For those of you not keeping score, if you have a large item high off the ground, you're going to be paying more than you would otherwise. So in other words, a 1x1x1 cube sitting on the ground is going to set you back one credit a week. a 10x10x10 cube 100m off the ground... ouch, I don't even want to think about that one.
However, it does beg the question, "why would you want a 10x10x10 cube up there anyway?" The reasoning behind charging more for larger and higher objects is to discourage people from building massive towers and to allow more of a "get to know your neighbours" feel to the world. This is obviously a good idea, for all kinds of reasons. Unfortunately, it ultimately fails for the following reasons:
1. People can just raise their terrain up 100 and build their crappy cabin (no offense to people with cabins, just to those with bright neon purple flashing cabins.)
2. By judging height by measuring the distance between an object and the terrain directly beneath it, it fails to take into account radical, "naturally existing" variances in terrain. as well as those of us who have built on relatively flat land and deliberately lowered the terrain beneath our structures to create large basement areas for keeping objects under construction, or for giving us more room to build, while at the same time, not having to build UP.
Sadly for me, my building (convenently located in Southwest Da Boom!) hits both parts of #2 dead on. Don't take my word for it, though. Observe this handy ASCII art!
CODE
___________ (\
_(___________) | \.
(_______________) /\ | |
My lab. --> [ | | ] / \ | |
No, really. [ | | ] | | | |
[____|______|_____] | | | |
( ..........|..................
Secret underground ( .. |##### ^^^^^ ######
workshop: | .. |# Other people's #
| .. |##### stuff ######
|.. |##################
Water line: -------------------------------------------------
..#######################################
..#########################################
..###########################################
................#############################################
Now, the problem here is that while the ground level is fairly uniform over most of the sim, my lab is perched atop a rather steep cliff. I've made use of this landscape feature by hollowing out a generous portion (read: all) of the land beneath my building and using it as a workshop.
Because I
There are a number of things that can be done to remedy the current situation, and I propose doing all of them:
1. Generate the average height of land for a sim to generate the sim baseline.
2. Generate a perimeter heightmap for plots of land, measured by the inner perimeter, the edge of the land you own, ignoring what your neighbours have the edges of their terrain set to. This prohibits neighbours from attempting to affect the tax rate of each other's land.
(#2 requires that the land ownership/selection controls be fixed, of course. If I click on a chunk of my land, I want to be able to select the entire lot, not just whatever small chunk I chose to purchase in that time. By the same token, I want to be able to select and manipulate smaller areas within the larger one.)
3. Prohibit users from raising terrain past a certain height above the baseline. 30m, just for an example. Now, that won't stop anyone from giving themselves a nice, big tower to get in our way, but what will is this: put a restriction on the angle terrain may be raised above a certain (average) height. There's very few cases where a big cliff face is required, as impressive as it may be. If you want to increase your land up high, you'd better start buying land, because it'll take a lot of it to get that high.
This isn't perfect, and I'm sure there's a great deal I'm missing, including much of a point, but tell me what you think anyway.
Catherine Omega
meaning that if you wanted to raise your land up 100m, but the neighbouring terrain was
