Ape Apps

Was sitting there in Church today and during the sermon I was thinking of the code for My Colony, and I had an idea to add another gameplay mode of Multiplayer Regions. In my mind, it would be a slightly larger map than the current region file, and all of the high-level region data would be stored on the server, including the little thumbnail images that represent the individual city files. However, you could invite your friends to join your region, and they could pick a plot on the map and start building their own cities.

Instead of shared resources across the region like on current region maps, only atmosphere would be shared, although there would be a new regional warehouse type building where players can manually store resources that are shared across the region.

Also, instead of the whole region being one big city, it would be broken up into 'areas', like metropolitan areas, where each one of those would have a charter code/online presence as opposed to the region as a whole.

For example, if you start a city on the region at coordinate 20:20 (x:y), and you own no other cities touching that city, it would be chartered as a new colony on the server. If you then started another city right next to it as 20:21, it would be "linked" to the first city and they would become a metropolitan area with shared resources. However, if your friend started a new city in that region across the map at location 8:10 or something, then that would trigger the formation of a new "area" with a new charter code and its own resource pool.

My thought for this was that regions are so big anyway, the likelihood of a player filling one by himself is not very high. However a group of players could probably do it.

Anyway, that is kind of an idea I had, it's nothing solid right now, but I have (at least in theory) worked out a lot of the code needed and issues in my head, lol. I mainly wanted to throw this here and see if there is any feedback on it, to see if it is a feature anybody would actually be interested in, before spending time to implement it. I actually think that compared to a lot of things, it would be a pretty easy one to implement, since a lot of the work on Regions is already completed, it would be a similar experience except there are other parts on the map that are being filled out by other people. The only main difference to the player is the joint atmosphere, and the addition of the joint regional warehouse. You wouldn't really be able to load up other players' maps and play them, you would just see them on the main regional overview.

Let me know what you think of the concept, and if it is worth exploring further!

i would really love the feature. but one main concern to think on would be, what if one of the players gets inactive? i really love the concept but if a region gets filled with dead cities, it wont be as much fun. maybe, you can annex the other cities created by the friends, might cost civics, rather than free creation of cities on region. and again. if its a group of players, a single region might not be enough :P
later on, if region can as well be expanded, it would be cool but thats too far fetched rn.

also, as you are working on trade routes, and you have mentioned that starships will finally have some use, maybe inter-region trade routes can be done without them, for they are in same region and you don't need a starship to transport good.

My thought was that once a colony got removed from the server for inactivity in the standard way, it would also be removed from the region map that it was a part of

I personally think that the ability to trade territories between players would be a great feature. I would say that in order for a territory to be sold from one colony to another, the buying colony needs to own territory adjacent to the territory being bought so that they can link up after the trade is made. The territory being bought would keep everything pertaining to it's individual map, except any capitals/consulates would represent their new owner.

Also, what if a colony could sacrifice one or more of it's maps/territories to invite another player into the region. The player would proceed to take over the territory(s) and it would become a colony all by itself. This could be useful if all space is taken up in a region, but one colony still wants to invite a friend. The map(s) would keep all of the data pertaining to themselves, structures, people, etc, and the new occupant could continue to buy more territories/maps from the other pre-existing occupants. Players should also be able to lend their colony out to other colonies in the same region, which could be useful if a player needs to go away for a while and needs someone to look after their colony. The lendee would be rewarded in some way for taking care of the colony, and then the lender could return at any time and cancel the lone. If you want i can make a thread for that idea in suggestions, since I have a lot of ideas for that potential feature.

Trade routes between two colonies on the same regions map could cost significantly less civics and could never require starships. I recall posting an entire thread devoted to this topic in the suggestions forum. Was a while ago though.

This last idea could be another benefit/risk of occupying the same region as other colonies. What if the entire region become loaded while just one of it's occupants is online? This would mean that all of the other colonies in the region would generate and consume resources even if only one colony is online. If everyone is offline, then the region unloads and no colonies produce or consume anything. This could be a blessing or a curse depending on a colony's situation.