Building a different kind of bases

You know... I've been bringing this up a lot lately, but I'm unsatisfied with the current base builder on a principle level, and I don't think there's any point in me suggesting improvements to it, because there's NOTHING which could be done to it that will make me actually like it. I know it has its fans, so I'll just stop trying to mess it up for them, and instead see about suggesting a completely different approach to making bases.

To me, the current incarnation of the builder is inherently limited, because even at the biggest plot size, you're still limited to a handful of rooms, most of which are taken up by functional facilities, anyway. So how about we go about it in a completely different way and look at a base design framework which will inherently give us a LOT more room without actually making our workload in filling that room infeasible. Let's first examine what a "base" actually should be. Currently, our bases, owing to the game's basic design, resemble more the kinds of things you'd get in Dungeon Keeper, rather than an actual compound that I think about when I think "base."

So, let's draw on a different inspiration. Let's look at an overland RTS of some sort, something that gives you a lot of room, but actually requires that you have a lot of room to work with. Let's look at the Settlers games. More specifically, let's look at The Settlers II: Veni Vidi Vici. I pick this game in particular, because it's an RTS of an unusual kind, where you're not just moving units about and ploppin buildings haphazardly, but rather need to make a decent, logical network of both supply lines and building locations in as large an empire as you can manage. Land management done right, from the games I've played.

Now let's try and apply this to our own game. Let's take the traditional volcano tropical island for an evil hideout, just for the sake of an easy example. Let's also stick to just base building without introducing actual RTS elements for the time being. Just cosmetics and maybe current base functionality. You basically have a large open plot of clear, flat ground to build on. Instead of micromanaging every chair and lamp post, you have a collection of buildings you can place down. To keep basic functionality, you could have a few versions of power plant that you can use, a comm centre to handle computing power, arsenals and warehouses to hold your stuff, and a few mess halls, barracks and command buildings just to add some ambience. Each of these buildings would be relatively small, but would be able to be entered. Ideally, I'd like to make the insides open to the outside world, but entering them like stores is also an option.

Now, going into your power plant would see a generator noisily trucking along, while going into your comm centre would put you in a room with lots of beeping computers. But that's not all. In addition to these buildings, you'd have the ability to lay down roads. Not necessarily as well-made as city roads, but if everything is forced into a grid, then why not? After all, if Locomotion could force a decent system of adaptive roads, it should be doable. Basically, the point here would be to encourage you to place MANY buildings in your lot, possibly running out of room, and linking them together with roads to... Say, transfer power and utility lines along with it. And look pretty, too

Aside from that, we could have a variety of walls, from the simple barb wire chain link fence, to the more elaborate tall walls, or even towers. I'm going to draw inspiration from Empire Earth here in how ramparts are designed there. You basically lay down a collection of walls around or through your compounds which then link together into rampart towers. You can further build towers ON the walls themselves, as well as build gates into them. And what self-respecting villain wouldn't build a tall concrete wall with metal gates and guard towers all around his evil compound? And why not split your compound into subsections with walls and gates in-between, after all? And who says you have to restrict yourself to just walls? Tall guard towers are often built just on open ground, as well, to add this more menacing look to the area.

So, basically, you now have a collection of buildings linked together by roads, walled off from the outside, possibly walled off into sections, all crammed together into a single lot. So suppose you want a bigger lot? Suppose you want to upgrade? Well, we currently have "better" versions of our base equipment and the ability to expand the plot, so why not have better versions of buildings and the ability to expand the lot? At this point, you can either tear down the old walls and expand the compound, or just build more walls around the new section. But what of new buildings? Well, suppose your best power plant is just HUGE, taking up lots of space you could be placing more buildings in, but the "better" power plant is just as powerful, only much smaller? That's an improvement, right?

Another feature I can pilfer from Settlers is buildings that require extra space. For instance, a comm centre might require a lot of additional space for more antenna, which you'd lose if you built roads around it or crammed it next to other buildings, but a better comm centre might require fewer of these, or might have its antennas add more... Control, is that what it's called?

The whole point of this is to get base building out of the dungeons and actually make it a lot more expansive, the equivalent to designing your own zone from pre-fab pieces. As long as a rigid grid is imposed on the thing, there really shouldn't be any problems of ugliness, and you'll end up with something that is, actually, very cool to look at and be in. Not just a small, confusing labyrinth of square tunnels, but an actual compound with buildings you can enter. While such a customizable location would definitely not have as much refinement as a real, professional-made zone, the feeling that this is YOUR base would more than make up for it. And, best of all, the effort required to put something like this together would not be monumental. I don't mean in terms of resource cost, I don't even want to guess at that. I just mean the actual, manual labour of hand-placing the whole thing.

Let me put this in perspective: A costume is difficult and time-consuming to design just because it's an artistic process, but once you know what you want, putting the costume itself together is a 10-minute job, if that. Putting a current base together, even if you know what you're doing, is a major, multi-day project. The base I envision won't take you any longer to build once you know what you want than, say, your average Star Craft encampment would, minus the resource gathering. That's what I think the real charm of such a system would be. With a base that's basically just five rooms, you kind of need to customize those rooms or there's no point. But in a base that's, say, 20 buildings, roads, walls and infrastructure, pre-fab buildings wouldn't be as much of a problem. No more problem than pre-fab costume pieces are, anyway.

I realise this isn't going to happen. I know it's just too "out there" to suggest, even though I think there's potential in it. But I just really wanted to express this, because it's been rolling around in my head for a long time now.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I like this idea, actually I'd like any idea that adds anything to the base, but this would be an awesome way to do things.

The concept of the RTS view of bases and using pre-fab panels, rooms or buildings brings to mind the Second Life way of doing things. Digital home-steading, sort of.

Claiming a base could, in theory, give access to a digital, 3D area. Within that area one could use the tiles/blocks/buildings/whatever from the tool-kit. These could include, in essence, the exact kinds of things you're suggesting but also more detail oriented items for those who wanted more precise control. Additional space could be acquired in any number of ways, but prestige is already in place and therefore would be the most likely method.

Seeing that those items which allow interaction with the rest of CoX, such as teleporters, storage bins, invention benches, rez chambers, etc., are the only things that would need to be precisely tracked on the server, there would be little reason for the digital spaces to take up much room on the game servers. Size of the area and location of items could be stored and then passed to each client who enters the base. It would require a lot of effort on the client and probably require a huge investment of time and energy to create (and quite possibly an entirely new client application) but the vast amount of work would take place on the clients. Add in a kind of P2P system for updates/changes and it removes even more from the server load.

Of course, like the OP said, that's a pipe-dream.

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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

I'm not actually against the ability to fine-tune. It's just that HAVING TO is what kills bases for me. Currently, if I don't break my *** in half arranging flower pots one by one, I'm stuck with a hollow square space that isn't very appealing. The idea, as it were, is to give people entire pre-fab buildings that come kit-made the same way the cut-n-paste buildings that make up our zones are arranged and rearranged. In fact, if you look at a basic old zone, you'll note that the city is broken down into a grid structure where roads take up a certain number of squares and the rectangle space between them is often filled with one large building with a rectangle block of its own surrounding it. Granted, actual world designers do more than just place buildings on squares, but it's not out of the question to assume this is doable in a more user-friendly way.

Basically what I want is to let people design their own small, simplified, kit mini-zone to their specifications. I picked a jungle island as an example, but there's no reason it has to be. It could just as easily be an empty lot inside the city somewhere that has buildings off in the background. The options are there, but it's just a mountain of work to even consider such a system. For my money, I think it'd be great.

If we restrict this to large objects only, we can vastly reduce the server load such a thing would create. An instance that has, basically, 20 buildings defined as coordinates, as well as a bunch of wall and road pieces, this shouldn't be a large lump of info to save. A regular base needs to be saved as a 3D model, because from what I understand, it's not loaded as a kit zone. A player-made zone would not need to have every face of every object recorded server-side. All it would need to know is where each building is and where it's facing. The client can do the same. And where a current base can run into the thousands of details just because we can set down individual beakers, a building-level base wouldn't really go much over 50-100, simply because you'd run out of room for bases with any more.

I realise it won't happen, but I enjoy considering the prospect

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Whatever happens, Id love for bases to get a second coming. Trying to build something that doesnt feel like every other base out there is hard, and actually making the system work, even with the relaxed clipping rules and such we got given, is still not a task for the faint hearted, or merely those who dont have time to spend hours fine tuning the damn things to actually look good and not clip.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

As someone who's put a great deal of work into his base, I have to say that while I respect that you're trying to simplify this, I think you're oversimplifying it and assuming everyone wants a base in a manner that most people don't.

First off, multiple buildings as the norm is an awful idea. While some supergroups have multi-building outdoor areas, this is the exception by far, and when they do they're usually massive supervillains or government owned. The most well known supergroups are...

The Justice League, who have one building: the space station known as "The Watchtower."
The X-Men, who have the Xaiver Institute which is as well, one large building, a boarding school.
The Avengers in either SHIELD HQ or the Stark building, depending, still one building.
The Teen Titans have Titan Tower.

As far as villains go... Penguin's got a nightclub, Luthor's got the Lex Corp building, and most villains, like Joker, Poison Ivy, Two Face, are transitory because their bases are only safe as long as they're unknown.

The only major comic book villain I can think of who ever really had a huge, expansive base was Magneto, and even he has had more than a few different locales over the years.


The idea of a mini-zone, well... It just doesn't make much sense. Yes, there's a small subset of villains and an even smaller subset of heroes who have multi-acre plots, but even those tend to just focus on one building in the middle.



Now, on the other hand, what is a good idea here is ready-made structures. Rooms are, well... They're a pain to put together. I've spent many days if not weeks working on my base, and yes, it shows because my base is awesometastic, but wow if that doesn't eat up everything I've got. And most people just want a quick base that looks decent, not a base that looks OMGAMAZINGTASTIC.

What we need is pre-fabricated room options. That is, when you make a "control room" the option to set it up as a Full Tech Control Room or Full Arcane Control Room and have it just... put itself together right there. Certainly the crazies like myself wouldn't touch the stuff, but it would make making a nice looking base a lot easier for the masses.

I think he was talking about a secondary base system, not a replacement. There's no reason to think he was saying "you guys shouldn't have your neat stuff 'cuz we want easier stuff". Quite the contrary, I'm pretty sure he was saying "these guys that want the neat stuff have really neat stuff. Can we who want easy stuff maybe catch a break too?"

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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha ...I have the patience of a coffee-fueled flea...

I agree with this. It would add very diverse bases and people who love base building could do a lot more.
I think another cool addition would be a Circle of Thorns theme. They have those huge caverns with bridges and rocks and the water underneath, they would make great bases.