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House pack up

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 2:56 pm
by Erougn
I hear that with the server merge there will be another house pack up for inactive accounts.

I'm very concerned about how this will affect our cities.

Say, for example, I lose 10 citizens in the pack up, which for the sake of argument moves me from class 4 to class 3. Do I lose a city level? If so, does the radius shrink? If so, do the active citizens who may be outside my new radius lose citizenship? And last, but most important, can I lose my shuttle?

Any info or links would be appreciated. I looked a bit at the forums and didn't find much.

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 3:14 pm
by Bovive
I believe that you would lose a city level, but as far as the radius I am not sure how that works. If you lost enough citizens you would lose the shuttle, but I forget at what level. The packup dates have not been announced yet which is strange because you would think it would be before or during the same time as the free transfers. If you run around your city and count the number of condemned buildings we can try and help you figure out how many more you need and see about establishing some toons there.

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:36 pm
by Erougn
It's hard to tell how many are condemned atm. You only see the condemned message when you try to enter, so you can't tell on private houses.

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 5:37 pm
by Bovive
Oh ya, very good point.

Re: House pack up

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:07 pm
by Kurke_Aumea
Erougn wrote:I hear that with the server merge there will be another house pack up for inactive accounts.

I'm very concerned about how this will affect our cities.

Say, for example, I lose 10 citizens in the pack up, which for the sake of argument moves me from class 4 to class 3. Do I lose a city level? If so, does the radius shrink? If so, do the active citizens who may be outside my new radius lose citizenship? And last, but most important, can I lose my shuttle?

Any info or links would be appreciated. I looked a bit at the forums and didn't find much.


If you lose citizens that brings you below your current city rank, your city will lose a rank upon its next update. I went through this one with Nar Shadda a few times when the citizen count would hover right around the required level for the next rank, but someone would randomly leave the city and I would go down a rank at the next update.

If your city loses a rank, your radius does shrink.

When your radius shrinks from losing a level, any active citizens outside of the previous radius will lose their citizenship with the city.

When you lose a rank, you do lose the perks granted by the rank. In your case, you technically would lose your shuttleport. However, there is a lovely bug in the city system where upon losing a rank, structures DO NOT disappear or get packed up in any way. A prime example of this are cantinas. How many times have you seen a cantina that is nowhere near a city??? This is because the cantina was placed but the city lost the required rank and even disbanded. This is great if you lose rank but still want to keep some of the existing perks. It sucks if you take over a new city and kind of want to redo things.

In regards to shuttleports, I'm not quite sure what would happen. See, cantinas are actually tied to the entertainer that placed it. Civic structures like gardens and shuttleports are tied to the mayor and city hall. If the city hall goes poof, so do the civic structures. If the city were to lose a rank, given the bugs in the system it is entirely possible the shuttle will stay there, but you wouldn't be able to use it or something like that (which would be equal to not having it...). Or the shuttleport could get destroyed with the loss of the rank (in which case you get another one built and replace it once you regain the rank).

The kicker is, of course, the city cap. Since only a limited number of cities can be rank 4 or higher, you're advancement is dictated by the effort of others. On the plus side, everyone is in the same boat as you during a housing pack-up. So if you are looking for citizens, then so is everyone else. Also, you have a little leeway in which to find replacement citizens since the city update occurs once a week (so even if you fell below it, you should be lucky enought to have a few days to recover the citizen loss without even losing a rank). The only way you'll get really screwed is if you lose a rank and there are lesser ranked cities sitting in the wings just waiting to jump ahead of you despite their citizen losses.

A couple quick and easy ways to determining how many active citizens you have are by adding all of your citizens to your friends list or by bank tipping all of your citizens 1 credit. When that person logs in, you will get a game mail stating that the person you tipped received the credit. Lexx I think did this to determine active RID members. Tally up the receipt game mails and you'll have a pretty accurate active citizen list.

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 7:22 pm
by Lexx Yovel
Kurke pretty much summed up what I was going to say.

If you lose enough citizens to not qualify for rank 4, the city will lower to rank 3. It's radius will decrease, and those outside the radius will no longer be deemed citizens of your city. This could result in a further chain reaction which reduces your city to rank 2.

The shuttle would be destroyed, but privately owned structures, such as the cantina, would remain.

I would recommend recruiting citizens into the city, however, you don't need to worry *too* much at the moment.

During the previous housing purge, the Devs gave us at least a week (if not more) to prepare for the purge. They would put "abandoned" on the housing signs if they were to be deemed possible to be destroyed.

So I'd assume that the Devs will do the same thing in the next purge. You'll be able to look around your city to see how many homes are marked "abandoned," and take appropriate measures as needed before they actually become destroyable.

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 9:47 pm
by Saurat Seerdon
if anyone blows up my house...i'll kill them.

Posted: Sun Jan 04, 2009 10:18 pm
by Erougn
I'm in pretty good shape actually. I currently have 41 citizens (ironically, I'll be getting metropolis status next update), and at least 20-25 are active.

Thanks for the answers, I'll be much better prepared when the time comes now :-)

Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 1:49 pm
by Monthigos
I'm a citizen of Fort Victory but my alt isn't. If you need me to, I will have my alt place a house near the center of the city.

Incidentally my alt got removed in a server purge about a year ago and I've yet to get him back into the guild. That's really my fault tho, I haven't said anything since I only get on my alt to make SEAs.

Posted: Mon Jan 05, 2009 2:21 pm
by Erougn
Monthigos wrote:I'm a citizen of Fort Victory but my alt isn't. If you need me to, I will have my alt place a house near the center of the city.

Incidentally my alt got removed in a server purge about a year ago and I've yet to get him back into the guild. That's really my fault tho, I haven't said anything since I only get on my alt to make SEAs.


As far as FV, hell yeh we got plenty o room. It doesn't hafta be your main structure, just where you are declared.

As far as RID membership, I'm sure someone will see this post and fix that :-)

Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 6:52 pm
by Santos
With my old city on Lok, Fort Maelstrom/Sleefe Pwns, it was at rank 4 till the pack-up, then it dropped to rank 2. The shuttleport disappeared, but for some reason it still showed up on the world map and you could still shuttle there despite there being no shuttleport. You just had to use an ITV to leave. Not sure if this bug is still going though, or if it only happens/happened on Lok.

Posted: Tue Jan 06, 2009 7:29 pm
by Lexx Yovel
Actually Tele, I've noticed that bug as well, and it seems to occur on any planet.

And Vincen, we can get your alt in, no problem. Just contact me or one of the Execs and we can get him back in.