RWG Gateway Tile Riffs

[zztong]

I like Tiles. I've made 30 of them (and have more on the workbench). Gateway Tiles in particular have changed the character of RWG maps for the better and bring interesting new content to the game. The Vanilla game comes with very few Tiles in each category, so there is not a lot of competition for Tile placement. They will all get used. Settlements consume a lot of Tiles and the current method of Tile selection and placement for settlements largely works. However, Gateway Tiles can be rather distinctive and memorable. There are lots of repeated placements, thus with a Vanilla configuration and certain RWG settings (many settlements), you experience some deja vu.

 

Here are three ideas that riff on the Gateway Tile feature:

 

Idea 1: Gateway Tile Bias and Weight and/or Duplicate Repeat Distance

 

Discussion: When you hit a scale of around 8 gateway tiles of the same configuration (aka straight) RWG still likes to reuse Gateway Tiles rather than look to place one of each first, then start to reuse. So, for example if you have Tiles "gateway_01" through "gateway_08", RWG might select 3 x gateway_01, 2 x gateway_02, and ignore gateway_03, gateway_04, gateway_07, and gateway_08. Since the Tiles can be memorable/unique, the repetition when there are alternatives is not desirable. Perhaps something like the bias/weight system POIs use or the "Duplicate Repeat Distance" feature for POIs would provide a solution.

 

Idea 2: Gateway Tiles - Specify if a Settlement's Gateway Tile or Roadside Tile.

 

Discussion: Sometimes Gateway Tile content is best appearing as an entry point to a settlement and sometimes it is best being a stand-alone landmark. For instance, using Vanilla Tiles, you can have a roadside rest at the entrance to town, where it arguably doesn't belong. So, the proposal is that "gateway" tiles always be entrances to settlements and "roadside" tiles always be used along a road away from a settlement. Both would offer intersection, straight, and t configurations.

Idea 3: Wilderness Tile - A Gateway Tile in the Wilderness using the "Cap" configuration.

 

Discussion: Again, riffing on Gateway Tiles a Wilderness Destination Tile would be nice. That is, it could be placed as if it were a Wilderness POI, but as a tile it could have a selection of POIs placed upon it. These basically allow for a tiny 1-Tile settlement. It effectively is the same as a 150x150 Wilderness POI using Parts, except that you cannot place a POI as a Part. I assume this is only desirable in the "cap" configuration, unless you were looking for a way to make intersections for gravel roads, then maybe other configurations.

 

Thanks for listening.