Ace groans, “Well, that sounds like a problem for the future.”

Lily laughs, “Or not even your problem at all. Let those kingdom builders take care of it. For now, just focus on your town.”

Ace just lazily waves his hand in the air as he calls up the town panel.

{[Unnamed] Dungeon Town

Coffers: 0

[System Buildings]

[Laws]

[Officials]

[Options]}

Ace frowns, “Of course everything would be in sub panels. [Buildings].”

{[Upgrade] [Creation] [Customize] [Repair] [Removal] [Systamize]

Town Hall, General Store, Smithy, Leather Workshop, System Well, Gruel Dispensary, Butchers, Basic Bone Road, Basic Living Mangrove Dock, Delver Supply Store, Soul Lamps Unlimited, Reinforced Dungeon Containment}

Ace turns back to Lily, “Most of the building options make sense but what does Systamize do? Like, I understand it is going to make a building into a system structure, but what does that mean?”

Lily nods, “A powerful option that I advise you not touch with a ten-foot pole any time soon. What it does as you guessed is turn a building or land feature in your town into a system controlled building. There are many benefits, including the ability to use the upgrade feature. The downside is that once you systamize a building, it is out of your hands. Unless you use the upgrade or customize feature, no one can make permanent changes to the structure.”

“That means if you systamize every building in your town, anytime someone wants to make a change like adding on a room to their house, they have to ask you. Also, while the upgrade option is powerful, it is also limited. A skilled builder can make all kinds of strange changes if you give them a chance. That and they can repair a building faster means that most towns will limit systemized buildings to things like what was already provided. Though it is important to note that even if you systamize a shop, the system will not magically fill it for you. Those starter buildings are special like that.”

“Oh, and the system will staff systemized buildings as well. So if you don’t have any alchemists then setting up an alchemy shop and systemizing it isn’t the worst plan. Though at that point you would be better off using the creation option. Once again, the starter shops are special, so don’t expect creation to magically spawn buildings in moments. However, it does give you more control over what you get as you can honestly dig quite deep. Each option has sub options until you get down to selecting specific groups of workers.”

Ace nods, “Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for the info.” And he turns back to the system screens and calls up the laws panel.

{[Create Law] [Update Law] [Remove Law]}

Frustrated at the near useless panels, Ace pokes at create law.

{New town detected

Would you like to use a preset law package?

[Yes] [No]}

Ace shakes his head and closes the panel without making a choice. While interesting, that is the kind of thing he needs to go over with the others. Though speaking of the others, Ace pulls up the officials panel next.

{[Assign Position] [Dismiss Official]

Ruler: Ace, Treasurer, Guard Captain, Head Healer, City Planner}

Ace rubs the bridge of his nose, “Hey Lily, there don’t seem to be that many positions that I can assign people to.”

Lily shrugs, “There never is with a new town. Positions don’t show up until it is needed. You can try to artificially add some on by acting out a need for some specialized positions, but overall, not worth worrying about. The important ones generally are there from the start. Mainly that of guard captain and city planner.”

“A guard captain can assign official town guards which mesh with the laws. Beyond that, though, they have an easier time learning skills based on commanding their people. A group of guards led by a captain can be a scary thing, even for skilled adventurers.”

“On the other hand, a city planner is mostly useful because it takes some responsibility away from you. They gain access to the buildings tab. You can restrict how much they can do, but even if all you let them do is make sure all the system buildings are in good repair, it can be worth it. But if you trust them? Just open the flood gates. Like the guard captain, they have an easier time learning skills related to planning out a city. As the leader, those skills aren’t what you need and this lets you push the responsibility off onto others.”

Lily smiles as Ace turns back to the screens only he can see. The four open positions aren’t too hard to figure out who goes where but once again Ace decides to leave it till he can talk it over with the others. Instead, he pulls up the options panel.

{[Dungeon] [Citizenship] [Misc]}

Ace doesn’t even have to think about it before tapping the dungeon option.

{Energy Well Aura: [On] [Off] [Area Restrictions]

First Room of Each Floor a Safe Room: [On] [Off]

Instance Overstuffing: [On] [Off] [Set Limit]

Allow terrain modification around entrance: [On] [Off] [Area Restrictions]

Allow monster spawning outside of dungeon: [On] [Off] [Area Restrictions]}

Ace nods, ‘The energy well bit must be the thing recharging people’s power. Though the area restrictions thing sounds interesting and just what I needed. Besides that, I don’t really see a need to change any of the others. Well, except maybe the one.’ “Another question Lily, what is instance overstuffing?”

Lily stops doodling on a piece of paper and looks up. “That one has to do with instanced dungeons and their limits. By default as many people can fit on a floor as you can pack in. the only limit being physical space. Once a dungeon has instances though it, and now you, can choose to prevent more than a certain number of people being on a floor for any particular instance.”

“Of course, there are limits to it. Six is the smallest amount you can set for instance. Besides that, the dungeon is more than capable of setting certain floors to be special and thus allowing more or less people in than what you chose. Though not even the dungeon has full control over it.”

“A normal boss floor, even in non-instanced dungeons, will limit the number of people that can be on the floor to ten. My advice for the moment is to just leave it on. You’re already limiting people going in through mundane methods and it would suck if you needed to get everyone in the dungeon only for it to block most people from entering.”

Ace just sighs and opens the citizenship panel.

{[Citizenship types]: Citizen

[Naturalization Requirements]: Leaders Approval

Limit System Shops to Citizens: [On] [Off]}

With not much there, Ace moves onto the misc panel.

{}

With an eyebrow raised, Ace slumps down onto the wall next to him. “So, Lily, I would think there should be more options? Misc doesn’t even have any options in it! What is up with that?”

Lily laughs at his defeated look. “What? Did you think the system would provide you page after page of options so you can customize your town without actually doing anything personally? If only that would be the case! As you start ruling, the various choices, you make will cause more options to pop up. Though you are a bit behind new towns on a more established planet. That, however, mostly comes from them having been trained to manage a town.”

Ace shakes his head, “But these options don’t do anything!”

Lily shrugs, “You skipped the law section. No, I can’t see your screens but it would have taken a lot longer even if you just wanted a preset. Without a bunch of laws, you don’t really have that many levers to tweak. That is actually where most of the misc options come from early on. Like, if you had a law related to pets, then there would be a lot of options based on that so you can tweak the specifics without having to update the law all the time.”

“A really silly example would be using your world’s tomato. While technically a fruit, most of the population consider it a vegetable. If you had a law taxing fruit and people were debating over if it applied to a tomato, an option would pop up in misc that would let you choose. Basically, if you give it enough time, you will regret ever even mentioning there not being a lot of options.”

Ace sighs, “I guess it would make sense that without having chosen much of anything from the other panels, there wouldn’t be much in the options. At least the dungeon bit had a very interesting option that everyone will be thankful for.”

Lily laughs, “You’re a dungeon town. If there weren’t interesting options for it, something has gone wrong.”

Ace nods, “True enough. Though back to the various positions I can fill. Do they get anything else from that? Actually, do I get anything for being the town leader?”

Lily shrugs, “Eh, not particularly. At least not to start. For the most part, the various officials will be ways of distributing responsibility. For instance, if you set up taxes in the laws, you will have an official in charge of that. By default, the position will have control over the taxes unless you overrule them. Another useful one is that once you have some farms set up, there will be a position meant to keep track of food.”

“Remember how I said you can set up quests to stock the larder on the second floor? Well, that position has the permissions to handle that sort of thing. That way you don’t have to worry about the specifics of what is stored beyond just knowing if there is enough overall.”

Ace sighs, “Well, all of that can be decided upon later after I gather the others. While I wanted to give all the founders a position that doesn’t seem feasible or desirable.”

Lily tilts her head to the side, “Founders? I’m not asking but I assume that came with a title path. When setting up the citizenship stuff, the system should offer a pre-made founders citizenship option. Seeing as the anchor to make a town isn’t cheap you normally end up with a few people who can claim to have founded a town and that citizenship package is there to help. While not quite an official position like guard captain is, it has some similar benefits later on so well worth it.”

Ace waves that off, “I already have plans for an inner circle made up of all the original people who stayed to face the wolves.”

Lily shakes her head, “That’s nice and all, but the system has a few special things added to the founder package that other types of citizenship can’t get. You might have noticed that I said official positions don’t get much right now? Well, with the right development, things change and founders can get in on it. Useful if you have someone focused on training so much they don’t want an official position. If anything, you might get a few interesting options to play with.”

Ace shrugs, “I’ll discuss it with the others later. Honestly, all of this needs to be taken care of later. I might even end up changing the government structure so I am no longer the only one at the top of the pyramid.”

Lily taps the counter with an irritated look. “Let me rephrase that. You will make a citizenship type for founders. It will be useful for you and the others. Even if you choose to change to a completely new form of government, that type of citizen is important and only you can make it. If anyone else who doesn’t share the founder title was to gain control of the panel, the option would not be there.”

Ace stands up and stretches, “Fine, I’ll do it. After I talk to the others. We’ve cludged along this far and are still fine.”

Akhier

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