Sim Border Encroachment- Always Possible?

The area on the grid where my first few sims existed grew way too congested to place any more islands, so I branched out to a less-populated area that offered more breathing room. I very carefully placed all my new islands with two goals in mind:

1) Allow for expansion in the event that I wanted to add an adjacent island to any of my existing islands.
2) Protect "my area" of the grid without griefing or unnecessarily blocking the growth of my neighbors.

I based my sim placement on the idea that the 8-sim border that surrounds every island you own is basically reserved for you once you place your island; you have claimed that space for future building, so long as it doesn't plop you directly adjacent to someone else's island. I also assumed that this was done on a first-come-first-served basis. The first person to claim a full 9-sim grid (the border and the central island) would "own" that territory, and neighboring estate owners couldn't barge into that space.

Apparently I was wrong.

A week ago, a portion of my estate looked like this. The island Sade and its sister to the East had a protected border on all sides (disregard the "spot" notes... those were for a customer):



But a couple of days ago I happened to discover that my islands were no longer protected to the North:



I grew concerned that this meant that the estate owner to the north had not only barged into my protected space, but would now be able to build directly adjacent or corner-touching to my own islands; something I had intentionally planned my estate to avoid. Upon contacting Concierge, I learned that by moving so close to my islands, the other estate owner had just created "dead space" on the grid. I cannot place any islands there now, but neither can he.

The thing is, in the days of Ye Olde Land Store, when sim delivery was a completely manual process (and even earlier, when people could make grid reservations), I used to get notified if someone tried to build too close. And I was even shot down a few times when trying to place sims, because the Land Store was so broken I didn't know I was attempting to move into someone's protected space, but the Lindens caught it and prevented it.

So my question for y'all other estate owners is: Was it always like this? Was it always possible to basically kill off parts of the grid by crowding out your neighbors? It really doesn't seem like it used to be possible (or policy) before now, but perhaps I was just "lucky" before.

Well you'll have to wait for someone more experienced to come along but it looks like I'd expect it to look, you can only build if there's one clear square left after you build an island (unless all parties agree to it).

I know that reservations expire after a while - I wonder if there is a similar deal with exclusion zones?

I really don't know to be quite honest, I just wanted to add something.

You can avoid this by reserving the spaces around you.

The only thing the buffer space around your sim guarantees by itself is that no one can place a sim bordering yours

I don't think you can reserve plots anymore.

Well thats awful. Really, I don't know what to say about that.

If you want to expand you still can. The Lindens will move your existing islands to somewhere where there is space for you to go in the direction you want.

I had this issue when I wanted to expand my first island to the West. They just moved it to a bigger space and then I could add another island where I wanted.

Just contact them and explain your situation, they obviously want people to buy more islands, so don't worry, sure they can help.

Well while you can no longer make grid reservations, all reservations made before the program was retired last year are still honored, so long as the reservation holders still pay for them (and a surprisingly large number of folks are indeed still paying for them). For anyone interested in the current status (and history) of reservations, I did an article about them a couple months ago:
http://wildefirewalcott.blogspot.com/2008/03/reservation-system-then-and-now.html

And yes, as Elgyfu mentioned, when I was chatting with concierge, they did mention that they would relocate me if I needed to expand. I have heard from friends that LL really tries to avoid doing free relocations unless there's absolutely zero chance for you to expand in any direction, so I might not qualify, but I also know they can be flexible when they want to be.

I am really just annoyed that I took so much time choosing a spot and the exact location of each new island, and totally had this false sense of security about it. I actually would have planned my estate differently had I known this could happen. And the knowledge base does not even come close to explaining the placement rules.

Send them the icon you're using over at SLU and they'll cave!

Seriously, you have a lot of islands, it's in their interests to bend a rule here and there for someone like yourself.

Reservations not possible to be made any more. This is a positive thing, really. Imagine someone taking an alt and blocking a 100,000 USD continent business for 30 bucks while you are on vacation. Mainland parcel extortion? Peanuts and kidstuff by comparison, and it happened all the time.

Reservations still honoured. Cost for this? All I'll say: go check your statements.

Encroachment - was *almost* always this way. Prior to about March 07 I think it was, you could reserve or build in the 'diagonal' position to an existing region without permission. No longer.

Phantom landstore regions - the land store and the actual grid are two entirely different things. If someone moved a region, there's no guarantee the place where it came from has been 'cleared' in the land store even if there is nothing there now - all old errors remain. Especially common when regions get abandoned. Was true for ages, and is still true today last I checked. A call to concierge can get them cleared, though strategically... leaving one there is almost as good as a reservation

* * * * *

An odd little factoid - never, ever, ever, did I read where it said we were entitled to our locations on the grid. Or anyone else for that matter.

Something to think about in an age where location, proximity and eminent domain are getting more important by the day.

There's no encroachment.

There's a sim between you and the other person. This space can ONLY be filled if both of you file tickets and say it is ok to put a sim there.

Don't you worry your head about stuff like this. We deal with it a lot for the NMC Educational continent every time someone needs to get a new sim or needs to be moved.

It is a LOT HARDER than you think to become someone else's neighboring sim.

Pretty much they can not do it without your approval and you can not expand over in that direction without theirs.



PS. you're overly spreading your estates, one sim worth of space alone will give you infinite views, you do not need a full circle of void spaces around each sim. Case in point, the two new islands you have two sims in between whereas they can have just one.

It's odd that that occurred. I just played with the landstore a bit, and discovered a sim had moved closer to me than I had planned on...since I had intentionally buried my sims. So, I just tried to put a sim diagonal to that one...and couldn't do it.

Yes Troy is right. That area between your sims is now a 'no man's land' where neither of you can place an island. That is basically how it's always worked, just no reservations now.

I never owned or have any plans on buying a private island so I can't say if it has always been this way. It does raise an interesting question. How close to another's spot on the grid can someone buy?

Consider Scenario 1:



Red buys an island at B2.

Rule 1: When an island is bought, the eight surrounding grid spots can only be bought by that buyer. They are 'reserved'.

Scenario 2:



Blue buys an island at D2. Should this be allowed? Blue did not viololate rule 1.

However, the purchase takes away the ability for Red to buy three of the spots that they had reserverd. A dead zone is created from C1 to C3.

Rule 2: You can't buy an island one spot away from another island owner.

Scenario 3:



Blue buys an island at E2. Should this be allowed? Blue did not violate rules 1 or 2.

However, a dead zone is still created. Red can't buy C1-c3 and Blue can't buy D1-D3 because that would violate rule 2.

Rule 3: You can't buy an island two spots away from another island owner.

Scenario 4:



Blue buys an island at F2. Should this be allowed? Blue did not violate rules 1, 2, or 3.

However, a dead zone is still created. Red can't buy C1-C3 and Blue can't buy E1-E3 because that would violate rule 3.

...and so on and so forth.

I guess the real question is: At what point does/should the use-it-or-lose-it rule apply?

--Hugsy

I guess the real question is, why does this system have to apply at all?

Poor design - "Note: Moving your Private Region will cause links made from the Picks tab of the Profile window to break."

Stupidity - Didn't realize people would buy regions close to each other either on purpose (to grief/extort) or by accident (didn't realize the ramifications).

Money - "There is a $150 charge to move a Private Region. This fee is charged per Private Region, for any movement."

--Hugsy

Interesting. We moved our sims a month or so ago, as someone had parked theirs right nearby and created a deadspace.. and when asked politely would they mind if we touched corners, were somewhat unhelpful. Long story short, we found a spot on the new land store gazillions of spaces/miles/sims/whatever away from anyone else.

Guess what?

Inside 1 week we had multiple sims placed to the immediate south (one owner) and now are surrounded on all sides by a number of sims, with a very wide clear zone around all that placement until you hit the next settlement of sims... so I guess the Lindens are going to be moving us for free again some time soon.

What makes me wonder is why place a sim so close to another set when there is so much space available? Is it a case of "ooo they're big = popular = local traffic from the map for me" or something else?

Inc

Even with the nice new land store, I still think it's hard/tedious to find big open areas on the grid. It took me a long time to find what, at the time, was a pretty open space, but is now almost as crowded as the area around my old estate. So I think folks stop on the first open area they find and, just like people on the freeway, go wherever the hell they want, courtesy be damned. Even if I'd known this deadzone thinger were possible, I would never have just gone, "oh well, my neighbor won't mind if I make it so that neither of us can ever use this part of the grid." I would at least contact them first.

The desire to keep everything on the same map is really turning out to be unscalable. These problems will increase exponentially as SL continues to grow. I think LL needs to break up the map. Have every estate be on a separate map unless the estate owners agree to be on the same one. It may be nice to scan around the full map at the different estates, but the problems caused by tens of thousands of estate owners trying to expand will quickly outweigh any benefits of keeping a unified map.

I guess imagining if they had put their sim 1 block further up then you would be able to have palnted an island and done the exact same trick to them. Possibly the only way is to make a hollow in the middle, but then you could get an extortist drop into that too.
I alsways believed sims could be placed anywhere that basically prevented avatars or bullets/particles etc from flying from one owners to another they were at one point placed corner to corner till a few incidents occured and I can remember managing to fly from a corner island to the next by hitting the corner withn enough speed.

Nope, There's no such thing as a reserved spot. There is only a buffer zone where others can't place islands (i.e. right next to yours).

In fact, back in the day, it was perfectly allowable for someone to place a sim diagonal to yours (1 sim over and one sim down, so the corners touched) since the two sims were not visible to each other. But only recently with the removal of reservations did LL remove that ability.

Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word 'reserved' if it has a specific meaning with regards to private island purchases. 'Protected' might have been a better choice. Just trying to convey the idea that you don't have to worry about someone else putting their sim there.

--Hugsy

Probably a naive question but unless you are planning to expand or the sims are directly bordering (because of the way inter-sim/client communication works) why would it matter where on the map your sim is?

It seems that both the expansion issue and the entire map system along with the sim communication and the sim crossing/near sim crossing client and server issues are just a byproduct of a system setup before LL had to deal with scaling the system to be so large and unfortunately though short of a total redesign (I wish) correct me if I'm wrong but they kinda screwed everyone over and it'll get worse as more sims come online and more people buy sims.

Gah! Now that's just insanely annoying!

Not surprised though. Success has 1000 followers, as the old expression goes.

Is there even an actual map end? As far as I knew it seemed near infinate, I can remember a few times zoomed right out scrolling through nothingness for quite a while then spotting a batch of islands in middle of nowhere?
If it has a size, how many sims by how many sims is it?