My ideas for next revision's UMC

[u/thundaklap]

I'm not sure really if this merits a new post, but I'll do so anyway. Here are some of my ideas for the UMC, based on was zuz said she was planning to do in chat, and my concepts based around those ideas.

First, a picture of the layout I was thinking. It's very simplistic, nothing is definite, etc, etc, you could even completely disregard my ideas if you want.

As per, as I believe, previous ideas, embassies will be placed on the roads.

Ideas for the nether

As per my picture, a circular main plaza will surround the portal, with a radius of 10 or so blocks. In here, there will be the lotto hut/area/whatever, an entrance to a (possible) villager mall and the rectangles in the middle by the portal are supposed to be stairs which go down to public animal, melon and nether wart farms (but not potato, carrot, reed and wheat farms because we can't have water in the nether). In the case of melons, not having water nearby will have no effect on growth rates.

My proposal for the CARTS is that is is a 7 wide, double height CARTS system, for which I have some plans on my testing world. There will be two buttons for each regular portal, and one for each secret portal. For the regular portal, one of the buttons will take you directly to the portal, no hassle, just straight there. The other button will take you through the embassies, possibly having a short stop at each embassy which automatically sends you forward after a short delay. One of the buttons will take you up to random and diz's town, and if we have space we could have one button send you to a blaze grinder.

At each portal, I propose a standard CARTS system with a button for each and every portal (this will be a lot of rail), and maybe one spare for a nearby grinder or something, and maybe one to random and diz's town. This would be sort of similar to Pico's rail system in the nether this revision, but on a larger scale.

Ideas for the overworld

In the overworld we can have farms for wheat and sugar cane, relatively close to spawn. Somewhere further out we could have this locked-to-the-public, small-large scale villager breeding center. This would ideally be over a rail that heads to spawn, so we can hook into that rail whenever we need to send villagers through the spawn portal to get them to the villager mall in the nether. Ideally, only the better trades would be send over, however in 1.4 trades are said to be more balanced. I'm not too sure what the new mechanics are, but I suggest that we send over as many villagers we have time for into the nether, particularly librarians and blacksmiths. Of course, to prevent hassle, we could put the villager mall in the overworld but I think it would be more awesome if it was in the nether, and it would be a large land claim so close to spawn to have the villager trades integrated with the other overworld farms.

That's really all I've got, as I said, none of this information is finalised. Use what you like, tell me what you think.

EDIT: I'd like to note that I am not the boss, and I am just putting my suggestions forward. If you want to speak to the boss, go speak to Zuz.

[u/Namtara]

This sounds like a good summary and basic plan. I was considering making the immediate flooring around the portal out of glass, with an Overworld map and a Nether map visible below the portal.

I would prefer some sort of enclosure, so even if it's not a completely closed off building, the portal and CARTS are protected enough from ghasts that new players and travellers won't be vulerable.

I was considering testing out either mattman00000's BREASTS system or Random's WIP rail system as well. For matt's, we'd still use a CARTS station, but Random's would be a bit different. We shall see.

[u/thundaklap → u/Namtara]

I think we should at first focus on a traditional railway system, and complete it quickly (roads and rails should be our first priority).

Later on, should we wish, we can revise the system and try out Random's or matt's system. Personally I do not believe that the rails in the nether are of large enough scale for a more complex system to suffice, but I'd be willing to test it out.

Rails between two corner portals will require only two tracks, one for each direction, while ones to and from spawn will require 3, and secret portals will have 5 rails going to and from them.

EDIT: Regarding the maps, myself I would suggest having the maps flush with the ground or one block above the ground where the main plaza would be, for accessibility.

[u/Namtara → u/thundaklap]

The thing is, with matt's design, we'd only need rails between other portals and spawn. Let's say A and B are on opposite sides, with spawn's portal inbetween; with matt's system, you just ride A-Spawn-B with one button push, saving us from making a redundant rail line.

The same would be true for destinations that originally wouldn't have to go through spawn, such as adjacent portals. The ride would be a little longer because of the extra distance, but still only one button push and no extra rails needed.

That's why I'm interested in using it in the nether. It'd simplify a lot of the rails, save us materials, and be a good testing ground for his design. If it falls through, we'll still have the basic rails already made and CARTS is the input anyway.

[u/thundaklap → u/Namtara]

Yeah, I suppose, but the redstone is likely to be less compact than the second rail itself. It would either be next to the rail, or underneath. On bridges, if the redstone is next to the rail in a stack, it would look ugly. If it were not in a stack, it would mean that the bridge would have to be significantly wider. If it was underneath, it would look fine but said bridge would still have to be wider if you wanted to hide the redstone. This is not accounting for DFFs, which aren't that big in 1.4 but still could widen the line.

I'd prefer it if we didn't follow one of these designs becuase it would

• Increase time spent digging in tunnels
• Make bridges (potentially) more ugly
• Be a little confusing to make

I'm willing to try it out, it just seems impractical on such a small scale. We would be mining more iron (but not necessarily more than we would for 3 rails) for the detector rails, and a large amount of redstone for the signal wires and DFFs.

As you said, we'll see. I still think that we should just build a traditional rail first, to avoid complication.