Sure, sounds good.
Maybe with the ability to inscribe custom glyphs on the signposts. Wouldn’t that be neat?
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im on board would really add to the game and make pathfinders such as yourself a viable role to play 
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@Havok40k I haven’t done a full accounting but they are 10% and now #2 on list at 630k or so. They are using gleam to outline the floating road and have a few other roads connecting to various houses, etc. They did build around a tower in the area and I assume it was owned by one of the people doing this. I’m not sure how much of the road is complete… 50-65% maybe… Of course I have no proof they are doing this to take over #1.
@Glychi Yeah I think that should go into a suggestion topic and we have something where plots can be designated as a road and are separate or something…
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already done some time ago, managed to unearth two topics on this subject:
both quite old but you might like to go through them to see what people came up with
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Cool… good find. Wish we knew their roadmap on some of these things so we could refresh the topics and fine tune the suggestions for new ideas, etc.
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even though there is a devlog category in here, its true an actual list of features in progress would be nice;
best we got so far is the irregularly posted reports on what’s been on devs agenda, but thats a retrospective thing;
heres the last one:
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Actually by my calculations if they absorb Eden and one of the other developments close to 400k prestige, they could become the new capital.
If they come to close to Eden, I might have to build a gleam tower in order to add more prestige to Eden. . I have the equivalent of 500k prestige in refined gleam in storage now. Not how I think you should gain prestige, but to prevent Eden from becoming part of their town, I have considered it.
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No worries, we negotiated a stand down last night, with the threat of preemptive annexation if they started moving toward any other settlements. As long as they stay on their projected path and loop around the world, no further settlements will be affected. It’s already too late for tillweed market though.
We also boosted New Berlyn’s prestige by 600k last night thanks to a huge surge of community aid! Thanks everyone who helped with that, it was super fun!
Also, @Xaldafax and I developed an insurance policy in case they go back on their world, but I doubt it will need to be implemented.
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Yeah we talked with them and they clearly said they had no interest in taking over any towns and just wanted to complete their road only. In fact they even said from what they could tell their floating road will not affect anyone else. So it was just a misunderstanding that is now resolved. Here is even what one of their players said to show:
SaltySloth: Treaty of Horti Dingtonelig has been ratified this day of October 20 2017.
so one of the first Boundless treaties has been completed and agreed to. I will probably be doing a post suggestion on a treaty or agreement type component to the game for the developers to consider.
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I can appreciate the fact that in this instance the parties reached an agreement. However, I still believe that it would be in the best interest of the game to allow people the option of not being assimilated.
If I had built up a city and then someone built a road just to absorb my city, I would be pretty upset. Someone removing my ability to reach certain feats (creating a hamlet, village, town, city, etc.) without my ability to control it seems unfair at best.
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We have already discussed a solution to this in another thread on the forum - the plan is that: Settlements can’t be merged into any other Settlement once they achieve a defined prestige rating.
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Wonderful @james… do we know when that component will be finished in development and released to the live servers?
I assume this also included an option where people “could” join that main settlement to merge prestige, etc.
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I do not. Hopefully we’ll get it into the next development release before we migrate Testing to Live. But it will not be a hotfix as it’s a change of function rather than a fix of the current function.
I’m not sure about adding an option - it adds complexity to an already complex system.
Fundamentally the purpose of Settlements wasn’t to hoover up disparate collections of beacons, but rather to logically group beacons that had already opted to build near each other. Roads have created an unexpected glitch.
In the past we tried to find a beaconing solution that would allow roads to work without them connecting settlements. Maybe they didn’t need beacons and footfall would keep them from regenerating? But this is open to griefing and regen. Maybe some sort of non-merging beacon. But this adds complexity and is open to misuse. Maybe the game could attempt to ignore roads, which could be detected as 1 plot high and wide beacons, but this then doesn’t stop someone building a 2 plot high beacon to force merge settlements.
Currently my best solution is to adapt the current Settlement merging algorithm to consider past temporal state. If a Beacon is in Settlement A and the Settlement is already big enough then the beacon can’t be considered for adding to Settlement B. Additionally, if a new beacon isn’t in any Settlement but touching 2 Settlements, then it should be merged into the nearest.
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I like the whole idea where this thread is going and agree that reasonably large settlements should not be absorbed by other settlements by default.
Just one additional thought / input:
What if a settlement breaks apart into to equally large pieces by accident.
Maybe because a connected beacon expired or because someone removed a plot by accident while building?
Both already happend to me ingame and i was happy they merged again easily.
So … what would happen in the new system, when both resulting pieces would be big enough to not be considered for merge?
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Good question. See how we need to iterate solutions!!
Really, roads are the problem? Well, roads that span distances and create a web anyways.
Is there any way to differentiate beacons for roads?
Or maybe a new plot tool that makes road plots instead of normal plots! They could be a different colour when viewed with a ‘plot viewing’ item (like plotters or beacons)
They could act differently and maybe they’d be auto-linked to the first settlement plots they touch, so even if they ran alongside new settlements they wouldn’t attach.
(typing whilst thinking, this is what I do :p)
This gets into a couple of different areas regarding plots. Do we need/want different plots for roads or preserving a natural setting around a build? Both as a way to not use up our plots on items that are not part of our home/build and maybe to have a plot type that cannot be used to merge two communities.
I did a quick search and had not seen your prior comments on merging. I appreciate the fact you are implementing a solution.
The thing is with this additional “road plot”, no one is stopping them for using the normal plots when building roads so that they can still absorb settlements it passes through.
Definitely the safest option for merging is via manual interaction/query between two mayors but that’s a little boring for my taste and a little tedious. hehe
To make things more exciting, I kinda like the idea of “if you’re at least 50% of this settlement’s prestige, then you can’t be absorbed by them”. Spices things up so that settlements will have incentives to flourish up their area. But that though brings up more balancing and issues. 
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Well I enjoy to be competitive in games as for me, it’s what makes the game fun and interesting (makes you think harder to be one step ahead the others).
I do agree though that competition is not what this game is aiming for and I’m fine with that. Boundless is my go to game when I just want to relax. One thing I would like to tweak a little to James’ solution is to also allow merging of settlements.