WARNING: HUGE BLOCKS OF TEXT AHEAD. Skip down to my comment for a TL;DR summary of this part. This idea is in a few parts:

HOMECOMING PART I: Social Changes
HOMECOMING PART II: Shuttle
HOMECOMING PART III: Ready Room Renovation
HOMECOMING PART IV: Guild Lab
HOMECOMING PART V: Guild Stash

So, I have a bunch of ideas for Guild Halls lately, and I remember an event a while back that was called the "Homecoming Celebration" and it celebrated the major Guild Hall change. See release notes 2012-11-14 for details. We've not had one of these in a while and I'd like to see it again - and I'd like for it to always be Guild or at least social related, so players can expect playerbase-focused updates around the time of a Homecoming Celebration.

It's sorta close to that time of year, so I feel like posting these now. Ignoring the fact that this sort of thing can take ages to code. Hey, at least I'm posting earlier than the time it used to happen! >,..,> Anyway....

I'll be submitting these ideas in Parts over the next several days/weeks as I have time. Some of them will not be liked, I'm pretty sure. Many of them incorporate suggestions made by others before, some of them many times, with my own twist on the idea(s).

Obviously I don't want ALL of them in one Homecoming event, that would be too overwhelming. Just something, you know?

Focus of this part is on:

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Ready Room Renovation

Tired of not being able to load into where you want to go right away?
Wondering about the SK world-environment and how knights occupy parts of it?
Tired of being a guildless fella and having pretty much no use for (prizebox) furniture besides selling it? Idea time!

Thought: What happens to your knight when you log off? Where is all your...stuff (many players have a lot of STUFF)? Haven seems pretty small. Where do we all live? Do we energize like pokemon into pokeballs somewhere in Haven? How big is Haven anyway, like, there's places we can't go...obviously Haven is bigger than what we see.

Well here's an idea - let's explain part of this mystery with a Ready Room Renovation update for a future Homecoming. It's your HOME :D

I envision spherical "resident" modules that are attached underneath Haven. Picture like, grapes. Yes. That's where we all live. One knight per grape. Hey, there's lots of room for guild halls too. Okay I'll shut up. Game Logic. There's infinite space. Deal with it.

Overall: Inspired by Warframe's Liset (personal ship). The Ready Room is now a personal guild-hall like room. New visualized "User Interface furniture" will come with this Renovation. Pointless, but very fun! And lore opportunities! "UI furniture" is similar to an arsenal station (that big box with things in it that opens when you touch it and brings up your stuff so you can change what's equipped), various objects can be interacted with to bring up various parts of your UI menus. These objects include boxes, panels, piles, etc. and can be placed around your new ready room space.

Two types of ready rooms - both with that blue+person social icon thing that says "ready room." One is only for nubbies:

Until a new knight gets to Haven, the little nubby will load into a primitive barracks with lots of NPCs who also crashed/maintain the camp. You are supplied with a cardboard box and a rollout blankie and have your proto stuff. Hurray! There's other blankets and stuff around. Not a lot here. It's just the rescue camp. Nothing can be personalized in here. I guess you can take the box and blankie with you if you want, but the idea is that this stuff is used over and over by new players, because it's a rescue camp.

When you get to Haven, an NPC in a new Briefing mission talks to you about the Ready Room. Some lore could easily be teased at here. Ready Rooms can be physically accessed by getting onto a new elevator pad located in the Town Square, in that northeast area not too far from the auction house.
(Closer to Garrison than Bazaar, this makes sense). Ready rooms can be made public, so getting onto the pad will prompt a message like walking into the GH from the garrison does, for other rooms or yours. If you're in a guild, your room can be linked to a properly updraded guild hall! More info on that in the Guild Hall section. A search function for names is available - there's a lot of players! Rooms are private by defualt.

The briefing mission gifts your Ready Room with Spiral Grey furniture items. Just the basics. Spiral Grey furniture items open up UI menus. The "visualized UI furniture." Mission furniture gifts are locked into your Ready Room and cannot be traded, sold, or donated to a Guild Hall. They don't show up in your knight's arsenal either. Just the Design Mode of the Ready Room. Guilds can purchase Spiral Grey furniture from the Birdsong Emporium at the Command Console if they wish. (Spiral Grey sign is the MotD in the command console, so the sign is more like a notice module that you see in the clockworks, a projector... like in front of danger rooms etc.)

A later briefing mission (sometime after defeating the snarbolax) will give your knight a small personal shuttle (see idea thread) that you upgrade and maintain. This will show up as a UI Furniture: 3x3 pad with your shuttle hovering over it. Bound to your Ready Room like the Basics. This shuttle furniture cannot be purchased as a functional UI-interactive furniture by Guilds - a big shuttle hatch is available with a Shipyard upgrade. (go read the idea! Myah!)

Your Ready Room is functionally like a tiny guild hall, and you can even have small parties in it! Up to 3 other people can be invited/get into your ready room.

The ready room is almost the same size as a room in a Guild Hall, just with + 3x3 area entryway for entrance loading. No furniture can be placed in the entryway. In the entry is the rooms "command console" per say, where you can go to Design Mode.

Command Console + Tiny Elevator

Your command console is also a tiny elevator! Two options when you interact: console menu or go to Haven.

Tiny Elevator - choose elevator panel - interact with this to go to haven. But wait, Dracora, we all load into the same spot in haven, elevators would...shut up! Game logic! You return to haven via elevator all the time! You'll load in to that Northeast area in Haven Town Square mentioned earlier. Elevator animates as going up (not down). This CC+elevator is 2x2, centered in the 3x3 area and cannot be moved. You have to interact with it, not just step on it, to use it. It's flat, so stand on it and then press attack. It does not block movement, it's kind of like a carpet really. Just walk over it and stuff.

Deposit furniture into your room's command console so you can place it. This will bind it to your Room, so be sure you want to do this. All furniture you've deposited or have access to from a Guild Hall (more GH info below) will show up in a single list while in design mode, various markings will tell you what's what:

Ready Room Bound: blue diamond, like the bound symbol on gear.
Guild Hall Bound: green shield symbol.

Buy furniture from the Supply Depot - in reality you'll get it from the Birdsong Emporium. Supply Depot is basically like a Walmart to me. Lots of things for you from different places. You can also get some furniture from Prize Boxes.

------UI Furniture: The Basics------
"User Interface furniture."

These can be stowed away like furniture, they're not otherwise super special or screwed into the floor or anything like that. They are essentially visualized arsenal sections, and are actually quite useless but hey, this sort of thing is fun! You don't have to have all of these out at once. Put them anywhere that there's space! All of them have a tile in front of them that is "empty" and blocks other furniture. This is for getting out of/easily interacting with the furniture.

Your knight will randomly be sleeping, sitting, fussing with a furniture, playing with your battle sprite, etc. depending on what furniture you have when you log in. You'll have immediate control. If you put everything away, your knight will have been meditating in an empty part of the room and get to its feet. If you've clogged your room up, and there's no UI furniture, the knight is forced to meditate in the entryway every time. It's presumed that your knight goes around doing things all the time, with or without your control, so they will be in a different place every time you log in. Good thing they never buy or sell anything on their own.

Yes, you can totally clog up the room with normal furniture, filling every square but the entryway. The room's command console is in the entryway, so no worries. But you'll have some trouble with beds and such with random log-in animation - so you will be stuck then, and have to reload into the room at the entrance to fix it. Or you could live like that if you want. Ew.

When you load into the area, the loading screen will have a title+subtitle like other areas:
Ready Room
[[CHARACTER NAME]]'s Ready Room

------List of UI Furniture------

Basics: crash pod, spiral grey footlocker, spiral grey bed, spiral grey chair, television+radio, Social Screen, Activity Screen, Missions Screen, Mailbox, Antenna, Sign. Buy the others. For lots of monies.

- Personal Crash Pod - salavaged from where you crashed on Cradle, this crash pod is a reminder of your roots. You store Artifacts in your Crash Pod, (like the hatch handle), and can view them by interacting with the crash pod. This makes sense to me, your crash pod is an artifact from your past. Interact with Crash Pod to view your Artifacts. The pod's door is jammed open, cracked, etc. Personal crash pod, shuttle pad, and energy well are the only UI furniture that are not preceeded by "spiral grey."
-Spiral Grey Footlocker - interact with this to get to all your equipable gear.
-Spiral Grey wardrobe - brings up your costume preview window and pops open your costume arsenal tab next to it.
-Spiral Grey Mineral Chest - pop open to see how many minerals you have. I just really like how minerals look and I want this.
-Spiral Grey Battle Sprite Perch - The sprite you have equipped will hover here. Switching sprite you have equipped will switch the sprite here too. Have fun messing with that. could show its cute little pod too, but that would have to switch too and that's kinda weird.
-Spiral Grey Television+Radio - sign up for PvP or spectate.
-Spiral Grey Social screen (orange scrolling text, goes on wall) - view social progress of your friends. Who beat what boss when?
-Spiral Grey Activity Screen (yellow scrolling text, goes on wall) - opens party finder. Image on screen sorta looks like the arcade depths map.
-Spiral Grey Mission Screen (goes on wall) - opens mission menu. Screen rotates through random mission card images to be aesthetically pleasing.
-Spiral Grey Auction House screen (blue text, goes on wall) - view the Auction House. This is limited: you can only view items you are currently bidding on or selling. You must load into haven or guild hall to search, bid on other things, or sell other things. This is mostly to encourage social interaction. It should aid players who are trying to win auctions and logging on with only moments left to win that shiny!
-Spiral Grey Antenna - this stick is like the field sensor furniture, but is just a rod with a glowing white ball on it. Interact to bring up SK news (current promo pics etc).
-Spiral Grey Depot Antenna - looks like antenna but with a glowing energy-blue ball on it. Opens supply depot.
-Spiral Grey Mailbox - view your mail and social list. Are these delivered with Snipes like owls in harry potter? I mean, there's a snipe sitting on the box and it has a hat. Wonder what snipes do with all them crowns in the AH? And well, we're paying something or someone to mail things aren't we?
-Spiral Grey Bed - log out.
-Spiral Grey Chair - prompts you type in an away message. Go AFK!
-Shuttle Pad - this 3x3 furniture supports your hovering Shuttle. Shuttle's appearance changes as you upgrade it. Read that Part I idea.
-Spiral Grey Sign (projector beacon on floor) - you can leave a message that comes up in the chatbox for your room. Use for reminders etc. Same character limit as the MotD of guilds.
-Spiral Grey Desk - has a journal (book) and a badge/crest - view your achievements and things from my other idea like statistics of how many monsters you've killed etc. The badge will change to the max badge of Player Rank you can have - Vanguard for Vanguards etc. Even if you use your accessory crest on an armor, it shows up here.
-Spiral Grey Portrait (goes on wall) - swagmaster 5000. This allows other players to view everything in your arsenal and data about you. Of course, all they can do is look. The portrait is round, and the game snaps a picture of your knight's face (whatever you are wearing when you put it up) when in design mode. It's a small picture+frame version of that big round thing in the upper left corner of our current game UI.
-Spiral Grey Welcome Mat (1x3)- no matter where you put it, this carpet shows you the names of all the knights who have been in your room (besides you) within the last 24 hours. simply press attack while standing on top of it, and a simple menu pops up showing the names.

And lots of other junk! Hurray junk!

You can buy regular beds/chairs from the BE for your room if you don't want them to be UI-interactive. Your knight will ignore these regarding "log in" behavior.

Ready Rooms can have their themes/environments/(habitats - another idea) changed, just like guild halls. Expensive!

Some default loads to recognize in haven:
-People coming from missions - front of Haven Town Square.
-People logging in - through ready room to Northeast of Haven Town Square.
-People coming back into Town Square from Arcade Haven area - north part of Town square. Get the idea?

Again, mostly pointless.

Pretty great though, right?

I would fill my room with snipes. Completely. If I could, I'd fill it with chromalisks. Which I've suggested as a plushie furniture before.

But there's more!
It would stink to live in a deeper module or something, wouldn't it? Ugh, I'm installed by a wasteworks rotation, ew. I want to move.
You can move your Ready Room to fuse with your Guild's Hall for a price.

------Guild Hall Linking:------

Linking Ready Rooms to Guild Halls...here's how I think this could work:

Obviously, you need to be a member of a guild to link your Ready Room to it.

Your guild must have a "Barracks" upgrade for RR linking to become available. The Barracks upgrade requires both 2F wings.

Every ledge in your hall can have that a door opened in the front via Design Mode, and this leads to any ready rooms guildies have linked to it!
You know, this door (THIS DOOR). It will only be open-looking if there is an open Ready Room attached, even if it's opened in design mode. Opening it in DM just lets people link up their rooms. All the ledges you open lead to the same UI - similar to when you walk into the Guild Hall from haven, it says "enter your gh" or "pick one of these other guild halls." It will do that for your room and other guildies' rooms. Neat!

The ready room will link up to the hall behind its 3x3 area entryway. If you exit this way, you'll load into the area in front of the ledge in the hall that
was first opened. Moving your Ready Room to fuse with your GH requires Gremlin labor, so the occupant of the room needs to pay them with around 50,000 crowns to get moved.

Magically, you can still use the tinyelevator in your RR to get to the same place in haven, even if you're linked to your guild's hall. Wonkavator? Maybe. Game logic. People can still get into your room from haven too, if you have it set to public.

Guild Masters can choose to "open up" the Guild Hall's furniture inventory so attached Ready Rooms can use the stuff.
These guild furniture items will show up in the room's DM inventory and be marked with a little green shield icon. Obviously cannot be traded/sold etc.
I feel like this would be cool, a lot of guilds have lots of leftover furniture from various plan changes and events, so they'll get used this way :D.

Similarly, the Occupant of the Ready Room can share their room's inventory with the Guild. The mission basics + shuttle pad are never shared.

An officer or guild master can go into your room and take back Guild furniture as desired. This is preferable for 1 or 2 things, yes? If your room is locked, the Command Console has a function that warps all Guild furniture out of a targeted room back into the inventory. Forced! This recall can only be completed when the Occupant is offline. Rooms are private areas, granted, linking to a hall is a rather social move, but hey, there are ways to maintain the feel of a sanctuary, even so.

Similarly, the Occupant of the Ready Room can snatch their stuff back with the Room's command console. This can complicate things a bit, as it causes the GH to reset like the GH DM publishing does. So, potential for people to troll here by constantly resetting their rooms via snatchback. But they can't place furniture+GH reset in the first place unless they're high enough ranked in the guild, so, as always, don't rank up people who cause trouble!

If you leave or are removed from a Guild, your ready room automatically disconnects, assuming you chose to connect it. Anyone in your room will be booted to Haven as it's moved back to the standard grapevine. Any guild furniture in your room will be instantly returned to the Guild Hall's inventory. Similarly, your room will snatch back anything that's yours. This causes the GH and your Room to reset as you leave the guild roster.

---Other Notes---
Players can choose to lock their rooms from the public, friends, guildies, or everyone. Hey, sometimes I like to party, but I also want to sleep on occasion! So your hall can be public, but your room private. If your hall is private, you can invite people to the room, but they can't exit into the Hall. Rooms never show up on the Party Finder, haha.

Players that are not you obviously can do nothing with your stuff, nor can they look at it unless you have a portrait on display. Some people like to brag.
Your knight will be there, a sort of ghost animation of yourself, not paying attention to anyone that comes in. Because you can log out with the room set to public!

When you log in with your room set to public, there might be someone in there. Hey, what do you expect, you left the door open! But don't worry, only up to 3 people that are not you can get in there at any given time that you have it open. 4 is the max, like a squad. Obviously this makes a lot of really weird behavior possible, cause people are people, so...you know...pick your friends and privacy levels.

-----------Other Changes-----------
Basic UI change: when you complete a mission, you can pick which place you want to load into - haven TS, haven Baz, Haven Gar, Haven Arcade, Ready Room, Guild Hall, or repeat mission. For prestige, the mission repeat option fails and you go to haven.

Also small fix, instead of "advance now" the button should say "continue." Just sayin.

---Pros/Cons---
Cons:
-Potentially less populated Haven. Game might feel more empty. Hence the AH restriction I mentioned for the Flat Auction House Screen.
-Makes really weird behavior possible. "Hey...I was watching your knight in your room while you were gone...*stares*" Yeah no.
-Is infuriatingly "useless" and might elicit rage on the forums regarding "what devs should spend their time on." Oh wait, anything can do that.
-More time moving furniture than playing? Maybe.
-A weird furniture market maybe.
-Sharing furniture in guilds is silly, I just like the idea. Of sharing. Which will be a major part of this huge Homecoming set of ideas of mine.

Pros:
-Would add some substance to the game. I love not having to walk anywhere, but sometimes I feel a little disconnected. And not just when my -connection goes out.
-Would give players another something to do for a while, and be continuous with more furniture in the future. Ooooh I want that new table of cookies for my room! Yay!
-Would give more uses for furniture - there's not many furniture boxes, and I think that's cause the entire playerbase doesn't have a use for them.
-With this, far more players will.
-Would be pretty entertaining, feel more personalized (the game cares about ME!) and be a lazy alternative to clicking or hotkeying various things when you log in.
-Private. Room. Of. Snipes. I am a snipe. Huuuummm. *roosting in a siped stranger hat*
-More themed rooms for Guild Halls - make alts and link them up. Each alt's room could have a different theme. Hurray!

------To readers------

Please avoid saying things like "OOO will never do this" etc. I want user opinions about the game/feedback for this. +/- 1 based on how you think it will be for the players. Please post ideas about cost/time parameters and so on!