Part of the 1.9 Server Discussions. Please discuss more general things there before it's spun into a dedicated topic.

Other topics in this series:

• General Discussion
• Discuss the Economy
• Discuss the Map
• Suggest Plugins
• Discuss Spawn ideas

Transportation
We are going for a Player-vs-Enemy world with an emphasis on creation. I propose limiting teleportation to only your home town and spawn. This will encourage exploration and the creation of safe passage ways between towns. Once two towns are linked by a path an admin will create a region around that path so it's protected from grief and mobs can't spawn along it. Contributors could be rewarded with Denarii, but I think that might be more of an economy discussion. Rewards will also help compensate for the use of personal materials.

So, what should be allowed? Should transportation be an admin created commodity or should it be created by the citizens of the server? What about teleportation? Should we allow it or restrict it more?

I certainly am in favor of removing tpa if it will encourage people to do things like use a (player-built) rail system more often, and since we're planning to enable the Nether, that will also enable relatively fast travel. I think it's shortsighted to remove /home and /sethome, though; can we come up with some argument for why those should be removed?

Regarding WorldGuarding roads and such, I think the fact that we're graylisting will remove the need to do so. That sounds like a lot of admin effort (and a ton of WG regions). I certainly like the idea of motivating the creation of roads and railroads somehow, though, especially since I plan to not have admin-built roads and rails.

Removing /home will help with creating safe pathways. If someone can /sethome in a cave, then /town spawn to deposit their loot. Then /home back to the cave, that removes any danger of mobs in a PvE world. I honestly think only /spawn should be allowed because making it back home with a inventory full of loot is what Minecraft started out as. I realize not everyone enjoys the same style of gameplay but if we're going for a vanilla-esque PvE world, I whole heartedly believe mobs should be a real danger. And limiting teleportation is one way to aide in that.

I would be in favor of swapping /town spawn with /home that way players can decide where their home is. If we do that, I'm not sure if /set home should be enabled or if beds will be the only way to set ones home.

See also: http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=237145#237145

I just don't see what's wrong with the way things are with teleport now.. Maru and I have so many issues with dying by lava and mobs can become a massive hassle while exploring.

tpa is great to go places so one person can check out another person's place/project/build. Taking that away won't force me to use more roads/rails/whatever. It will isolate me to one corner of the map, away from everyone so I can have a large area to mine and build without worrying about other people being in my area to mine, like one has to do when they are sharing a town with people.

Personally I know my server uses none of those commands, but having one (like /spawn) would be nice, and would make players create safe pathways or railways in between places. It's worked out fairly well for me. Railways and nether travel work the best and are fairly safe once you put a little bit of time into them to make them more mob proof and noob proof.

I agree with tifreak8x, /tpa encourages more community, because I'd be more willing to /tpa to check out someone's build, than to spend time and risk resources.

Can there be a cool down set on the usage of tpa?

Personally I prefer cutting back on teleporting, but that's just me preferring the vanilla type feel of doing things for real instead of the easy way

Although I would usually be all over doing it the vanilla way, I do like the /tpa function in survival. I agree with Ivoah.

I am thinking for new members of the 1.9 server, they will have problems getting to their towns. They will not have a horse, so travelling that distance will take quite a while. Maybe removing the cost for a /t spawn for the first use, if /tpa is disabled.

Nothing is honestly "wrong"-- whichever way the wind blows, I think that things will be okay in the end. But it's not if anything is "wrong" really, it's more like out of interest for making things more interesting and difficult-- I don't want to use teleportation, as to make things more interesting and difficult. People have argued "well, why don't you just impose that difficulty on yourself and not others?" and I feel there is a couple flaws with this argument, which I have partly addressed before.
[1] Going with the idea that you shouldn't press an idea onto others, and letting people decide what they want is not good organization. The server will need to be run one way or another. One can argue from a creative-mode inclined attitude the exact same reason, "why don't you just not use creative mode if you want it to be difficult for yourself? Don't let that affect those who want to use creative mode". Now replace all instances of "creative mode" with "teleportation". It's all the same idea. Truth is, we are a survival server, and I think it would win a vote that we'd want a survival server. Those who want creative-mode building will have to face the reality that this server will not fulfill their wish. With that said, it's okay to argue for teleportation, but having teleportation follows the exact same argument as having creative versus survival-- it should be one way or another. If it weren't one way or another, we'd be trying to make everyone happy, and I don't think that is what we should be trying to do. All of us who will participate on the new map, will have to compromise one way or another, more or less.
[2] Building off the last point, I couldn't just tell myself to make things more challenging by not teleporting, as to not trample on others who want to use it. I'd be a burden to others who want to quickly do things. because while they want me somewhere now, my commitment to not teleporting would make them wait as long as it takes me to get to them, which I don't think would settle well in the end, and people will just move on since waiting defeats the purpose of having teleportation. As much as I wouldn't want to use teleport, I'd end up using it in the end as to not be that odd person out on the server, feeling distanced from people who teleport to each other. This is why I feel in the very least, would need to be argued against.



I would really like to contribute to community builds and goods such as a well-developed transportation system. If I didn't have the ability to teleport to whomever I like, and to and from place A and B, I would invest more of my time doing so, and would be happy using it. Initially as the map starts out as Monkey0x9 previously mentioned, it will be harder to get from place to place-- that is for sure. But I feel that people envision the map's lifetime as if it will be permanently like this, when it likely won't. If people have a hard time getting around and fear being at risk from travelling, then we can meet those needs over time as we civilize the map. If it were me, I'd have more urgency to do things like building a more established railroad that goes to the ends of the map, and to the corners or anywhere else that will make things more convenient for when I want to travel in the future. Look at the real world we live in today-- we didn't have even some of the basic modes of transportation some time ago, but we developed that with time, and now it's extremely convenient to go take a train from A to B in the state, as a way of trying to equate it to minecraft. While transportation will still be present even with teleportation, it will most certainly be greatly devalued. Instead of using the rails to go from A to B and B to A as necessary, it would be just A to B only one time, and a teleportation after. It goes from something you rely on greatly, to something you toss aside after one use. (Didn't you hear that Kerm needs his trains?)

In the end of this, I feel that when we start preparing the map, we should have all potential members take an official poll to decide on something like this, with an admin overseeing the final decision of course.

To put this a bit more succintly:

• Imposing the "difficulty" of transportation over teleportation on yourself is a lazy mans excuse for a survival server. It's like going to the gym only to sit in the sauna room. You're suppose to put the effort in to not take the lazy way out.
• If teleportation exists on the server, it's going to be the favorable method of travel for everyone, regardless of incentives. From Point A to Point B may take 5 minutes by transport or instantaneous over teleport. If Player 1 follows the transportation route to Player 2, who is used to teleporting, P2 will grow impatient of P1.

With that said, there's more interconnectivity between these different discussions than what's realized. If we disabled teleportation all together, towns will have a stronger desire to compete with shops. We may see a strong economy. Other than emerald, there's no regional ores. So the prices won't be vastly different from one side to the next. But if Town A is rich in Emeralds while Town K isn't, Town A may value emeralds lower than Town K. So, then you need to value your time. Do you take the trek to Town A and buy goods for X% less or purchase it next door at Town K?

Secondly, the transportation can directly benefit player shops. If Town C connects Towns B & D, Town C may get players stopping to check out what goods they have for sale. Rather than teleporting to either town to get an "advertised price," the player has the option to shop around on their way over.

I shop around all the time. I had to ship a 25lb item; I checked UPS, FedEx and USPS. USPS was advertising their FlatRate box - if it fits it ships for a flat rate! - while FedEx and UPS were not advertising deals, sales or prices. However, after checking out both stores, I found out that UPS was actually a better deal. If I had teleportation in real life, I would have 'ported over to USPS and shipped it off. Rather than driving down and making sure to drive by both a FedEx and UPS store before USPS.

Transportation will also facilitate a closer knit community of towns. Towns that elect to build in the far reaches of the server will experience solitude and lower traffic. Towns that bundle together may decide to form a Nation, and that Nation will be that cluster of towns rather than these towns all over the map. Nations themselves can be a great collaboration between the towns. Maybe we'll see a small number of close towns form a Nation then build a wall around themselves and a towering town hall.

To reiterate what Charles said, everyone will have to comprise here.
To correct what Charles said, while I may create these topics I have the final say. This is not a democratic decision. These discussions are to get ideas and feedback on ideas. While gameplay and server decisions will be based on these discussions just note that I may elect to go against the majority vote.

The ability to teleport to a common townspawn builds community within a town (larger towns like current Arcadia are melting-pots of various Cemetechians). Furthermore, it incentivizes the formation of towns. Thus, I propose we keep Towny as a transportation option, as it provides a common and central location for groups of players.

There's also talks of keeping Towny and forming nations. Given the rules provide the same protections Towny provides, there's not a lot of incentive for forming nations; the nation bonus does not serve much purpose, and we no longer permit hostile factionalization. Thus, especially in the case of a larger map (more biomes means better builds), I propose we enable teleportation between nation towns.

Also, if we choose to use a large map, disabling teleportation will be very frustrating in the case of long travels and/or deaths during transit. Traveling a kilometer or few without food and tools is very difficult, and not all of our players are survival wizards.

As the map settles a little after the initial period of surviving and begins developing some infrastructure, I think the infrastructure especially in towns that will become known, will create reason to venture over and check it out. For some bigger towns, this would apply even to those further away from the town. Building cool stuff and making your town be known for something will be a large driving force for people venturing to it. The competition should be good enough that this will occur.



Travelling a kilometer or few *is* very difficult if you don't have food or tools, and probably why I think if you want to travel that far, you'd be equipped to do so. And beds allow a /sethome vanilla mechanic, so if you die, you end up ideally where you will be around your base or belongings so that if in the event you need to fetch your stuff that is somehow worth travelling a kilometer for, you will have the resource to do such a task. I don't think travelling extremely far without resource is really a concern, because you would definitely die by not being equipped. You wouldn't need to be a survival wizard to know you'd need food and equipment to trek that journey.

Will it be more challenging, as normal vanilla minecraft without teleportation, and instead the need to utilize transportation? Yes, definitely. There will be deaths during transit at some point in time, and that has happened on this 1.7/1.8 map too. If you made a journey of 1000 blocks out to adventure and you died during your travels, your consequence would be the same, teleportation or not. You will not have the ability to teleport to your stuff even on this map unless you died at your destination that you set a home at. And even without teleportation, if you died at your destination, you still could have a homeset via bed that will respawn you near where you died.
As far as difficulty, you would simply need to be more prepared for stuff like if you die. If you have mobs surrounding your stuff, you could bring an extra set of iron armor that will be near your bed so that you could go fend them off to regain possession of your stuff without worries of being killed again. Teleportation in this case I feel is just an easy way out with zero penalty, because if you die or otherwise something inconvenient happens, you can just blink your eye, teleport, get what you need, blink again and teleport back, and the problem is solved. No inconvenience at all. Yes it will be frustrating not having that convenience, but I strongly feel that it's part of the game and what keeps things interesting, and to try and make everything convenient takes that value away.

Here is my vote:
1. Remove home / sethome.
2. Allow tpa to players.
3. Enable nether.

Ydabba: when removing sethome/home, would beds be enabled?

I agree with what ydabba says, just as long as there is the vanilla bed allowed.

If tpa is removed, vanilla beds would be allowed. As they are currently?

However, ydabba. Would you mind elaborating your points as to why you feel that way?

I'm in favor of keeping all the tp's as they are right now, while also building extensive networks that allow other means of travel.

If you need more command block magic for the rails, let me know. For teleporting... Depending on the map size, if it takes too long to use the rails to traverse the map, then leave TP on. I am talking more than a couple of minutes for travel. Nether would greatly help transit times. Beds would let you return to a home position, so the concern would be traveling elsewhere, although I assume /spawn would also still work?

If you really want transportation to replace teleporting, make smaller worlds, but have multiple overworlds. Faster to get around and not needing to crowd into one small world. If the maps are small and rails cover the worlds well, then it will not be hard to find creations. I'd prefer a survival creative map to not get spread out, detracts from sightseeing.

Also, standardize rail making.

That's just my 8 minutes.

I definitely agree about standardized rail designs. I plan to make a showcase/museum of some sort near the world's spawn (with everyone's feedback, of course) with some designs of how the rails should look, how stations should look, material and color schemes, powered rail spacing, and so on. We'll need gold and witch farms for all the powered rails and iron farm(s) for all the regular rails, as well; I'll certainly be very excited to help construct the facilities for those.

It sounds like our best option would be to have /spawn, home beds, and /town spawn, but remove tpa. Home beds, trains, and town spawn would give you the ability to traverse much of the map easily, especially if we have a way to encourage rail-building and road-making (something monetary, perhaps)? I don't really have any strong thoughts on the removal of tpa, other than liking anything that pushes people to construct more railroads.

Heh, state-sponsored transportation administration. Any though on map size and multiworld?