This is the second developer diary of our Player City Refresh that aims to cover all the information not covered in part 1. We recommend reading that first.
We debated developing a process to select the ‘best’ city to promote into the open slot, but this would still result in unhappy players. Instead, when a slot is open now at a limited rank, ALL cities that qualify for that slot will be promoted, even if this overcaps that rank bracket. This does mean it will likely be a longer wait for slots to open up at Rank 4 and 7, but when a slot does open, a city is guaranteed to grow.
One note: the maintenance cycle for a city now only begins once a city has been validated as Rank 1, 24 hours after being placed. This means if a city is founded on a Saturday, it won’t be immediately charged for maintenance before the city is even fully formed. We have not changed the restriction that cities can only grow/contract by 1 rank per week.
Swapping a specialization will now cost a flat fee of 50,000 credits from the city treasury at the time of the swap, and trigger a 3-day cooldown during which cities cannot swap any other specializations (they can still fill empty specialization slots though). This is meant to allow cities to be responsive, while still maintaining a required thoughtfulness in specialization selection.
In the specializations listed below, and in any future added specializations, some will notice some shared verbiage that indicates how a specialization functions.
Any skillmods preceded by ‘While within this city’ are applied via a new city buff that will appear on the buff bar of anyone not city banned while they are within the city’s limits. We have made a change to how cities calculate their domain, and any no-build zones encompassed within the radius are not considered part of the city for this buff.
Any skillmods preceded by ‘For all citizens of this city’ are applied via a new citizen buff that will appear on the buff bar of anyone who holds residence in the city.
Note: The specializations that involve a base require the base to not be disabled.
While we originally started with 25 specializations, after playtesting and other valuable feedback, we found that a few of them just weren't good enough, so they were dropped or merged with other specializations to make both better. However, one of the key aspects of the update is rebuilding how cities and specializations function to enable a better future. With this framework done now, we can more easily create new specializations in the future, with new tools at our disposal like: minimum rank requirements, mutually exclusive specializations, global application of city benefits via citizen buff, faction alignment requirement, faction status requirement, faction base requirement, etc. We recommend you consult with a Senator and create a PlayerVoice for any new specialization ideas.
How do I know Specialization A is working? Or if a city has Specialization B?
We understand that specializations without a skill mod are not displayed currently, and will be working in the future to display these in some way more directly. For the time being all specializations a city has are listed in the planetary map.
Where can I suggest quality of life adjustments?
This publish is big, so some bugs will slip through, we encourage you to report those via /bug. If it is not a bug though, we encourage you to contact your Senators to give feedback on this update.
City Maintenance
As part of the update to player cities, we have made multiple changes to the maintenance cycle and pricing of cities. Foremost among these is that the cost of specializations are now combined with the rank cost, so regardless of what specializations a city does or doesn't take, a city’s base maintenance will be unchanged.Rank | Citizens | Cost (credits per week) |
|---|---|---|
1 | 5 unique accounts | 50,000 |
2 | 10 | 100,000 |
3 | 15 | 250,000 |
4 | 30 | 350,000 |
5 | 40 | 450,000 |
6 | 60 | 650,000 |
7 | 80 | 750,000 |
8 | 100 | 850,000 |
City Promotion
Additionally, all city maintenance will now be processed at 12:00 a.m. GMT on Sundays. This allows us to solve a major issue we have been hearing from mayors: deciding who gets an open slot at a bottlenecked rank, like Rank 4 on Naboo. Previously, it would be whichever city first processed maintenance after the slot became available, with no regard to seniority or population.We debated developing a process to select the ‘best’ city to promote into the open slot, but this would still result in unhappy players. Instead, when a slot is open now at a limited rank, ALL cities that qualify for that slot will be promoted, even if this overcaps that rank bracket. This does mean it will likely be a longer wait for slots to open up at Rank 4 and 7, but when a slot does open, a city is guaranteed to grow.
One note: the maintenance cycle for a city now only begins once a city has been validated as Rank 1, 24 hours after being placed. This means if a city is founded on a Saturday, it won’t be immediately charged for maintenance before the city is even fully formed. We have not changed the restriction that cities can only grow/contract by 1 rank per week.
Specializations
Before we get to the full list of specializations that we will be launching with, there is one important change. Previously, with only one specialization for a city, and the relative supremacy of a few specializations, specialization swapping was a rarity. With cities now having up to six specializations, we anticipate that will change. We designed all these specializations to have synergy with each other and niche uses. To that end, we expect cities to more proactively change their specializations in response to the state of the galaxy and preference of citizens.Swapping a specialization will now cost a flat fee of 50,000 credits from the city treasury at the time of the swap, and trigger a 3-day cooldown during which cities cannot swap any other specializations (they can still fill empty specialization slots though). This is meant to allow cities to be responsive, while still maintaining a required thoughtfulness in specialization selection.
In the specializations listed below, and in any future added specializations, some will notice some shared verbiage that indicates how a specialization functions.
Any skillmods preceded by ‘While within this city’ are applied via a new city buff that will appear on the buff bar of anyone not city banned while they are within the city’s limits. We have made a change to how cities calculate their domain, and any no-build zones encompassed within the radius are not considered part of the city for this buff.
Any skillmods preceded by ‘For all citizens of this city’ are applied via a new citizen buff that will appear on the buff bar of anyone who holds residence in the city.
Major Specializations
(Taken at Ranks 3 and 6)| Improved Job Market | While within this city, increases the credit payout of missions taken by 15%. This payout bonus does not stack with Bounty Hunters' Guild Hub. |
| Science Center | While within this city, increases the Reverse Engineering Chance by 5, increases Assembly by 30, and reduces the time required to incubate and hatch a beast by 3 hours per session. |
| Enhancement Center | While within this city, increases the duration of doctor buffs by 1.5 hours, increases the entertainer tick speed by 1 minute, and increases the performance proc chance by 15%. |
| Bounty Hunters’ Guild Hub | While within this city, increases the credit payout of NPC bounty hunter missions taken by 30%. For all citizens of this city, increases the number of pings received by tracking droids by 5. This payout bonus does not stack with Improved Job Market. |
| Travel Interchange | While within this city, all ITVs have their cost to use reduced by 25%, but will not accept Multipasses. |
| Flight Academy | For all citizens of this city, increases the Duty and Space Battle Tokens earned by 10%, and grants them two additional Starship Berths. Additionally, Factional and True Ace citizens can use the city's shuttleport to directly travel to the Idiot's Array Lounge for free. |
Minor Specializations
(Taken at Ranks 4,5,7, and 8)| Outdoor Enhancements | Increases the number of Civic Structures that can be placed by 33%. Increases the number of City Decorations that can be placed by 33%. |
| Cosmodrome | Allows landing at city hall from the planetary space station. City Bans will not block this. |
| Sovereignty Expansion | Increases the radius of the city by 100 meters. Requires Rank 5 or higher slot. |
| Homestead | All declared residences in this city have their lot usage reduced by 1 to a minimum of 1. |
| Networked Surveying | For all citizens of this city, increases Resource Extraction Rate by 10% (also on placed harvesters) and the size of samples retrieved by 20%. |
| Storage Units | All declared residences in this city have their storage increased by 250. |
| Industrial Center | For all citizens of this city, increases Factory Speed by 20% and reduces maintenance of factories and harvesters by 20%. |
| Mission Exchange | For all citizens of this city, allows taking an additional terminal mission, excluding bounty hunter missions. |
| Military Installation | For all citizens of this city, when aligned with the faction that matches the base in this city, increase GCW points by 5%, further doubled when special forces. While within this city, aligned defenders of the base gain +30 defence. |
| Nature’s Boon | For all citizens of this city, increases fishing success, chance of lyase while foraging, and creature resource harvesting by 10%. |
| Vergence | For all citizens of this city, increases the chance of becoming attuned to The Force. While within this city, visibility will not be generated. |
| Command Relay | While within this city, aligned entertainers are 10% more likely to gather intelligence. When this city has a base, control gains on the planet for the aligned faction increase by 1%, and intelligence chance bonus is increased to 20%. |
| Fighter’s Retreat | For all citizens of this city, decreases PVP/Mercenary prestige, space PVP prestige, and GCW rank decay by 5%, increases to 10% if citizen alignment matches city. |
| Gourmet Hub | For all citizens of this city, increases the duration of food and drink by 10%. Cannot be taken with Franchisee. Requires Rank 7 or higher slot. |
| Franchisee | For all citizens of this city, the local fast food franchise makes food and drink fill decay 1 second faster. Cannot be taken with Gourmet Hub. Requires Rank 7 or higher slot. |
| Lucky Star | For all citizens of this city, they feel extra lucky at finding chests and gain 1 Luck. |
Universal Specialization
One of the most popular current specializations is the Research Center, for its 15% experimentation success increase. We tried rolling this benefit into the new specializations, but it quickly became apparent it was still a problem that biased selection. So instead, all cities now gain the following specialization for free at Rank 2.| Civilized Science | While within this city, any experimentation has a 15% bonus to the final result roll. |
Questions?
Where is Specialization X? Why did Specialization Y change? I thought you said there would be 25 Specializations?While we originally started with 25 specializations, after playtesting and other valuable feedback, we found that a few of them just weren't good enough, so they were dropped or merged with other specializations to make both better. However, one of the key aspects of the update is rebuilding how cities and specializations function to enable a better future. With this framework done now, we can more easily create new specializations in the future, with new tools at our disposal like: minimum rank requirements, mutually exclusive specializations, global application of city benefits via citizen buff, faction alignment requirement, faction status requirement, faction base requirement, etc. We recommend you consult with a Senator and create a PlayerVoice for any new specialization ideas.
How do I know Specialization A is working? Or if a city has Specialization B?
We understand that specializations without a skill mod are not displayed currently, and will be working in the future to display these in some way more directly. For the time being all specializations a city has are listed in the planetary map.
Where can I suggest quality of life adjustments?
This publish is big, so some bugs will slip through, we encourage you to report those via /bug. If it is not a bug though, we encourage you to contact your Senators to give feedback on this update.