It takes time for a city to be built. You can’t expect a group of people to simply drop all their belongings on the ground and instantly build something on the scale of a castle or sprawling metropolis. More importantly, if those people can simply plunk down a fully operational smelting station, a Weaver, a Carpenter, and a Mason wherever they go, why would they even need to?
One of the issues I’ve seen recently with games like Minecraft, Terraria, and Starbound is that it’s too easy to simply pack up everything you own and play the nomad game to get whatever resources you need and avoid conflict. Obviously, with Radiant’s focus on city-building, this is one of the prime issues they will be combatting–making settling predominantly in one area more rewarding and fun.
My suggestion today is the concept of installation times on your crafts and stations, preventing the player from simply tossing all their belongings into their inventory and hauling off. (Granted, I say this with caution–the idea already reminded me of last year’s Free to Play April Fools joke with wait times…) Rather, I am suggesting progressively longer times to install your belongings as they become more intricate and elaborate–obviously, your SUPER SMELTATRON 3000 is going to be a bit more complicated than the Carpenter’s level-one station made out of a tree log.
Requiring some time being put into establishing your settlement/town/city would make the concept of a Home City that much more important, as it would require more thought in designing and preparation and would end up being the location of your greatest stations and workers; it can’t simply be thrown into a bag or hauled away in a few backpacks or wagons. However, this could also be a source of additional perks for Workers and Crafters–faster assembly speed and more efficient hauling.
Honestly, I can foresee some criticism on this topic, as it’s essentially slowing down the game for the sake of the game. What do you all think?
Hmm… in short, I’m undecided. On the one hand, I think it’s silly that you can place a bed/chair/Super Smeltatron 3000 in half a second flat (and disassemble it in the same amount of time), but… this might also be one of those times when realism has to take a back seat to gameplay. You don’t want to get your curtains off by 1 voxel and then sit there for 30 seconds whilst a worker shifts them for you after all. That just seems frustrating.
As far as the nomadic lifestyle goes… to be honest I think the city-building side will make the nomadic life unattractive enough. Building a settlement is a big investment, so that should work to limit the number of people willing to up sticks and move away.
Yeah, but those are curtains! I’d sure hope they wouldn’t take that much time to install, even if they were some sort of legendary gilded curtains of eternal envy.
Maybe if they were for a giant window the size of a HOUSE they’d take some notable time to install… For the standard windows we’ve got now? Probably little to no change from the current system. As you said, small, simple stuff like that shouldn’t slow the game down.
Well yes, my point was more to give a simple example. Misplaying your Super Smeltatron 3000 by one voxel and having to wait a good while to see it moved is also a nuisance.
Although this makes sense I think it may be a little tedious, also what would the people do for the amount of time needed to move an item? Animations for that would be strange unless it was a sort of spinning particle ball until it was complete (like the crafting right now).
I could also see this being useful for crafting, I’m not 100% on whether currently crafting a said item is slower or faster than a different item? Crafting a statue should realistically take much longer than a simple wooden slab. Although this is still problematic because it means your worker is locked to that task for a given time and eventually items will become so complex, scaling of time would have to be looked into for balance.