[MUD-Dev] Morphable worlds, Reset based systems revisited

[Paul Schwanz]

Brian Hook wrote:
> Shren said:

>> I've thought about this.  Say your world of city states has
>> 10,000 grid squares of land.  If you add diminishing returns for
>> controlling more than a certain number of them, then you
>> guarantee that no one kingdom ever conquers.

> That's basically the idea that I've had as well, but instead of
> diminishing returns, it's more like "power drops off as a function
> of distance from true home".

> So say you have two kingdoms, Alpha and Omega.  Alpha dominates
> the landscape, however players that are citizens of Alpha see
> their power diminish the further they get away from Alpha's
> capital.  To some extent, they can recoup power by conquering
> smaller cities and outposts that lessen the drop off, but the drop
> off exists nonetheless.

> Omega only controls its home city, and it can probably never be
> taken away because the power slope would likely function at such
> an extreme at that location that a relatively weak Omegan could
> defeat the most powerful Alpha.

Along these same lines, I've considered a model for an SF MMORPG
where player communities work together to build and fuel large,
expensive structures that act as power generators for shields and
weapons.  Strength of shields and weapons are influenced by distance
to the nearest "friendly" power generator.

My focus, however, was not so much to prevent domination.  Instead,
I was looking for ways to create a territorial feel with a natural
range between safe and dangerous areas in order to allow players to
better manage risks (with better management of risks, choices can
become more momentous), but in a flexible way that still allowed
players to affect/change/grow the amount of territory they control.

For preventing domination, I think I'd prefer to stay away from any
real hard-coded limits.  Instead, I'd like to see community growth
and expansion require quite a bit of cooperation and coordination of
effort so that the complexity of managing larger city-states pushes
back naturally against expansion.

--Phinehas


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