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Offering asylum to other guilds is a good start, Why not offer various mercenary groups a place to call home. I personally see a LE organization as a place ruled by a military with the military as a police force as well. With a council of lords that are generals of their own armies all based out of one settlement. This would have the benefit of relieving some of the weight of keeping the player base interested until launch.

It would also give each group of military the ability to set their own goals, which would fit in quite nicely with the overall evil of the organization/settlement/nation.

Saying only that they must act together in the defense of the kingdom and lord generals and pay a percentage of their profits to the upkeep and advancement of the whole kingdom. This would give them the benefit of having a player controlled settlement without all of the costs and keeps them from having to use all of their forces for defense.

I'm going for pets as well.

Pets - Pets are primarily animal companions for rangers and druids. It will also allow familiars and random guard dogs or other such animals to follow the players along, but those are not primary features of a class so they'll be less useful. The tech involved is all the AI for pets pathing with you plus combat AI, plus all the mechanics work balancing them and all the animations. This also makes things like hiring mercenaries or hirelings to follow you around possible since its basically the same system. Also vanity pets so you can have a random pet animal that follows you around.

The system allow classes with companions to keep more of their flavor and adds a mechanical benefit to those classes.

The "pet" system would set it up for the merchents to be able to hire gaurds and the like to help get goods back to town.
I know player could do this and would be better at gaurding, but filling out your gaurd ranks with some more lesser troops will decide more than one fight.

A pet system could be used for pack animals and the like, helping anyone who needs to move goods.

1. Pack mules and donkeys aren't mounts. So they are pets. These are what traders are going to need early in the game. Not fast mounts that can't carry much, and not expensive carts and wagons that carry far more than needed. Even it we want carts we can have mules pull them though.

I agree with this, if they allow pack animals into the pet system it would make it 100x better chioce for the economy.

How Mounts Early On Hurt Us

1. It makes a small map smaller. In many ways it doesn't matter how large a map is. The size of a map is how long it takes you to cross it. People get more out of travel and exploration if the world is revealed to them gradually, rather than handed to them quickly/easily as they gallop through it. Mounts become nessecary as the world grows. Before that they are un-needed and allow people to access content FAR too easily.

I agree though if mounts only increased speed by a minor amount like say +30% with a "gallop speed" that would increase that to 50% once every 10min for 15sec for quick escapes, it wouldn't be too bad. Just as long as mounts are moving at a reasonable speed and not 480%+ like WoW it shouldn't be horrible.

I could see 3 types of food:

1. "Fuel" for Settlements. This would be something that is used every hour by the settlement to "feed" the NPCs that invisibly run stuff behind the scenes. You run out of this and your settlement will suffer and eventually collapse. This would be "Barrels of Foodstuff" or some good name.

This would be ideal, farms produce bulk food stuffs that are labeled "bulk wheat" or "bulk corn" have them all crated up or in barrels, a farmer or a merchant could break down the bulk goods into usable amounts for cooking or get them to a settlement to be fed to the peasants, keeping the starvation away from the masses and keeping the settlement running smoothly.

2. "Prepared Meals" for Inns and Taverns. This would be a type of food that isn't useful unless purchased at an Inn or Tavern. These would be fairly cheap to produce compared to rations since they are not usable in the field.

Instead of having food as a buff or to remove a debuff I believe stopping at an inn should a "relaxation=morale" type buff, something tied like "food quality" + "entertainment quality" + "companionship" + "time spent = a boost to morale (with a cap that keeps it from getting crazy high), that lasts for a full game day (6hours I believe).

The same could be said of camps though you'd need a bard or some other kind of entertainment to get the entire bonus.

Now, if they want to tie food & drink to the refresh mechanics (the "ability reset button") that could work.

Something along the lines of different quality food & drinks which determine how long the refresh takes and how many abilities reuses it refreshes.

cheap bread and water gives you 1 extra ability reuses, common bread & water 2 extra ability reuse, elegant meal and fine drink 4 extra ability reuses.

In combo with the above, adding in the quality of entertainment, companionship(just sitting near others while eating/drinking should do this one)and time spent seems like an ok way to do it as long as the morale boost is a small enough reward or buff that in a one on one fight it's not an I win kind of reward but would add up in parties of adventurers to turn an equal fight into a slight advantage for those that have a morale boost.

3. "Trail Rations." Standard Adventurer fare. These cost a bit more than Prepared Meals since they have to be specially prepared to last in the field.

I can't find the quote but in addition to the tie to the refresh of abilities you could keep them cheap and have your trail rations increase your heal rate while eating. (I would keep 1st aid firmly in the fixing bad injuries/stopping bleeding area if this were the case, so as not to cut the demand of cheap trail rations.)

So food by itself increases your healing and helps refresh abilities. Going to a tavern, inn or camp with fellow adventurers causes a morale bonus and refreshes more abilities, the NCP population gets fed through bulk goods. This system allows for the stratagies in warfare keeping your settlement fed, Trail rations should be eaten on a regular basis by players creating a need for them and gets peoples butts into taverns or around campfires without the "oh its been 10 minutes, I better go back to town and buff up" problem. It keeps the gamechanger buffs in the hands of potion makers. It also adds more gameplay chioces making dancing, singing and juggling something worth going for.

I would like to see food have buffs for PCs as well. In the pevious food thread linked above by Dakcenturi, Nihimon and GrumpyMel came up with something that seems pretty solid without being too much of a burden.

I think the beauty of GrumpyMel's idea about getting one kind of buff from Inns and another from Rations is that it's really simple and doesn't require the developers to spend a lot of effort tracking timers on individual in-game objects.

The way I'd like to see it is:

•Inns - 100% strength, 4 hours.

•Camps - 80% strength, 2 hours.

•Rations - 60% strength, 1 hour.

Or something like that...

I would also like to see a mechanic for feeding the troops in warfare as well as a base amount needed to be gathered to keep any settlement running at peak efficiency. With crafting and such being run by NCP characters and our PCs doing the supervision, in any player run settlement there will be quite a few peasants and they are going to need a food supply. This would add a nice dynamic with the siege warfare as players would have to decide whether to burn their own farms to keep the invading army from using them or to defend the farms and keep a supply line to the settlement. This would open up room for players to smuggle in more food to keep their city running during a long term siege.

During peaceful times a settlement could make a profit from collecting food from farms and taxing the peasants on its sale. Store houses could stock up food and other supplies and if a settlement has a surplus and an ally is under long term attack could attempt to break a few supply wagons through the enemy lines.

I don’t know about anyone else but I think there is a lot of potential in a system like this, in war time it would add additional strategy and in peace times it would be nice for a player settlement to have a steady income that could be used for upkeep.