Player Portals - A Proposal

[Balagor]

Seeing as how we all have different idea on what portals should connect where (see the DB?s thread asking for ideas), I thought I would attempt to come up with a suggestion for player created portals. In this first post, I will discuss design concepts behind the design and in the second post I will detail the proposal (as much as I can).

Design Rule #1 : Minimize Tulga work to implement idea. Otherwise we will be waiting until next century too see it. After all this would be new work on top of their already full plates. Its needs to be relatively easy to implement, and fairly useful to the overall populace, otherwise it will go nowhere.

Assumption #1 : Portals are stored as database records, including assigned destinations. If they are hard coded tables in the code, this entire idea is out the window, as they would not be player changeable.

With these 2 thoughts in place, the following is added

1) Creating a new Portal should be hard : These should be community projects to create. The more possible destinations, the harder the job to create the portal. One nice side effect of this could be a source of new community construction projects. 2) No Dial-A-Portals : As much as some players might really like them, limited destination portal networks are clearly part of the basic game design. Being able to quickly adjust portals to different destination would clearly break with that design. 3) No Player Pads : Portals, as a start point, need not cross-reference anything else. Pads, as destinations, have to cross-reference to potentially all portals, especially when assigning destinations to new portals. This implies significant developer work. Also there are two security issues. The first is that pads on plot would allow bypassing plot permission, unless the developers spent time reworking the portal teleport code to check permissions on pads (violation of Design Rule #1). If we had player pads, people would start screaming about it rather rapidly. Secondly, since pads would have to have identifiers, most likely player designated, how long would it be before some ?cute? player created a pad named ?Mahegra? (easy solution, preface all Player Pads with fixed Prefix like ?Player?). Still this is more possible problem requiring developer interaction.

[Balagor]

The Proposal

1) Player Portals would be new buildings on the plot menu. Each Portal would be distinct for the number of destinations if could handle ( i.e. Portal ? 1 Destination, Portal ? 2 Destination, etc.) 2) Portals would be made with high end resources (T6). As the number of destinations supported grows, the number of resources will grow geometrically (i.e. Portal ? 1 Destination = X resources, Portal ? 2 Destination = 2x resources, Portal ? 3 Destination = 4x resource ?.) 3) When the Player Portal is activated, the activating player would be presented with a menu to select the destination(s) the portal would be connected to. This would be the only time the portal destinations could be selected. 4) If it is desired to have new Portal Destinations, a new Portal must be built.
Tuning ? The developers could tune the use of portals by controlling the number of destinations a player portal can handle at max (by what buildings are available), and how rapidly they can be built (by resources needed). One other balance would be someone building 2 1 Destination Portals vice 1 2 Destination Portal, and this can be balanced by how big a portal footprint is (i.e. how much space do you want to waste). (I would suggest limiting the number of portals per plot, but I have seen no sign such a mechanism currently exists).

Development ? Roughly speaking the following things would needed to be developed

1) Artwork ? The current portal artwork could most likely be used for completed portals, but a portal under construction would be needed. 2) Construction ? Adding building to the plot layout dialog, and the construction menu. 3) Activation Dialog ? This would have to list available destinations to be assigned to the portal, and of course assign them. The last part of activation would be to add the portal to the active portal list in the database. 4) All the other important details ? The many things I do not know about, but no doubt need to be done to complete the concept before QA gets their hands on it.

[Balagor]

The above is a rough proposal. Constructive add-ons to improve it are certainly desired, and I will endeavor to incorporate them into the proposal above.

As one note, even if the entire thing above cannot be done, if might be nice to do new portals/pads as a community completion activity, so we can have more community crafter events J

[imported_Silveron]

Balagor,
The structure per plot limit does exist in the code. Look at the tiered consigners for your proof.