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Construct degradation


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Let's say you decide you no longer want to play the game for some reason, what happens to your stuff? Something that might work would be construct degradation over time. (before you start to rage at me just stop and read) Nothing super fast. You don't want to go on vacation and come back to all your stuff gone. 

 

What I was thinking would be something kind of like Wurm. After being inactive for x amount of time you stuff starts to "take damage". Very slowly at first but as time goes by it takes more and more. So let's say you haven't been active for a month (calm down it's just for easy maths) so your stuff starts to "take damage" at 1 "hitpoint" per day. Now each month after that adds more of a multiplier to that so let's say after 6 months of being gone you are now taking 6 hitpoints every day. It's not much but after a while your construct with collapse and at that point in time maybe something like 10% of the resources from said construct are "added" to the surrounding area. 

 

Now of corse if one of your friends is still active and you give them rights to everything then nothing happens to your stuff and it is fine. Unless it is an old base that you no longer want to maintain, and hell even forgot about. let's say after 3 months of not visiting a location the degradation starts to happen unless you interact with it in some way. Maybe you get some sort of message a month before this happens so you have plenty of time to make arrangements.

 

Let me now what you think? 

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I think this is worth having a separate thread for because construct degradation addresses a separate issue from item degradation.

 

One of the issues that was discussed during the interview I was lucky enough to get was about logout mechanics, specifically how to handle constructs that are built and then abandoned by players who quit the game. 

 

Construct degradation may address part of that issue, and a way to determine how long a given construct may survive for without upkeep would be to rely on the skill system. Players who have higher skills at certain areas of construction might be able to make constructs that require less maintenance. That would somewhat ensure that brand new players aren't building "ugly" things and then quitting immediately, only to have their constructs last forever until they start to degrade. 

 

The skill system could also perhaps apply to people who are specifically trained to repair and upkeep constructs. Perhaps people with better skills in those areas would need to use less resources to repair things, or perhaps their speed at repairing things could be increased?

 

It could also be tied into the materials being used, such as having some materials require higher upkeep costs than others. 

 

 

Degradation of constructions is one of the best parts of Wurm Online. There's nothing quite like wandering into an old abandoned settlement that is in ruins, or seeing parts of roads that have fallen into disrepair and are overgrown with wildlife. 

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I think this is worth having a separate thread for because construct degradation addresses a separate issue from item degradation.

 

it can be done with the same in game mechanic, though.

You dont need one that slowly destroys stuff to be separate from another mechanic that slowly destroys stuff...

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I'm not a fan of that idea to be honest. If I've built something then I'd want it there for others to use and play with long after I've gone (if I've gone!)

 

If 1000+ players decide to turn a whole planet into a city and as soon as they get around to meet the other side you have to start repairs from start to finish over and over again? Would really bug me and probably most players too.

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I'm not a fan of that idea to be honest. If I've built something then I'd want it there for others to use and play with long after I've gone (if I've gone!)

 

If 1000+ players decide to turn a whole planet into a city and as soon as they get around to meet the other side you have to start repairs from start to finish over and over again? Would really bug me and probably most players too.

Infrastructure needs maintenance. Just saying. It's a drive that distinguishes bad orgs from good ones.

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But at what point do you draw the line between reality and playing a game?

 

I've got stuff at home that needs repairing that I haven't got the time to do, I'd rather not have that feeling inside a virtual game world too.

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But at what point do you draw the line between reality and playing a game?

 

I've got stuff at home that needs repairing that I haven't got the time to do, I'd rather not have that feeling inside a virtual game world too.

Well, when people ask for degradation, they mean it when the construct is left unused, like a car parked on the street for a year. Its fuel goes stale, its gears get rusty. A street may get overgrown with flora, an abandoned building may grow vines around it (if it's near flora as well). That kind of thing. Space stations get a rusty feel on the walls and so on. That's what many want, it can drive the eonomy and the exploration for new resources.

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But at what point do you draw the line between reality and playing a game?

 

I've got stuff at home that needs repairing that I haven't got the time to do, I'd rather not have that feeling inside a virtual game world too.

 

it also doesnt have to be manual maintainance.

 

fill a container with some resources, attach a "maintainance module" to it (which sends out little robobugs to do the job or whatever) and the rest goes automatically.

 

with regular supply income its not much work.

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I don't like the idea of things decaying, but out in the world away from safe space there would be scavengers and enough people playing bandit that anything that doesn't have some sort of (powered) shield or defensive system will not last long unsupervised.

 

Its a real toss up between realism and "fun", I do think that people should have some security when they log out, even if its automated defenses.

 

Around the arks there is going to be some sort of safe zone so presumably there will be some sort of land management that gives you rights to build and you are totally safe.

 

In less civilized space people will pull together to create secure places. Sci-fi equivalent of self-storage :) you keep everything in a hanger guarded by local organisations. Its safe from pirates but if a full on faction war breaks out you are out of luck and might loose your stuff.

 

Going way out into the depths of space should be scary and risky as hell without back up or a really good plan.

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I understand that upkeep cam be difficult for some, but there must be some way for people to reclaim abandoned structures.

 

I was under the impression that hacking TCUs and ships gave that mechanism. But maybe it wont in a safe zone.

 

I wouldnt mind a decay mechanism, so long as it can be automated when the resources are provided. It would be tedious regardless of how well you are organized if you were to have to do it manually.

 

Eves system for this isnt bad. POS require fuel, without it to power them and form the shield anyone can take it over. TCUs could require a power source, ajd the same goes for ships. Ships require a low amount of power for baseline systems and without it the computers shut down allowing anyone access to scrap it.

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Taking over long abandoned bases or salvaging debris from space battles should both be valid strategies, it would reward players for exploring.

 

It should never be impossible to attack someones base outside the the safe zone but it should be sufficiently hard that people who haven't pissed off a major faction can feel relatively safe once they have built an energy shield. The energy required to take down a shield should be a lot more than it takes to power it.

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Any kind of maintenance would, of course be automated. As long as the construct has power then it should not need anything else other than to repair damage caused by combat. 

 

The degradation timer would not start until after the power systems fail due to no fuel. Now if someone were to happen by the construct "hack" the core unit and transfer ownership to them then restore power then the timer would "reset" and any maintenance from there would continue as before. The only repairs that may be needed would be those that caused severe "hitpoint" loss lets say over the period of a year. 

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Perhaps if after a set tme, you lose ownership of it. Allowing for the possibility some one else could mine or destruct it, there for getting some resources from it, or just demolish or destroy it.

 

I like it. I think I actually started to say something along those lines but left it out so the post wasn't le wall-o-text. I tend to go into long winded rants and over detailing things.

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I've got some thoughts on Construct Degredation, and it could be tied to Construct Units and Territory Units.

 

What sets a Construct apart from just deformed terrain is the Construct Unit. It would make sense dor deformed terrain to eventually "settle" rounding out the edges of holes, mud huts collapsing over time, etc. You can set some kind of upkeep or required maintenance for CU's to prevent the construct from being susceptible to degradation. If CU's require power, an unpowered CU whld eventually begin to degrade.

 

If a construct is within a Territory Unit's radius on the other hand, the degredation could be covered instead by the upkeep on the TU. Like storing a car in a garage, the protection of a TU could be enough to halt construct degredation as long as the TU is maintained.

 

As neat as all of this is, it may end up being less server intensive to have no degredation mechanics at all. Games like Rust have degredation because there is so much information tracked for objects, that abandoned structures are server-killers. Space Engineers servers usually also have cleanup scripts that delete abandoned grids. Both of these examples however use complex collision physics, projectile tracking, mass and velocity calculations, structural integrity, and other variables that simply won't be present in an MMO. These other games have degredation and cleanup as a survival mechanism.

 

Depending on how info is stored on constructs and voxel changes, it may be nothing to them to hold that info indefinately, which removes the need for degredation in the first place.

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