh:

I like the idea of siege quality tools, though maybe that's taking it too far. It would be much simpler in coding terms to require iron or steel to break the harder igneous crafted and placed blocks. That would make certain types of stone more valuable as a building material, and stonemasonry as a possible trade skill. It would discourage random tin pickaxe griefing in a well built settlement, but not someone's cobblestone hut or a sedimentary wall, no matter how much love and care they put into building it.

The point I'm trying to make is that traditional random griefing in MC is not as much of a problem in TFC. Most of the player base is dedicated and experienced enough to want to cooperate or advance themselves independently. More importantly, I think a certain amount of chaos is required to give regional trade, factions, and populated cities any lasting meaning or value. Widespread area or block protection on a code level would do more harm than good to a dynamic environment. I say let the players protect or destroy blocks themselves.

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Here's my two cents:

Block protection:

I don't want a magical homestone to protect my house from bad guys.

My suggestion is to implement a system where metal supports can be added into blocks. This would add more incentive to travel into the metal age, to keep your buildings safe from greifers.

A reinforced block must be broken multible times before it is actually destroyed and drops an item.

Imprisonment:

Killing a player with rope or handcuffs, or what have you on your hotbar causes the slain player to respawn in a preselected location. One might just construct a prison cell, or perhaps a slave labor camp to make them work for their freedom.

The imprisoned player will continue to respawn in that location until you set them free with a command, or a right click, or whatever would be appropriate from a gameplay scenario.

Alternately, if the imprisoned player breaks out, then travelling X distance from their spawn point in prison will set them free.

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i like the last sentance

Punctuation please.

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Block protection:

I don't want a magical homestone to protect my house from bad guys.

My suggestion is to implement a system where metal supports can be added into blocks. This would add more incentive to travel into the metal age, to keep your buildings safe from greifers.

A reinforced block must be broken multible times before it is actually destroyed and drops an item.

Spell check please.

As I said... reinforcing blocks to some nth degree is pointless. A determined invasion by a number of players to raid or take out a rival faction should be swift and devastating, not like standing there whacking away at one stone block like Steve punching a tree. Seriously? :huh:

Besides, metal is already the primary incentive to do anything in this mod. Historically, metal was used extensively to reinforce wooden doors and gates, but not stone. And I agree, a magical Home Stone should not directly protect a home or settlement. You need to protect your home fiercely and rebuild it if necessary. If you or your faction/allies/citizens are not there to defend it, why would it matter how many licks it takes to get to the center of that Tootsie Pop? :) It's going to happen anyway unless the blocks are completely invulnerable. Currently, that's only the case with the lack of stone picks, and the iron requirement to break vanilla obsidian.

I think slowing down griefers to a crawl should be inherent in the quality of tools used and the stone used in construction, but not so much that anything constructed is safe from harm. Hardness and density of various materials should be made more consistent with the real world. Some rock types have already been nerfed for being too OP, but maybe that needs to be looked at again. It would certainly be easier for Bioxx to tweak and balance those factors than to come up with crazy new protection code.

Imprisonment: I say kill them, repeatedly if necessary. Deathbans come in handy here and are already implemented. But ok, if imprisonment is wanted or needed, then yes setting their bed spawn in a cell would be a simple way to detain them indefinitely. Beds would have to be unbreakable with punching for that to work. So would metal doors, and stone for that matter. The door could be opened to let them go with existing items like levers or a redstone torch, none of which a naked player inside would have. But they still have to be 'killed' so they drop their entire inventory, maybe maces or another type of subduing weapon would work. What about starving to death, repeatedly? What if when they get out they find another bed in town and set their spawn there, and continue doing whatever annoying or destructive thing they were doing in the first place? Just kill them and put their head on a spike as a warning to others. :)

Labor camps might be interesting, but that would be very hard to enforce if you hand them a pick to escape with.

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