Hospitable Homes

[cjnodell]

I think it would be nice if my character's home, aka estate, was a bit more hospitable. Currently they are something that one sets up and then mostly forgets about. I like thinking of my estate as my home. I want to be there in times of peace. The problem is that it is not practical to do so if you have a unit. I think that it would be coll if, while in the same region as your estate, your unit would not longer suffer from equipment damage. This would make it possible for me to hang out at home for any length of time. In general, I think it would be nice one could upgrade their estate in various ways. Some random brainstorming:

25G - Enlarge Estate 1 - Already a feature
50G - Enlarge estate 2 - Already a feature
25G - Barracks - A place to house estate owners unit. Eliminates equipment damage. Requires a large estate.
20G - Higher Normal Tutor of <SKILL> - Once hired tutor functions exactly as one at the academy. Paid per session hour. Requires Large estate
30G - Higher Advanced Tutor of <SKILL> - Once hired tutor functions exactly as one at the academy. Paid per session hour. Requires Normal Tutor of same skill.
50G - Higher Expert Tutor of <SKILL> - Once hired tutor functions exactly as one at the academy. Paid per session hour. Requires Advanced Tutor of same skill.
50G - Smithy - Can repair damage to estate owners unit. Normal costs apply.
25G - Higher Guards - Decreases Infiltrator's chance of successfully attacking estate owner while estate owner is in home region.

I am sure that there are many more possibilities. I am not sure which ones would fit into the game well if any. I simply like the option of hanging out at home instead of constantly having to reside at the capital. Well, I guess that I could stay at home regardless, but it costs a lot more and is rather limiting.

[Velax]

I like this idea. Might also increase a knight's loyalty to a region, as I doubt he'll want to move after spending lots of gold improving his estate. And there's so much you can do with it. Maybe a Training Ground, which makes training your troops slightly more effective when you're in your own region. Or a personal shrine to your religion that only you can use, and lets you use the "Visit the temples" option in your own region. Or a bar that lets you use the "Treat your men to some entertainment" option.

[Indirik]

Part of the Enhanced Estates feature that was being worked on, but which has taken a bit of a back seat to a complete estate overhaul, was similar to this. Each estate would get a certain number of "plots" on which the estate owner could build various things. The bigger the estate, the more buildings. Buildings would do different things. You could build a sawmill to paid wood production, a family chapel to support your religion, a "family museum"  to boost your prestige, plus several other cool things. This could be integrated into New Economy goods, as well, with knights getting a share of the regional goods production as well as direct gold payments. The knights could then sell off these goods to make more gold, at whatever prices they could get.

The buildings would become permanent parts of the estate. The lord could assign a new knight to an already established, but vacant, estate.

This is still on the back burner. It wouldn't be done until after the current estate overhaul is done. Progress is moving on that, but a bit slow. Tom is working on redesigning some of the back-end system in order to make the programming system more consistent, and less prone to bugs and inconsistencies.

[egamma]

well, I'm looking forward to the complete overhaul, and seeing these sorts of features.

By the way, is there a "programming roadmap" where players can see what the developers are up to?

[Indirik]

No, sorry. I'm not really sure it would work all that well. Most stuff tends to be done pretty quickly. The stuff that's not, tends to take a long time, and is often set aside and picked back up several times before it's done.

[Bedwyr]

well, I'm looking forward to the complete overhaul, and seeing these sorts of features.

By the way, is there a "programming roadmap" where players can see what the developers are up to?

(grins) Let's put it this way: I'm on the dev team and get to see all the discussions, and I couldn't even come up with one of those because of how it works.  A lot of things change based on new ideas, feedback, and discoveries about how hard/easy something is to actually code.

[Gloria]

I like this idea and finding out that something similar is in the works is great.  It would also motivate people to actively fight for a region if there is more at stake.