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New Game Features Guest Race - The Luminescent

Ashrem

Well-Known Member
The Luminescent have been observing your city’s growth, and see that your technological advances and the power of your magical denizens may finally offer them a way to return to the reality they left long ago and share the new magics they have discovered in the darkness. In return for your city offering them a place to which they can return, they offer to bring unique new magical techniques and their experience with working in the darkness to your magical city.

Their first act will be to train your spellcasters in the construction of the Black Hole (Void Portal), which temporarily hides your city from the sun, removing much of the light from your city wherever they construct their buildings so that their zone is in twilight and allowing them to visit, so that together you and they may work to return light to their people and yours. The Void Portal also serves as a collection point for the new magical materials they will teach you to manipulate, starlight and moonlight, allowing you to build up a supply of these magical resources for use in advancing your city.

Their experience in capturing the faintest light of distant stars and the moon lets them teach you new methods of construction, including roads that glitter and sparkle with starlight, casting a soft illumination about them on all the buildings of your city.
(Potentially, Roads are added immediately before the portal, and a quest to upgrade them confers soft illumination on the city when it is plunged into near darkness at completion of the Black Hole Portal (first quest is to replace a minimum number of roads)) Workshops must be connected to the Primary portal by Luminous Streets before they can provide Lumens
The construction methods of the Luminscent will soon be incorporated into your other buildings. Upgraded residences, manufactories, and workshops, are infused with a natural, ethereal light, which allows your people to fill spaces that were previously unused, increasing population and productivity without any changes to size or shape.

List of potential elements to fit the theme
  • Comets
  • shooting stars
  • Firefly-like beings/avatars
Some suggestions courtesy of Soggyshorts (with modifications) for Buildings. (Note that there are two options on the table. One, all of the lumen production, transport, and capture is automated, while in the other, Lumens must be harvested and then can be used in the nearby Refracting Portal, the product of which can be manually harvested and converted in a nearby Focussing Portal, which then may be harvested and processed in the Void Portal
Guest race buildings:

Void Portal:
This is the gateway between your city and the Luminarians. As The Void Portal absorbs more and more Radiance the Luminarians are able to bring more of their people through and with them their knowledge of new technologies until eventually the void becomes infused with so much light that they are able to complete their escape from darkness.

Luminous Street:

These replace existing roads in your city and increase your Luminescence casting light upon adjacent buildings. Additionally, productions from workshops that are adjacent to luminous streets release Lumens, a resource needed to feed the guest race buildings.
(Luminescence is like culture for settlement buildings similar to prestige from the Amuni chapter and is required for building all settlement buildings)

Refracting portal:
Lumens produced by buildings from around the Refracting portals pass through them (Automatically or when harvested) and are transformed into Spectral Light.
(Refracting portals can only handle the Lumens output from 1 building per level starting at level 2)

Reflecting Pool/Portal:
These reflective surfaces use light from the moon and stars to provide a passive source of Lumens for your Refracting Portals.
(these do not count towards a Refracting Portal’s limit)

Focusing Portal:
Focusing Portals within range of a Refracting Portal redirect the Spectral Light as Radiance into the Void Portal
(Larger Focusing Portals are able to capture more light from Refracting Portals that are further away, and more effectively send it into the void from a greater distance)

The heart of the new city design challenge is that having all of your workshops bunched together is no longer effective and you need your settlement buildings spread out as much as possible for maximum effectiveness. Also, the limits of the settlement buildings range make having the Void Portal at the center of your city a more effective strategy than shoving your settlement in a corner as we often do. Rather than a separate Guest Race Road, the guest Race Road upgrades become a part of your city.

Potential additional complicating factors:
  1. If the gathering radius of 2 Refracting Portals overlaps, they cancel each other out and are unable to gather or process Lumens.
  2. If there are more Lumen producing buildings within a Refracting Portal's radius than it can handle it shuts down and is unable to gather Lumens. E.g. If you have 3 workshops inside the radius of a level 2 RF, the RF will not collect Lumens from them or Reflecting Pools.
  3. If a building is moved during production, the production continues, but it will not create Lumens similar to how moving a set building resets production. This prevents players from constantly swapping buildings around to game the system.
  4. Buildings produce Lumens in a similar way that making beverages/toolboxes gives medals in the challenges event, but scaled based on the level of your workshop
  5. A Luminous street must the void portal to each guest building and workshop in order for lumens to be produced
  6. Radiance, Lumens, and Spectral Light all decay.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
(possible event to launch the new race/chapter)
Soon after the arrival in Elvenar of the Dwellers in Darkness, the magics they bring will begin to spread through the land, just in time for a great eclipse that lasts for two to four weeks and results in a worldwide celebration in which some of the resulting constructions will be infused with Starlight, lending an ethereal air to the buildings that are left behind by this event.

Potential Downsides:
Automatic transport of light resources from and to various buildings requires a new mechanism which might be complex.
 

CrazyWizard

Well-Known Member
A very interesting idea,

The curent chapters are about the return of the elvenar, so this might be a nice succession to those chapters. (following the storyline I think te constructs will be back as well at some point so most likely after that return)
 

Ashrem

Well-Known Member
Anybody see any weaknesses that could be worked on, or any inspirations of what could be added or modified?
 

charlemagne3

Active Member
Very interesting - i don't see any problems in my non-beta cities which followed the normal pattern of expand the rectangle with each expansion. Because i was bored with all that, when I designed my beta city - I deliberately left a 4 x 4 hole in the middle of my expansions and I am just starting constructs in it. So far doing it this way has worked albeit I anticipate constructs presenting a challenge and it would be good if options other than portal in center of city are available for the spatial design of this new race. Of course I maybe the only player in all of elvenar that decided to leave green space in the middle of my city because I wanted to do something different in my city design. I am sure that having green space is ingrained and left over from being an urban planner!! All in all needing to do a new city design sounds like fun.
 
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Ashrem

Well-Known Member
I think that while you'd maybe move a little slower, the portal's central position is purely optimization, not a requirement.
 

Kersepitje

QA Moderator
Elvenar Team
At the risk of repeating myself, could we get a poll on this idea, @Marindor or @Kersepitje ?
I'm sorry but this isnt really my department, Im more about how the technical aspect of the game works, and the bugs that come from it. So Marindor will have to make a poll about it.

Even so, I'm not sure we will make a poll about this. I love the ideas, I found it fantastic even that they made an event with constellations just after you made your suggestion. So maybe game design is already on the same train of toughts.

The reason i think this idea won't make it into a poll, is because this isn't really a suggestion on how to change the game, but rather how this game will advance/evolve in the future, and i think the game design team has an exclusive to this. We usually have the storyline ready for about 2 chapters in advance, so even if this idea gets a poll and does get accepted, Don't count on it being implemented soon.
Also be aware that even if an idea gets accepted, its not certain it will be implemented exactly as it was suggested, usually we take the core ideas from the suggestion and implement those so it fits with the rest of the game. We add our own twist to it.

So i can't help you here, but maybe Marindor can if it meets the requirements to turn it into a poll.
 

DeletedUser2988

Guest
I'm not really qualified to comment since I've had little time experience with guest races, only starting faries in my regular city, but this does sound interesting and would require looking at one's city differently, thus making it more challenging.
I wonder, can any of these other races bring other creatures with them, like pets,
that would need special housing or care?
 

Marindor

Well-Known Member
What @Kersepitje stated is basically correct. Although the idea is worked out great and really nice to read, the plans for the next chapters are already there and we can't really make promises about future chapters so it would be great as a general topic to brainstorm together, but in terms of the Ideas & Suggestions processing, this is not a subject we can do much with, sorry. I'll archive this thread now :)
 
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