New Beacon Option: Prevent Players From Claiming Within X Plots

I’d like to see the ability to OPTIONALLY mark a beacon to prevent players from building within X amount of plots. Balancing is TBD but I think this would help with a lot of the “what is blocking” back and forth happening in the new thread on selling beacons.

Before everyone starts saying how terrible this is and how you can’t get neighbors or use roads anymore, I would just like to point out how I suggested this be an optional toggle. Make it require coins to be toggled or burn fuel at twice the rate, w/e. Again, I leave balancing to be determined by the devs. I just think this could solve a lot of the complaints surrounding selling beacons right now.

Let those who want to expand in the future have the room to do so.

Let those who want neighbors to build near them have the ability to do so.

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It would just need to be a dead zone of 1 or 2 plots. And a 4th permission on the beacons to allow building in that dead zone. It could as simple as allow or not…or it could be add them as a friend and give a certain person permission.

The problem here is it would let people claim a larger area then they should unless they had a ton of plots to do such a thing unless the cost to do this was very high.

Right now the restriction on your plots is your limit and most of the cases people are having with the “land speculation” is people need to move away from the major hubs and this is not an issue.

Over time it might if they never release more planets but right now it’s now.

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Yeah, why do that when you can get more footfall near hubs? :stuck_out_tongue:

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Again, leave balancing to the devs. I agree it needs to be balanced but I don’t think the reservation horizontally should be tied to plots but rather to coins or an increased fuel rate, as I suggested above.

This is a proposal for the future so this thread doesn’t have to focus on the now but rather on the future, what this would look like in practice, and the effects it would have. :wink:

Footfall is a joke compared to a decent shop.

All but a very few buildings will make less then 1-2 thousand a day and that’s nothing compared to a shop not to mention the cost of building them as empty plots don’t get you any footfall really.

Please keep on topic. There’s a plethora of other threads to discuss footfall in or you two are always welcome to keep to PMs.

Personally I think that the only option we have to prevent people from building near us is to reserve the land with the plots we have or plots from friends. I don’t think additional dead zones are needed because ultimately they will not solve the source issue of those building close.

Can you expand on this please? How do horizontal reserved plots not solve the issue of buildings close to your build? That’s literally the entire point is to make it so that only you have the ability to use those reserved plots.

The system in my mind would try to reserve a radius around your beacon and as you try to expand it would look to expand the reserved plots also. If it attempts to reserve a plot that has already been beaconed by someone else (say, a speculator) then it will fail and do nothing and that person keeps their area.

Maybe I just don’t understand what you mean and I apologize for that.

If you plot at a single level across the land it is reserved above/below that plot. No one can claim it. Sure they can use it but it can still regen.

If you want a reserve area around your beacon just plot more area. If you are trying to get an additional “buffer” around around your plots, then I think that is not a good idea. Plus it makes it more complicated on how plots work on a programming level. The system is already complex.

The simple solution is just reserve land you want to build on or go to an area where people aren’t around and risk the potential that someone might move into the neighborhood.

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Yes, I agree. This solution is designed for people who don’t plan out their builds or don’t want to PTW to get plots to reserve areas for expansion.

I don’t think your point about the programming difficulty is true. The reservation code already exists. At a conceptual level, it’s a simple if statement to check if any of the plots surrounding any given plots are claimed or reserved and, if not, reserve it. I’d actually like to see this done instead of the vertical “mantle to sky” system in place now as it would allow people to build on top of each other. I’m sure it’s more complex than that but I don’t imagine it’d take too too much effort on a system people are clearly passionate about.

Again, agreed. I think the current system is actually good. But there’s a lot of pushback right now on Jame’s thread and I think this suggestion addresses a lot of concerns brought up by people there.

Eh. If you want a buffer zone, plot a buffer zone. That’s exactly what I did for my build. I do not think you should get extra (horizontal) reserved area just because people “dont want to plan out their builds.”
But that’s just my opinion.

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It sounds like you are asking for a solution that already exists.

There was a thread about people plotting over each other and that is an issue. A developer did say it was not an easy thing. I think @lucadeltodecso or @olliepurkiss might be able to talk more about plots and the complexity around the system.

The pushback I think goes way beyond people plotting over and under others. I think allowing that and James’ feature would even be more of a problem because now I’m literally locked into an 8x8 plot (because of vertical ability) versus now at least it is a horizontal.

Not really. It’s more that I’m offering a solution for a problem that doesn’t exist (see James thread on selling plots and people’s reactions). Many folks over there are against the idea because people will surround and extort their builds (despite this being a CoC violation). This suggestion makes it so that those WITHOUT PLOTS TO DO SO have a buffer to allow them to expand in the future WITH A COST of either higher fuel or coins. It’s not free but it’s not at a cost of plots (current solution) that new players may not have.

This sounds quite interesting. Could you find and provide that source? I was under the impression that the current plotting system with absolute vertical reservations prevented people from plotting over each other.

By now do you mean right now or do you mean a scenario where they were to remove vertical plot reservations? I’m assuming the latter before the former should be impossible. And if you ever were completely blocked in, again, it’d be a CoC violation that you’d report and the responsible party or parties would face consequences.

Note how the word “want” isn’t featured in what I wrote. What I intended with this suggestion is closer to: