What the RA wants from new sim work & the Guild

[Jamie Palisades]

Moon, please accept my apologies to you and the Guild for the lateness of this post. I’d promised to try and draw together, for the Guild's convenience, the acts of the RA regarding future sim planning. Please be kind with my failings, and just imagine my surprise when I started to wade through the 2 March RA transcript to *find* those answers.

I do not yet have a high degree of confidence that I know the answers. I intend to seek some clarity myself. But I do, for now, note the following, in the hopes that it has some interim utility to you and the Guild in your planning. Corrections to this summary from others are welcome.

1. At the 24 March RA meeting, the members confirmed that they had previously approved a fourth sim expansion, directly to the East of CN, generally using the CN theme.
2. They also confirmed that there's a possible proposal -- not yet approved -- to build a "Mozart/Salzburg" theme compatible with NFS, directly to the East of NFS.
3. The latter apparently is thought by some to be a possible project for "private initiative" work -- a concept which I do not think has yet been defined or approved either.
4. At the 24 March meeting, the RA also requested an update from the Guild about its expected timelines for future work on sims.

Of course, I will continue to try to report as clearly as I can, about our progress and the relevant operational bits of prior RA minutes. We appreciate the Guild's work -- and I benefit from it every day that I look out my windows in CDS -- so we do want to make governmental cooperation with the NGOs like the New Guild as easy to possible. Hope to see you at the Sunday Guild meeting if I can.

Kind regards Jamie

[Arria Perreault]

Jamie,

I am surprised to read about a Salzburg sim (which already exists in SL...). When we have organized the former contest, it was clear that the proposal Nea Hora was kept for future expansion. With Nea Hora there is a concept of a greek line, behind CN line and the future sim. I would like to know about that. We have spent some time to develop the concept of Nea Hora.

[Beathan]

Arria --

I continue to lobby for Nea Hora -- and it still has some support on the RA. However, when the RA last voted for expansion, there wa support for the idea (pushed by the CSDF) that the next expansion should be in-theme. This was presented by the CSDF as a way to save time -- although I disagreed with that reasoning, as it seemed to me that the easiest sim to build would be Nea Hora as it was already conceptually designed.

The Salzburg sim was an idea I floated if the RA chose to expand NF "in theme" -- but the RA went with a CN expansion.

Beathan

[Sonja Strom]

As I understand it, Nea Hora is definitely a concept the community still wants to see introduced into the CDS. It has not at all been forgotten.

However, the decision to be made regarding the 4th CDS sim was just as Beathan described. Essentially it had to do with whether or not the RA - on behalf of the CDS community - could act to quickly increase the size of the CDS in an effort to accommodate new residents. During these conversations, it was decided that the RA could act to simply expand on an already existing theme, especially if doing this would fit the existing CDS Master Plan. The final decision the RA arrived at was to create an expansion of the city of Colonia Nova by one sim to the east, and for this sim to offer as inexpensive of parcels as possible. The concept of this was to allow people who would like to join the CDS to be able do so without requiring expensive land purchases.

In the course of these discussions, the possibility of also expanding Neufreistadt by one sim to the east was talked about, but not approved. Nea Hora was also raised as a possibility immediately south of Neufreistadt, but this was also not approved. In my understanding, the Nea Hora concept was not approved for the next sim partly because it would be introducing a new theme, which might not fit the "In-Theme Expansion" nature of the discussions, and because introducing it would be a divergence from the CDS Master Plan.

Personally, I also did not want Nea Hora to be added to the CDS south of Neufreistadt, because I would prefer it to be north of Colonia Nova.

[Sudane Erato]

Nea Hora was also raised as a possibility immediately south of Neufreistadt, but this was also not approved. In my understanding, the Nea Hora concept was not approved for the next sim partly because it would be introducing a new theme, which might not fit the "In-Theme Expansion" nature of the discussions, and because introducing it would be a divergence from the CDS Master Plan.

Understanding that this was not approved, please note that Nea Hora (which, btw, would be better spelled Nea Khora... this is not a pure "H" sound, and "kh" expresses it better) cannot be located south of NFS because the elevation there is approximately 175 meters, and Nea Hora *must* be at sea level. Let's not repeat the difficulties we had with CN, in which the original plan had it located adjacent to NFS, and we found that it had to be located one sim space away in order to be brought to sea level. Even *that* solution necessitated the very extreme slopes of AM.

Personally, I also did not want Nea Khora to be added to the CDS south of Neufreistadt, because I would prefer it to be north of Colonia Nova.

Plastering any theme immediately adjacent to another entirely different theme runs the huge risk of making our area into a "Disney theme park". CN is firmly "Roman", of the era of 500 BC to 500 AD. Nea Khora, which seems to be based on the modern day Mykonos in the Aegean Sea, could be dated anywheres from 1800 to the present day. May I propose that any expression of a strong "theme", like CN and like Nea Khora, be separated by at least one transition sim, like AM.

Sudane.......................

[Beathan]

Sudane,

I may be misremembering, but I recall Nea Hora as a transition design to connect NFS and CN. That means that it need not be at sea level -- it is designed to transition to sea level. For that reason, it is (I think) geographically suited to connect to NFS to lower the general terrain of the CDS.

The theme transition issue is different. As a Greek theme, Nea Hora does not mix well with the Alpine theme of NFS. However, the Greek theme would not be an abrupt transition from CN, given the Mediterranean and social kinship of Greek and Roman society.

Beathan

[cleopatraxigalia]

so can NH technically go above the new roman sim and then............wow thematicaly its gonna be tough to go from alpine to greek island.. i think that sudane is correct ..............lets do NH next but not have it touch the existing ones.. what about a void sim in between ? a walk through a woods or somthieng to transistion? would that work? i just know it seems we need a sim pretty soon to most everyone..............and that what the RA approved gives us that .........personally im all for NH being the next sim.......or NK?

BTW.. per the public paranoia i was hearing sunday...........or spinor what ever it was that the new sim will look like mainland......

i personally do not see that an issue.

the new sim theguild is wrokign on ........should be pretty simple not much infrastructure cos it uses what exists in CN now for that.............so when the 512 adn 1024 lots go for sale, of course many ppl will buy more than one and connect them and do skyboxes.. and leave lots of open space too.............plant gardens etc. so it wont look like mainland. The covenents will assure that..............and it wil need to have all builds in three categories.........the guild had GREAT ideas on this:
preapproved houses for the lots
preapporved builders
and then as needed approval fro custom or not pre approved builds...................gosh it should be very easy and good! hopefully fast.
If the guild needs anything from the RA to do it , I sure expect they just ask us, not say they cant go forward becasuse they dont have the things they need. Having our LRA quit has made things difficult for us and the whole community so i hope everyone is of cooperative spirit................CDS is awesome!

EVERYONE intends to keep it that way.

[Sudane Erato]

I may be misremembering, but I recall Nea Hora as a transition design to connect NFS and CN. That means that it need not be at sea level -- it is designed to transition to sea level. For that reason, it is (I think) geographically suited to connect to NFS to lower the general terrain of the CDS.

Yes, the originators of the design proposal, realizing that they were in a difficult position needing to connect NFS and CN, designed it to transition from the high elevation down to sea level with a huge, improbable, cliff face at the southern edge of the sim.

But, I would defer to Arria and Ulysses here. Studying the details of their proposal (which made me very excited, for obvious reasons having to do with my ethnicity), it's clear that the inspiration is an Aegean island... and their model made me at least think of Mykonos. Google "Mykonos", and you will see that a town such as this (and indeed, the Greek word "hora/khora/chora" means in fact "the town") hugs the sea from relatively low elevations. Even a steeply "inclined to the sea" town like "Hydra/Idra" could nowheres *nearly* elevate 175 meters in 256 meters of map distance.

The theme transition issue is different. As a Greek theme, Nea Hora does not mix well with the Alpine theme of NFS. However, the Greek theme would not be an abrupt transition from CN, given the Mediterranean and social kinship of Greek and Roman society.
Beathan

Yes, this is is different. If indeed the Nea Khora proposal was for "turn of the millenium" Greek society, with temples and theaters which they themselves originated (and the Romans copied extensively), then, true, it would be quite appropriate. But the words Nea Khora were not even known at that time, and the style of architecture suggested by the proposal was still many hundreds of years away. Again, I refer to the originators of the proposal for their intention on this, but it was my impression that they demonstrated an architectural style and culture more typical of the Aegean Islands in the years 1800 to the present.

Sudane......................

[Sonja Strom]

It also seems to me that the Greek theme of Nea Khora (or however best to spell the name) would be much more elegant, and make more sense culturally, if separated from Colonia Nova by at least one void sim. Certainly even ancient Rome and Greece - and even more so 19th Century Greece - had important stylistic differences. One consideration might be to have some ocean separation, to give Nea Khora more the feeling of a Greek island. Doing this could also allow us to have two beaches - one on the Colonia Nova side and one on the Nea Khora side.

If introducing this Greek theme would be more popular with the community than expanding Colonia Nova at this time, I would support concentrating our efforts on it instead. I also believe we are early enough in the process that the RA could reconsider its "In-Theme Expansion" decision, and change its recommendation to purchase of a Nea Khora sim (and maybe also adjacent void sims if desired) instead of a second sim for Colonia Nova. I would be interested to know how the New Guild feels on this subject.

Of course, we could also keep things as they are and simply move forward from here by identifying this project as the next one we want to work on after the eastward expansion of Colonia Nova (which has already been approved by the RA). Or, we could have work on both projects happening at the same time.

In regard to the purchase of a void sim (or sims), we could consider doing this as a community. I have always felt that open areas can be a worthwhile investment in the overall look and feel of the CDS. However, I might also personally be willing to purchase a void sim for my dance club ::CONTACT:: (which currently is at a height of 740m above Saturn sim) and have it be a part of the CDS.