Building Destruction

[Greek]

by the way - do you have any plans for reducing road levels?

It might be interesting but it has nothing to do with this system.

What if the spoils of a destroyed room are not moved to the 'parent' room, but directly to the outside? Rooms are an extension to the building, not a partition to an existing room, so there is some logic to this.
This would avoid the overcrowding problem entirely (and provide -some- prisoners a breakout-opportunity ). If you don't want to have things all drop outside you can always remove them before destroying the room.

Irl ships are deconstructed on land or in docks, so why not in-game too? This means you cannot work on a ship/cabin destruction project when the ship is not docked to land/harbour.

Looks like almost a good compromise, but for ships it'll mean only pirates won't be able to break into a cabin/hold. But the rest is fine, as it makes almost all problems disappear.
So maybe merging two ideas: for buildings&docked ships move everything to main location, if ship is sailing then try to move all stuff to main deck. If no room then prevent project's finish. It'll mean it's attacker's job to make sure it's possible to destroy the cargo hold. But it's impossible to prevent such destruction project if attacker is much more powerful. There will be no possibility of making unconquerable floating fortress.

[SekoETC]

A location when destroyed could turn into the ruins of (location name) and once everything has been removed from amidst the rubble, a button would appear that said demolish ruins, and that would destroy the location finally. That would solve the problem of where to move the contents, because they would be moved manually. Naturally the location would be accessible to everybody when in the ruins stage and no lock could be added there.

[freiana]

So, the ruins of a building would be like a -very- big storage object in town, from which things can only be removed and nothing added?

[SekoETC]

I was thinking that it would still appear on the list of buildings and could be entered to pick up the items. Although I suppose making it a container and moving all the people out would also work.

[Greek]

Container won't work, as it can't store people. So it will only reduce the problem, not remove it.
Changing building type do ruins/rubble can be an option, but I'm quite undecided how hard is it to do. Maybe changing such building to vehicle (like a cage) would work? But its capacity must be unlimited to avoid further problems (still barricading, making space for people from extensions etc). But no capacity limit would mean unlimited cargo space for ships after destroying just a small cabin. And it won't be possible to easily limit building of new objects/machines inside ruins.

Adding a check for every possible action (drop, build, use) "if sb is in ruins" is a very nasty idea.

[SekoETC]

If it was like a vehicle, then people trying to barricade it could be shot from the outside and bodies extracted through the usual means.

[OdintheCeltV]

good idea.

[Greek]

First of all, Tiamo, thanks for your suggestion. Idea of moving eveything to root location is really great for its simplicity, but unfortunately won't fully work for holds and cabins.

I was thinking about it for some time and Seko's idea really looks like the best possibility. If implemented correctly it won't cause problems with any kind of building/vehicle. So it solves all the problems perfectly.

There I'll describe general concept of how I see it:
Let's say all buildings are first destroyed to become ruins, while ruins and vehicles are disassembled to get back part of resources used for a building/vehicle.
Ruins are assumed as technically being stationary vehicles.


1. destroying buildings
1.1 It's possible to start destruction project for every building in the game, no matter how many extensions and how much stuff/people is inside. Cost (in days) of destruction is a thing to be discussed later, but it will be based on construction time of building and all its extensions.
1.2 When destruction project is finished it's always successful.

• Building type is changed to ruins of adequate type. (for example: cottage -> ruins of cottage). The same happens for all extensions. Vehicles (which means just steel cages and ships in harbour) are not affected.
• All fixed objects are removed without any compensation.
• All ongoing projects are removed. I'm unsure how to compensate them, but they must be compensated. Otherwise it'll be possible to create lots of projects just before destruction of building to make used resources disappear. This way even staff wouldn't have an easy way to give them back. Best idea would be to use normal project canceler code.
• All movable objects and people stay inside.
• It's possible to attack people in ruins in the same way as when they are in vehicles.
• As a result it's possible to kill people inside even when capacity is exceeded and get bodies outside with staff's help.

1.3 Building locks are destroyed, because they are fixed objects. Vehicle locks should be impossible to build in the ruins. (it'll require a code fix)
1.4 It's impossible to prohibit building all machines in ruins if they can be built in vehicles. For example it'll be possible to build a smoker inside and I think it's acceptable.
1.5 It's impossible to build any new extensions. All existing extensions are ruins, cages or ships.
1.6 It's assumed that destruction of building can be peaceful way of getting rid of buildings, getting resources or a way to defeat enemies who are hiding inside during the battle. That's why it's not necessary to make any actions inside of a building and it's not possible to stop the process/make project fail.

2 disassembling ruins, land vehicles and ships (later called vehicles)
2.1 you can start disassembling vehicle when it's completely empty (no objects, no projects, no people inside, no extensions)*
2.2 disassembling project can be successful or unsuccessful. It's unsuccessful if vehicle upon project finish isn't completely empty. It also may be unsuccessful if there'd be not enough space for raws got from disassembling. If it's unsuccessful then you must try again.
2.2 disassembling project for ruins is usually quite short. For normal vehicles its based on construction time.
2.3 land vehicles which can be built using resources or vehicle parts will always yield parts (surprisingly, it will require some work to make it possible, but certainly it is)
2.4 point 2.2 implies that disassembling can be only peaceful, there's no use in doing it during battle and enemies can easily make your disassembling project unsuccessful. You must have complete control over the location to make successful disassembling.

* For some time there will still be some objects which are impossible to disassemble, so it'll be possible to ask staff to remove it magically. But I hope at least radios, furniture and sails will be made able to be disassembled before that. It'll leave a list of about 15 "special" object types which still won't be possible to disassemble. But it won't be much.

Ok, I think it's enough to say this idea is a really nice solution. It can be implemented in two separate steps, where I think 1. is more important, because it can deal with barricading exploit.
It may look strange there will be like two different systems to destroy things, but buildings and vehicles are not the same, they have different properties and characteristics so they'll require two systems in any complete solutions. And it's absolutely amazing it's possible to merge two-step building destruction with one-step vehicle destruction to require just two-step system.

Do you see any possible new exploits going with this implementation? Do you have any ideas how to improve it? I think the core functionality should work as said above, but details may change.

[SekoETC]

It's good that someone finally wrote a summary. I think it's good and I don't see any points that would require adjustments.

[Cantryjczyk]

Very good solution. I don't see any lose ends. Brilliant. I can think only about few details
- information about ongoing building destruction should be delivered to all chars inside, no matter how deep they are
- destroying buildings is not easy job, let it cost exactly 5% tiredness per tick, fine if you do only this, but fighting at the same time is bad idea, need to focus on one or another

[Doug R.]

Are the ruins of extensions still nested in the main ruin? If so, it would be possible for characters to still hide inside nested ruins (i.e. not be seen from the main location). I'm fine with that. It's realistic.

Will the capacities of ruins remain the same as the original buildings? If so, destroying a building will only make barricaded characters attackable, but the ruin still not enterable (though fixed object destruction will clear out some space). This isn't a a problem, except that it will necessitate staff intervention if the occupants are killed. If the capacity of ruins were made much larger (simulating the sudden appearance of multiple holes to enter), then players would be able to deal with obstructions on their own in most cases.

And thank you for the summary, Greek. It's nice to see this moving forward.

And since I'm defensively-minded, I have thought of a side-effect of this: The desire to build useless rooms in order to add "structural integrity" to the main building. I would instead suggest a new object called a "bullwark" that adds integrity, but isn't actually a building. It would cost just as much in time and material, but wouldn't turn your building into a labyrinth.

[SekoETC]

Also destruction of fixed objects may free enough space to enter, at least if they are completely destroyed instead of turning into resources.

[Doug R.]

Didn't I say that?

[SekoETC]

I reread your post but I still can't see it.

[Chroma Key]

Filling my Good Samaritan quota for the day.

(though fixed object destruction will clear out some space)