Player Estates

[Captain Jack]

Ahoy all,

This is the initial discussion for Player Estates. A brief overview has been given here, 11 months ago at Dev notes for future developments. Today, I will try to illustrate a more detailed overview. Feel free to add your ideas too so we can shape a final suggestion as soon as possible.

1)Port Building

First of all, Estates will be a port building. In fact, they will be the first port building. It will be privately owned and built in contrary with other port buildings we have in mind, which will be funded by multiple players.

Every player will be allowed to have 1 estate at first. We may allow for a second later. This is something we will revise.

The estate will count as the "public home" of each player. You already have a home port (the one you started or if you have a hideout, the port you have your hideout) and estates will not change this.

2)Perks

There will be a single perk from player estates: Influence Gain

The influence gain will be % based and at best, it will be near the current daily loss. Since the current daily loss is 1%, the max daily gain from the estate should be around 0.9%. The final value can be discussed here and it will be decided here for the final suggestion.

This will allow players to maintain their influence at one port. This can have several strategic usages.

3)Cost

However, the Player Estate should not be a way to "save" coin. It should mostly serve as a landmark for each player and also act as a gold coins AND gold bars sinker. Therefore the cost should be extravagant.

4)Attributes

The Estate should come with the following attributes:

A)Type
We should have several types here. We can use the following:
i)Hay Shacks
ii)Log Cabins
iii)Stone Houses
iv)Villas
v)Palaces

You will start with the Hay Stack and you will need gold bars to upgrade to the next type.
Construction of every type will need time.

B)Acres

Every new type, will also require acres. The better the type, the more acres it should need. Every port will have a finite number of acres. These acres will be a different pool from the one we use for plantations. In general, ports should have 2 acres locations: One for buildings and one for plantations. Later we can add a law where ports will be able to expand these acres (location) through a law, just like it happens with plantation acres. The timing of such law will be decided when acres will run low. Something difficult to happen from just estates, early on. Since the starting pool of acres will be big enough just for estates.

Acres will be added with gold coins from the players, as long as they are available. The gold coins will be spend to terraform them, which means they will be labor costs and not administrative costs. As a result, the nations will not earn from this.

Acres occupied though will be taxable, if the nation wants. A law will be created and nations will be able to use this. The law will be acres-based and a tax per acre will be applied. There will be a maximum limit for this law.

Acres addition will also require time.
There will be an acre limit per type.

C)Servants

What a proper estate without servants would be? Estates will have servants. I cannot think of any usage other than show for them, but we can certainly discuss any ideas. They will count as crew members and they will come with a maintenance cost of 5gc per day.

There will be a max limit per acre.

D)Luxury

A final attribute will be luxury. This will be used to rank estates of the same type and acres. Instead of adding infinite acres that would make this unreal, we will use the Luxury attribute to describe the amount of luxuries an estate has.

Luxury will need gold bars. Purchased luxuries will carry over from every type.

There will be no max limit.

5)Ranking

We intend to place a link to Estates of every port at the Court page, at the Hire Officers/Hideout/Plantations box.

The link will lead you to a page where all current estates of a port will be listed. From Best to Worst.


6)Resale

To allow relocation, we can do this through Resale. Players should be able to sell their properties for a price. Once sold, they will be able to buy/construct a new estate at the same port or elsewhere.

The game will allow you to have 1 estate active and 1 more under sale at a different port. This will allow players to put an estate on sale and move on to the next one without waiting for their estate to be sold.

Sales will be in credits. Seller will receive 90% of the credits and the game will receive 10%. There will be a minimum cost set based on type. No maximum limit.

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Again, this is the original discussion based on the original idea. Feel free to add your ideas. Once all ideas are posted, a final suggestion will be created and posted at a new topic. The difference is that in discussion you can add completely different ideas and reshape the whole feature while in suggestions step, you can only suggest at the existing shape.

Also, we do not really need metrics and values here yet as these will be decided during suggestion phase but some preliminary ideas can be helpful.

[Most Lee Harmless]

So... this is just a way to spend vast sums to achieve what? A minor saving in influence cost which is designed to be an unrecoverable cost. Oh but there will be a top-list.
Sorry but that dont excite me.

[Grimrock Litless]

[Insert free real estate meme]

[Kangaroo]

So... this is just a way to spend vast sums to achieve what? A minor saving in influence cost which is designed to be an unrecoverable cost. Oh but there will be a top-list.
Sorry but that dont excite me.

+ 1 So far.
There has to be a reason to sink, I am not seeing one on diplayed detail.

[Banger]

Meh.

[Meliva]

I do think it's a bit underwhelming also. But since it is just the first port building, perhaps it can be expanded upon with future ones as well. Perhaps a boost to other port buildings, or some other benefits.

I do like the idea, but the effects and benefits do need work.

[Mack]

So... this is just a way to spend vast sums to achieve what? A minor saving in influence cost which is designed to be an unrecoverable cost. Oh but there will be a top-list.
Sorry but that dont excite me.

hey im pretty sure you were one of the inspiring voices to this idea a few months ago

[Stan Rogers]

This whole estate thing does not excite me in any way and I will probably opt out of any construction projects.
Something that could excite me is the development of port forts and purchasing defensive cannons etc. but that would be for another idea thread. Not this one so count me out for now.

[Shadowood]

CJ,

For now I have to agree with the others in this thread. Unless this "estate" serves more of a purpose it just doesn't sound like a good investment at this time. I of course will wait to see final mechanics before sticking foot in mouth. But as it is now, sinking gold and bars in to save on only Influence loss doesn't sound appealing.

Knowing you however, this will probably tie into something else in the future. Any thoughts you can share here?

[DezNutz]

Not really excited about this either. Estates would need to do more than just 0.9% influence for influence drop.

I think that Estates would better serve as the next step for Hideouts.