DD/Buildsystem/Market place

From Unknown Horizons

Proposal

Summary

The market place is or rather should be the center of a town. Its main and most probably only function is to supply the inhabitants of a settlement with needed goods. Inhabitants can collect goods there and only there. So, the market place will be the first requirement to fullfil for a working settlement. Market places are also limited by their range (a pretty big range) which will consequently mean you will need more than one market place to completely cover all residents in you settlement. Several market places in bigger cities are not uncommon.

To avoid having too many market places - especially for closing small gaps in your accommodation - building class will additionally feature smaller buildings with less range (like shops, small basars or something) which will work very much like the market places.

Moreover the market place is an object of prestige. It will change every increment to reflect the settlements state of development. To make this happen successfully the size of the market place ist the SAME in EVERY increment.

Finally the inventory of the market place will not be the settlement wide inventory used by branch offices or warehouses. The market places' inventory will only contain goods available for inhabitants resp. needed by them. To extend the functionality of this inventory it should be possible for players to:

• restrict goods avaiability for inhabitants.
• restrict the amount of avaiable goods for habitant.
• raise value-added taxes for goods (maybe!).

Restrictions might be very helpful to avoid inhabitants using all available goods to update the residents in a new increment, or when the production of a new good has just started and the player want to ensure the full accommodation first.

Implementation related notes

See also Supplying buildings with goods.

Graphics

• The market place needs individual graphics for each increment. The graphic features to reflect the development will be the ground, the market stalls and a well/fountain/statue (depending on increment.)
• The additional buildings (shops, basars and so on) will need graphics depending on which increment they will be available.

Sounds

Nice ambient sounds for crowded places will increase game depth.

Open questions

None so far.

Phasing

Details

First:

• First implement market place inventory and make inhabitants using the market place only to gather goods.
• Implement restrictions for goods.

Then:

• Implement the update function as soon as it is figured out how increments and buildings' updates will work in detail.
• Implement taxes (if accepted by dev team) as soon as it is figured out how taxes will be handled.

General

Hopefully, next milestone.