[Support] Beacon Compactness ‘Helpline’

ill run over there

I can see many issues…but you appear afk

Was happy to help… Glad to be of service

1 Like

I think I am going to run into needing help with our city. I have a large beacon of mine which is specifically roads for players to get between the center of town and their builds but for whatever reason it’s marking the beacon as uncompact. I am not sure if it is because it is close to another build that is fully marked in yellow or not.

And with the game currently down I cannot check percentages. But using the map available via here: https://maps.playboundless.com/

On the planet Refgar, I am seeing this:

[Far left of the screen]

All of those yellow roads are marked as uncompact despite having many beacons filling the centers of the boxes. I wanted to give plenty of space for people to build.

And I noticed our neighbors have a whole city whom we connect to, who are also all yellow. Plus our spaceship friend. I would really hate to see either of their builds fall because of this.

Could I get help/input? I can reduce some of the roads to the north, but I wanted to see if that is all?

1 Like

Refund after having played for 2 years? You’re joking, right?

It can be solved and people are willing to help. I can have a look too if you want? Won’t have time next 6 hours I think, hopefully sooner…

6 Likes

I am assuming none of the blue beacons within the roads are yours?

If not, why not try to alter them into each street having their own beacon? 1st street, 2nd street and so on for north and south… and 1st ave, 2nd ave, and so on for easr and west, that would emulate how real cities are within each neighborhood and may lessen your issues.

I did not notice if you listed the negative compactness figure…just curious. . Othet possible solution is to build a sizable park either within or adjacent.

PROBABLY easiest solution is a combination of both methods.

I hope this helps

Are you compact or not? The way you phrased your post makes me assume you have a positive compactnesd which is what you want and means you are GREAT (all good!!).
If this is not the case I am willing to hop over to your place later today… please private message me planet and coordinates of your settlement.

Hopefully though you are already ok

James did say at one point that merely stringing a bunch of individual beacons together to try and bypass the compactness mechanic was not ok. Other wise all someone that wanted to run a road would need to do is just use multiple beacons.

From Testing 240: Compactness and Shopping API! forum topic
Circumventing the system by using an extensive collection of smaller beacons is not allowed and also banned.

While I understand what you are saying… i also recall James saying this is not intended to punish players… the player clearly has a grid system for a neighborhood and assuming the blue beacons are not theirs but rather players moving in and living there within the city I just do not believe the player in question would be violating the intended spirit the developers are desiring.

STILL the park route IS allowed… build one or two…and I mean real parks need to be built within reasonable time and divide it into north and south sectors.

You can argue that one either way. . I can by your logic plot out a road system for a city that covers 1/4 of the planet, but since it is a planned city it is fine. I clearly have a grid system, parts might even be occupied so when is it too much? How long does it remain empty squares before all I am doing it in reality holding more space than I have plots? If the point is not to have players reserving areas then how is this any different? It discourages other players from building there because they see the roads and the protection zones could even still be on.

yes having the plot buffers off is a good thing as it allows people to settle and make their own driveways…

Depends on the intention of the road configuration… this players grid creating very small plots IF covering 1/4 of the planet would be an issue. However this is different than say an interplanetary road system designed to simply QOL travel etc without using oort or coin (and oort prices are spiraling out of control…Unless Dev intervention in the supply or price I do not see a way out of this…for some reason people just do not want to hunt in sufficient quantities to help ease supply shortages). 100 coins adds up! I am poor to be honest I tend to put all my coins back into the nation of Axon. Oort (I am good…) is something you need to be conservative with so as a solo player you can only have so many portals open :wink:

SUGGESTION: Free same city portals! :wink: lol

And here is the crux of the issue, if we make it all about the developers determining the players intention versus just letting the program algorithm decide then we waste developer time. On top of which then we get players claiming the developers are treating player A different than player B when they allow one player to string a bunch of beacons and do not allow another player to do the same. We already have claims in the forum that the developers have “Favorites”. I do not think we want to have more of that.

If you want to plan a city then have enough plots to occupy the empty spaces between the roads. Just remove plots from the area between roads when someone wants to build there. From this release on that is exactly what players are going to have to do. And should they not do it this way? Why should a player planning a city be able to use fewer plots to plan a large build than an individual? The logic always seemed to be plot what you need. That includes everything you need and not just an outline of what you need or want.

1 Like

There is no real right answer to many of those questions (beacon subject only) … while I understand the concepts i do not see it in black and white… i see a third area , a neutral grey area… as a living being I have found the central zone being just as legitamate as the two extremes Plus much more common. So one size fits all is not always fair

I TOTALLY understand why plot buffers seemed like the best idea at the time. So classify it as 100% in the good zone? No, we MUST place it in the neutral area because the update did some Great things, but it also brought us some Bad things (swiss cheese plotting being one of those).

Now you have the compactness update. One of the Biggest reasons the Devs gave was due to the swiis cheese or spaghetti plotting abuse Created in part by the plot buffer update.

So is the Compact update (just discussing the one part of update here for this discussion) in the great or bad category? If you guessed: neither Again you would be Correct.

Some people love it. Some people hate it. I actually have grown fond of it on Biitula. Still it is like the other updates except we probably have yet to discover where the dragon that will bite us all as a community into our ASHCANS (if you dont get that word PM Me…). If History is a guide, it will.

The Developers are doing a great job…but you must understand many of these changes are totally UnExplored territory as At Least “I” have never seen a team take our player views as serious as Wonderstruck does! BUT as UnExplored territory we are all asking for changes that can have MAJOR Good/Bad effects that no one anticipates.

I am a survivor as I suspect most of you readimg this is… We Will Adapt! We will all prosper…but let us never forget Wonderstruck is NOT Amazon with a zillion dollars and a Development team the size of Disney World! Some changes MUST BE, but let us also respect that the more we ask them to change things. The Less Time they have to bring us into this game’s Golden Age!

This is all just my opinion and I hope it is respected as worthy.

2 Likes

Well its good to know that you can help.I will be asking for assistance if one of my builds dont measure up to the new beacon system.

2 Likes

I dont have a beacon that falls outside of the compactness range so i’m good :slight_smile:

I noticed when looking at machines that are crafting, the pop up that usually shows the machine is crafting with timer doesn’t appear.

Okay… after finding my road there was -71 in compactness. I tried the solutions that were suggested.

I tried unclaiming the whole beacon and yaay-- now I can’t get back what I had due to plot protections. [Always fun] Which breaks even further since it cannot make a rectangle/square.

I have had to place 8 different beacons in order to try and get just what I have stuff previously added.

I will say I am not pleased with how this has increased the number of plots needed/beacons needed just to fix something that was a previously not broken. [I am also slightly salty I went from 2900 plotted area doing top and middle to almost 3400 plots needed and it’s not even close to being what it was.]

But Now I am just at 0 compactness despite having builds all around. So-- I am lost and really need help.

1 Like

pm me your planet and coordinates and tomorrow I can try to come take a look… sorry this is happening to you. :frowning:

I went ahead and sent a message with screenshots. And, Thank you!

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.