Well.. they stated if you aren't visiting or active in your homestead someone can swoop in and squat on it and take it over after 30days (a total of 60days, with you being away 30 allowing them to squat). These are IRL days btw.

Dunno about the app, there were mentions of one potentially being made but nothing too fancy allowing you to play the game from your phone though.

Posted By Lunaus at 6:28 PM - Fri Jan 12 2018

Well.. they stated if you aren't visiting or active in your homestead someone can swoop in and squat on it and take it over after 30days (a total of 60days, with you being away 30 allowing them to squat). These are IRL days btw.

Family members count as well.

Adverse Possession is the process of obtaining land that was previously owned but has been abandoned. Abandoned land is land which has not been visited by owners or family members in the last 28 real-life days. Right away, that means it’ll most often be land that’s remote, infrequently visited, or land which has been left unattended due to people going offline for several weeks or months. Once a land has been officially abandoned someone can attempt to take possession adversely.

The idea behind it is to allow land, buildings and such to be reclaimed after people quit the game.

So simple answer would be to welcome a fellow player into your family and allow them to manage your lands/businesses while away. They also will know where you are (in game outta game could be creepy) so could help watch over your body and keep you safe.

Malais is right, it would be beneficial securing your property by inviting friends or people you trust to come and either be your neighbors or live with you.

If you have neither for this game, I'd suggest hopping into our community's Discord and making some friends and connections until the game comes out.

Additionally you could hire a respected and trustworthy group of folks in game to keep an eye on your property. Godspeed

-MX

Curious are you a scout?

If your working year is really confined to the baseball season you might just try to make your characters life coincide with the off-season when you have time available.

During the baseball season your soul can just stay on ice in the hall of records, I don't think their is any requirement that you immediately start a new character with that soul. Your property would need to get handed over to someone who can keep it safe. This could either be a friend with an inverse schedule or a larger guild/group that you might be part of which shares it's facilities. I suspect many players will arrange something similar when they go on military deployment.

A normal character life would be a year but if you want to be aggressive and do a lot of combat it might be shortened to about the length of the off season. Or you could start the character a few months before the season ends as an NPC that can be apprenticed under someone else until your ready to take it over at middle age.

Wouldn't an OPC shopkeeper tending store be considered as occupying and using their property? If not, then an NPC shopkeeper should be similarly subject to squatter's rights, or OPC characters could be seen as not having the in-game legal rights that NPC characters do. In my opinion, there should be the minimum possible differences between PCs of any status and NPCs, to promote immersion.

Of course, the baseball season is one seriously long time in in-game years. A player might have to arrange for succession by designating heirs and/or an AI inheritance policy to ensure such a long period is adequately protected.

NPC is just a PC placeholder, they aren't always held to the same mechanical rules as we are. If they are not on their property for more than 30 days then they are subject to squatters rights but since they are controlled AI they do not work off an OPC script like an logged off player would. It would make it very easy for PCs to just take everything any NPC owns if this were allowed.

And yes family or anyone who has access to manage your home can also 'visit' to reset the timer. I'm sure even if people don't have real players as family the NPCs should suffice.

Thank you all for replying and it confirms somewhat what I have been dwelling on. There is no real answer from the community and as always we theory-craft as to the mechanics, but there is nothing definitive atm. I would personally like to see an app where I can tend to small tasks which mark the account active. Or have the time be a bit more than 30 days, a lot can happen irl that would keep someone out of game for more than 30 days. To have everything stripped from you basically nullifying all of the time and energy vested would be disheartening.

I would think just hopping in to the game a few minutes a week, would keep you listed as active for the month. Also like others have mentioned have some friends who could check on your land for you.

I understand some people can potentially have problems to log in due to some health issues (staying in a hospital for extended period of time).

Though in your case, I am quite unsure why you don't have a notebook since you travel a lot. And if you do, there is no way you won't be able to log in at least once a month for 5 mins to check something, update your shop's item list to refresh your active status etc.

So maybe having a notebook (not just for the game) would be a better thing for you than a PC? I have friends who use NTBs only without having any PC and they can play whatever whenever they want during travels.

I would expect that an OPC would have the same ability to reset a squatter's rights timer, as an NPC or PC. Since to the game's mind, they are all equal. So I wouldn't worry too much about a squatter coming in and sitting in your home or shop for a whole month and laying claim to it. Since your OPC would no doubt return home to eat and sleep, and also return to whatever business they run. So any land you own should get reset automatically every time your OPC went through it's daily routines.

As to people realizing that your character is an OPC and not actually you. I imagine that it would be fairly easy to tell if they simply watch the OPC for a few days. Since it will undoubtedly walk the exact same path and do relatively the same thing every day. They could tell due to the lack of variation. Leaving you open to any form of plot they devise. Such as stealing from your shop while your OPC is at home, knowing that it won't be back for a set amount of time.

Though, if SBS makes an app that lets you swap out OPC scripts on the fly, I would expect that the randomness caused by that, would throw most crooks.

Your problem is quite the quandary. I hope that SBS has thought of something to minimize the difficulties a situation like this could create for people like you, who's jobs and daily lives interrupt any free time.

If OPC's count as visitation, I would be very okay with it