What if... the voting mechanic was replaced with proximity. Place your homestead where you like, if it is close enough to 6 others (thinking in hexes), you all just made a town. If you don't want to be a part of it- move away before the 24hr timer kicks in (during which full reimbursement of all supply) but the town is still formed and all empty plots are 'imminent domain-ed' to the town. 24hr vote for mayor / leader and their homestead becomes the town hall. Everyone always has the ability to build all the things, space permitting, but efficiencies can be achieved by coordinating during the 24hr vote. Lastly, give us a way to communicate while offline with potential neighbors, IE prewritten (and localized) signs 'no trespassing', 'plot for sale', 'scram', etc.
Hhhm, proximity would makes sense as well. I think that's basically how towns formed in unsettled lands anyway. The last thing would be great, a way to communicate while offline. In general I'd like to see a bit more options with something like callouts and/or emotes cause voice chat and text chat don't always seem to work
5:28 I think the solution could be that no more homesteads can be built in the radius of a town and all pre-existing homesteads in the radius of the town will stay where they are. This might also encourage a group of players to build homesteads as optimally close to the center of the homestead that will become the town to decrease travel time to market. It would also encourage voting on location rather than which homestead they like the best. For a homestead that didn't vote for the town they could choose to stay independent and get no trade from the town or get overthrown by the town and neighboring homesteads. I think the threat of being taken over would convince a lot of homesteads to join. Also it would protect the towns from any foreign invaders if they were to show up.
Hhhm, not sure how voting on location would work. My idea to vote a homestead into a town was the fact that you could vote at a homestead marker. I woulk like for non voting homesteads to stay independent yeah but I see foresee some issues with overlapping building zones for instance.
