NotEvilAtAll

[!] All around Honeyhill, a great panic sets in. Halflings run about in the streets shouting "SELL! SELL!" and wheelbarrows upon wheelbarrows of wheat grain, hay, and bread pile up on the docks. To whom they will go, not a soul knows, yet the pile grows ever larger. "Weh were FOOLS, FOOLS oi tell yeh!" Shouts a halfling barter-merchant, staring at a large pile of grains growing ever larger. "Weh were FOOLS ter t'ink tha' t'is could go on forevah..." A halfling cries in the corner of the docks while a female halfling tries to comfort them. It seems as though many have been hurt, though not physically. [!] An emergency publication circulates, produced from an unknown source WHEAT CRASHES! Wheat has fallen in its barter value, going from its peak at 20 pumpkins per wheat to a value nay even one tenth of that for hay, much less wheat. It seems as though, with the decline of buying pressure brought on from the end of the Hay Herald publication, some biggun barter whales have dumped their hay onto the halfling trading scene, dumping prices into the ground! It is as though a rug has been pulled out from under us, leaving us to flop about on the ground as we do now! Emergency economic relief from the last few Pumpkin traders (who avoided the hype of the Great Wheat Bubble) is expected to ease tensions in the next few weeks, but until then, stay wary!

It's real. I don't know why it isn't just a CA blacklist or lore infraction or whatever, but the ban hammer gotta ban I guess.

If it makes you feel any better once I stayed banned for 2 months over making fun of Telanir's face

On Almaris it's mostly been charters doing that, with war/diplomacy/rebellion only ever forming new nations when it forces people out of their land to have them make a charter instead. Currently on Almaris the number of successful rebellions/diplomatic plays to gain independence from an overlord nation is zero and the only new nations popping up have been on charters or formed out of couping an old nation and re-branding it with a different name. This was also the case on Arcas with the only newly independent nation forming out of an old overlord, Haense, already having held nation status for many years regardless. New nations just aren't made out of the lands of old nations these days, certainly not under the current rulesets. You have to go to unsettled lands to make a new nation on modern LOTC. Thus, all else staying the same, only allowing communities to set up as nation vassals ensures that said nations stay the same from map to map. This isn't Axios anymore with big rebellions to carve new nations out of Oren (even in Axios many new nations were made on charters too). I shall now also highlight another problem with only allowing people to settle in existing nations; such a policy is terrible if true conquest is to be allowed. On my time on LOTC I've found that very restrictive rules on settling new locations goes hand in hand with very restrictive rules on conquering old locations. If your nation getting conquered gives you no easy methods to start up something new again someplace else, you tend to be more in favor of conquest rules that saves your nation from ever getting conquered in the first place. This is a trap that Almaris fell into for its first few months, with very restrictive war rules and much too restrictive charter policy, the polar opposite of Atlas which saw new settlements get easily set up in freebuild and old settlements/nations regularly conquered in map-wide coalition wars. Correct, nation status is an OOC mechanic, and correct, nations themselves are RP entities. What exactly is the point to the OOC mechanic built in to justify the RP entity? Is the RP entity of a self-declared nation not enough alone to justify it's roleplay and continued existance? The non-staff supported groups, the psuedo-nations and vassals and settlements and whatever are also RP entities much in the same way that a nation is, often with a great degree of longevity and history themselves, and whose likewise rise and fall is as much an RP generator as whatever goes on with nations. Nations are not special. They just happen to have at one point had enough activity on a spreadsheet for staff to give them an OOC nation status and the ability to buy multiple tiles, settle many vassals, and other such things unique to the status of being a staff-declared nation. Yes, dynamics surrounding vassalage to staff-declared nations has lead to RP on the server, yet I fail to see how roleplay is hurt by doing away with the special status declared by staff or even just maintaining things as they currently are (as opposed to your opinion that the staff-declared OOC nation status ought to be entrenched ever further with a complete monopoly on all land). These vassal groups and pseudo-nations can still call themselves vassals in RP without the staff being there to declare such, and all such dynamics related to vassalage would likewise still exist with the added benefits of more land-settling options for those communities that wish to engage in them. Of course, if the pseudo-monopoly on land that nations currently have is lessened or removed entirely, it hurts the power of existing nations. That doesn't hurt roleplay though. If nations don't have as much OOC power over people, that doesn't hurt anyone's RP. If a nation relies solely on its nation status and associated benefits over non-nation groups to stay afloat then I do wonder why such a nation need exist at all. Nations can just go back to being RP-declared and RP-enforced groups and nothing more, and I'd be a happy camper. RP exists outside of nations and it is very dumb to say that giving nations a 100% monopoly on all land settling is the only RP-friendly choice for the server. Deciding not to be a nation vassal is a choice that characters can make in RP that would not be supported on the server with your proposed changes. As I have pointed out many times now, nations themselves are far from free of OOC, their psuedo-monopoly on easy land currently is an OOC privilege and not because they necessarily do the RP to hold onto all of this land, and oftentimes the way vassals are settled in nations is OOC anyways, or made more OOC with pastes or other such methods that make the vassals pop out of thin air after some discord decisions were made (likely involving staff too, hah).

Why would we remove the primary method for political shakeups on the server? Nations, as a general rule, don't give out their land for free to form independent nations elsewhere unless they are completely imploding like Oren was in Axios. This sounds like an ideal way to guarantee that, unless one of the nations that's been going strong on LOTC for years and years suddenly implodes into a bajillion pieces, the nation roster will remain unchanged from the start to the end of the map. Historically a significant portion of new nations have popped up in freebuild or as charters somewhere so without anything like that the server just doesn't have as much changing on it. All land management systems are OOC on LOTC. The only IRP way of doing land management is to make all construction work done with emotes and modreqs because that's closest to how construction works IRL. Region systems are an OOC system and not an accurate representation of RP b/c foreigners could realistically do the same construction/destruction stuff as residents (in the real world, a land owner has to physically stop you from building/destroying stuff instead of using non-existent region protections to stop you). Freebuild is an OOC system and not an accurate representation of all the construction work needed to make that log cabin. Pastes are an OOC convenience b/c settlements don't just pop out of nowhere realistically. LC is an OOC convenience for similar reasons. Every land system on the server is an OOC convenience by nature. Nations and nation status too are OOC conveniences LMAO. If you have to petition staff to get some extra good-boy benefits congratulations you have an OOC system b/c staff don't exist IRP. Nations don't have grounding in the land they own either and maintain absolute OOC monopolies on land they don't ever patrol with military forces and sometimes barely even settle with any citizens. Emote chopping down trees and hauling them over to make a log cabin as much as you want, if /rg info says the tile is owned by a nation and the PRO says "no", you can't do diddly squat even if nobody ever shows up to stop you IRP. As for the OOC conveniences on how to dole out land on LOTC, I much prefer systems that let the map change over time and give regular ol' players like me a better chance to do stuff. You're free to think whatever you like but keep in mind that nations and regioned systems of land management are just as OOC as the alternatives.

[!] A halfling corpse would be found north of the swamps far off in Attenlund, its head weirdly round and nose strangely long. [!] A note rests under the Filibert Applefoot's bed: Final Will I have lived a long live, yet with my age it is clear that I will expire soon. Thus, I write this will to detail what will come of my belongings: ~To Mimosa Applefoot, I give my burrow and all the family's herbs. ~To my beloved grandson, I give my pipe, all of my pipeweed, and all of my booze. ~To the Thain, I give all of the resources I stored in the village vault. ~To the Sheriff, I give my bounder's badge and my walking shovel. ~I give my journals, notes, papers, and quills to any halfling willing to write newspapers for the village. I wish to be buried next to Iris Peregrin, and on my grave shall be planted a single tulip. -Filibert Applefoot

Hello there. We here admins of LOTC have heard your pleas and thus 9.0 will be a massive void with no ground to stand on. Landscapes will finally be removed from LOTC

Nobody who argues in favor for freebuild argues that it's about the builds looking better than the alternatives. That never has and never should be the point of freebuild. You can fly around an old map and find freebuild builds that look worse than builds on Almaris, of course, but that's to be expected. A build made by hand in survival mode without unlimited resources will not look as good as builds pasted in from creative build servers, no **** sherlock. Freebuild is about the process. It is about settlements starting up without a mastermind organizing it all and prime regions attracting settlement naturally over time. You cannot have a perfect settlement spot be in freebuild without a Belvitz-like settlement popping up there, such is the nature of freebuild. Freebuild escapes the meta-OOC Civ 6 game of tile and nation management, discord messaging, etc and just lets you change and impact the world around you much easier. That is why people advocate for it. Games with fully fleshed out and designed pre-built worlds will always look better than pure sandbox games, yet people still play and enjoy sandbox games all the time. Freebuild is a sandbox, and that is why there are people who like it. I have been and always will be pro-Freebuild simply due to how I play LOTC. I love building. I love exploring things that other people have built. I love watching the world change around me over time in ways I can't predict, with new things to discover around every corner. Freebuild just hits that spot for me. Yes, freebuild doesn't always look perfect. Yes, freebuild makes it harder to cram players into cities and spam discord pings at them to log online for tavern events. People who want freebuild don't play LOTC just for those things, however. I want LOTC to be a sandbox because that is how I personally wish to play LOTC.

Some sort of deployable area denial to encourage attackers to seek more than one point of entry (something like boiling oil or whatever). The ability to defuse planted bombs to give the defenders the opportunity to nullify damage with a good sally out. Make sure you can't use a shield while climbing a ladder b/c then the defensive advantage of easily shooting at people as they climb up the ladder is too easy to avoid. Maybe if you shoot at a ladder it doesn't build up as fast or eventually gets destroyed entirely. Climbing up a ladder into a melee fight on vanilla Minecraft is much easier than it is IRL, so maybe you should get a surge stun effect for a moment when you dismount from a ladder to represent that, idk. Since players don't collide with one another on LOTC it's not like in Bannerlord where defenders can pick off attackers climbing up a ladder one by one before they gain a foothold; once the attackers get a few people on the walls it becomes a messy blob fight and loads of people can pile in from even a small ladder without worrying about getting pushed off by collisions. Just pitching some ideas here. If attackers can use auto-build ladders to get over any wall design and blow holes through any non-PvP fort wall with explosives, then it is fair to give defenders tools to shut down chokepoints and get easy damage on their enemies as they run around trying to gain entry. Prior to this addition the "defensive advantage" was all passive, unmanned defense that you didn't have to do squat or diddly to obtain for you got it just by having walls your enemy couldn't get over. This gave defenders the ability to pick their battles and only sally out on full health or when they could get key picks on the attackers. With this ability gone, there is no more major advantage to defending instead of taking a field battle, for once a blob fight starts on the walls or in the city square when the attackers inevitably bust in its effectively the same as a blob fight in the fields but in a tighter area. What I want to see change is this old defensive advantage be morphed into a more active defense, where the "defensive advantage" isn't just: "Well, they can't come here to kill us, so we can stare at them all day long until they get bored and only come out when we think we can kill 'em" but is instead more like: "The attackers can come make a breach whenever they want but we have counterplay available to make them suffer losses if they aren't careful" With this change atm the defenders don't have the counterplay available to make the process of breaching a city/fort dangerous and interesting so that's why I think some should be added in.

Yeah this change annihilates the defensive PvP advantage in raids and thus something should be added in to give defensive battles a bit of an advantage again. I still think it’s a cool addition but some counterplay for the defenders needs to be put in or there’s no point to defending.

then there needs to be some modification of it that a moderator can put in to manually raise and lower it a certain amount of blocks without it doing it itself to work for CRP raids or else it'll be weird.

in a CRP raid would you have to emote raising up the ladder or will it just do it on its own? maybe that'd be something to consider idk

I wonder how the raid ladders will work with CRP default. If raiders show up and defenders call CRP, how does that work exactly? Does the ladder build up at X blocks per round of emotes or what?