Were there every any plans for...

[Techwright]

Were there ever any known plans for the zones that are outlined but inaccessible in the Paragon City map? For example, that light green zone east of Independence Port, the one with the rivermouth, looks like they intended a green-line station, possibly a switch track to Salamanca.  

 

Also, the actual playable area for many of these zones is rather small.  There's practically a whole 'nuther zone's worth of space in the map's center below Perez Park.  Were there any plans to expand the zones into these areas, perhaps when the war walls were brought down?

 

As a side note, I knew Independence Port was big, but compared to the other zones, wow.  It really should have a third tram station on the other side of the harbor.

 

[Redlynne]

At the 2012 Player Summit I tried to convince a few devs that there ought to be a railyard for getting all those shipping containers from Independence Port on rails for shipping around the rest of of New England.  That would have meant opening space to the WEST of Independence port north of the Rikti Crash Site/War Zone and be a big switching yard with steel tracks and lots of railroad rolling stock on the tracks (and skirmishes happening around the zone kind of like Boomtown) where the place is substantially damaged and the fight is to "reclaim" it since it was OUTSIDE the War Walls for awhile.

 

The response I got could be best described as ... polite interest ... but of course, nothing ever came of it.

[MTeague]

Now I'm curious.  Which of these corresponds to Khalisti Wharf?

[ArchVileTerror]

Without logging in to double-check, I'm pretty sure the Wharf is "here'ish."

[Aberrant]

Here's the full size image. You can see a little marker between Skyway and Talos for Skyway International Airport. I always imagined a zone revamp of Skyway would've expanded out to the East to incorporate a proper airport for the City. Either that or an outdoor style mission map for a new Task Force or similar, with an airplane in flight interior mission for defending a plane from hijacking by the Sky Raiders.

[Oubliette_Red]

Here's the current map in-game.

 

[Aberrant]

Here it is without all the writing!

[Redlynne]

4 hours ago, Aberrant said:

You can see a little marker between Skyway and Talos for Skyway International Airport.

Drawn without reference material ... apparently.

 

ANY airport, especially an international airport(!), would need to occupy a land area larger than Independence Port.

To be honest, you'd want to have a zone the size of some of the Shadow Shard zones(!) in order to fit an international airport with runways 10,000 ft long for heavily loaded 747 flights, and possibly even C5 Galaxy landings (if needed).

 

Oh and you'd need to "point" those runways in directions that don't aim directly into tall buildings.  Are there any tall buildings in Steel Canyon, Perez Park, King's Row, Brickstown, etc. ...?

 

Trust me, you'd have to go someplace either south or east of the entire map to find enough open space that doesn't send flight lines into buildings to have an international airport near Paragon City.

[Techwright]

On 5/13/2020 at 10:10 AM, Redlynne said:

At the 2012 Player Summit I tried to convince a few devs that there ought to be a railyard for getting all those shipping containers from Independence Port on rails for shipping around the rest of of New England. 

I remember also having the idea that a rail yard would be a great fit in the game.   I still think it would, if for no other reason than I want to see Mr. Incredible clones lifting boxcars for exercise. LOL.    I also recall catching the art director's interest at one point  when I suggested this is a big Northern city, and it needs ethnic communities: Chinatown, Little Italy, Czech Village, etc.

13 hours ago, Aberrant said:

Here's the full size image. You can see a little marker between Skyway and Talos for Skyway International Airport. I always imagined a zone revamp of Skyway would've expanded out to the East to incorporate a proper airport for the City. Either that or an outdoor style mission map for a new Task Force or similar, with an airplane in flight interior mission for defending a plane from hijacking by the Sky Raiders.

That's an interesting mission idea.  I always pictured an International airport zone as a launch point for expanding the game to World of Heroes, opening up one continent after another with major expansions.

12 hours ago, Oubliette_Red said:

Here's the current map in-game.

 

Now you have me needing to go back to KW and compare it to what's on the map.  I'd imagine it was heavily altered.  Also, isn't the crossing in KW pretty low for letting cargo ships into IP?

8 hours ago, Redlynne said:

Drawn without reference material ... apparently.

 

ANY airport, especially an international airport(!), would need to occupy a land area larger than Independence Port.

 

So not even a small craft downtown airport?  I suppose the idea could be retconned into a heliport.  Maybe even have a bit of near-futurism and add a drone freight business at one end.

[Redlynne]

Airports are supposed to be big, flat, open areas with runways to land on that have no obstacles at elevation around the perimeter of the airfield.  That's done for a REASON ... guess what it is (and your first two guesses don't count).

[Marine X]

Probably one option would be to utilize Boomtown and the diagonal area between Indy Port and Croatoa for the airport ( Basically expand Boomtown to include the new Airport with the Terminal at it's existing South East Side). It would be adjacent to an available Rail Line with Air Traffic landing from the Southwest just above the Rikti War Zone and ending up facing toward the coast North of Boomtown. The existing rail would utilize a tunnel beneath the airport to get to Croatoa. That would be a neat place for some new Unsavory group to loiter around in and plot mischief.

[Doc_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Marine X said:

The existing rail would utilize a tunnel beneath the airport to get to Croatoa.

Keep in mind that Croatoa is (in theory) a three hour train ride away.  It's not actually directly adjacent to the City.

"Croatoa is a three hour train ride upstate from Paragon City , and was once the favorite lakeside vacation spot for city dwellers. For the past three years, the train service has been closed due to the Rikti Invasion, but due to recent events the government have reopened the line."  - Issue 5 patch notes.
 

[Techwright]

8 minutes ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Keep in mind that Croatoa is (in theory) a three hour train ride away.  It's not actually directly adjacent to the City.

"Croatoa is a three hour train ride upstate from Paragon City , and was once the favorite lakeside vacation spot for city dwellers. For the past three years, the train service has been closed due to the Rikti Invasion, but due to recent events the government have reopened the line."  - Issue 5 patch notes.
 

Yeah, a 3-hour monorail train to the countryside? The patch may have made that canon, but I'm not buying it, especially when the canon map conflicts with the location info.  Had the canon map had an inset (like so often is done for Hawaii and Alaska) and had the train appeared differently in Croatoa, like more of a traditional commuter train, I'd be happy to buy into the idea of a distance commute, with an understanding that we just changed lines at the last stop in town.

 

[Yoru-hime]

I'm inclined to think that the map scale is in error with regards to Croatoa.

 

Look at how close the map suggests Salmanaca is to Paragon City, then look around the zone. The train station there is the anomaly. Does anything else there look like it's just a few miles from a major metropolis? It's a town surrounded by forests, hills and abandoned farms as far as the eye can see, not the commuter suburb that its map placement and rail line suggest that it would probably be.

 

If Paragon City is the equivalent of NYC, then I'd think that Salmanaca is the equivalent of somewhere like Ithaca or Utica. Getting there using public transit could easily take most of the day, if it's possible at all.

 

It would have been really cool if they'd set up a commuter platform or a bus stop in Salmanaca instead of reusing the existing resources, but either no one thought of it or there just wasn't time/budget to build it.

[AlabasterKnight]

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

Yeah, a 3-hour monorail train to the countryside? The patch may have made that canon, but I'm not buying it, especially when the canon map conflicts with the location info.  Had the canon map had an inset (like so often is done for Hawaii and Alaska) and had the train appeared differently in Croatoa, like more of a traditional commuter train, I'd be happy to buy into the idea of a distance commute, with an understanding that we just changed lines at the last stop in town.

 

 

I like that except, I'd rather see Crotoa removed from tram menus and a zone made in the area between IP and Boomtown as a Casino coast, including riverboat casinos... with a featured special train station that connects Crotoa there and other possible future countryside zones... including the ability in the far future to have the connector to another city.

I was going to pull quote that "South and East" suggestion for the airport and second it. In the area South of Dark Astoria with northeast-southwest runways. 
In my experience, cities that develop without a major Int'l airport near the center often put them in the boonies. When I was a kid, the ride to Dulles felt like an eternity, so if the Airport was a zone where I just suggested, it would make a nice backstop. And later, like the train station above, People could fly to other cities...

I'd love to see the cape on the east side of the bay turn into something, AND

I am totally in favor of a train yard at the center of a zone west of Independence Port, also with a second train station to the countryside.

Edited May 15, 2020 by AlabasterKnight

[Machariel]

On 5/14/2020 at 11:05 AM, Aberrant said:

Here's the full size image. You can see a little marker between Skyway and Talos for Skyway International Airport. I always imagined a zone revamp of Skyway would've expanded out to the East to incorporate a proper airport for the City. Either that or an outdoor style mission map for a new Task Force or similar, with an airplane in flight interior mission for defending a plane from hijacking by the Sky Raiders.

i like how the highest-quality versions of this image always have the little crease marks from the original folded map 😂

[Redlynne]

5 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Keep in mind that Croatoa is (in theory) a three hour train ride away.

At the speed that the trams move relative to the scale of the city zones ... I can believe it ...

[MTeague]

On 5/14/2020 at 3:22 PM, Redlynne said:

Oh and you'd need to "point" those runways in directions that don't aim directly into tall buildings.  Are there any tall buildings in Steel Canyon, Perez Park, King's Row, Brickstown, etc. ...?

No no no.  Portal Corp is on the job.  The planes taxi into giant inter-dimensional portals and take off in alternate realities, re-entering our world about 3 miles south of Striga.

and there's a Giant Honkin' Portal that incoming planes fly directly into to get to the right runway to land on while bypassing the city, the exact same way.

 

THAT wouldn't end tooooo badly, you think? 😄

[Redlynne]

Definitely no precedents for that being a Bad Thing™ ...

 

[Techwright]

On 5/15/2020 at 12:35 PM, AlabasterKnight said:

 

I like that except, I'd rather see Crotoa removed from tram menus and a zone made in the area between IP and Boomtown as a Casino coast, including riverboat casinos... with a featured special train station that connects Crotoa there and other possible future countryside zones... including the ability in the far future to have the connector to another city.
 

I could get behind this with a couple of additional points:

 

1.) "special train station" could be a stacked station: tram up top, buses and/or ground train on lower level.  Then just adjust the Croatoa station to reflect the new transport.

 

2.) Casinos suggest organized crime, at least in the old-school sense, and since IP is next door, and is a major hub of Family activity, it would be a natural spill-over.  I'd want a line coming off that stacked station and heading into the west side of IP, say middle west, and new material added to the west side of IP, opening it up to more than dreary runs to the other side for brief adventures.   IP is big enough for 3 stations.

 

3.) Casinos also suggest the Rogue Islands and might present an opportunity for blue side to have some of the villains from the casino on the islands put in an appearance.

[Reiska]

Someone ought to measure to see if the total lengths of Steel Canyon, Atlas Park and Skyway City north-to-south, in-game, come close to matching up with the length of Independence Port.

 

I wonder how close the scale actually is.

[Sakura Tenshi]

On 5/15/2020 at 8:01 AM, Techwright said:

Yeah, a 3-hour monorail train to the countryside? The patch may have made that canon, but I'm not buying it, especially when the canon map conflicts with the location info.  Had the canon map had an inset (like so often is done for Hawaii and Alaska) and had the train appeared differently in Croatoa, like more of a traditional commuter train, I'd be happy to buy into the idea of a distance commute, with an understanding that we just changed lines at the last stop in town.

 

That map also points south Faultline as the location of Hamidon spawn (or at least sighting of hamidon creatures) and mentions a Baumtown Airport* when no mention is really made in-game. Closest being a small arc from Crimson saying "a passenger plane is coming into town" but never says where specifically. Also, sometimes artwork like this and the people writing the lore are not given clear communication and just do whatever than acknowledge one another's work. I personally like the idea of Croatoa being at least three hours of train riding to get there since the whole idea is the place is extremely removed from Paragon and the ravages of the Rikti War (no warwalls, no signs of buildings having been damaged, and so on). But of course, assuming the train is going even 35mph, a three hour train ride would put Croatoa over 90 miles away from Paragon when Rhode Island itself isn't even 50 miles at it's greatest dimension (not to mention Paragon's geography defies a lot of Rhode Island's actual geography).

 

All in all, it's just the sort of stuff that makes me dream of a remade City of Heroes where, among other things, the city layout makes a bit more sense. Of course I'd also be a cheap bastard and just move Croatoa up to Maine, mash in aspects of First/Night Ward and Dark Astoria (classic) and effectively turn it into Solomon Island from The Secret World, make it so Skyway City's 'highways' actually go somewhere and the zone effectively connects to every other zone in the game via it's highway system, make it so there's different styles of War Walls** representing Rikti design, human design, and in Atlas Park's case a pre-war design made by Positron, along with a bunch of other nonsensical changes.

 

*Baumtown Airport also need not be that large of it's not actually a fullsized airport meant for commercial flying, I live near a fairly small air field which is still considered an airport but nothing larger than small, privately owned rotoprops and helicopters ever take off or land there. Similar to the air strip seen in Neutropolis and Cap Au. However if one were to make an airport in Paragon, could always handwave the smaller size with new super-science passenger liner airplanes needing less space to take off and land.

**According to the lore, interestingly, it seems to say both Rikti and human sides erected Warwalls. https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Rikti_War#Invasion

[Techwright]

53 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

All in all, it's just the sort of stuff that makes me dream of a remade City of Heroes where, among other things, the city layout makes a bit more sense.

I've always felt a COH/V 2 should not retell the story of this Paragon City again.  We've already got plenty of canon lore showing a myriad of universes, so start again with Paragon City of a different universe.  Differences between the two should allow for things such as a "city layout [that] makes a bit more sense".  It also allows for certain key dead figures to still be alive, or for that matter, for entirely different figures to take their place.  

[Sakura Tenshi]

2 minutes ago, Techwright said:

I've always felt a COH/V 2 should not retell the story of this Paragon City again.  We've already got plenty of canon lore showing a myriad of universes, so start again with Paragon City of a different universe.  Differences between the two should allow for things such as a "city layout [that] makes a bit more sense".  It also allows for certain key dead figures to still be alive, or for that matter, for entirely different figures to take their place.  

Kind of agreed, I've mentioned in another thread actually that if I made a 'city of heroes 2' it would probably be more of a continuity reboot and I guess alternate universe with details mentioned here.

 

[Techwright]

3 minutes ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

Kind of agreed, I've mentioned in another thread actually that if I made a 'city of heroes 2' it would probably be more of a continuity reboot and I guess alternate universe with details mentioned here.

 

Yours is an interesting concept.  Not to derail my own thread, but as a counterpoint to the mortality idea for Statesman,  how about the control of the Well?  We've already heard from Lady Jane that Stateman rushed to power, and "pulls his punches", so to speak, lest the Well take greater control of him.  What if that threat were front and center?  He's using his power less and less because the Well is pulling at him more and more with each fight.  He sees a point of no return looming in his future, and is guiding a new generation to take over before the Well remakes him into a being of power with no moral code, essentially becoming a major threat to hero and villain alike.  His sometimes unpleasant nature is a result of that destructive possession by the Well.