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City Planners / Urban Planners / Zone Planning


juvenius

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When you build a ship you need a basic idea of the ship that you are building....when you are building a space station you need a basic plan or idea to build that....but cities are dynamical buildings come and go....infrastructure is upgraded and updated and so on.

 

This topic looks to address the issue of the complicated thing that a city is, a start of a conversation in to making the most basic of things in a city urban planning. On a more basic level cities are organize districts then in Lots. DU needs to adress this from the start if it wants to make cities that really stand out.  One owner per lot.

 

City / District / Lot is the break down structure that i see the most simple to go. A idea is for example:

 

Small City  - 5 Districts / 5 lots per district

Medium City - 10 Districts / 10 lots per district

Large City -  20 Districts / 20 lots per district

 

Also the ability to mode hole buildings from lot to lot, lets say that you made a industrial district and you want to move it to a bigger city or in the same regard a Small City upgraded to larger city.....

 

Will right more on the topic...just wanted some feed back from the community on the idea. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I dont think that will work.

There is no such thing as a designated area that is tagged "city".

 

In DU there is land.

On that land you can build.

Eventually settlements of several buildings will emerge. At some point it will get of a large enough size that players will call it a city. But from a game point of view there is nothing that defines a city.

 

(A territory unit can be placed anywhere on the land. And a TU has nothing to do with the concept of a city.)

 

Urban planning is something you will have to plan before trying to build a city. Not implement some plot mechanic.

 

:)

 

PS if you want to move buildings then you need a dynamic core unit. Standard core's cant move.

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This topic shouldnt be adressed to NQ, that is only giving to players tools, but to organizations that will plan those cities.

 

Some organizations already started to structure their plans and to asign people to different functions such as engineer or architect.

 

City planning requiere lot of knowlege in terms of spacial orgization, transportation, network, segmentation and sociology but a game like DU wont need any knowledge since it will be more villages polulation, scaled to big metropolis

 

Will be like playing 3d simcity, a one man job will be enough to make something look like a city

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While NQ won't be providing any specific measurements/terms to define the structure of a city, I personally would love to hear everyone's opinions on how cities should be structured. 

 

Going off the OP, the question is: How big is a District?

 

In my opinion, large cities will be divided by territory boundaries. Each Territory Claim is 1km wide. Since it's possible that the Territory Claims in a city might not all be owned by the same person, I suggest making the space of a TC the base size for a District.

 

On the topic of Lots: I think there should be a standard number per district, no matter how many districts a city has. I personally would say that Six Lots is the optimal amount (seeing as how each territory claim is a Hexagon) The Lot boundaries can be organized in whatever way you wish, and then distributed among officials in the city, who then find people looking for property and rent it out accordingly, giving a share back to the District Manager.

 

These are my thoughts; feel free to tear them apart

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In the end, you will always be able to tell which settlements were planned out and which weren't. It won't matter if or how territories are split up.

 

My guess is that subdividing territories will lead to worse city planning, since everyone who gets their own piece of land will build what they want, regardless of the rest of the city. I think it would also cause a city's community to become fractured and independent from each other, which is not what you want in a city.

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In the end, you will always be able to tell which settlements were planned out and which weren't. It won't matter if or how territories are split up.

 

My guess is that subdividing territories will lead to worse city planning, since everyone who gets their own piece of land will build what they want, regardless of the rest of the city. I think it would also cause a city's community to become fractured and independent from each other, which is not what you want in a city.

 

I agree. Planned cities would probably only work out later in the game when people know what makes for an effective city, and have the resources and people to build it relatively quickly. Otherwise, cities will probably emerge organically; growing and changing as needed. If I had to guess how a major city might be laid out, I would probably think that it would be based on rings rather than squares. The center of the city would be administration and market facilities, which would be surrounded by a ring of industrial infrastructure. Outside that would be pretty much everything else: housing, entertainment, hangars, storage, and whatever else people thought of.

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Rome wasn't built in a day. I fully expect, as time goes by, more elements will become available which can be used to make a city function more efficiently or provide additional services or luxuries. Even planned cities will have to have modifications done to make use of these new discoveries. Will a city be more efficient if everything was planned in advance? Yes. But there will always be unforeseen and unexpected additions as players gain more mastery over the system.

 

As for zoning, I hope that the RDMS is powerful enough to give rights to allow construction in a designated (3D) area. Regardless it is up to the players to decide how they want zoning to work. Placing arbitrary limitations on a zoning system (unless those limitations are game technology limitations) does not dovetail well with all the other systems in DU which allow a large degree of freedom.

 

Players decide where they want to build what. We can plan a city into districts or have a city that has everything mixed together with no logical districts, or something in between. RDMS could be used to create districts by specifying which elements can and cannot be built there. Ultimately the concept of a district and what that means is for each city builder/planner to decide.

 

Emberstone, as a neutral city targeted at new and experienced players alike, will have designated market (open to all), industrial, and residential areas (among others). Some will be built by CSYN for those that don't care to build their own, but hopefully, RDMS will allow others to build their own accommodations. If you want to be part of Emberstone in any capacity (even just to book a "lot") drop me a PM.

 

Kurock

CSYN, Chief of Development

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i like hexagon idea, plus its what is shown in concept art for territory claims so it would just make sense

Then you will be happy to know that currently the land is indeed divided in hexagons. It was explained as being this way for dividing a sphere in pieces.

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Structure cores define a specific volume. Length, breadth, height  parameters the cores come in 5 or 6 sizes. Smaller structures may be able to nest in available space in or on the edge of larger structures. Or they may exclude each other. That defines any city geometry.

 

The other factor may be the need for streets, landing pads, parking. We will have people that want to walk, run, use hover vehicles that probably can't go more that 1 or 2 metres high so we will need roads. Landing vertically is hard so many flying craft will need skyways, highways in the sky. Like the jetsons, star wars or 5th element. We may even need speed limits. Horror! 

 

The orgs may lay out at the very least flattened terrain, stone roads or marked roads. White engineered stone perhaps. Most will build along them. I've played in a few games where sandbox building occurs; second life, minecraft servers, wurm online. Make a road and you find most people honour and build out from the resulting informal design. 

We will have shanty towns in some places but even that will be a style choice.

 

One question is what happens to the structures resources when you deactivate a structure core to pack it up and move. Do the resources despawn back to your inventory? If it does then there is no problem. Shanties will clear as people move; structure cores are expensive. If not the resources walls floors etc would be unprotected and would be mined out by either the owner or others.
I'm not a dev so I'm just going on the existing published game design. However I'll be making roads where I need to. 

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One question is what happens to the structures resources when you deactivate a structure core to pack it up and move. Do the resources despawn back to your inventory? If it does then there is no problem. Shanties will clear as people move; structure cores are expensive. If not the resources walls floors etc would be unprotected and would be mined out by either the owner or others.

I dont think constructs will despawn and resources going back in your inventory.

At some point after release NQ is concidering implementing a salvage function. At that point anyone can break down vacant constructs if they have the permission through the RDMS.

 

We might encounter empty settlements where people packed up and moved on. But because of how they plan to have it all working it shouldnt be a problem.

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If a city doesn't give a bonus of some sort, e.g. better/faster production, less fees on markets, faster travel or anything similar, people will just build how they feel. I don't think we will see cities like the Americans have, it'll be European style

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You are wrong. At beginning it will be chaos, people will build as they want. But as people get more power and resources, there will be players who will create hubs and have complete control over it. And others will come because it will be effective and comfortable to live there and work there because they make more profit by more working and less running around. That will be biggest bonus that cities will offer. Not chaos created by many people, but order created (or orchestrated) by few.

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A user or org that sets up a TU will be able to control building plivlages. I've got a guess on how "lot management" will work.

 

We already know that Core Unit elements are what makes somehing a construct, and also restricts the size of that construct. I'm willing to bet the owner of a TU can effectively create lots by placing Core Units spaced out from each other (allowing room for roads) of various sizes. The owner of the TU can sell the Construct (consisting of just the Core Unit for the lot) along with the rights to modify that construct, without surrendering general build privlages within the TU.

 

This would allow a player to purchase a lot within the territory that would restrict how large their structure can be. I could buy a lot and build a shop there, maybe even a parking garage if I had enough space. The same permissions that prevent a player from building in-between lots could also prevent players from building additional cores in their lot to increase its size (though a clever TU owner could build vertical lots that have multiple cores linked together hidden in a centeal column for a skyscraper lot).

 

On the flip side, the owner of the TU might ALSO have blanked building rights for the city as a whole, and can modify the structures (despite being owned by other players) through the TU's permissions to connect roads and sidewalks to people's structures, and to endforce the rules of the city.

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If a city doesn't give a bonus of some sort, e.g. better/faster production, less fees on markets, faster travel or anything similar, people will just build how they feel. I don't think we will see cities like the Americans have, it'll be European style

The bonus a city provides is proximity to markets, services, Rez nodes (house), production facilities, and entertainment (arena, bars, hovercraft tracks etc). Time is money and cutting down on travel times is a big bonus. The owners of the territory will decide on a layout if any. We will have chaotic cities and there will be well planned ones and those inbetween.

 

That said no one is being forced to build cities in a certain way or at all. Emergent gameplay. What works will work.

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Might someone provide the source for the claim that Core Units would limit the size of their Constructs? I was under the impression that you could build your construct as big as you want with just a simple CU, not that you'd have to get a certain sized one for a certain sized object.

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Might someone provide the source for the claim that Core Units would limit the size of their Constructs? I was under the impression that you could build your construct as big as you want with just a simple CU, not that you'd have to get a certain sized one for a certain sized object.

 

Latest Kickstarter Update:

 

 

 

The size of constructs will be limited only by your ability to gather the resources to build them, plus the max building zone size of the Core Unit you are using to create it. We plan on having very large Core Units available later in game, and the ability to assemble several constructs into one by “anchoring” them (this may not be available at release time however, and could be in a -free- expansion).
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My opinion on this is that cities should simply evolve organically. I am a big proponent of adding game mechanics that make cities useful, but not mechanics that limit their uniqueness. 

 

In general I think that it will give cities more character, if each of their street layouts and organization are unique. If there are to be districts, those should be defined by the players themselves, so if there is a plot system it shouldn't be dividing a TU into equal sections but be defined by the owner of the TU.

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When you build a ship you need a basic idea of the ship that you are building....when you are building a space station you need a basic plan or idea to build that....but cities are dynamical buildings come and go....infrastructure is upgraded and updated and so on.

 

This topic looks to address the issue of the complicated thing that a city is, a start of a conversation in to making the most basic of things in a city urban planning. On a more basic level cities are organize districts then in Lots. DU needs to adress this from the start if it wants to make cities that really stand out.  One owner per lot.

 

City / District / Lot is the break down structure that i see the most simple to go. A idea is for example:

 

Small City  - 5 Districts / 5 lots per district

Medium City - 10 Districts / 10 lots per district

Large City -  20 Districts / 20 lots per district

 

Also the ability to mode hole buildings from lot to lot, lets say that you made a industrial district and you want to move it to a bigger city or in the same regard a Small City upgraded to larger city.....

 

Will right more on the topic...just wanted some feed back from the community on the idea. 

 

I think the DU team wants players to build cities & towns their own way, your idea however is a good idea on how to organize cities and it would give players an idea of what's where, but in my opinion, it's a little limiting, cities should be as big as players want them to be, but at the same time they shouldn't expand too big to the point where it will absorb other cities/territories, unless a planet isn't shared by other orgs, then if one org owns a planet they can expand as much as they want to.

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Try to imagine a city planet, actually. Like "Coruscant". That would be a lot of work and planning - and of course it would take a lot of time.

I could also imagine a sprawling Space Station style city with a Scaffolding style pattern of "hallways" that connect to large empty areas with core units that can be sold or rented out. It would have a modular repeatable design, but each component would be built by different players resulting in a sort-of spazzy borg-cube of different architecture styles, or a death star of shopping malls.

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