2019-12-04 Land, Abandonment and Decay

[Haxus]

Land
Avatars now have land associated with them, in the form of solar systems. Land is an important factor in the next topic Abandonment and Decay.

The solar system that contains the avatar's home building is automatically part of their land. The solar system is not protected from abandonment if the home building is destroyed. The solar system remains protected even if the home building is destroyed.

In addition to their home system, each avatar may designate up to ten solar systems to be their land. The land designation is arbitrary. Any solar systems can be chosen.

This does not claim those solar systems as property. There is no way to know if a solar system is already part of another avatar's land. Any number of avatars may designate the same solar system as their land.

Land is shown on a new Land page on the Bio window. There, land can be removed and the current solar system can be added to your land.

Land can also be added using the Cities and Bases, System Scan, and Star Map windows. The cities list supports multiple select, so you can do a bunch of them at once.

Abandonment and Decay
The previous update produced some good ideas on this topic. Here are the new rules for abandonment and decay, with some clarifications.

Abandonment
A building can become abandoned.

• Building abandonment begins three days after: 1) an avatar on line was last present in its solar system or 2) it stops being protected by the land designation of an avatar.
  
• Buildings in the land solar systems of an avatar are protected from abandonment while the avatar's account remains active.
  • Buildings do not have to be part of a city. All buildings in land systems are protected.
    
  • Empire of the avatar and the buildings is not a factor.
    
• Abandonment appears as a negative morale modifier on the city report. The negative modifier is the number of days since the building began feeling abandoned, up to -1000.
  
• Land may take up to 24 hours to register the change of an avatar's account status, whether active or inactive.
  
• Solar systems may take up to 24 hours to be notified when they become land, to gain that protection.
  
• There is no extra benefit to overlapping the lands of multiple avatars.
  

Decay
Once a building is abandoned, it is subject to decay. Decay is disabled in this update. Decay will likely be enabled Friday.

• Up to three abandoned buildings in a city will decay at each city report cycle. Decayed buildings are listed on the city report.
  
• Unincorporated buildings on a world will decay. This goes unreported.
  
• When a building decays due to abandonment, it is completely destroyed.
  
• Probability of decay increases as the negative abandonment modifier increases.
  
• Decay conforms to city build rules so bases will decay before cities, on any given world.
  
• A city report with decaying buildings is marked with a highlighted icon.
  
• The final city report from a decaying city does not expire in the mail queue. It is marked with a highlighted icon.
  

Buildings on Empire Standings Pages
The empire standings pages show counts of various things in the universe but it does not include buildings.

Buildings are now shown on the empire standings pages, currently at 124,000!

I am eagerly looking forward to seeing a reduction in that number, soon. With a universe reset on the way, and servers blinking red, I'm not feeling particularly patient. How does Friday sound, to enable building decay?

[Haxus]

When an avatar departs a solar system that is not someone's land, the pattern that should be seen in the reports from cities in the system is like this.

First day: +1 Cosmopolitan.
Second day: nothing
Third day: -1 Abandoned
Fourth day: -2 Abandoned
.
.
.

If the system is someone's land.
First day: +1 Comsopolitan.
Second day: nothing
Third day: nothing
.
.
.

[Deantwo]

Land

Would "sovereignty" or "fief" be better names for it maybe?
Hard to come up with a name for it when "claim" is used elsewhere.

The solar system that contains the avatar's home building is automatically part of their land. The solar system is not protected from abandonment if the home building is destroyed.

And if this protection is still only an immunity to abandonment, we will be forced to still set it as a land anyway, or the whole system crumb as soon as the building is destroyed.
Or if we accidentally change our home building I guess.

[Haxus]

I started with 'Avatar Domain'. 'Land' is a nice short word that gets the point across.

Avatars are no longer landless peasants. They bring something more to an empire than population, they bring land.

Home designation is an important decision. I hope it doesn't often happen accidentally.

Nobody is forcing you to do anything. The home designation makes sense. A new avatar who builds a city is automatically assigned a home there. If they leave their system, their home system will be protected from abandonment decay, even if they have never looked at the Land page of the Bio window.

[Haxus]

I just realized that text on the city report about abandonment needs updating. Current city reports will say something about the home rule, that is no more.

[Celarious]

I personally like the name Land, since it's simple and easy to understand!

In terms of the abandonment morale penalty, does it decrease by 1 for each day abandoned forever?


EDIT:

I am eagerly looking forward to seeing a reduction in that number, soon. With a universe reset on the way, and servers blinking red, I'm not feeling particularly patient. How does Friday sound, to enable building decay?

Friday sounds great honestly! Seems like there's far too many abandoned buildings everywhere and Friday would give people a chance to login over the weekend to check the situation

[jakbruce2012]

Friday is fine with me as well, looking forward to the servers cooling off a little and becoming playable again.

Had any look at resource scan inconsistencies introduced in the last week or so? Dean seems keen to declare it an old issue, but it seems to be an old bug returned.

[Haxus]

After doing more work on this, I realized that the home solar system remains protected, even if the avatar's home building is destroyed.

I corrected the initial post.

[Haxus]

Net morale has a range of -128 to +127.

Abandonment penalty grows by -1 per day to a maximum of -65535. Probability of decay is based on the abandonment penalty, not on the net morale value.

[Deantwo]

The solar system that contains the avatar's home building is automatically part of their land. The solar system is not protected from abandonment if the home building is destroyed.

And if this protection is still only an immunity to abandonment, we will be forced to still set it as a land anyway, or the whole system crumb as soon as the building is destroyed.
Or if we accidentally change our home building I guess.

Let me correct what I said here. Got to thinking a little more about it to narrow down my worry about this.

While the new Land system is only granting an immunity to abandonment, rather satisfying the need for visits. It will mean that if the player hasn't been online and visited their systems for a long time and their account goes inactive, the whole empire will suddenly get the huge abandonment penalties from one day to another as the immunity vanish.

It would be be much better if the Land protection satisfied the visiting need, so that the empire would slowly feel abandoned after the account goes inactive.
This does however bring an exploit with it that I am not sure how to fix. If Landed systems have visitation need satisfied, you could in theory cycle your Land through your list of systems once per day to remotely visit 10 systems with each avatar.