I'm wonder what a tower might do that is summoned in a predetermined location off-plane that somehow benefits the city/commune that summoned it.

For example, what if raising this tower means any xp loss from any death anywhere is decreased by 75%. Of course, the tower drains power continuously while its up.

Or what if it also makes you conglutinate anywhere plus decreased xp loss?

Any other ideas?

About the Suspect status...what about raising it slowly to see how it effects things? Like raise it to 15 for a couple weeks. If the world doesn't explode, raise it to 20. Keep raising it in increments of 5 until you see it start to have a negative effect, and then drop it back 5, and stick with that if things seem to return to normal.

Wouldn't that be a nice non-drastic way of going about it, that could allow both sides to remain happy?

If said examples came up who would they target? People all? Or people who enter there from another organization? And are they meant to be harmful to the organization where its set up by draining, or does it drain the organization that set it up?

Sorry for asking things probably already stated, just unsure if anything I understand about them is correct.

(And my internets being weird so if this gets double posted or if Im in writing a bunch of times Im sorry!)

Very mature and reasonable suggestion.

However, a couple of weeks wouldn't be nearly long enough. (I imagine certain people would be on their "best behavior" if they thought the limit would keep raising every few weeks--not that I'm naming names!)

But would you have the patience to wait a couple of months to see the reaction? And what if the reaction is negative and we have to drop it back down to 10? Would you be mature enough to accept it?

I think that if we are given the rope to hang ourselves with, people will be a lot more understanding if we do end up doing just that. A month or two between raises would be something, and I think that we'd see some policing of it by players, who really want to see the limit continue to rise.

And, if they didn't, they couldn't have anyone to blame but themselves. When going to the 10 limit, it went from free reign to suddenly being cut down to a bare minimum, and there wasn't much oppurtunity for people to learn from their mistakes and straighten up. In this case, they'll have that chance, and I think it'll end up with better results (even if it fails, you'll be able to say you gave us the chance, which no one will be able to deny)

Rather than one giant nexus-reaming 'tower o' doom', I'd like to see numerous lesser city upgrades that cost commodities and power - they would be like city improvements from the Civilization games. One thing I was thinking is that you could use this to influence your commodity production, though they would have other uses as well. For example:

Magnagora wants to build a metalworks factory. This factory can be used to supply all novice Ur'guard in the city with free, low-end short swords, and perhaps a set of leathers. These weapons will be set to 30 month or so decay and will be unmeltable. The factory has a one-time building cost of, say, 5000 power, 200,000 gold, 2000 wood, and 400 iron. Once built it is permanent. It can then be activated or deactivated by the Warlord at any time - when unactive it does nothing, but also costs nothing. When active it does its job and eats up 50 iron commodities per month. These can either be taken directly from the reserves, or we could have a new commodity pool marked 'city upkeep' which the trade minister can funnel commodities into.

Mag has built a metalworks factory but can't easily cover the 50 iron/month fee. However, they've also built another structure: a Dwarven Embassy. When active, they will lose a certain amount of gems (or something else, I dunno) in exchange for increased iron production. Or perhaps it will be customizable so you can exchange certain other things depending on what you want mined more heavily. Or maybe I'm just on crack.

Again, very rough ideas.

(I shall not rest until Lusternia has become a turn-based stratagy game!)

I'd exchange gems for iron ANY DAY!

I think any org could change gems for anything they wanted without a care way too much of it.

That's a nifty idea, Guido.. but I think there should be sooome way to destroy it. And that could be a means of conflict. Not as simple as "raid and level it" but something more involved using conflict quests (that aren't done constantly and repetative) with some goal like supplying sabetouers, or some sort of long range ballistic (we already know this exists-Nintoba's Spear), that can be slowly powered-up/supplied to damage/hinder/destroy buildings.

Actually, if these things could be destroyed by normal raids, then finally there'd be some incentive to attack cities and communes on prime themselves (not villages!). For now, nothing interesting to attack there.

Heh, my favorite type of game.

Why should these 'upgrades' be permanent? IMHO, the cost of your metalworks factory idea is waaay too low. What if it cost 50,000 power, 1,000,000 gold, 2,000 wood, 1,000 iron, and 500 steel. What if the upkeep was 1000 power and 50 iron per month.

Hmm, what if special structures could be built on the elemental planes that 'attack' the factory, making them rust (water plane) or decay (earth plane) or break down through fae gremlins (ethereal).

Nobody would pay 1000 power a day for novice weapons. We'd just... you know... buy the metals / stone and make the axes ourselves (which we already do).

Further, that's far too expensive for something that can be destroyed...

Use the Willowisps..they like have no use anymore? They can steal parts and cause them to break just as well as a gremlin.

I dislike the idea of an uber tower that has an incredible effect on everyone, like causing conglute everywhere (basically no penalty for dying...) or thunderclap-esque things.

However, I do like the idea of a tower that can be imbued with effects providing small boosts. Things like, say, giving city members a bonus level 3 health regeneration, or maybe a temporary level 2 experience bonus (like the human one).

I also like the idea of permanent city upgrades. I don't think the metal factory does enough to justify a 1000 power/month cost though. Some other ideas...

Aetheric Lure: Twice as many elemental creatures spawn / fae leave two ethereal creatures instead of one.

Astral Passage: A rift somewhere in the city that allows anyone with Astrogate to transverse directly from prime to astral and vice versa.

Aura of Replenishment: Willpower/endurance regeneration at the nexus.

Scrying Stone: Lets city members scry people from the location of this upgrade.

etc.

I love Shamarah's ideas! Those are all reasonable requests I think.

Its a good way to give the Moondancers back their scrying pool! See, theres backing to it! And whos to say no one else had the same?

I would rather that, before new things go in... people were actually held responsible for their *current* actions.

It's kind of a shame that NPCs declare something and then just don't care.

Permanent city upgrades are nice, but I have a feeling eventually they'll lose their novelty and all the cities will end up having one - like arenas, for example. It'd have lasting effects, but permanent things don't seem... well, dynamic enough. Once cities have all the upgrades, they're back to where they were before, except with easier bashing. That is, the changes won't have the value they would if they could be taken away.

As somewhat of an aside, it would be a nice little thing for raids to have an impact on the rooms themselves: for example, players can carry a torch or something that allows them to turn the description of a city room into a generic "Piles of rubble indicate where a city once stood" message or something like that if certain prerequisites (no demesne, terrain changed for a year, whatever game balance requires) are fulfilled. Cities and communes would have to spend power and commodities to rebuild, of course.

For Guido's idea, everyone else pretty much summed it up: it's nifty. Not sure if other MUDs have similar systems, but I can't think up of a game world off the top of my head that allows players to change the world they live in like that. It would certainly be fun if it was implemented. But the admins want to move conflict off-prime, so the buildings probably shouldn't be built on prime.

Aetherspace would be a good place, I think - Magnagora could hatch a barracks in a government-owned aethership/manse docked to the portals that floods villages with Ur'Grunt mobs (similar to the orc invasions into villages), and it'd be destroyed by other aetherships (well, if aethercombat can occur at portals and docks, which they don't right now, I think) or stolen and used in another aethership/manse.

If the upgrades had a power upkeep, cities couldn't get them all and would have to pick and choose.

I love all of Shamarah's ideas.