So what are the advantages of industries being what they are now?
First of all, they are built by our community. I remember when designs were being submitted for the arcanum. There were perhaps half a dozen of them and though I cannot remember who exactly designed the winning submission, I am sure that when they see their design in every town they are as proud as I am when I see a rock covered in vines and know that I am responsible for that. As a result of this, Industry buildings are also themed. Any player with a couple weeks of experience on Loka will see an industry building and be able to identify it from a distance as being one particular industry. There is no confusing the windmill with the dungeon or the barn with the dig site. Each one is different from the other. Lastly, because of the size and unique shape of each industry they are excellent for filling new towns when ordinarily there would be nothing but a few scattered homes and a wheat field. This is key when attempting to attract new players. While some might jump at the opportunity of a blank canvas, I believe most players would prefer to come into an already populated town, make their own contribution or two, and then move on.
But what about the disadvantages?
While it is true that every industry building does look different from each other, all barns and all dungeons and all industry buildings in general are just copies. Without customization, my barn is going to look the exact same as Hilo's and the exact same as Eldritch's and the exact same as Cincia's. When I first returned to the server I asked Cryptite and many town owners if I could have permission to fly around and take screenshots to document each town. While I still want to do this, I am slightly less enthusiastic because so much of every town is the industry buildings. They've gotten stale.
Alright, well why don't you just tear down the existing structure and build a custom one? Excellent question. The following is a guide on how to build your own, one of a kind, industry building:
- Choose an area to place the industry
- Ensure that there is a space of at least 20x20x10. If there is not, destroy everything until the area is clear
- Place your chosen industry
- Destroy all the blocks in the industry you just placed (no you can't pick them up, that'd be silly)
- Repair any damage done by steps 2 & 3
- Build your own custom industry building
If that sounds tedious then, yes, I can confirm it is very tedious. It is also extremely destructive to the terrain should you not live in a flat area such as the plains. In my own case, I live in the Ancient Forest which has mountains both to the east and to the west. Should I wish to place an industry, even without customizing it, I would have to either take out a substantial chunk of a mountain or destroy one of the custom trees. Neither option is desirable.
My proposed solution is this: By default allow everyone to place the prebuilt industry structures. However, at the same time add commands in order to simply zone off an area as an industry.
By doing this we can maintain the advantages of the existing industries while also tackling all of its disadvantages.
There is one flaw in this design that I can see which was brought up earlier by Magpieman:
when this used to be an option players placed all industries in a tiny cube right next to each other. This is not how we want them to be, players are obsessed with efficiency and they will place them like that to save 10 blocks of walking.
Off the top of my head I can think of a few solutions though. First of all, announce the addition of the proposed command using the News forum but do not add it to any help menu in-game. We have a few of these hidden commands already (intentional or not) and they act as a barrier for new players. Until you are more experienced with the server you will not discover all that is possible. Secondly, add a minimum space requirement between industries. This is the cleanest solution and should probably already be a thing. Lastly, perhaps this isn't that much of an issue to begin with? The idea here is that we're allowing everyone to build their own custom industry buildings. If someone use these tools to compress everything into one small area they're not going to have a bunch of well designed buildings and it's going to be very confusing determining which chest belongs to which industry. Unless your name is Hilo, you're probably not going to do as well as the other towns which make full use of this tool.
