A huge idea
Issue
People that place down a town stone can claim the surrounding land, regardless of whether or not it contains blocks placed by another player. This can create an issue if someone has placed a road or an area outside their city that connects to their town.
Let’s take a little look at the differences between using a town stone and not using a town stone: and the problems needing fixed between the two.
Using a town stone:
- You claim land that’s inside the boundaries set by your town stone.
- You get access to the major/citizen privilege.
- You get access to the /teletown transport.
- You become immune to player attacks but you can attack players if they are a citizen of another town.
- You gain the advantage of cooperative building between other players through strategic planning.
Not using a town stone:
- You can claim land by placing blocks but they can still be taken over by someone who places a town stone
- The thrill of not knowing how your town will turn out because anyone can come in and build.
- You can be attacked by anyone and attack anyone at will because you’re in the wilderness.
- You will have to place a marker on the game map so you know where your town is/or you can place a teleporter near your town.
As you can see each one has it’s advantages and disadvantage but there’s 2 in particular that are very similar.
1. You claim land that’s inside the boundaries set by your town stone
2. You can claim land by placing blocks but they can still be taken over by someone who places a town stone.
I’ve done some thinking and I believe I’ve found a solution to this problem.
The Solution
The solution is a very simple one indeed. When you place a town stone it already has certain dimensions set, meaning; when you place the town stone anything inside the dimensions of the border are claimed by the major of the town stone placed.
A solution to this would be to limit where a town stone can be placed. When you place a town stone it can’t be near any other blocks placed by another player. You can however place a town stone if the only surrounding blocks are your own.
Now I know you’re thinking “well what if you place the town stone (which is isolated) and we want to expand it? There’s blocks blocking my next expansion.
Simple solution! Instead of claiming new area when you expand. How about it create new area? Sounds crazy I know but let me explain myself.
Let’s say (just for hypothetical purposes), that you have a town stone and it covers a 4x4 area. You decide that you want to expand your town so it becomes a 8x8. Now, instead of expanding to the next 4 spaces outside of your town it will create 4 new spaces between your town border and the space next to it. Doing so will eliminate ever running into another player’s town.
Creating new spaces instead of expanding to existing ones will not only solve the issue of running into another player’s blocks it will also let the world expand itself naturally. Think about it, every time a town expands it’s creating new land, thus: expanding the world as a whole. This will encourage new players to go out and set a town stone and it will protect the roads and pathways between 2 towns. Eventually if the world gets too large you can have the player choose when they start the game which town (created by sim9) they would like to start in. Sim9 could easily just create another starting place on another part of the map. Doing this would spread of the flow of players and not bunch everyone out in one specific spot.