Missing Manse Miniatures!

Allixea

Hello everyone! I am working on expanding my manse with a little beach and some water when I came to a shocking realization.

There is no way to have a room flooded with salt water, only fresh water, you can't float above a coral reef in fresh water! There also seems to be no way to make an underwater room meaning diving is completely out in manses.

I know it's probably not a high demand sort of thing but I don't see why the option just isn't there when we have deserts, beaches, snow, and fresh water available.

Jolanthe

Side note - is there any way to make a room indoors again if you want to, without removing that room and all its other upgrades? That might be nice - else if you can use another billowing winds miniature in an outdoors room, maybe that can make it revert back.

Saran

One thing I'd love to see personally is switching things up a little and having it so that manse owners can just have commands to set the terrain of rooms in their manse and flip the indoor/outdoor switch. The relevant miniatures could then become something you use inside the manse to unlock their terrains as options.

For me, at least, I have a manse that's themed as being almost entirely outdoors with forest and trees terrain among bits of other terrain around so it's 100cr or 50cr + 2000goop per room for miniatures, which then lead to deciding to just go the homestead route instead cause if I'm going to spend that much, I might as well have it on prime heh.

Uilani

That's a good question, Allixea. I cannot answer it immediately because I do not know what thought process went into that decision originally. Was there a good one or was it just "nobody would need that, right?". If I were to guess on the spot, a reason does come to mind (whether it is a good is the question).  When it comes to other environments, it's possible that the limitation is intentional and meant to reinforce that while manses are flexible, they are not meant to become entire worlds but remain homes. You can create a pond in your backyard - fresh water - but not sea - salt water. You can bring in sand to make a beach or a pretend desert, plant lots of trees in the garden, etc. 

Of course, players can and will describe their manses however they see fit anyway but there is a difference between supporting player choices with code solutions, and not interfering with ways they find to get what they want in spite of the code. Kind of like how we disable/rework any offensive emotes we find because we do not wish to encourage that behaviour as a game, but players can still custom emote whatever they please. 

Saran

Uilani said:

That's a good question, Allixea. I cannot answer it immediately because I do not know what thought process went into that decision originally. Was there a good one or was it just "nobody would need that, right?". If I were to guess on the spot, a reason does come to mind (whether it is a good is the question).  When it comes to other environments, it's possible that the limitation is intentional and meant to reinforce that while manses are flexible, they are not meant to become entire worlds but remain homes. You can create a pond in your backyard - fresh water - but not sea - salt water. You can bring in sand to make a beach or a pretend desert, plant lots of trees in the garden, etc. 

Of course, players can and will describe their manses however they see fit anyway but there is a difference between supporting player choices with code solutions, and not interfering with ways they find to get what they want in spite of the code. Kind of like how we disable/rework any offensive emotes we find because we do not wish to encourage that behaviour as a game, but players can still custom emote whatever they please. 

Very late and appreciating that it's just a guess, but I don't think the system necessarily achieves that goal, particularly given we've seen Deepnight heh. Instead, it feels like it more limits what is considered a home. To the point that it seems like, for most of the races, you can't really create a home matching the type of environment their lore indicates they like to live in.

(to note, the following is just about what is mechanically unsupported, not what you can describe despite the system)

An Aslaran couldn't create a house inspired by Shanthmark with some actual plains or grasslands around it, Dwarves and Trill couldn't have actual mountains terrain around their homes, a few different races like forests and it wouldn't be surprising for commune players to want a home set there but that's not supported, Mugwumps couldn't have wetland shacks with an actual swamp around them, etc. 

For a Merian, you could create a beach-front property or even an island home surrounded by beaches, but you couldn't have any actual ocean rooms and you couldn't create something underwater a la Glomborolum. On the other hand, a Dracnari could seemingly recreate most, if not all, of Skarch with correct terrain types and add in a little home somewhere but you couldn't have the volcanic terrain of somewhere like Zoaka.

If the goal is to limit people from going too crazy maybe a "biome" concept could achieve that while enabling more freedom to even just create a home the lore says your character's race might want to live? Fulcruxes could have a certain number of terrain slots for example, which could provide a limiter to how many different terrain types you're able to use within a given manse. 

For me, I really just need like... forest, trees, freshwater, and un/natural underground. If I had all that but couldn't get more it'd probably also limit me from building out into the grasslands section because then the rest of my manse would be "real" so I probably wouldn't want a "fake" section personally. It's also why I've started looking at a homestead cause making the manse real is looking to cost as much as having it even more real on prime.

Eritheyl

If it's ever possible, I'm in favor of working terrain changes into the MANSE command with a gold cost per room (maybe increasing as certain thresholds? Above 5 price goes up by x, above 10, 2x etc). Remove the miniatures entirely, but still keep things limited to "normal" environments, so no chaos, flesh, etc.

I'm also in favor of letting manses be almost whatever the heck we want. We can already set custom descriptions, giving a little more flavor by way of terrain is not suddenly going to make things silly and ridiculous - we've had silly and ridiculous since day one, I'm sure.

Saran

Eritheyl said:

If it's ever possible, I'm in favor of working terrain changes into the MANSE command with a gold cost per room (maybe increasing as certain thresholds? Above 5 price goes up by x, above 10, 2x etc). Remove the miniatures entirely, but still keep things limited to "normal" environments, so no chaos, flesh, etc.

I'm also in favor of letting manses be almost whatever the heck we want. We can already set custom descriptions, giving a little more flavor by way of terrain is not suddenly going to make things silly and ridiculous - we've had silly and ridiculous since day one, I'm sure.

More impressive than silly really but if we look at Deepnight, it is(was?) a huge city and, in the end, it's really just a matter of what scale anyone is willing to build their manse out to and how they theme things.

But also... manses are kinda silly anyway? They're gnome-tech bubbles of reality that exist in a space between planes and are shaped by the will of the mortal bonded to them. Plus you can hatch a creature inside them to turn them into a magical living spaceship.