Suggestion Townships 3.3 update discussion

[Alator]

• Player cap per town set to be unlimited for all tiers (technically will capped at 999). Minimum player counts remain.
• Player cap increase per housing region removed.
• Housing region costs halved.
• Housing income changed to the following:
  • shack - 0
  • house - 5
  • chalet - 10
  • manor - 15
  • mansion - 20
  • villa - 25
  • estate - 30
• Food requirements removed from housing for payoffs.
• Tribe housing caps increased to 3 houses.
• Soul Items server price reduced to 250.
• Loosen up soul structure biome restrictions a bit.
• Max player tax reduced to 20s.
• Shack and Campsite Regions unlimited. Campsite power debuff removed. They are intended to assign players their own plots in towns.
• Town tax changed to 870 (trust me on this one).
• City Tax changed to 1500.
• Metropolis tax changed to 2500.

And whats with the town tax? How should i pay 1040s tax every day with only 300 income from houses?

Check your math again.

And dont Forget the Region cost. Not sure if it should be adjusted or not. but we should keep them in mind.
I mean 8k for a CityHall is kinda much.

The current system is far, far easier on players to set up and maintain a town than it used to be. For example: http://herocraftonline.com/wiki/Town


I feel this is in a good place. Comments!

 

[TheManiac23]

ATM i have

8 Shacks
6 House
4 chalet
3 manor
Those pay for my Tax of 1040 + the Town Hall Dragon Egg payout.

With the new system its
8 Shacks = 0
6 House = 30
4 chalet =40
3 manor =15
So only 85 from the houses +240 from dragon egg thats 325 income and 870 cost = -545
So i need to build more houses if i dont want to use the Soul Shop thing. (Not everyone wants to deal with that stuff)

9 Shacks = 0
8 House = 40
7 Chalet = 70
6 Manor = 90
2 Mansions = 40
Thats 240 From houses +240 from dragon egg so 480 income and 870 cost = -390
That means you have to let 4 Shops Running only for the Tax if you dont Sell anything of Soul Items
even if you can run 4 Soul Productions and shops you wont have much left for anything.

Not really good for towns.

Now lets do the Max money income from the new town system

We have -390 From houses and tax

With 5 productions and 3 Shops we make

5 Production 1250 in case you can sell all items (which isnt sure i have so much stock atm and cant sell it)
3 Shops 375

So its 1235 income. But like i already said only if you can sell all soul Items which isnt guaranteed

would be enough to keep the town up and have some extra cash for buildings or other town stuff but only if everything goes right.


With the old system and max houses i would make

9 Shacks =180
8 House = 280
7 Chalet = 420
6 Manor = 510
2 Mansions =230

Thats 1620 + 240 Townhall -1040 tax = 580 income with all houses possible and without Soul Items

If we add 5 Shops and 3 Productions now its
2500 from Shops -1250 From buying the items
1500 From Production of Soul Items if you can sell them all (atm i dont sell any of my soul items)

So its a max of 3330 this way

If we do 5 Productions now and 3 Shops its
3 Shops 750
5 Productions if we sell all 2500

Maximum amount of money you can make from a Town: 3830

 

[dionnsai]

I'd like to see a much higher limit on the House size as well, I find them to be the most reasonable size for my citizens to own individually. Not so small as to be cramped, enough room for 2 decent floors of living space and storage. As for the costs and money, I can't say I'm attached to feeding houses, so if this reduces/removes the need for me to do that, I think I could live with these changes and spend time doing something more fun lol.

 

[dionnsai]

A thought though....why don't you just get towns out of the Soul game and use Power as the currency within towns? You'd be talking much smaller purchases overall and you'd need to do some completely new math but towns do have ways of managing power consumption vs generation? So much power is needed per day to survive, construction of any single structure might consume X power and then there is the daily consumption, town growth could be regulated by the town's ability to generate power. This would also create some more interplay with the war system, since power is the mechanic involved, not souls.

Since power is a capped (stored), basically once you hit the ceiling for your town size, it's not like you can farm more power or take it out of the town...or could you generate some sort of overflow into a soul item which could be fed into a town to generate emergency power...

This does leave figuring out what to do with inter-town trading....

 

[Alator]

We need to back up here.

People are assuming Townships were meant to be a source of money generation. This is a false assumption. They never were, and only became such due to the war system failing.

Trade is part of the balance, especially for larger towns. You can't ignore parts of the system because you don't feel like it. If you want to, don't expect to get as much out of it.

People are also assuming that any town over tribe should be able to be run and managed by a single person. This is also false. They are meant to be communities. If your town members don't want to help you support your town, you built too big and recruited crappy town members. If you want a safe-ish zone you can keep yourself, use a residence.

 

[TheManiac23]

Yea HC has 10000 active player so we can support 100 towns with 100 members in each.
Like this you can just make the old town system in again.

 

[DEMOCALIBER]

Honestly I LOVE these changes! I don't have to waste my time stocking my housing. Soul Items can still generate income, though not as much (which is fine with me)...and taxes reduced is nice too. This, as was stated in previous posts makes it much more reasonable income wise. Making 1.5-2k per day with town is a TON more reasonable than 3-4k. Thanks Alator! (The income generation for towns could be a little higher. With everything that changed, I think the housing amounts at least could have stayed the same.)

 

[dionnsai]

I'd like to see a /to budget tool that shows a better breakdown of projected earnings vs expenditures

 

[dionnsai]

Honestly I LOVE these changes! I don't have to waste my time stocking my housing. Soul Items can still generate income, though not as much (which is fine with me)...and taxes reduced is nice too. This, as was stated in previous posts makes it much more reasonable income wise. Making 1.5-2k per day with town is a TON more reasonable than 3-4k. Thanks Alator! (The income generation for towns could be a little higher. With everything that changed, I think the housing amounts at least could have stayed the same.)

I spent most of yesterday's gameplay time packing houses full of carrots and shit, had to prod a few town members into carrot farming just to get me caught up.

 

[DEMOCALIBER]

I'd like to see a /to budget tool that shows a better breakdown of projected earnings vs expenditures

That's a great idea...something that can show you EXACTLY what your positive income will be each day...helping you determine if you need more infrastructure to actually keep your town alive.

 

[dionnsai]

That's a great idea...something that can show you EXACTLY what your positive income will be each day...helping you determine if you need more infrastructure to actually keep your town alive.

could also include a breakdown of power consumption vs generation (project using best case, such as mines operating at peak efficiency and so on) or that could be a separate tool

 

[Alator]

I like the idea of a more detailed money log, but atm significant coding additions are out of the equation.

 

[LovelyArmor]

We need to back up here.

People are assuming Townships were meant to be a source of money generation. This is a false assumption. They never were, and only became such due to the war system failing.

Trade is part of the balance, especially for larger towns. You can't ignore parts of the system because you don't feel like it. If you want to, don't expect to get as much out of it.

People are also assuming that any town over tribe should be able to be run and managed by a single person. This is also false. They are meant to be communities. If your town members don't want to help you support your town, you built too big and recruited crappy town members. If you want a safe-ish zone you can keep yourself, use a residence.

Bring back a whitelist and bring in good players onto the server. It's not our fault this server has "crappy players". We as players, don't control who comes in.

You want townships to work. Let's make sure you aren't pissing off the people who do play, in the process.

If you want people to actually play on this server, don't insult them.

 

[LordZelkova]

Bring back a whitelist and bring in good players onto the server. It's not our fault this server has "crappy players". We as players, don't control who comes in.

You want townships to work. Let's make sure you aren't pissing off the people who do play, in the process.

If you want people to actually play on this server, don't insult them.

Easy there lovely.
He isn't insulting anyone.

 

[WitchOnaRampage]

Such a clash of understandings here. Without clear messages about HC's design and objectives, players "make sense" from their experiences.

We need to back up here.

People are assuming Townships were meant to be a source of money generation. This is a false assumption. They never were, and only became such due to the war system failing.

However, in the experience of players on this map, Townships HAVE been a source of money generation. Whatever the intention of HC management, this has been the players' experience, and the basis of their understanding about how Townships are played on the current map.

It takes time to shift people's understandings. Refer any work in communication, marketing, social change etc. The HC community is just a microcosm of the wider community. And the first step toward shifting understandings is to get a very clear look at where they're starting from. Seeing the world from their current perspective.

Perhaps if this note that appears on many Wiki pages were more widely advertised, the community would be better prepared to accept that change and improvement are objectives throughout the life of a HC map, and they might be more open to accepting and adjusting to change as it occurs.



I'm sad, also, to see how the work Alator is endeavoring to do to improve the player experience is being received. I'm hearing a lot of frustration, yes. And a sense of powerlessness that is bringing up anger, and even some abusive responses.

I'm sorry, I don't have any more concrete suggestions to make for improving Townships. Just the suggestion that any progress move forward from how things ARE (ie reality), not from how things are SUPPOSED TO BE (ie illusion, refer The Work by Byron Katie).

Good luck all.

 

[barbas0l]

First off, huge thanks and hats off to @Alator for taking this monster on. The current township plugin had some really big ideas and directions it wanted to go, but the execution wasn't going as intended. For the first time in my Herocraft tenure, townships are generating cash and not requiring it. This is something Alator has mentioned a few times, and something I have to agree with, that townships shouldn't be generating tons of extra cash(I understand it was for war purposes, but that didnt work out). So now the balance changes are coming to really limit the money gains we're currently seeing. It seems that after the balance changes mentioned above come through, that towns should be closer to the break even mark for upkeep(correct me if I'm wrong, quick math). In the past, townships required more money to keep up, and didn't generate any sort of income themselves. I've personally bitched up a storm in regards to the township plugin, and thankfully a lot of my concerns and ideas were taken into consideration, and I saw changes in-game. The current size and item requirements are NOTHING compared to the original (thanks again @Alator ), buildings required per tier are much less than original, and now there won't be a citizen cap in towns (which was extremely painful early on). There is no such thing as the 'perfect system', but huge strides have been made in the right direction. Thanks again for all the hard work, and for hearing us out during the process @Alator [USERGROUP=9]@Admins[/USERGROUP] @Kainzo

Just an after thought, is war still going to be an avenue that the plugin is working towards? If not, do dragon eggs serve any real purpose anymore? (I'm at work currently, but I'm writing down some more questions/comments for later!)

 

[alexhoff1]

I'll survive. I don't like it that much, but I'll survive.

I believe my income is about tied with taxes now XD. (After the changes are implemented)

 

[SandSassy]

If this "towns create no taxes" goes through I know several players (including myself ) and we will never play again.

 

[Jonsoon]

If this "towns create no taxes" goes through I know several players (including myself ) and we will never play again.

Then that is your decision. A poor one, albeit.

Herocraft is ever changing and evolving to produce new experiences and to balance.

Threatening to leave the server will not change anyone's minds. You know what does? Discussion. Bring forth other ideas and contribute to the topic instead of saying what you want goes, or else.

 

[barbas0l]

If this "towns create no taxes" goes through I know several players (including myself ) and we will never play again.

I'm not sure you worded that correctly. Towns don't create a tax, they are charged a tax. Town have been generating income WAY over the tax they are charged, and we're now seeing some balance changes to alter that. As it stands, towns are providing a large amount of region-ed protection AND generating an absurd amount of revenue, and that shouldn't be the case. With the aforementioned changes, towns should break even for taxes. So between your income from housing and soul shop production your town should make just enough to cover your taxes, and that's without charging a daily tax rate to your citizens.

PS - Ultimatums don't go over well here XD .