Nothing other than zoning, which is supposed to be a thing. And that's something mayors will be able to control.

Perfect, thank you for the response.

Posted By Hieronymus at 8:47 PM - Wed Oct 09 2019

Nothing other than zoning, which is supposed to be a thing. And that's something mayors will be able to control.

Did Snipe not say what you put in the building makes the building?

Posted By *Spenraw * at 10:07 PM - Wed Oct 09 2019

Posted By Hieronymus at 8:47 PM - Wed Oct 09 2019

Nothing other than zoning, which is supposed to be a thing. And that's something mayors will be able to control.

Did Snipe not say what you put in the building makes the building?

Edit: It has come to my attention the above post may not have been sarcastic and, if so I apologize for jumping to conclusions there.

You wont be able to just turn some NPC home etc., into a school though. You have to own the building and just being mayor wont mean you can kick everyone out and repurpose everything. There will probably be very few buildings just sitting around empty at start of expo. You will need to build/place new ones and then make them what you want.

Posted By malacar at 06:11 AM - Thu Oct 10 2019

You wont be able to just turn some NPC home etc., into a school though. You have to own the building and just being mayor wont mean you can kick everyone out and repurpose everything. There will probably be very few buildings just sitting around empty at start of expo. You will need to build/place new ones and then make them what you want.

I understand that, my OP states that I am only talking about buildings I specifically own. Thank you for clarification though.

Posted By Josh at 03:09 AM - Thu Oct 10 2019

Posted By *Spenraw * at 10:07 PM - Wed Oct 09 2019

Posted By Hieronymus at 8:47 PM - Wed Oct 09 2019

Nothing other than zoning, which is supposed to be a thing. And that's something mayors will be able to control.

Did Snipe not say what you put in the building makes the building?

No need for sarcasm on something that was already answered, thanks.

Eh, this doesn't seem like a sarcastic response to me. Snipe did say that, and it relates to you being able to do whatever you want while you are in your space, and using objects in the space to help define that.

That said, there were two recent Discord discussions that you may find useful. First, Snipe or Serp said that you could actually use a Guild Hall building as your residence. This is the opposite of what you're wanting to do, but aligned. Secondly, I asked for clarification the other day about zoning, and was informed that zoning won't restrict you. Specifically, I wanted to know if I could use one structure, anywhere in a settlement, for industrial, commercial, and residential purposes combined. The answer was yes, and that zoning wouldn't inhibit me.

Hope this helps!

Posted By Athyrmose at 6:38 PM - Thu Oct 10 2019

That said, there were two recent Discord discussions that you may find useful. First, Snipe or Serp said that you could actually use a Guild Hall building as your residence. This is the opposite of what you're wanting to do, but aligned. Secondly, I asked for clarification the other day about zoning, and was informed that zoning won't restrict you. Specifically, I wanted to know if I could use one structure, anywhere in a settlement, for industrial, commercial, and residential purposes. The answer was yes, and that zoning wouldn't inhibit me.

Hope this helps!

I'm also very interested in the impact of zoning, but I would like to point out that "zoning not inhibiting the types of usages of parcels and buildings" was a statement given by community members and not dev-members. I hope the community is right on this one, but I would prefer for a dev to confirm it. After all, what's the point of zoning at all if there's no impact? O_o. It wouldn't make any sense to spend days developing a UI for it if there's no purpose. Or if the purpose was mere cosmetics.

Simply put, I'm not convinced "parcel zoning won't restrict you".

The difference may be 'parcel' versus 'plot'. We've been told parcels are divided into a grid of 4x4 plots of 16x16m each. We have also been told that many of the farming and orchard kits have 'stacks of seeds to fill up one farming plot'. This might mean that zoning is done per plot and not per parcel. Which would give us 'mixed-purpose parcels'. It might also mean you still cannot farm on an industrial plot, nor place industrial manufacturing items on a residential plot, nor build houses on an industrial plot.

Mind you, I don't see how they'd limit 'houses'. Maybe you can't place beds on an industrial plot? Therefore iliminiating 'houses' on an industrial plot?

Point in case: restrictive zoning might be done by plots rather than parcels.

@ KearaLoar: The explanation provided was that zoning exists to ensure that things needing to be built for settlement development get built. It's also been said that if you want to put a bed, crafting station, and a display case in one room you can do that as well.

The answer provided came from a subject matter expert or ambassador, and was not refuted by a dev, so if the devs trust their expertise, I might as well trust them, too.

In any case, perhaps a dev will see this thread and respond. If the information is incorrect I would love to know. ;)

I think either way zoning will be a nice addition when allotting parcels to residents so that they have room for small gardens, fountains, statues, ect... to decorate and utilize the outside of their houses and, specifically hold a piece of land rather than just picking a spot for the house and building it up without the ability to customize further/expand given your parcel/parcels granted have enough room to do so.

All great points though, thank you both for the further input.

Mayors will have a hard time when a tavern and school is needed for his town to grow, but all the inhabitants do is building farms or residential houses.

Posted By Ilyria at 10:20 AM - Thu Oct 10 2019

Mayors will have a hard time when a tavern and school is needed for his town to grow, but all the inhabitants do is building farms or residential houses.

My thought is actually the opposite for my settlement. I specifically am considering repurposing my furnished villa as a Library as it is a rather large building based on the plans and, I don't anticipate needing quite so much room for my own living quarters, especially at launch time. I'm thinking it may be more beneficial to focus the larger structures towards town prosperity rather than that of personal prosperity. At least for my town that is.

@Athyrmose:

TL:DR = It might be better to wait for one of the devs to weigh in on the issue.

I'm not saying you're wrong, but as a developer myself I don't see how parcel-zoning would be a requirement or even a boon as far as "ensuring that things needing to be build for settlement development get built" goes. That's a matter of calculations. Complex calculations, yes, but it shouldn't require "parcel zoning".

How many citizens? What are their needs? What resources are available? What's the height-map? Where's the water? Which structures and objects are needed to meet those needs to a reasonable degree? Etc. Add a proximity factor. Add an RNG factor. Compute.

Or, when a settlement expands: What's the structure/object we need? Which parcels belong to the settlement? Where's space? What makes sense as far as walking distances go? Compute.

In these calculations, parcel zoning only complicates matters. For one, you'd have to calculate how many parcels of which type each settlement needs / is likely to have from a story point of view. Then while plopping in the buildings and objects you'd have to filter the parcels by type so no crops are added to residential parcels, no smithies get plopped into agricultural parcels, and so forth. No suitable zone available? Then you'll have to re-compute the zoning. And after that, once the game is live, you'd have to constantly run parcel-re-zoning re-calculations for any and every domain if such zoning is necessary to "ensure that things needing to be built for settlement development get built". It'd be much easier to just plop in the building/object wherever, regardless of zone type.

Zoning would be just one more data-set to make any developer pull out their hair screaming.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying "parcel zoning cannot be used in such calculations". All I am saying is that, as a developer I don't see the need for them unless zoning actually effects gameplay.

And while the DEVs are very active on discord, it's not like they can afford the time to monitor every single comment and refute every false assumptions or claims.

Again, I am not saying you are wrong. I have no proof one way or the other. It is perfectly possible one of the DEVs will see my comments, roll their eyes at me, and confirm that, yes, zoning doesn't actually restrict players in any way.

But considering the community has jumped the gun on multiple occasions, it might be better to wait for one of the devs to weigh in on the issue.

I don't think it has to be that complicated to be honest. Every structure can fit into one or more zoning classifications. Every parcel can be assigned a zoning classification. If you attempt to build a structure on a parcel with a different zoning classification, then you'd be prohibited from doing so. That's as far as they need to take it IMO.

A zoning classification would focus on the physical attributes of a structure: residential/commercial/industrial, 1-story/2-story/3-story, etc.

What sorts of activities happen inside of a structure can be left up to player enforcement of zoning laws, which can be as simple or complex as your ability to create contracts/laws goes.

Personally, I like the idea of zoning that restricts what players can build on parcels because it allows mayors to control how a settlement is partitioned and organized. Otherwise, it'll happen on a whim and in a haphazard manner, which may work for some but not for others.

Posted By Josh at 6:25 PM - Thu Oct 10 2019

Posted By Ilyria at 10:20 AM - Thu Oct 10 2019

Mayors will have a hard time when a tavern and school is needed for his town to grow, but all the inhabitants do is building farms or residential houses.

My thought is actually the opposite for my settlement. I specifically am considering repurposing my furnished villa as a Library as it is a rather large building based on the plans and, I don't anticipate needing quite so much room for my own living quarters, especially at launch time. I'm thinking it may be more beneficial to focus the larger structures towards town prosperity rather than that of personal prosperity. At least for my town that is.

I've been thinking of turning half of mine into the town hall.

That way I get my town hall, and it's in a building I get for free 😁