Don't forget labs for my villager-research system that surprisingly noone seems to have a major problem with.catsonmeth wrote:I had an idea about cities and construction and NPCs and whatnot a few months ago, back when there was still a little glimmer of hope. Can't really remember what it was but IIRC it was pretty brilliant, as are all of my ideas.
I just skimmed the 5 pages you people have put up in two days, but here's my idea. Sorry if it's been suggested.
How about we add little NPC villages that can evolve and turn into cities as time passes if there's player planning. It would basically be like a seed, just an area of land that already has a name (not sure how naming would work, maybe it's named when a player happens across it) a few buildings arranged in a not-completely-retarded way, and some NPCs, which can be used to gather resources and build larger, more complex buildings. The buildings can come from blueprints, like we're planning shipyards, except there would be more pre-planned.
Or maybe small cities, larger than towns but not as large as what players need.
Maybe the question shouldn't be "Should there be generated cities," but rather, "How can we make players build cities, how do we make cities profitable and fun?"
One way to do it is to give each building a unique, necessary attribute. Maybe banks are the only way to store large amounts of currency. Apartment complexes could be an easy way to generate NPCs, schools make higher-level NPCs. Make vehicles and parts impossible to store in player inventory, so that they need to be stored in warehouses. Factories would be necessary to build those vehicles and parts, making it impossible for anyone that doesn't have a factory to manufacture fighters and tanks. Libraries for storing blueprints, ports for drydocking.
I still don't have any good ideas of telling the villagers what area to use as a lab, so this might be it.
It would also mean that Villagers could possibly repair demaged buildings, as their shape would be pre-determined by blueprints.