Steven briefly mentioned node policies regarding land management in the dev stream:
Policies could potentially be enacted that might protect certain actions within resources.
Here is my take/suggestions. Feel free to poke holes and improve.
Scope
Policies only affect minerals, plants and non-aggro mobs in the node's ZOI. Including the aggro-mobs would just make it
weird. Any area not within the ZOI of a lvl 3 node or higher is always a free-for-all.
Premise
Humans cannot control themselves when it comes to resource management without strong incentive systems. History has proven
Tragedy of the Commons to be very real, and Ultima Online has shown that
players will destroy a carefully balanced ecosystem to a point where the devs simply removed the code again entirely.
Also, you cannot defend your local resources if there are heavy penalties like corruption when you do.
Suggestion
Mayors should be able to set policies that makes it illegal to either:
- Harvest a rock or specific plant or animal species at all. For anyone. Period.
- Harvest a rock or specific plant or animal species at all unless you are a citizen of the node. Optionally also allow citizens of parent and vassal nodes to harvest freely.
- Harvest any tree or plant that hasn't reached full maturity yet. It sounds like a high gathering skill would allow for that, but also that it would negatively affect the land management score.
The above is not meant to be an exhaustive list. It's just to set a few possible examples. Come up with better ones below!
Illegal doesn't mean it's impossible. It means it comes with risk. Anyone breaking the law will automatically be flagged as enemy of the node to all node citizens. EDIT: For 5 minutes or whatever the standard timer is. In other words, they will appear as enemies/combatants to all citizens of the node, but not to anyone who isn't a citizen. This removes corruption from the table if a citizen decides to attack. Citizens will appear as non-combatants to the poacher until they attack. The poacher/illegal logger will only be free to defend without fear of corruption
if first attacked, and only against those attacking. To a neutral bystander it would look like two or more non-combatants fighting. Exactly like a node or guild war really.
In order to prevent mayors from just making it illegal for anyone other than citizens to gather anything as the default, it needs to come with a cost. For example, any illegal logging and poaching should provide no XP towards the node, where it normally would provide XP if any player in the area felled a tree. In other words, node upkeep and development would be directly hampered by those policies.
It has to be VERY obvious if gathering is considered legal or not in the area. I suggest copying the checkbox system we have for attacking other players:
Players will be able to opt-in (via a checkbox) to allow their beneficial spells, or non-beneficial AoEs to hit flagged players. If this is checked then AoE heals or damage will affect flagged players. If it is not checked then the AoE will not damage or heal any flagged players, and as such will not cause the caster to be flagged themselves (if they are not already).
Without the Poaching/Illegal Gathering box checked, you simply wouldn't get the option to gather or hit non-aggro mobs in a ZOI where it's illegal.
With the box checked, it should still be very obvious. I suggest making the little white dot we saw on the gatherable a different color like bright red or orange, as well as coloring the progress circle we see before and during the harvesting. And a clearly visible icon on the nameplates of the non-aggro mobs would be needed to show you'll flag up if you kill them.
Something like this for illegal harvesting, but better
There is a whole parent/vassal node aspect to this as well. I haven't fully thought it through, but please come with thoughts about that as well.
Edit: I left the ZOI part a little vague on purpose, because I am not sure how I would design around the node's original and immediate ZOI, with overlapping ZOIs of parent nodes.
We could let nodes only set policies for their immediate original ZOI as if they were level 0-2 in size, which would simplify things. Or we can let parent nodes set policies for their entire ZOI, but allow vassal nodes to always override those policies for their own ZOI as they please.
