Enemy Estates in City Subdivisions

Suladan

While this clearly wouldn't be "top of the list" type material, there is an issue where a citizen of a city builds a home in its subdivision, then turns traitorous and flees the city, abandoning their home.

There is a mechanism by which an enemy plot can be reclaimed by the city, but only if there is nothing built on the plot. If there is something built there, then the only option is to wall it off. That handles it as far as a security concern - but also starts to clutter the subdivision with random walls and blocks of walls all over. These make it annoying to navigate, prevent anybody else from using that spot and mar the beauty of the blood pools.

Beyond that, the place is totally useless to the enemy, it's walled off so he can't get in or out of it, can't sell or destroy and reclaim the room credits, etc. It's basically a bad solution for both parties, but the only one currently possible.

What I'm proposing is that if a plot is owned by a city enemy and it does have something built on it, then the same reclaiming procedure would work, but in this case the person would get the same credits back as if they destroyed the rooms (i.e. half room credits/door credits). Any furniture or items left inside would be destroyed. Maybe there's a 2 or5 year rule where they have to be an enemy for that long to circumvent possibilities of abuse.

I think that would work out better for both and solve all associated problems. Otherwise, over enough time, the subdivisions are going to turn into labyrinths.

What do you think, @Sarapis‌, @Tecton‌, is that possible?

Also opening it up here on forums to get feedback and amend the concept if others have any better ideas.

Aerek

Players getting to destroy other players' credit investments is a bad idea, much worse than an ugly 'X' on a subdivision map. A city enemy status is eventually reversible, which means that sub house could one day be used again, but if the MoD gets to blow it up, that's an irreversible loss for the individual that could easily range up to hundreds or even thousands of credits, especially if there were priceless or irreplaceable items inside the house.

Remember that cities can technically enemy someone for any reason. The potential for abuse is large, and the potential damages far to great to justify for purely aesthetic reasons.

Tharvis

citylock tends to do the trick most of the time, anyway

Suladan

Hmmm. Ok, good points. Will find some kind of work-around.

Tharvis

Personally I just work in a two stages : Citylock when enemied, Wall if they figure out a way to circumvent the lock. Third stage, reclaim, is something we pop a requirement for unanimous ruling council decision on (which only happens in -extreme- cases of people being a pest)

Sybilla

I was thinking whether it would be viable and/or preferable to designate an area as "the slums" or similar, accessible only by MoD and possibly their aides, and lump all enemy 'built' property there. Either a corner of the subs, or a secondary subs map, or something.

This would free up the area occupied in the main subdivision map, meaning the land could then be sold to people who aren't enemies, it would get rid of the walls to navigate, and generally keep the look and feel of the map without the ugly X's.

Should the enemy status eventually be revoked, there could then be a protocol for buying land again from MoD and getting the old estate transferred to wherever the new plot is.

Elphaba

From the shortened title on the main screen of 'Enemy Estates in City', I thought this was going to be about the Serpentlords estate in Hashan. Extremely disappointed.

Edit: In all seriousness though, is this really that big of a problem? Do you really have that many people enemied who own plots and have built on them that it's becoming an inconvenience to traverse the subdivision?

It's a lot more difficult to get into subdivisions these days so as Tharvis said, most of the time you can simply just get away with citylocking the door rather than walling it.

Mishgul

It does look aesthetically unpleasing but so do I and my gf puts up with me so who knows.

That said, it would be nice if there was a way for people to reclaim or sell property in cities they are enemied to. Circumstances can be cruel and, in some cases, out of your control.

Suladan

As I said in the opener, it's not the biggest problem in the world, but there are some areas where an enemy bought a whole section of plots, which then results in random wall sections extending across roads or practically cutting off areas. It is annoying.

I do see that destroying hundreds of credits of investment and creation is not desirable, though. If the "slums" solution is workable, it'd essentially be an ability to relocate (similar to what already exists) to another plot, and they'd get a message that they were moved.  Again though, requirements for that? Enemy for a few years and dormant?

Xith

Interesting case for empty plots. Like perma-dormant people who will never do anything with those attractive, close-to-entrance subs plots. After like 150 years or so I think the city could reclaim empty plots, possibly at some cost, so that they could then re-auction them to interested parties.

Nim

Given one of the biggest reasons against this is the ability for a third party to functionally waste your credit investment, a possible solution for that is that maybe cities can just buy off the land, paying back whatever difference there'd be between what the payer paid and what the payer would get back if they were the ones who sold it.

There are details like "would they get it back in regular credits vs. housing credits," but if a city really wants to reclaim land, I don't think player credit investment is a good defense against that.

Of course, granting this power to other players is a legitimate argument against this sort of thing, as well as the destruction of player creations (in terms of the copy itself). The latter could be resolved by sending all so-destroyed descriptions to the player in the form of system messages (the kind that don't automatically decay).

Sena

Reading this thread, it sounds like most people aren't aware that you can already relocate a house from one subdivision to another, for a fee.

If I was enemied to Ashtan, I could move my house to another city, keeping the layout, items, descriptions, furniture, and everything else intact. It would be expensive though, 350 credits total (it would be 250 without a bed).

There just needs to be a way for cities to force it somehow. The city paying the cost of the relocation is far from ideal for the city, but forcing a player to pay 250-350 credits (which they might not have) isn't reasonable either. Maybe a city command to move the house to a temporary, inaccessible location (maybe with some cost, but far less than the normal relocation cost) that the enemied character can relocate it from (if they want to) would work.

Sybilla

Sena said:

 Maybe a city command to move the house to a temporary, inaccessible location (maybe with some cost, but far less than the normal relocation cost) that the enemied character can relocate it from (if they want to) would work.

That is what I meant with my slums idea.

Tecton

I think we're going to rework the house relocation system to not require you to have to go to your original plot to relocate it. Will be in as soon as time allows!

Medi

If you have ever seen Mhaldor's subdivision, you know that walling off enemy houses is a serious disruption to the flow of the subdivision. You can hardly walk in any direction without hitting one. And trying to design the subs around enemy housing is going to be an ever-evolving problem.

I know that we were allowing people to reclaim their plots just to get them out of there, but there are some who are dormant/can't afford it/don't care. Luckily with the changes to subdivisions this isn't a huge security threat but still poses some potential problems.

Being able to relocate without going to the original plot will help, but I also agree with the slums idea, either moving them to another subdivision or just being able to put them in a different spot on the current map. I'm also not against being able to reclaim the plot and have some percentage of room credits be returned to the owner, with some sort of safeguard against abuse. Ultimately, you decided to buy a plot and build a house in a city, and then you did something to screw that city over. That has consequences!

#Ijustinheritedadisaster

Achimrst

City lock has always worked for me when dealing with enemy plots with houses on them. 

Synbios

I know this was resurrected, but I have a thought:

* When you go IN from the subdivision to your house, you basically enter a sub-area containing your designed rooms, exits, furniture, etc. Another visualization I'd like to use to tie into my following bullet point is that of a tree, with the trunk as the subdivision area itself, with branches sprouting from the trunk as an instance of player housing.

* Why not have a way for either the player or the city to 'encapsulate' the enemy's housing unit into some arbitrarily-defined container(snowglobe? house-in-a-bottle("WHY DON'T YOU JUST PUT THE WHOLE WORLD IN A BOTTLE, SUPERMAN")?) and place it in the enemy player's inventory? That way, if he should decide to just relocate his house, he can just activate the arbitrarily-defined house container and poof! New house, different neighborhood.

Veldrin

I really like the way Lusternia does it (did it years ago?), with each house being it's own area that can be key'd to a city so you can enter it from their 'subdivision entrance' or the neutral 'subdivision entrance' and then they can leave to the cities they've gotten it key'd too. If they got enemied to a city the city could simply just remove the permission to enter/leave the city via their house (well aether manse)

Makaela

@Veldrin It is still done that way. And they are called Manses :P

Also how weird is it that there are so many Achaean player names in Lusternia played by different people? o.0