The basic issue with city advancement is that the "isCityRankCapped" was returning "true" too often because it wasn't comparing the cities by rank, just the total count. This one is "the sooner the better" because the longer we wait to fix it, the more cities get stuck, and it won't untangle itself very well.

After much discussion about this tonight, I'm also thinking the check for totalCities > maxCities (the number of outposts, really) should go away. Just because the planet somehow got over the limit doesn't mean no one should be able to progress.I updated the patch to reflect this change.

Right, re-did this with the information I could grab from the scrapbook

due to not being able to upload files, the patch, pasted last

As per the scrapbook:

The number of player cities that can be placed is capped. The 3 main worlds of Corellia, Naboo, and Tatooine are able to hold 20 and the moons and adventure worlds of Talus, Rori, Dantooine, and Lok can hold up to 50 cities. It is important to note that there is also a cap on the number of cities that can achieve a certain rank. While the core worlds of Corellia, Naboo, and Tatooine can have a total of 20 cities, only 15 can be rank 3 or above and only 10 can be rank 4 or above. The moons/adventure planets of Talus, Rori, Dantooine, and Lok can have 30 cities above rank 3 and 20 above rank 4.

To accomplish this:

• Scrap the check for max cities, at all point we're checking for the rank at hand, which is equal or lower than the planet limit anyhow.
• Check for cities of equal or greater rank than being checked, as per the scrapbook.
• Double-check at the end.

The patch: (note, NEEDS TESTING, I don't have a full dev env running atm, so cannot do full testing.......)
Downloadable: http://rawr.xaroth.nl/xar/CityManagerImplementation.cpp.patch


Index: MMOCoreORB/src/server/zone/managers/city/CityManagerImplementation.cpp
===================================================================
— MMOCoreORB/src/server/zone/managers/city/CityManagerImplementation.cpp (revision 5901)
+++ MMOCoreORB/src/server/zone/managers/city/CityManagerImplementation.cpp (working copy)
@@ -186,9 +186,9 @@

bool CityManagerImplementation::isCityRankCapped(const String& planetName, byte rank) {
Vector<byte>* citiesAllowed = &citiesAllowedPerRank.get(planetName);

• byte maxCities = citiesAllowed->get(0);
  byte maxAtRank = citiesAllowed->get(rank - 1);
• byte totalCities = 0;
  + // http://www.swgemu.com/archive/scrapbookv51/data/20070127193144/index.html for information
  + byte totalAtRank = 0;

Locker _lock(_this.get());

@@ 200,12 +200,14 @@
if (cityZone == NULL || cityZone>getZoneName() != planetName)
continue;

• if (++totalCities > maxCities || totalCities > maxAtRank) {
• return true;
  + if (city->getCityRank() >= rank)
  Unknown macro: {+ if (++totalAtRank >= maxAtRank)

  Unknown macro: { + return true; + }

  }

  }
  -

• return false;
  +
  + return (totalAtRank >= maxAtRank);
  }

bool CityManagerImplementation::validateCityInRange(CreatureObject* creature, Zone* zone, float x, float y) {

I 'think' that this is also called when placing a city deed. So this looks like it fixes the expansion issue but the check to see if the planet is allowed anymore cities is bypassed.... which might be a totally different issue.

Just brainstorming here but maybe two functions are needed? 1) To see if you can place a city to use when placing the city hall deed 2) To see if an existing city can expand.

anchored xaroths patch