Petition rules
This petition is pretty simple:
- If you don't want gliders to be accessible at start upvote this post
- If you do want gliders to be accessible at start downvote this post
In the following I will offer my thoughts on how gliders can eventually be incorporated without heavily impacting the whole world.
Before I will go into the potential impact such a technology has, let's first take a look at how to lessen the impact of gliders
On gently introducing gliders to Elyria
Even if the technology is known somewhere it doesn't have to be accessible everywhere or easily obtainable or usable by everyone.
Measures package 1 – Gliders as a Kypiq-only technology
Limiting the first set of gliders buildable to Kypiq would not only be a good fit lore wise.
It further would ensure the technology takes at least a little time to spread throughout the continent.
The most impactful decision would be to only allow Kypiqs to actually use gliders ruling the technology is not advanced enough to transport heavier folks.
An even more strict ruling could be to have them only operate without strong winds and say these conditions can generally only be found within forests, limiting them to a biome at first.
These last two points are also part of the next package of measures.
Summary package 1: Limiting gliders to Kypiq inherently limits how much of them we will actually see. It still leaves the option open to make them more easily accessible and more widely usable as the technology advances.
Measures package 2 – Gliders as a little developed, little understood technology
If we assume gliders are a technology in its infancy we can let that play out in multiple ways.
As mentioned earlier we can limit who can use gliders and where you can use gliders at first.
Further, we can have building gliders require a very high level of craftsmanship.
If the level required is set high enough then only a handful of NPCs will have the skill needed as it might take more than one lifetime for players to sufficiently master the craft.
We can expand on this by requiring expert craftsmanship in multiple disciplines. Sure, building a glider can be hard. But maybe even building the components of a glider is hard.
Maybe the material covering the wings needs very careful treatment, creating a very thin and still durable cloth.
We can require exotic materials e.g. spider silk or alchemical components for a special varnish to let that thing fly.
Lastly, the first set of gliders might have very bad gliding ability, i.e. the ratio of distance travelled to height lost is very low.
Summary package 2: The measures in package 2 serve the following purposes:
- to ensure mass production isn't feasible
- to ensure a very high price for gliders and
- to limit the use cases for gliders
But why are gliders "bad"?
Gliders are not bad!
But... having gliders potentially has a lot of implications that might not be desirable for the game world right away.
Parcel delivery
Gliders have the potential to cover great distances very fast.
While this might not work the way the company zipline uses glider drones to deliver medical supplies in africa
it's very likely we'd have distribution centers near every mountain to allow for quick deliveries to the surrounding area.
Very cool, but do we want that from day 1?
The airfoes – military gliders
Gliders offer unique possibilities in warfare. Your towering defenses and walls? Enemies just fly other it.
If gliders are very capable and easily accessible siege warfare is not necessary.
It's much easier to either use a mountain in the vicinity or build a high tower somewhere near the settlement you are trying to invade and just fly in directly.
Do we really want to be required to build air defenses on day 1?
The perfect getaway
If gliders are ubiquitous thieves won't need to sneak out. They will simply climb the highest building they can find and fly out.
Aaaand their gone.