Concept for Galaxy City Revamp: 'Reconstruction'

[mechahamham]

While I like the 'Destroyed Galaxy City' tutorial, I hate the idea that we just lost Galaxy City and never had it reconstructed. I've been pouring over an idea for a while for reconstructing Galaxy as a higher-level zone, about the same level spread as Brickstown. The zone would be modified quite a bit, using original geometry, but also quite a bit of new geometry around the border to include new buildings.

 

Difficulty: High. This would require a significant amount of modeling, something that the Homecoming team doesn't have a ton of ability to do. We've had a few zone additions, but this would go maybe a step or two beyond what was necessary to create Echo Plaza.

 

Regardless, if any or all of the ideas here are useful, please feel free to use them in any form!

 

Story Arcs:

 

The idea behind the story arcs is that these should be along the lines of the origin arcs in the original version of Galaxy rather than a overarching zone storyline. Additionally, I've added arcs for the two blue-side alignments.

 

Never Forget What They Took From You (Vigilante):

Shawn McCrehy is one of the many residents of Galaxy City who lost loved ones during the Neo-Shivan attack. The experience has hardened, perhaps even radicalized him, and he's out for blood. Shawn maintains that Freedom Corps' Longbow troops acted poorly and, in one notable case, homicidally recklessly in their 'defense' of Galaxy City. Shawn has requested your aid in bringing justice to a murderer.

 

Heart of the Galaxy (Hero):

Kevin Graham has lived in his older sister's shadow for more than a decade after her passing. "Some people try to worship my sister, like Galaxy Girl was some kind of saint. I've still got scars that say otherwise. She *was* a good person but now someone's trying to tell people she was some kind of fascist messiah. You have to stop Arachnos from *using* my sister's memory like that."

 

A Good Cop (Natural):

Captain Dan Roholland of the Federal Bureau of Investigations has been dispatched to Paragon City to help the Paragon Police Department investigate allegations of corruption within their rank and file. He's ready to bring charges, but a complication has arisen... a complication called 'The Malta Group' whose members are active within the PPD.

 

When the Walls Fell (Tech):

Dana Jericho believes very strongly that the War Walls surrounding Paragon City neighborhoods have not only outlived their usefulness, but are actively harming the communities they're supposed to protect. "They didn't stop the second Rikti invasion. They didn't stop the Shivan Meteors. They DO stifle commerce, education, and more. And now they're swarming with robots from another dimension!?" Regardless, you have to get to the bottom of the infestation of the War Walls by Praetorian Clockwork.

 

Informed Consent (Science):

Brian Maddock, or as he prefers, 'Br'ock', was at one point a member of the mysterious Lost, the cult-like gang that seemed devoted to Rikti ideals. Then he became a conscript of the Reformist Faction of Rikti invaders here on Primal Earth. "Listen, Hero. You think you're doing a good thing 'rescuing' us from the Rikti. And, maybe for some people: you are. But for a lot of us, the Rikti gave us a place, community, and stability. I had nothing but abuse and addiction in my life before. Now one of your friends is hunting us and forcibly detaching us from: the psychic network. Many of us: do not want that. Many of us: would rather die. You've got to help us."

 

Guarding the Guardians (Mutant):

Ashley Brinson is the president of the PCU Guardian Angels student association. The Guardian Angels are super-powered university students dedicated to making sure the PCU campuses stay safe for all students. Unfortunately for the Guardian Angels, some of their members are being subverted. It's no secret that many young people come to university to party, but the Carnival of Shadows' depraved brand of 'partying' is everything the Guardian Angels are trying to prevent.

 

Out of Time, Out of Mind (Magic):

Murder is afoot in Galaxy City, and the Midnighters need your help. A serial killer is on the loose. Martina Demetria, Midnighter Archivist, thinks she may have a line on the killer. "So far as we can tell, each and every one of the victims has had an Orenbegan Spirit Thorn either implanted or on their person. The perpetrator is targeting Circle Mages... and murdering their host bodies in the process."

 

Points of Interest:

 

Police Radio Mission Contacts Simon Angel and Danny Frost on loan from the UK Metropolitan Police Force. (Suspiciously similar to Simon Pegg & Nick Frost in costume from 'Hot Fuzz'.)

 

Reconfigured War Wall Enclosure

 

Pleiades Banking District and Memorial Tower

 

PCU Galaxy City Satellite Campus

 

Star Rise Point Apartment Complex

 

Fallen Heroes Memorial Museum: Repurposing and renovating the Freedom Corps building in the heart of Galaxy City is the new museum dedicated to all of Paragon City's heroes who have passed while in the city's service. The museum is currently displaying exhibits dedicated to the memory of 'Atlas' Barnabas Branson and his Wife Gloria, 'Galaxy Girl' Kelly Graham and 'Dauntless' Robbie Prescott, and the inimitable 'Statesman' Marcus Cole and 'Maiden Justice' Monica Cole.

 

Menders Baker and Tennant: Near the entrances to King's Row and Galaxy City, Mender Baker and Mender Tennant watch carefully for lower-level heroes to enter Galaxy City. They'll offer an explanation of the realities of the reconstruction, and offer to transport heroes to Echo: Galaxy City.

 

[Rudra]

Paragon City still hasn't been rebuilt from the Rikti war. The older destroyed regions which the city would have been planning and trying to get funds to rebuild should be done before they start working on Galaxy City's reconstruction.

 

That said, I do agree with one thing. Galaxy City as a new high level zone would be a good idea. And it is something the HC devs seem to be working on given the stories we have about it. Not an already reconstructed Galaxy City, but the destroyed one with all the (possible) horror and danger that awaits.

[Shin Magmus]

Perhaps a new enemy group for the evil super-dangerous Galaxy City.  I recommend a new, even more mutated version of the Trolls that are in league with the Shivan scourge which destroyed the city.  Let's call them... "Forum Trolls!"

[Steampunkette]

 

This is the map of Destroyed Galaxy City. This is all there is to it.

 

While the Devs could certainly plop these pieces down onto the map of Galaxy City and presumably remove components already occupying that space...

 

It would be an incredibly massive undertaking to rebuild the map to have it "Destroyed". Now I'm absolutely not against that option. Personally I'd prefer it if Galaxy City were a foothold of the Battalion on Earth and it became the "Rikti Warzone" of the initial invasion.

 

But we need to be realistic that this would be an insane quantity of work. The Kallisti Wharf map was already put together in the data files from Paragon Studios. Sure it had a lot of gaps and holes in it that our dev team courageously fixed. And they took the time to fix the car pathing, install spawn-logic, add missions and mission doors, create a pair of new villain groups, upgrade and update other NPC groups, etc...

 

And it took 6 years.

 

I'd love to see Destroyed Galaxy City as an end game zone akin to Kallisti Wharf or the RWZ. But we gotta expect it to take a -very- long time. 

[Sakura Tenshi]

Tangential, but besides the destroyed Galaxy tutorial corridor, the instanced map in Shining Stars and Heart of Darkness arcs suggest Galaxy isn’t nearly as wrecked as people seem to say. Heck, look past the blue instanced barrier wall and everything seems perfectly intact.

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, Steampunkette said:

 

This is the map of Destroyed Galaxy City. This is all there is to it.

 

While the Devs could certainly plop these pieces down onto the map of Galaxy City and presumably remove components already occupying that space...

 

It would be an incredibly massive undertaking to rebuild the map to have it "Destroyed". Now I'm absolutely not against that option. Personally I'd prefer it if Galaxy City were a foothold of the Battalion on Earth and it became the "Rikti Warzone" of the initial invasion.

 

But we need to be realistic that this would be an insane quantity of work. The Kallisti Wharf map was already put together in the data files from Paragon Studios. Sure it had a lot of gaps and holes in it that our dev team courageously fixed. And they took the time to fix the car pathing, install spawn-logic, add missions and mission doors, create a pair of new villain groups, upgrade and update other NPC groups, etc...

 

And it took 6 years.

 

I'd love to see Destroyed Galaxy City as an end game zone akin to Kallisti Wharf or the RWZ. But we gotta expect it to take a -very- long time. 

I'm fine with it taking a very long time. I fully understand the situation. However, I would very much prefer a continuation of the story that I have to wait to get than simply plop the old Galaxy City map except with maybe a few changes as a rebuilt before any other destroyed part of the city just to bring back Galaxy City and roll back/do away with the story that was part of its destruction.

[lemming]

This suggestion while nice, runs counter to the HC Arc about Piecemeal in what is going on in the current GC.

[mechahamham]

17 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

It would be an incredibly massive undertaking to rebuild the map to have it "Destroyed".

 

I may have not phrased it well. My intention was to use a modified version of the old Galaxy City map, what's now rendered as Echo: Galaxy City, as a base for this new zone. There would be some new buildings and a couple of new protrusions out from the old War Wall enclosure to make it less square. Think of a dogleg hanging out near the old KR entrance to house the PCU campus building or the like.

[MTeague]

I mean, Galaxy City is in the middle of downtown. I could see them rebuild that (at least start to) before Baumtaun.  

Although I will admit, I've wanted to see more progress on Boomtown rebuilding for ... a raelly long time now.

[Rudra]

2 hours ago, mechahamham said:

There would be some new buildings and a couple of new protrusions out from the old War Wall enclosure to make it less square. Think of a dogleg hanging out near the old KR entrance to house the PCU campus building or the like.

Galaxy City is boxed in by Kallisti Wharf to the north, King's Row to the south, Perez Park to the east, and Independence Port to the west. You can't make protrusions to expand Galaxy City without taking territory from one of those four zones.

[keyguardactive]

Eh, based on the map there's a little space around each of the zones that's inaccessible. You can get away with playing with the borders a little. 

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, keyguardactive said:

Eh, based on the map there's a little space around each of the zones that's inaccessible. You can get away with playing with the borders a little. 

I'm guessing that space is for the war walls and to have room to show transition links. (Edit: The reason I say this is because the zones look like puzzle pieces that fit together but are placed gapped for reference purposes. Or rather, like the zone itself is drawn smaller on the map than it actually is so there are gaps for reference purposes.)

 

Edited yesterday at 12:44 AM by Rudra

[Techwright]

20 hours ago, Rudra said:

I'm guessing that space is for the war walls and to have room to show transition links. (Edit: The reason I say this is because the zones look like puzzle pieces that fit together but are placed gapped for reference purposes. Or rather, like the zone itself is drawn smaller on the map than it actually is so there are gaps for reference purposes.)

 

 

I believe I understand what your saying, except that doesn't explain the "negative space" created by the square between King's Row and Perez Park, or the large variance of the western wall to the colored western border of Skyway City, or the large gap between Kallisti Warf and Galaxy City, or many of the other spaces, large and small, that do no line up with war wall patterns.

 

What does work in a lore-kind of way is to say there was limited time/resources, and therefore war walls were built on a condensed area of each zone, with tunneling, or reinforced tunnel-like road construction between each protected part of a zone.  It's a bit like historical forts or castles:  the area of control is much broader, including farms and parts of the city outside the walls, but when the invaders show up, everyone abandons all that and flees to the walled areas.   The problem, of course, is that Paragon City's fort structure has had only limited success, and that is declining, clearly, as Rikti have found ways to drop the energy barrier defenses long enough to launch zone invasions (not to mention other groups' invasions).  

 

[mechahamham]

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

The problem, of course, is that Paragon City's fort structure has had only limited success, and that is declining, clearly, as Rikti have found ways to drop the energy barrier defenses long enough to launch zone invasions (not to mention other groups' invasions).  

 

I didn't spell it out in my summary since I'm still toying with the idea of turning this into an AE arc. (It's kinda daunting to write an arc that no one will play because they're only interested in farming.)

 

The idea for the arc would be that the War Wall technology is both physically and metaphorically aging, requiring more maintenance as it goes along and growing more obsolete as newer technology is discovered-- something that applies to RL CoH. It was originally 'thrown up' as a stop-gap solution during and immediately after the first Rikti War, but the consequences have never been adequately addressed. It's segregated neighborhoods, frequently along racial and ethnic lines, and is getting in the way of what should be a melting-pot urban life. The only people consistently unaffected by it are the city's criminal factions, who use either high-tech means to avoid it, or the literally 'low-tech' solution of traveling through the sewers to bypass the walls.

 

In the story arc idea I had planned, displaced Praetorian Clockworks find the walls around Galaxy and decide that it's broken technology that needs repair. They splinter into two factions, much along the Neuron/Antimatter split. The 'Home Companion' faction are those who think that the right way to handle the issue is to strengthen and extend the walls downward. The 'Mender/Builder' faction seeks to dismantle the walls and use Antimatter's Sonic Barrier technology to better serve the original requirements for which the War Walls were created. In the process, it *looks like* they're fighting. They are leaving serious gaps in the force fields and even the concrete walls themselves. The player would have to fight both factions and then convince them to work on a compromise solution.

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, mechahamham said:

 

I didn't spell it out in my summary since I'm still toying with the idea of turning this into an AE arc. (It's kinda daunting to write an arc that no one will play because they're only interested in farming.)

 

The idea for the arc would be that the War Wall technology is both physically and metaphorically aging, requiring more maintenance as it goes along and growing more obsolete as newer technology is discovered-- something that applies to RL CoH. It was originally 'thrown up' as a stop-gap solution during and immediately after the first Rikti War, but the consequences have never been adequately addressed. It's segregated neighborhoods, frequently along racial and ethnic lines, and is getting in the way of what should be a melting-pot urban life. The only people consistently unaffected by it are the city's criminal factions, who use either high-tech means to avoid it, or the literally 'low-tech' solution of traveling through the sewers to bypass the walls.

 

In the story arc idea I had planned, displaced Praetorian Clockworks find the walls around Galaxy and decide that it's broken technology that needs repair. They splinter into two factions, much along the Neuron/Antimatter split. The 'Home Companion' faction are those who think that the right way to handle the issue is to strengthen and extend the walls downward. The 'Mender/Builder' faction seeks to dismantle the walls and use Antimatter's Sonic Barrier technology to better serve the original requirements for which the War Walls were created. In the process, it *looks like* they're fighting. They are leaving serious gaps in the force fields and even the concrete walls themselves. The player would have to fight both factions and then convince them to work on a compromise solution.

Yeah, that should work fine as an AE arc. I don't see it being how Paragon City actually works though. Because it sure seems to e that the War Walls break up the city by zone, not by voter ethnicity.

[Techwright]

4 hours ago, mechahamham said:

 

 

The idea for the arc would be that the War Wall technology is both physically and metaphorically aging, requiring more maintenance as it goes along and growing more obsolete as newer technology is discovered-- something that applies to RL CoH. It was originally 'thrown up' as a stop-gap solution during and immediately after the first Rikti War, but the consequences have never been adequately addressed. 

 

 

I'm actually not surprised at the rapid decay.  (I realize there was a real-world need for war walls due to the limitations of games in 2004, but since we're reconstructing it as lore...) If you think about it, the war walls are a concrete project on a scale bigger than the Hoover Dam, and erected in (I think) less than half the time.  Likely heroes with qualifying abilities helped speed the process, but that much concrete...well, the wall core probably is still drying, the quality of the concrete may not be the best due to the rush, and villain groups are forever attacking it.  I'd not be surprised one day to find the Prime Clockwork on top of the concrete trying to disassemble the metal energy grid posts.    

[mechahamham]

1 hour ago, Techwright said:

f you think about it, the war walls are a concrete project on a scale bigger than the Hoover Dam, and erected in (I think) less than half the time.  Likely heroes with qualifying abilities helped speed the process, but that much concrete...well, the wall core probably is still drying, the quality of the concrete may not be the best due to the rush,

 

I'm not a civil engineer, but the idea of that much concrete just standing vertically with huge mechanical energy projectors hanging out the top with no guide wires gives me the jibblies. What happens in a high wind, Raymond?! Tell us what happens!! I honestly couldn't tell you HOW concrete is supposed to cure at all in structures as large as the Hoover Dam, but we're supposed to believe all the concrete in the War Walls has no cracks after 20+ years?

 

Of course engineering physics need not apply to the game world. Just look at all the mostly-intact buildings in Boomtown that have falllen over and are resting on one side rather than a base. I think it's the Destined for Valhalla badge that's on top of a building where one is just laying on the other at a 45 degree angle, with no signs of sag.

 

That said, the engineering physics CAN be an interesting starting point for storytelling. 

Edited 18 hours ago by mechahamham

[Techwright]

10 hours ago, mechahamham said:

 

Of course engineering physics need not apply to the game world. Just look at all the mostly-intact buildings in Boomtown that have falllen over and are resting on one side rather than a base. I think it's the Destined for Valhalla badge that's on top of a building where one is just laying on the other at a 45 degree angle, with no signs of sag.

 

 

Yes, the Boomtown towers have always been a point of curiosity to me as the game came out in a post-9/11 world where we could actually see how the (horrific) physics work.  That said, I've heard MMOs take about 7 years to develop, so maybe Boomtown was crafted before Sept. 2001.  I know with the Feb. 26, 1993 attack on the WTC towers, the fear was they'd fall intact outwards, like trees toppling, and perhaps that viewpoint influenced design choices like Boomtown buildings leaning against each other.

[lemming]

I've always assumed that's not concrete as we know it.  The material is dried via a lot of handwavium.

[srmalloy]

And judging from the sheer amount of concrete used in building Paragon City, whoever supplied the 'crete would have made an absolute fortune.