Player Cities v0.5 Q&A

For my first dev blog here, I thought I'd take a few minutes to outline some of the questions people have been asking about how Player Cities are intended to function in Divergence.
First off, try not to look at "a city" as if it were an object to be right-clicked and transferred into your ownership. A player city is nothing more than a collection of individual buildings placed by individual players in close proximity of one another. If those players with to share the expense of a mutually beneficial defensive network for their homes or buildings, they can decide among themselves someone who represents their interests, and that person can place a city hall.

The city hall serves numerous purposes. First and foremost it taxes all buildings within it's sphere of radius designated by it's owner and collects those fees. That revenue is pooled and added to it's own maintenance pool, which is the source of the services it can furnish.

The most common service a city hall can provide is to establish a militia or police force (depending on what the township wishes). A militia is typically a set of NPCs which are spawned and patrol within the city hall's sphere of influence. They're programmed to attack either individuals specified at the city hall, or can be extended to broader specifications such as "attack all non-OSI aligned" if the town wishes to be factionally affiliated.

This "militia" will patrol within it's boundaries, in between structures and attack anyone specified as "unwelcome". Once a member of it's ranks is killed, it is replaced by the city hall at the expense of it's maintenance pool.

The mayor (the owner of the city hall) can also place defensive structures as anyone else in the world can but any defensive structure (unless overridden such as a wealthy individual wishing to employ their own personal estate defenses at their own expense) placed within the sphere with maintenance from (once again) the city hall.

Q:"But what if our mayor quits the game or is being a douche?"
A: (Currently) there is only one way to replace an uncooperative mayor in Divergence. Armed rebellion.

A city hall is like any other structure in that it can be destroyed, either through controlled demolition or a simple self destruct sequence initiated by an AI or highly-skilled hacker. The mayor obviously can do anything in his power to stop this sequence from completing, including setting city defenses to target others at will, giving him time to access the panel and stop it's function. Once the city hall is destroyed, whatever was in the maintenance pool and internal bank (if that feature is enabled) is dropped to the ground for anyone to pick up. A new mayor can throw down a new city hall and the process repeats itself.

Q: "So what if someone sneaks through the main gate at my city, kills all the guards, destroys the defensive turrets, blows up the city hall and takes my money?"
A: Well then, it sucks to be you.

Remember that because a mayor can take measures to stop the destruction of his city hall, through personal action and city defenses that the only time when one individual should be able to totally take over a town is if that town is already virtually vacant and has no operational defenses of it's own. "Taking over" a township/town/city/metropolis requires a coordinated effort of several individuals willing to risk dying and losing their own inventory and equipment in the process. It also requires the commitment to, if necessary, maintain that effort in preventing the existing mayor from thwarting their attempts.

In other MMOs, the one's brave enough to attempt player cities, you always find their still remains scattered around. Ghost towns long since vacant, taking up prime real estate and always right where you wanted to mine a really good concentration of aluminum alloy. That won't happen in Divergence. "Don't try to take more than you're prepared to commit to defending" is the rule.

Q:"You said already that you don't impose a value set on players. Remember that stuff about player freedom? What if I want to name my town something ridiculous?"
A: You're more than welcome to name your city a disgusting array of personal attacks and/or racial slurs if you so wish. But as with everything in Divergence, be aware of the repercussions. A few might be:

1. A town named "Cuntville" or "Buttsecksopolis" isn't going to make it into the story. Neither will "Alderaan City" or anything else obviously named after something from another game or franchise. Don't expect my or anyone else on the dev team's help if your desire to be unoriginal and cliche.
2. For names that go beyond the beyond of offensiveness, such as racial slurs, you can expect no interference from anyone representing Stainglass Llama at that time. However keep in mind that we're developers by day, players by night, and if someone on my team wants to make it a personal mission to obliterate a city with a bigotous name, as long as they're operating at the capacity of a player and not a GM, they are well within their rights to do so.

I hope this has spelled out a few of the more pertinent questions people had about the player city system. Obviously there's a lot more I could get into but please understand that giving people info about a game you're in the process of making is a double-edged sword. On one side you want to give people as much info as possible, but on the other the moment you open your mouth you become liable for those features and at the time of this writing, there is just under a mere $5,000 in the development pool.

As always, thanks for your support and helping make Divergence: Online a reality!