Hello Historians,
This friday, we're going to go over how towns have been reshaped. We'll provide a more of an in-depth look at how these new systems are actually intended to function and play into each other. First however, I want to explain the problem at hand that needs fixing, because it may not be entirely obvious unless you've had the pleasure of dealing with it already.
Be warned, this highlight will be very word-heavy, because I'll be touching base on the core problems at hand that you'll see a lot of servers struggle with.
The Problem, and the Philosophy
If you've had the joyful experience of being an administrator on a server, or as a leader of a large group of people, then you will know the fundamental problem with towns. I'll fill you in, on the off chance you haven't though: it is extremely difficult to retain members and get players invested in your towns. On bigger, more established servers this issue mostly fades. Players get so immersed by the lore, history, buildings, politics and more of their town, enough to keep them past that initial boredom of "What do I do?"
It may not seem immediately obvious, but citizens of towns in Towny servers have practically nothing to do. It is generally regarded to be the mayor's responsibility for fixing that, and bad towns who do not fix that should fail, but the problem is that the failure rate is too high. And when towns fail, nations fail, geopolitics fail, the economy fails, and the server fails. This is why you see so many servers pop up, get a ton of fresh new people, and then collapse within a month or two.
Minecraft is a fundamentally creative game. It allows us to do all sorts of things with it that it was not explicitly created for. Its gameplay loop was not created to entertain the player, rather the player is intended to entertain themselves. We do that by building or making crazy things to show off to others or just to feel proud of ourselves. So when we take a plugin like Towny, and then promptly tell players "Yeah, all your permissions to do anything are fun are gone now because they are at the whim of how favorably a mayor sees you or how skewed the server's economy is," players almost immediately get bored and quit. The only reason some of them will stick around for that is because they want to commit to the bigger picture, that of a larger geopolitical simulation. Those players will go off and make their town and finally be able to enjoy the game, but then they'll just turn away anyone they recruit if they aren't careful enough. The classic Minecraft server death spiral is less players -> less activity -> less interest -> less players -> less activity and so on and so forth. Once it starts (i.e. anything that causes that initial group of players to quit), 99% cases end with the server's death. We, quite obviously, don't want that happening on Historia.
So, how do we fix it? It's relatively straightforward. We mechanize creativity and provide an intuitive progression-based gameplay loop that doesn't depend solely upon said creativity.
The New Structure of Towns
Towns now have a few new major components. These are, in no specific order: Town Levels, Town Missions, and Supplies. Each of these components tie into each other to create one nice and neat progression loop for towns. They are all quite true to their name; you can likely infer what each of them do.
Town Levels
The first and most straightforward component of this new structure is Town Levels. These are separate from Towny's existing town levels, which are based almost entirely on population. Instead, Town Levels — or Civic Levels, as they are also referred to — represent the actual development of a town and the ability of its residents to function together as a community.
There are currently seven Town Levels: Foundation, Organized, Established, Developed, Advanced, Prominent, and Renowned. Every new town begins at Foundation and must actively work its way upward. Advancing is not automatic, nor is it something a mayor can accomplish by simply throwing money at the server. Each level has a combination of requirements involving population, completed missions, town supplies, and money from the town bank.
For example, progressing from Foundation to Organized currently requires at least 3 residents, 3 Mission Points, a Prosperous town status, and $500 from the town bank. Later levels gradually increase these requirements. Reaching Renowned, which is the highest level, requires 50 residents, 33 Mission Points, Prosperous status, and a final investment of $5,000.
These values are, of course, subject to change as we begin balancing everything and scoping them to specific eras. The important part is the structure behind them: town development now measures more than population. Recruiting fifty people will not immediately transform a collection of dirt huts into one of the most developed cities on the server. Your town must also complete communal projects, maintain its supplies, and build enough of an economy to afford further development.
Each level provides bonuses intended to make the town more capable without simply giving its residents direct "meaningless" advantages. Higher-level towns receive additional active Mission Slots, reduced upkeep, lower supply requirements, and increased claim capacity. A Renowned town, under the current balance, can maintain four missions at once, receives a 30% reduction to town upkeep, needs 20% fewer supplies, and gains 20% more claim capacity.
More importantly, these bonuses benefit the town as a whole. A higher level means more projects for residents to work on, more territory for builders to develop, and fewer resources spent merely keeping the town alive. Because of that, progress is no longer exclusively an achievement belonging to the mayor, it becomes something every resident can visibly contribute toward.
Town Missions
The second major component is Town Missions. Missions are intended to solve the most immediate version of the problem we discussed earlier: a resident joins a town, looks around, and asks, “What do I actually do here?”
Rather than leaving the mayor to invent work for every new citizen, each town receives a Mission Board containing a selection of town-wide projects. There are currently 55 missions divided between five categories: Agriculture, Industry, Military, Expansion, and Commerce. Each week, a town receives 20 offers selected from this larger pool, with the kinds and difficulties of missions changing as the town develops.
These missions are not quests assigned to individual players. They belong to the town itself. The mayor, or another resident with the proper authority, chooses which offers the town accepts, but every resident can contribute toward completing them. One player might gather the necessary materials, another might construct part of a new district, and a third might complete the final objective by claiming additional territory.
Missions can currently require towns to deliver items, harvest or mine blocks, place structures, kill certain creatures, catch fish, or claim townblocks. This allows missions to represent actual town projects rather than an arbitrary list of repetitive chores. A settlement may be asked to fill its granary, deepen its quarry, raise new fortifications, extend its road network, patrol nearby wilderness, or gather valuable goods for trade. The objective itself is mechanical, but how the town organizes to complete it is left entirely to its residents.
Missions are divided into Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulties. Under the current balance, these normally last for 3, 5, and 7 days respectively. Harder missions require more work, but they also provide greater rewards and more Mission Points. Higher-level towns will gradually receive a greater share of difficult missions, while smaller settlements will be offered projects that are more reasonable for their population and resources.
Completing a mission rewards both the town and the players who contributed. Money is deposited into the town bank, while a separate pool of money and experience is divided between contributors according to how much work they completed. The town also receives permanent Mission Points, which are one of the primary requirements for advancing its Town Level.
This means the person who harvests the crops, delivers the iron, or finishes a road is no longer helping invisibly. Their contribution is recorded, rewarded, and turned into measurable progress for the entire town. The mayor still decides which projects the town pursues, but the residents are the ones who make that development possible.
The number of missions a town can pursue at once is limited by its Town Level. A new town begins with only one active Mission Slot, forcing it to choose its projects carefully. As it develops, it unlocks additional slots and gains the ability to coordinate several projects at once. This prevents towns from accepting every mission on the board and encourages them to consider what their residents are actually capable of completing.
Town Missions are not intended to replace creativity. They provide a starting point for it. A mission may tell players to "construct" a road or gather building materials, but the server does not decide where that road goes, what it looks like, or what gets built with those materials afterward. The important part is that residents always have something visible they can work toward together. Instead of waiting for the mayor to invent a reason for them to play, they can open the Mission Board, choose a project, and immediately begin contributing to their town.
Supplies and Stockpiles
The final major component of Town Development is Supplies. Town Levels represent how developed a town has become, while Missions provide projects for its residents to complete. Supplies represent the resources required to keep that town functioning.
Every town has a shared Stockpile divided into four categories: Food, Materials, Metals, and Fuel. Residents can deposit accepted items into this Stockpile, where they are converted into supply value for the appropriate category. Bread, crops, cooked food, stone, timber, iron, coal, and many other resources can contribute, with more valuable items naturally providing more supply value.
At the beginning of each day, every town goes through a Supply Cycle. Its requirements are calculated, the necessary resources are withdrawn from its Stockpile, and the town either succeeds or fails to meet its needs. These requirements grow alongside the town's population level, meaning larger settlements require more resources to maintain. Higher Town Levels reduce this demand, representing the town becoming more efficient as it develops.
This creates a persistent use for ordinary resources. Farms, mines, logging operations, and workshops should not become irrelevant once their owners have collected enough materials for themselves. They can instead support the continued operation of the town and, through it, the development of everyone living there.
The town's performance during Supply Cycles determines its Town Status. There are five possible statuses: Prosperous, Stable, Strained, Shortage, and Critical.
All towns begin at Stable. Consistently fulfilling their requirements eventually moves them into Prosperous status, while missing Supply Cycles causes their condition to deteriorate.. Missing a cycle lowers the town by one status tier, while successful cycles allow it to gradually recover.
Prosperous towns consume fewer supplies and are eligible to advance through the default Town Level progression. Stable towns operate normally without bonuses or penalties. Once a town falls below Stable, however, it begins to experience increasingly serious problems. Your town will become harder to maintain and will lose access to many perks normally given for free to towns, and it will only get worse until the issue is resolved.
These consequences are deliberately inconvenient, but they are not intended to destroy towns. A shortage will not delete claims, remove buildings, or confiscate everything players own. It instead creates a problem the town must organize to solve. Residents can increase production, leaders can redirect resources, and neighboring towns can provide assistance.
Every Stockpile deposit also awards Contribution Credit, allowing towns to track who is actually providing their supplies. Resources that satisfy an immediate need provide the most credit, while excessive reserves give diminishing returns. This prevents players from flooding one easy category purely to dominate the contribution leaderboard. A town may also establish a recurring payout from its bank, which is divided among residents according to their current Contribution Credit after each Supply Cycle. This gives towns a built-in method of rewarding those who help out.
Towns can also send Supply Aid directly to one another. This is available between towns in the same nation and only when the receiving town actually needs the supplies, so nations can orchestrate supply and relieve towns in crisis.
So, when combined with Town Levels and Missions, this completes the progression loop. Residents complete projects and maintain the Stockpile. A well-supplied town becomes Prosperous. Prosperity and Mission Points allow it to advance its Town Level. That new level provides greater efficiency and more Mission Slots, allowing the town to take on larger projects and continue developing.
These mechanics can hopefully offset some of the issues that towns as a gameplay system normally face. We'll be curious to see your thoughts on them and how they play out.
This was certainly a very wordy highlight, this will not be the normal. I wanted to very clearly communicate the issues that have plagued servers that I have owned in the past or have played on, and how I intend to resolve them.
On the offchance you skipped to the end: TL;DR - we're adding town levels, town missions, and a supply stockpile system that can provide a bit nicer of a progression gameplay loop to towns.
As usual, feel free to discuss in the Discord. As a reminder for scheduling, we'll be doing these biweekly now (once every 2 weeks).