Carrier Pigeons

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Millhouse
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Millhouse » Thu May 05, 2016 11:17 pm

A couple of questions.

Would this be only for pigeons? I have exactly one character that knows which island pigeons are found. The others have no clue.

Second, is there a way to secure the dovecote? So that troublemakers don't just send pigeons away just to be a nuisance. It sounds like we'd be able to build inside other buildings. Is that how it would be secured? Does that also mean the feed source needs to be inside that building?

Could the animal pack system be used? So a carrier pigeon could be secured behind an animal enclosure?

Would it be possible to have multiple carrier pigeons in one location?
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Greek
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Greek » Thu May 05, 2016 11:50 pm

Millhouse wrote:Would this be only for pigeons? I have exactly one character that knows which island pigeons are found. The others have no clue.

It's not essential in the idea of system, but for sure the implementation shouldn't be restricted to a single animal type. It could be decided upon at the end.

Millhouse wrote:Second, is there a way to secure the dovecote?

There should be. Considering a dovecote would be a building then the building lock is the easiest solution.

Millhouse wrote:Does that also mean the feed source needs to be inside that building?

Yes, just like when keeping other animals in a building. Thre would need to be a storage with feed.

Millhouse wrote:Could the animal pack system be used? So a carrier pigeon could be secured behind an animal enclosure?

I think the easiest way is to completely disable pack system for carrier pigeons to avoid the issue when carrier pigeon holding a letter is joined with a pack (letter would disappear).
And considering a carrier pigeon must have an owner (so must be adopted before becoming a carrier pigeon) there shouldn't be joining and separating (ownerless) carrier pigeon. It's a bit similar to how steeds work. When you want to "unadopt" the steed then you need to unsaddle it first.

Millhouse wrote:Would it be possible to have multiple carrier pigeons in one location?

It's possible to have multiple domesticated pigeons in one location, so it should be possible to have many carrier pigeons as well (restricted just by amount of feed).
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kalinka
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby kalinka » Sat May 07, 2016 10:26 am

destroy the radio and bring me some pigeons! *heavy breathing*



I love the idea, srsly. Let's do it.
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Telefon » Tue May 17, 2016 2:14 pm

Good idea, xD.
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby MonkeyPants4736 » Tue May 17, 2016 4:06 pm

I know pigeons are the carriers in real life, but should it not be all domestic birds in Cantr? I don't know how available pigeons are. Allowing for all domestic birds to be carriers might make birds who do not give many eggs useful in another way.
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby SekoETC » Tue May 17, 2016 5:29 pm

Send a raven!
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby MonkeyPants4736 » Tue May 17, 2016 5:51 pm

Dark Wings, dark words.
Millhouse
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Millhouse » Tue May 17, 2016 6:35 pm

Greek wrote:
Millhouse wrote:Would this be only for pigeons? I have exactly one character that knows which island pigeons are found. The others have no clue.

It's not essential in the idea of system, but for sure the implementation shouldn't be restricted to a single animal type. It could be decided upon at the end.


Probably not every type of bird I'm assuming. Some birds, like penguins, ostriches and emus are flightless IRL so they probably don't fit into this system very well.
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Greek
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Greek » Thu Jun 02, 2016 5:00 pm

Greek wrote:Then it's possible to set two home towns. Each pigeon's initial location must be set in dovecote/nest. Only owner can select a new home for a pigeon, so it's necessary to travel once to the other town. Anybody is able to send the pigeon to any of these two homes.
One of the biggest problems is "storing" animals in a cage/nest. It's currently impossible, for many reasons. It'd be best to avoid it by making dovecots special buildings buildable in central areas of location or fixed buildings. Important: not possible on ships. It's only possible to set pigeon's home in dovecote.
There would be an event in central area when pigeon comes to the dovecote, even if this room is somewhere inside. Travel would take time, currently the concrete values are irrelevant.

After some time I see a serious problem how to present the data about pigeon's home. First of all, the question is whether it's necessary. And I think: yes, it is, because when you set pigeons' home, then you must be able to select which home to forget. So it must be visible at least during the process, but if it's achievable knowledge, then it shouldn't be hidden in the UI.

The feasible solutions I see:
1. show dynamic name of the dovecote building
2. show dynamic name of the location where the dovecote building is located
3. don't show name of any homes, just refer to them as "home #1" and "home #2" so it's necessary to keep these knowledge separately.

Regardless of the option it would be convenient to be able to easily label the pigeons like the key tags.

Ad 1
It's the most problematic solution, because the default dynamic name of the building (if you don't remember it differently) is its first sign. As a result, it will be possible to see the building name despite never being in the town where it's located. Moreover, it will be possible to send instant messages by changing the sign of the building and the name will be visible when looking on a pigeon, regardless where it's located.

Ad 2
It's a bit less exploitable solution. The disadvantage is, when there are a few dovecotes in the location, then you see only the location name (defaulting to "unnamed location") and not exactly which one is it. Of course the pigeon will remember which dovecote is the home, so there's no risk of choosing the incorrect one. But there is a problem similar to the first option - it will be possible to set name to "unnamed location" which is one of pigeon's homes (even if character has never seen it before), then travel to this town and see it remembered, even though there is no logical way how character could have connected the pigeon with the town. But it's just illogical, not very exploitable.

Ad 3
Referring to the homes using two hardcoded names would be safe from exploits, but it could be very inconvenient to use. Of course you can see the owner of the animal (like for any other domesticated animal) but there can be a few owned by the same guy. Imagine you want to send a secret letter about a surprise attack on town A and you accidentally send it to town A. That would be embarrassing... But it would be possible to label the pigeon to store the information which home is which e.g. "home 1 - town A, home 2 - town C", but manual labels would be less convenient than an automatic system. On the other hand, it would be possible to sabotage them when somebody untrusted gets access to the pigeons, so it allows interesting things to happen ;)


I'd like to hear your opinions regarding these options or maybe some other, completely different, solutions for this problem. :)
Apart from that, I think the suggestion for the implementation is complete and quite nice.
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby SekoETC » Thu Jun 02, 2016 5:31 pm

You could make the name of the home that's not the present home non-clickable, so you couldn't change it if it was unnamed location (or anything else). That way the only way you could change it was if you actually visited it, not by just seeing the pigeon.
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Greek
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Greek » Sat Jun 04, 2016 8:57 pm

SekoETC wrote:You could make the name of the home that's not the present home non-clickable, so you couldn't change it if it was unnamed location (or anything else). That way the only way you could change it was if you actually visited it, not by just seeing the pigeon.

It sounds like an interesting idea that solves half of the problem. The other side of the problem is: you visit a town, set a name, then you move somewhere else and see a pigeon whose home is the previously visited location. So it's still not prefect, but probably good enough to reduce the sense of illogicality.
But, on the other hand, the non-alterable name of other location will be pretty much useless for most of the people who are managing the pigeons but aren't travelling around the world. They would see "unnamed location" everywhere.

It's worth noticing that once options #1 and #2 become more limited (to be less exploitable), the more similar to #3 they become.

Generally, I'd support #3, but I don't know whether such system would be comfortable enough to not scare people away...
‘Never! Run before you walk! Fly before you crawl! Keep moving forward! You think we should try to get a decent mail service in the city. I think we should try to send letters anywhere in the world! Because if we fail, I’d rather fail really hugely’
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Greek
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Greek » Wed Jun 15, 2016 2:02 pm

Greek wrote:Generally, I'd support #3, but I don't know whether such system would be comfortable enough to not scare people away...

I've thought about it and I think it won't.

Just the engaged people would need to know how to play with setting/resetting homes, most of the pigeon users would use the already prepared birds. Remembering which pigeon is which could be done using labels and these would be needed anyway, as most of the pigeon users will not know any of the foreign towns known by pigeons.
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Telefon » Tue Jul 05, 2016 9:31 pm

This is a moderate good idea to add postal pigeons.
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"Weźmiecie go i wyhodujecie sobie drugiego Raynusa."
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Greek
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Greek » Thu Aug 04, 2016 7:52 pm

Moving to accepted, but some things are still not decided.
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Re: Carrier Pigeons

Postby Millhouse » Sun Aug 07, 2016 5:17 pm

How about assigning a unique number to each dovecote, similar to locks/keys, that cannot be changed?

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