Kingdoms Brainstorming

[Ryuugumo 88]

A simple fix would seem to be to provide configurable menus or files for towns and claims. If options are provided that allow the servers to choose when or if protection comes into play, then the people who want protection will be happier, and the people who want realistic consequences will be happier. A wider range of TFC server types will derive from this, thus fulfilling Bioxx's goal of providing a gameplay experience that is unique per playthrough.

Potential Configurable Options:

Invulnerability to all blocks in a town or claim to all but those who live there.

Only chests of a town or claim are protected.

When all players of a town or claim log off, protection is either enacted then, or after an interval of time.

This is an easily expanded list, and with the coming of LAN games with 1.31, it would mean a variety of different game styles on smaller scales as well.

Finally something we can agree on because it has the best options we just talked about.

[Ryuugumo 88]

I'm not sure but I think Bioxx is looking for ideas for features that he can add to help us make these decisions ourselves. It does nobody any good to talk about "I would do it this way." or "No that's stupid it should be done this way." We need to help come up with ideas for tools that help us do whatever we decide ourselves. Multiplayer has multiple players and people have a tendency to disagree. The only real good option is to find tools that are flexible enough for us all to use them for the wide varity of decisions we make. Bioxx saw that security is important so he added a town block. Maybe he sees it won't do everything we want it to and adds an ability to configure it to our own needs with some of the good ideas we have seen so far. One way or the other we should focus on developing tools that help us all out instead of focusing on "My oppinion is better than yours." Give us the tools and don't force us into someone elses ideas.

[dat594 11]

i like GCountach but combined with hindmost,(really I think these two things should be the base) plus the locks on doors and chests and stuff, plus the ability to reinforce walls and such,... plus about 20 others good sugestions

I think the coliseum is good but I like the idea of impromptu duels, activated by two people punching each other or some such thing, and they don't lose items or get any "jail time" for being killed by a player

[Lumireaver 101]

Excuse me while I continue not reading. (Actually I'm just too lazy to address every idea that I want to talk about at the moment. I promise I'm reading. ...It's that I just spent hours driving around town looking for my immunization records because US Universities are dicks. ...I didn't even find them. :C)

Have some random ideas I may elaborate on later:

Various Rulestones crafted of gems and (primarily) precious metal (alloys), each with different properties activated by engraving. For example, a Wardstone that keeps only engraved mobs away (limited to XX mobs per stone), a Harveststone that improves crop yield (but only for one type of crop), and a Reinforstone that makes buildings nigh impossible to destroy (on this stone you would just engrave the names of the unaffected players, I guess). An anti-pvp Kinshipstone (Not sure, maybe it would have a list of people who *could* be killed. Like a town blacklist/wanted dead-or-alive list?) Also more government oriented stones so players could build their own government piece by piece, only picking the features they want. For instance, a Keystones/Lordstones could give players permission to engrave Rulestones, Commerenstone would dictate who could buy/sell in shops, if those are added, and so on. Engravings could be No-Undo deals, or rewritable, depending on how serious you want people to consider their decisions.

Each stone would be crafted of different gems and metals. You could literally build your own government block by block. :U

Totems could only be destroyed with some kind of consumable Nether resource in a 1:1 ratio in a time consuming manner, or by the player who placed them with any tool.

Rather than affecting a predetermined area spread evenly around the stone, they would affect a rectangular area comprised of a limited-by-tier amount of chunks specified by engraving two corner coordinates. The game rounds them to the nearest chunk. (If coordinate/debug is ever patched out of TFC in order to force REAL-MAN-NAViGATION, a Waystone, or similar consumable/durability based tool could be used to gather this information). Unspecified Rulestones just use the default centred square area. Reasoning for specified area Rulestones is to better facilitate nice looking towns, and to enable hiding your Ruletotem in some kooky hidden dungeon filled with traps instead of building your town around it like some giant bullseye.

Idea for crafting: Three gems (a single higher quality primary gem, and two like-gems of a different kind, one quality lower), two precious metal (or alloy) double ingots, and four igneous extrusive stones. After crafting, it must be welded with a double sheet. The combination of gems and metals determines the affect, and the quality of the gems determines the amount of chunks you can affect.

Crummy mock-up for crummy imaginations. If the totem idea is worth anything, I'd be willing to slowly give each totem identifiable (okay so that's probably easier said than done at that resolution :U) features instead of just colour swapping them. Like little emblems in the column section depicting herbs, coins, or whatever. I can also make them look more like slabs than columns or swap different designs for different stones. For example, political stones could be columns, buffs and such could be slabs, and environmental stones could be spiral spire-like things. It should be pretty.

Also Rulestones ought to depower (indicated by a sprite with less vibrant gems--perhaps active stones will posses a faint glow?) after a Minecraft month/year, requiring refills of their primary gem, or secondary gems, not sure, but yeah. Some kind of maintenance... In commie societies they'll go to their Rulewall/totem/ect and slot the gems themselves. In kingdoms the peasant miners will sell the gems to royals for wealth and such.

[LtChae 13]

I want to add my support to the gentleman from CivCraft. The key is not for the mod to enforce rules, but for the mod to add the ability for the players to enforce rules. This is emergent gameplay we're talking about here, after all. That's what minecraft is all about.

Honestly, I think that all we really need from TFC are some basic tools:

• The ability to use Citadel with all TFC metals
• The ability to mint coins (But not be required to use them. Currency could be anything)
• Compatibility with Civcraft's existing mod suite
• Better mass transportation of resources
• More, and more uses for, raw materials

Honestly, I think that if Bioxx simply made an environment that supported player towns/government (i.e valuable resources in scattered places) players would organize government on their own.

Basically, we don't want to force players into a mold. CivCraft seems to have achieved this, and I say it's worth emulating.

[InertBurger 6]

Lots of really good Ideas here.

I think a bit of Q&A may help the ideas flow, currently Kingdoms is a very broad topic. I got a couple of questions so we can see what Bioxx reasonably thinks might be in place for kingdoms and help polarize the direction of these ideas cause alot of us are thinking X assuming Y. Bioxx may loathe the idea of Y (Bioxx may also love it, but that's peripheral we're here to talk about kingdoms!). Bottom line, good brainstorming has a set of defined parameters. Now lets see if we can get some!

About how big is the server you imagine this being used on? 10 players? 50?

The bigger the population the more it will feel like a "kingdom" this also leads to more griefers but, hey, take the good with the bad. Additionally npc's may be suited to a guard role for lower pop servers (such as the iron golem, etc.) acting as a watchdog. Would lessen binary gameplay of hold down left mouse button to break through wall and get items. Now you have to dodge guards.

Will material distribution remain as it is, or will it change allowing for specialized kingdoms?

Imagine an ore-rich kingdom at the base of a mountain, or one in rich plains near a river which grows food X% faster. This leads to trade, as bigger kingdoms need more resources and smaller ones may be able to cash in on this.

How complicated will this get? Simple feudal/city-states? Kingdoms with fiefdoms and a noble ruling court?

This one really is just how much work Bioxx is willing to put in (keep up the good work!).

Finally, how transparent is control over these kingdoms going to be? Such as: GUI for everything, action and reaction, automation, tier control, etc. Also things such as type of government being set or fluid, each one may have a bonus, etc.

Bottom line how much hair does the mayor need to lose before his duties are over for the day.

I too want to give input for the protection system unfortunately I'm going to make assumptions (bad Burger, bad!). More focused towards non-kingdom-members versus kingdom-members. Basically its the guard system from WURM ONLINE. If you have a low reputation (too many negative actions) town guards aggro on sight (mayor could also blacklist people, or set a negative rating for them for the town only.) Town guards should obviously be appropriately powerful and in sufficient number to thwart one or two people if they get caught doing unsavory deeds (also think "STOP, you've violated the law" kind of chain aggro), however larger groups might be able to overwhelm them. I also think some sort of armor should be a must, Steve shouldn't be able to take a sword to the side and get out with a bunch of health. This way the attacker needs to put effort into attacking. Personally I think it would be more fun if a group of raiders was rewarded over a single griefer. I see a group of 5 raiding one settlement for materials and goods, that settlement then raids back and takes more, etc. Eventually they get sick and tired of it and enlist help or offer a truce etc. Not on at a certain time, upgrade your guards or hire another settlement to defend your holdings should that be available. In short, we normalize resource risk versus reward. To clarify: 5 people attack a settlement of 20, that is a 1:4 ratio I feel a lot less "screwed" than 1 person attacking a settlement of 20 and getting away with it at a 1:20 ratio. 5 people worth of resources versus 20 etc. Finally for this to work I imagine some sort of wound system, health can still be regained but there's debuffs placed on a character after taking damage, to varying severity. A heavily bruised arm may suffer a 25% damage malus on a sword swing. A concussion may result in less XP gained from an action. The defending party is a risk of this too, but they have the home-field advantage.

TL;DR: Questions and No Rambo-ing entire settlements.

P.S. Jail is the wrong kind of punishment, we're playing a game to play and have "fun", not sit around. "But, yes, Mr. Burger that's the point make it un-fun to grief." True, but its a cop-out. There is no "fun" anti-grief mechanic to jail, just doing "nothing". To my knowledge "nothing" cannot be fun. Remember "Losing is Fun" (see Dwarf Fortress).

[bsb23 303]

I vote we get a test server going for CivCraft + TFC we are getting a lot of stuff about it. And the only way to prove either way would be a test server. Compatability would be pretty easy as far as i know i only see one problem what version is civcraft running in? Someone told me it was 1.1 still.

If this worked liked civcraft thinks it will Bioxx you will have to think about some kind of joining or something along those lines. They may have the work we want already done. Why would we redo it?

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

Only as long as we limit what exactly fits in an envelope, i mean, i don't want to open a little envelope to get 10 tonnes of stone XD, perhaps different package sizes IE: Envelope - monetary items, gems, and other small goodies like flowers.

Packages, for medium amounts of material, or a tool,

and a crate for absolutely ridiculous amount of resources (comparably anyways)

given that each block of granite weighs 2.7 tonnes.... lol

[EternalUndeath 1,208]

given that each block of granite weighs 2.7 tonnes.... lol

Well I said letters... never said anything about packages lol

[DarkDurza 3]

If you right click on a locked chest with a lockpick, the lock's durability is removed from the durability of the pick. If the pick is still intact, it then makes a check with a 10% chance of opening the lock and making it pop off as an item, returning the chest to normal. This is improved by 3% for ever tier of metal above copper.

I don't like the idea of a chance to open a lock. I like the idea of having a GUI similar to the anvil so that lockpicking becomes a skill, and not just spamming rightclick.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

I don't like the idea of a chance to open a lock. I like the idea of having a GUI similar to the anvil so that lockpicking becomes a skill, and not just spamming rightclick.

I'd agree with you, but this isn't a game like skyrim. The chests aren't put in for your amusement, they hold the fruits of the hardwork of your fellow players. I'd rather not have you stealing at all, but if I do, I'd rather it be tough as hell.

[Walmart Germaphobe 15]

how about this for something to chew on:

when a chest or other storage item is created it's stamped with the creator's name, if someone removes something from that chest it could have a little red flag pop up for the owner to see that someone's taken something and have a log of the last people (say about... max 5-10, at most?) to open the chest that actually changed it's inventory in some way, i have to say full stop right now i am definitely against automatically enforced laws or bots with town guard tags doing all the policing.

ok, so how does it get policed then toodamnmuch, i hear you saying, well that's a good question and the answer is by the community that plays on it, if someone changed the inventory of a chest and it's not theirs when the owner gets back to check on it and sees that the non-creator access trigger has been sprung it would allow the chest creator to optionally set a bounty in emeralds on the head of that person, any player who is able to dispatch that person without destroying other people's things (pretty obvious, just stated, in case i guess) or stealing from someone else can then collect the bounty at any town hall thing or whatever it winds up being called, i think also it's good to note here that money should have it's own inventory space, a coin pouch if you will that is protected (or maybe not, configurable by server admin) from dropping on death.

now of course, people are still going to want to fight and engage in fisticuffs and all that good nonsense, i propose Colosseums, yeah, roman ones right next to the town hall so that everyone can peer down into the pit and watch the mongrels fight to the death, basically i'm saying disputes over ore and resources are probably going to happen, probably inevitably if the server is large enough, i'm not saying the colosseum should be part of any justice system rather that it would probably be a good idea to let people have a place to fight it out all legal like if that's what's desired.

in closing and this is the best part of the idea as far as i'm concerned, but there would be no need for automated guard NPCs that try to and (yes probably) fail to determine who is a criminal or not and then GM bolt them into obliteration (or maybe you'll stand a chance, who knows) but at the same time it makes being unscrupulous not entirely impossible, it makes it very risky however and also gives an incentive for people who wish to act as police to do so, look at the bounty's list, find one you like, collect the head, it also importantly so in fact gives a very large incentive to the person the crime was committed against to go and fix it themselves, i'm sure it won't cause problems but how much overhead do we really want to dedicate to full time and active NPCs and portions of code that pour over interactions trying to perceive a crime or a not crime, if someone steals from you you could actually stand to turn a profit with a system like this so long as you're willing to fight for what's yours.

i think lastly, if any sort of automated policing type thing is implemented, it should not be a babysitter, it should take revenge on those who are wronged unprovoked, not float around your head like a mosquito you just can't seem to swat because it's always scrutinizing what you're doing to see if it could be a crime.

they could also use a BUD switch to activate redstone when the wrong person opens a chest *thief looks in chest* "yay gold"

*arrow shoots from hidden dispenser* "owwww darn"

[hindmost 15]

they could also use a BUD switch to activate redstone when the wrong person opens a chest *thief looks in chest* "yay gold"

*arrow shoots from hidden dispenser* ...

"Hmm, this sound... like arrows hitting my WROUGHT IRON chestplate. Somebody trying to shoot me? Dispencer at 5 times per tick? Aah, ignore that, do loot!"

[Enzer 60]

they could also use a BUD switch to activate redstone when the wrong person opens a chest *thief looks in chest* "yay gold" *arrow shoots from hidden dispenser* "owwww darn"

Thought Jeb said he was fixing BUDs since they were an unintended glitch. Though I guess instead you could eventually use tripwires for a similar effect.

[DoodTheDud 29]

Honestly I think we should stop focusing on griefers all together for now. No option is perfect and nothing will deter people who want to be assholes. This thread is beginning to lose its purpose because of the direction the conversation has gone. Discussing how land ownership and protection is great, but not when it is completely about griefing..

I don't know about you, but I'm not talking about "griefing". I'm talking about thievery and raiding, which I believe should be a fun and interesting mechanic for both the owner of items and the thief/raider.

I personally want to avoid having NPCs, but NPC guards that patrol the streets and confront strangers is, in my opinion, a FAR better option than protecting land.

Perhaps there could be citizenship cards, and those who don't have them should try to avoid guard confrontations, which could lead to their death or imprisonment.

[DoodTheDud 29]

I'd agree with you, but this isn't a game like skyrim. The chests aren't put in for your amusement, they hold the fruits of the hardwork of your fellow players. I'd rather not have you stealing at all, but if I do, I'd rather it be tough as hell.

Stealing should exist, but ideally, you'd have to work even harder to successfully steal something without your identity being known than you would have to work to gain your items legitimately.

Disallowing theft and vandalism greatly removes many fun possibilities from the game.

The only thing that can make a real challenge for a human is another human. We're the only ones unpredictable enough.

[Bioxx 796]

I won't address all of the points so far but the theme of theft is ongoing so I'll comment on it.

Yes, thievery can bring a lot of interesting mechanics to the game. However it needs to be VERY carefully balanced. There is no fun whatsoever in logging in and realizing that everything you have has been stolen while you were offline. This comes back to the protection provided by cities and towns. I will not force something upon players that I dislike myself, therefore at the very least, thieving will be configurable somewhere and most likely off by default.

edit: Also I updated the OP

[Jasnatdic 85]

A thought about npcs, if they get added. I think building a job board to hire npc with would add a believable way to obtain said npcs. Then you would have to maintain there wage to keep them, maybe even with downsides if you fail to pay them for a period. Like they run off with your treasury instead of guarding it. Also, you should have to equip your npcs. Including building their adiquate place of business and home. A guard for instance would die easily if not armed and armored, and require a baracks. A baker would require input of bakeing materials, as well as a bakery, as well as a home.

Also all job npcs would only do so much work in a day.

[hindmost 15]

This comes back to the protection provided by cities and towns. I will not force something upon players that I dislike myself, therefore at the very least, thieving will be configurable somewhere and most likely off by default.

What about delayed protection - say, it becomes on after 10-15 min from dislogin? If player is on the server, he will meet with the intruder (or not, based on intruder luck and skill), and if he is off, intruder have small amount of time to try to unlock some chests/doors - jamming in 25% cases - lets say, by 1-2 minute of heavy work for the mind per standart lock?

After that time, the house becomes invulnerable (and NPC-guards, if any - [almost] immortal).

And, of course, guards - they are defence mechanism with some AI - because they able to alarm other guards and report about failed or successed fights with intruders to the holder.

That mechanism gives us the ability to configure itself by two degrees of freedom - delay of lock and jam probability.

What do you think about it?

[DoodTheDud 29]

What about delayed protection - say, it becomes on after 10-15 min from dislogin?

This is a good idea. The delay keeps them logging off when they sense defeat, but stops them losing everything while they're offline.

[dunkleosteus 2,425]

This is a good idea. The delay keeps them logging off when they sense defeat, but stops them losing everything while they're offline.

In that case, you might as well make it 5-10 minutes. 15 is i think too long, long enough for a thief to just happen along on the house, as opposed to one who's already there.

[noctem9 13]

Here's a couple ideas I've come up with on the fly. By no means are they refined or well thought out.. just some brainstorming.

Regarding property:

I would like to see a system in place where one or two people can found a location to be their "Camp". Camps can be almost anywhere in the wilderness and they can be upgraded to full fledged villages through a sort of deed system. The deed system could work as follows:

Once a camp is esablished in a prime location fit for building into a village, the founder writes up a Village Deed in a sort of writing desk GUI block. This deed, centered on where is was "written" establishes an invisible border. It would be up to the denizens to mark, protect, and maintain their borders.

Plots of land for cottages (homes) could be subdivided and centered around a hearth/fireplace block inside the cottage. Doesn't break immersion, and what's a home without a warm fireplace?

In order to "upgrade" the newly founded village into a Town (with much larger border and space for cottages), there must be some conditions met inside village limits:

a) There must be a farm and maybe a grain mill

There must be x number of cottages (ties in with c, below)

c) A currency or resource* requirement

*Elaborating on resource: Perhaps when a village is established it is given an arbitrary base "productivity" value. Every time a new building is added inside the village limits "productivity" value increases. e.g.: Base village productivity = 20, cottages add +10 productivity, a bloomery adds +5 (once), et cetera. The productivity value must be met in order to upgrade. (idea pilfered from many turn-based strategy games)

Regarding theft and chest protection:

How about something simple but effective; Different types of inventory systems.

a) Resource Piles - Large inventory, can hold a lot of stones/logs/food but is unprotected from light fingers.

Wooden Chests - Small inventory, locked by default but can be destroyed with metal weapons thereby dropping the contents.

c) Strong Boxes - Tiny inventory, unbreakable and expensive to make requiring stronger metals like iron or steel; guarenteed protection for the owner.

Also, I feel like denizens of the same town shouldn't be allowed to break eachothers wooden chests. Only members of rival villages should have that ability.

Again, villagers should be responsible for the defence of their village (building fences, bridges, gates)

That's all I can think of for now.

[DoodTheDud 29]

In that case, you might as well make it 5-10 minutes. 15 is i think too long, long enough for a thief to just happen along on the house, as opposed to one who's already there.

I meant the concept, not the fine-tuning. But yes, I agree.

[sirdave 1]

Wow, a very interesting discussion. I reckon I could write a seriously "too long" post here. Ill try to keep this short.

Im surprised no ones mentioned millenaire. For me millenaire (or a copy - im being flagrant here) is the building block for kingdoms.

Already millenaire has pre existing settlements populated by human villagers that do a large number of the things that fit in with the ideas being described in this discussion. There are multiple cultures, differences (basic in current form) in food, basic building blocks and "earnable goodies". The villages can trade with each other if they have markets and if relations are good enough and they can war/raid each other if relations are bad. they expand and build buildings and their "radius" (such as it is in a square world - not getting into diagonal lines of blocks and actual distances) are configurable as are the distances at which the chunk+village is still loaded and "active". This last part about distances and the state of a settlement being "active" are critical, in terms of game/client performance and also in terms of how the game will/would play. Ill say more about this later.

Millenaires settlements are "found" during exploration/chunk generation. Reputatuion can be earned with them mainly by trading construction materials to them for their currency (they already have what i consider to be a workable currency built in, more on this later). There are a few small quests implemented in millenaire with a small amount of reputation gain. (I would increase the amount of quests so that reputation gain does not come 99 percent from trading stuff youve gathered to them). Millenaire already has a basic diplomacy system built in. You can go between villagers praising or slandering other villages to encourage them to trade with each other or fight/raid each other, I would involve reputation gain with this. Reputation would fall with the slandered culture/settlement.

Millenaire has a built in protection system. All chests in the village are locked. To unlock all the villages chests you have to kill all the adult villagers (possibly all vilagers in "kingdoms", armed child resistance!!) to be able to access the resources within. If you break the chest in millenaire nothing drops. I dont like this but without any further discussion there is a mechanism existing to provide protection.

In millenaire you can become the leader of the villager after lots of trading (very little non trading mechanisms exist to enhance reputation, this I would change) and you eventually gain access to the chest of the village. After reputation has reached a certain level you can "place/seed" an offshoot settlement of the parent culture that can then be traded with as per the original settlement and influenced to like/dislike other settlements with aformentioned results. At a later reputation threshhold you gain the ability/trade option for necessary item, to create a new player controlled village where you choose the buildings the villagers will build. I think in this player controlled village you will have full access to the chests from the very beginning.

To me Milleanire is ticking so many boxes in terms of something already being there that a copy would be easier than a rewrite but I am not suggesting merely copying millenaire. The author seems like a very decent fellow. Hes been working on Milleanire for a long time from what I can see. He seems very active in coding the mod and talking to people. He seems to have gone to great lengths to make millenaire customisable by players, there is a mechanism for adding player designed structures and also cultures. I have no affiliation to millenaire, nor do I have a relationship with the coder so I am not speaking for him but I would be very surprised if he wouldnt be very interrested in the idea of millenaire forming the basis of a "political building block" and or working with, at the very least conversing with Bioxx on something similar if either party did not want to directly use/implement/modify Millenaire

For the purposes of a beginning I think there could be no better template than millenaire. To do a lot of stuff that is being talked about here would take serious modification to the millenaire mod but I cannot imagine that one could write something as rich as millenaire currently is within 6 months of hard work. And to get more than it currently offers would take even longer. And I beleive that it would take only small modifications here and there to acheive some of what is talked about here with very little work, compared to a ground up creation/wtriting.coding of something similar.

Protection has been discussed at length. I personally think with the right features no protection would be necessary. I would consider the following features necesary at a core level for no other protection to be necessary (ie ditching the milleanire style protection)

1) NPC guards - hireable but also loyal followers or family members, including patrol routes, line of sight for "disallowed actions such as breaking the blocks of your designated house(s) (also your designated roads fields and well... blocks

2) Locks - possible lockpicks and keys and copies of keys made by the locks creator,

3) Changing mining time for all blocks, increasing significantly but looking for the balance of - .not too easy to tunnel into somones house/not allow breaking through walls to be so quick guards have 0 chance of "discovering" an intruder/thief/hostile/vandal .mining for stone/mud/whatever needed not boring, tedious

4) Damagable chests with varying base material modification for "breaking open" and possibly a chance to destroy items contained inside (this might make theft less attractive to non griefers and more fun all round),

5)Hardcore mode - you die you die. no "spawning" for a theif whos been caught and killed. More on this later.

6) Ability to move a player defeated in combat, if you beat somone (not necessarily kill them) you blatantly would/could/should have the ability to drag their unconscious form whever you wish, chain up a severly beaten opponent or whatever. the idea here is imprisonment/restraint. In line with the mining time for blocks idea above I think a stone cell should not be breakable by hand within the confines of the game. If you get caught theiving and beaten and imprisoned, well its better than being dead. you might be able to talk your way out with your gaoler if you promise to behave etc etc.... but effectively inline with the hardcore, "youre dead youre dead" idea if youre imprisoned and unrepentant, effectively you might as well be dead. Unless you have friends prepared to try to break you out. While youre a hostage if friends attack the threat of slaying you might hold them off. ill say more about this later.

Now this post is already getting fat and ive rejigged it a few times. Ill try and talk briefly about those things ive said ill say more about later. (ill work from the top down).

Firstly I said id say more about the village radius and the distance from the villager a player (any player in SMP) has to be to keep a village active and the implications for game performance and flow. In Millenaire the village has a radius which is effectively the "owned land", you can build on it but they treat it as theirs, they will build over the top of whatever a player who is not on control of their village builds, destroying what is present. It also has a distance the player must be within to keep the village "active" ie collecting resources and building. The scale of millenaire is small, the settlements have of the order of 40 villagers at their fullest growth and typically they are found with 8 villagers. Despite this the performace impact on the game is heavy. Having a land populated wall to wall (sort of) would not be feasible with a player count of 100 or so (im guesstimating here) due to the number of villages "active", if all players had a different village in their radius. To me this fact given the maturity of millenaire mod and the quality I associate with it, translate to the mod not providing the "kingdoms", which I would envisgae as multiple millenaire settlements as viable. As a non coder The only solution to a problem like this is to simulate the gathering/building rather than having actual entities going from a to b performing tasks that can be "seen". This is the part where millenaire would need to be very different or be adapted. I would like to imagine that one could create some kind of simulator effectively generating and consuming/resources, trading and attacking/deffedning without actually running entities ais which directly affect the outcomes of the village. Sort of like a sim city, simulating many villagers and generating macroscopic outcomes without simulating every aspect of the individuals lives. Millenaire doesnt really do this (as far as I know) but again, anything written from the ground up is surely going to take far longer than will ever be actually realised.

next I mentioned currency. Millenaire already has essentially a gold silver copper based currency. I like the idea of minting coins with a name.That works on many levels and could be easily integrated within millenaires existing currency. I think that gold silver and copper coins should be crafted from ingots of the said material. The value/ingot craft rate/cost of goods should be tied directly to the scarcity of the resouce (like i think it works in real life, or has, or should). Obviously the spawn rate of the currency metals would need to be set relative to each other, and also the prices/values of traded items is measured by the scarcity of the resource/crafted item balanced against the players or npcs needs. This brings me to something I havent mentioned but fits here. Villagers should require food/water (possible needs here can be inserted, balancing for performance/viability/cost balancing, including shelter,warmth,clothes,tools with whatever they have the least of generating the most need/desire). As it stands in MC you need a constant supply of tools so tools are continually used up/broken and new ones needed so a village will consume tools by collecting resources. I dont think I need to say too much about a villager/indivifual npcs needing food. Food would be the baseline for need and consumption and food generation methods and the time needed for a given output would need to be balanced with the economy and the scarcity of rare metals/commodity price. All of this creates an economy for which the currency should be balanced as the tool for facilitating trade. Between the villages also(necessitating some modification of the millenaire tarding system which i know nothing about). It has been previously mentioned that in TFC the "needed resources" are more scattered than in vanilla, this naturally and gracefully creates an inducement for villages seperated by some distance to trade amongst themselves for those resources they need/find desireable/useful. Weapons and armour and MANPOWER would be expensive and consumed in warfare/raids which would be another source of generating need and consumption to regulate the economy of the greater world.

Ive also said more about the hardcore death is death. There is another mod that I like very much called minecraft comes alive. In this mod the testificate villagers are overwritten with "human villagers" that you can interact with (millenaire villages do not overwrite testificates and both villages spawn in a world with both mods installed). Eventually you can marry an MCA testificate replacement and have children. When playing in hardcore mode if you have a child and you die you have the option to continue as your child (currently you dont change name and essentially play on as the same character but the child does disappear upon your death). I like this as a mechanism from the point of view of griefing - players who are cuaght and killed can eventually be forced "out of children" into permadeath and the "cost" of being killed for antisocial actions becomers much higher (your children/household should require food, clothes, tools if they are to do any work and shelter to keep wild animals attacking them, so they would incur a cost and therefore not be an unlimited resource that a grifer can exploit (just having many many children) to grief other players. Also If a player were to be beaten in combat rather than kiled (beaten or injured into submission) the player can be imprisoned and cannot "respawn" into a child upon death (no death occurs). So for me this is working from multiple angles.

If I could I would integrate the "marry a villager" functionality from MCA into millenaire outside this mod, but in the context of this discussion I would say that the two make natural bedfellows along with many of the suggestions Ive added.

I would make the guards/family members/villagers ai integrated and have settings which are either displayed (if not controlled or under stong influence - like the subject of a village youve become the leader of) or are controllable. I woudl keep them simple but flexible. Military stance - run away, deffend/fightback with setttings for until inury threshold or death/flee uncontrollably, attack range - melee or ranger weaponry and optimal range for missile fire, basic job, resource consumption rate - translating to rationing,tool quality and usage,clothing consumption, movement settings - setting home locations, range of movement/freedom, flee/flight distances/ranges/boltholes.

The idea here is that the guards can be "setup" along with other "protection countermeasures" to offer a nice protection to the owner, a chance of success for a potential thief and a very general platform for lots of other exciting scenarios. Villagers/family members can be setup to produce some resources mitigating their cost, or potentially with multiple villages trading a profit might be generated by producing smart, selling in the right places etc etc. This would require lots of work but offers a powerbase that enables things a solo thief cannot sustain.

At this stage Ill mention skills. Skills would be awesome. There shoudl be skills for everything. Like dwarf fortress a peice of armour or a weapon made by a master smith should be orders of magnitude better than that made by an apprecntice. Farming should be faster, hitting stuff should be more damaging etc etc. I always think about an infinitely increasable skill with each extra increment in skill taking longer to earn and have a corresponding lesser effect than the previous skill point on an exponential scale. So there would be a "bang for buck" point that is worth more than the ever increasing skills of somone who does 1 thing for their entire lives, in terms of the time it takes to earn the skill, as well as the value of the output produced. However despite the fact that I would love to see skills in minecraft for the scope of this discussion I think its a bridge too far. I think a great deal of what has/is envisaged can be acheived without it and the work involved with adding skills (should have been there from the start like many other things which are almost a joke) I think might be too entrenching.

Given that TFC has/is talking about seasons, if the hardcore idea would be utilised then the player character can have a lifetime which he can either play until death and then/or continue as a follower/child to "contiinue the game". This would lead to "bloodlines/families/houses, that would benefit from the legacy of those that came before them, the facilities, accumulated resources/wealth/manpower and knowledge. Another mod I think would fit within this concept is one called researchcraft which im currently playing. In it every recipe must be "learned" by performing an action upon resources which may be consumed and may result in a new recipe being learned. The recipes are stored with a recipe book known by the player which can/could be written into a book and/or possibly shared with other players or npcs.

OK I think that will do.

[DoodTheDud 29]

Wow, a very interesting discussion. I reckon I could write a seriously "too long" post here. Ill try to keep this short.

(ENORMOUS WALL OF TEXT)

Jebus, that's "short" for you?

Quality post, however.