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:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Guild Lab: More things to do as a guild

As guilds are now, there's no raw, evident gameplay benefits, just social interaction, more invites, and aesthetics. I, and many others, think that guilds could - and should - be so much more. But we can't have being in a guild be...punishing to those who choose to not be in a guild. How to maintain?

-Allow anything that can be obtained by a guild that is functional in gameplay be available in some way to the guildless, with more work that still encourages teamwork.

-Basically, maintain that being in a guild is not only socially beneficial, but also a time saver, so the game is still fair to all players regarding effort.
But some things are just going to be better in a group.

-Additionally, how to keep an update's changes to the game fair for old and new players/groups alike?

So I've come up with a few small things, and one large thing, to add to guild halls that are projects a guild can work on together:

------------Treasury Changes------------

A special Guild Alchemy Machine will be available as a 1x2 furniture (or something larger and more elaborate. Ideas?) This machine draws crowns from the individual's inventory, but otherwise attempts to draw from the Treasury as well as the player's inventory,
using the Treasury as much as possible.

This is to fix: all those donations people made to the treasury trying to be helpful with things, when they meant to do storage. This also helps a guild manage its wealth. I know many guilds, including my own, wish for materials to only be used in crafting, not reselling or missions. Storage will still be a functional thing, not replaced, since it's nice for a guild to have options like this in general.

Hunter's Lodge mechanics (boss trophy crafting) will not change at all. But I would like to recommend a recipe change so big trophies don't eat smaller trophies. Any guild halls with big trophies will be gifted the prerequisite trophies to make up for the cost changes (fairness). So a guild with a Vana statue will have 4 masks and 16 seals, as well as the vana statue. Cost for making more will be proportionate. Anyway, back to main ideas here!

Only guildies can use this machine (duh). Limit member access by putting the machine in a room with a guild rank limiting door.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Guild Lab:

A sort of miniature version of the Haven Lab. It is a featured/special room, installed in a wing, like the Alchemy Room etc.

It contains:
-a regular alchemy machine, and a sprite food alchemy machine. (These other two machines will also be available as 1x2 furniture in the Birdsong Emporium too).
-a research station (counters, drawers, bubbling tubes, gremlin tools, minerals, piles of materials are aesthetics for this area).

In the lab, guildies can fund research at the research station. Research improves the odds of crafting and getting UVs when using the guild alchemy machine.

Research also allows guild members to download recipes out of their brains into the Furniture machine so model replicas of that item can be crafted as 1x1 furniture - Think of these like weapon stands. I mean once you make a 5* item you're probably not going to make another one, right? Right. So less gathering dust. I'd make several electron vortexes to act as light sources around the hall. So cute! Cost for crafting the furniture is the same as the recipe, but only 1k crowns and no orbs. Hey, if it's just a statue it doesn't need all that mysterious orb power right? We wouldn't want live bombs lying around...Of course, this draws from the treasury. Once used, the recipe poofs out of the furniture machine (the one in Armero's lodge? or a new one? hmmm) This just incorporates another idea of mine, item stands.

You can merge helms and armors at the machine (recipe is any armor+any helm) to create full-body statues. Or keep them headless. or bodyless. Creepy.

You can also scan your character in the lab to make a 1x1 replica of your character, sword, shield, accessories, and battle sprite!
(this uses apocrean levitation tech). You'll have to merge statue and battle sprite.

Scanned Battle sprites alone will act like wandering entities in the guild hall. These are just advanced holographic scans, but they still look/are colored/act like battle sprites! If a person is in the hall and of a lower player rank, higher star level sprites will ignore them entirely. Otherwise, the sprites will investigate players, sometimes even following them if they don't have their own sprite equipped. Awww, it likes you! vs. YOU DONT HAVE ENOUGH BADGES!

Scanning is how you'd get statues of costumes, since these don't have recipes (and I don't want to change that to avoid derps). Choose to scan just your head, just your body, or both at the same time.

This "scanning" is pretty expensive, to encourage ppl to not fill a room with themselves in different pith helms. Or whatever, it doesn't have to be expensive. If you don't want someone making tons of statues, just block the room with a door.

As far as poses? Was thinking just a standard still of just holding the weapon, like if you were to take a screenshot of yourself in the party lobby, it would look pretty much like that. You could probably have like, a sort of scroll bar in the UI, for "ready" (Lobby), "Attacking" (in some sort of step stage for swords, having the gun reloading for handguns), and "Charging" for the obvious charge pose. A lot of "attacking" options will look similar to "Charging," especially bombs. Could have a "Bashing" or "Shielding" option too. If your knight is not holding anything while using the Scanner UI, then it will just be a straight stand up pose. The UI will show options for "Sitting", "Waving," "Dozing," and so on, even for the weapon poses too. Statues can be rotated as furniture when placing them in halls. When a statue is created, perhaps we could have some options:

You have the option to use your own crafting components. If this is the case, the statue you make will go into your inventory. You have the option to use the guild's crafting components out of the treasury. If this is the case, the statue you make will go straight into the Guild's furniture collection. You cannot mix and match components from treasury/your inventory like you can at the Guild Alchemy Machine. For these, it's either entirely from you, or entirely from the treasury. Honestly I'd much rather statues of individuals be made with only components from your inventory (come on, you're making a statue of YOU, why would you use guild resources?), but IDK how that would work coding-wise considering the current furniture crafting system that's in place. I like to assume anything is possible ;P

Pose alternative: UI at the statue can change the statue's pose (by anyone, not just whomever the statue is of).

I envision this scenario:
"WTS attractive statue of myself!" - And people would probably buy this sort of thing. You know they would.
Again, emphasis on access control. You don't want people going nuts building furniture of themselves with mats from the treasury. Restrictions of the current Hunter Lodge Armero Alchemy Machine seem to work, so use those. *mumbles on about what I'd rather have for this.*
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mineral Making

The lab has a section in the middle that grows minerals out of shards. Hurray, luminate for sprite food from my 10 billion light shards! This is a sort of "garden" and takes a while to grow the minerals. Once at full height, the lab automatically sticks them into the guild's treasury and waits for more shards. Guildies can use the Sprite Food Alchemy Machine (which is also linked to the treasury like the Guild Alchemy Machine if it's in a guild hall) to make sprite food. Help out the new players with your old dusty pile of...10 billion light shards.

This makes sense to me, since the shard descriptions say they are bits of minerals.

I'm thinking 1 shard = 1 month, 100 shards = 1 day, something like that. You can cram more shards in at any time, up to 100, to speed up the growing process. Always produces "shiny"

Huge opportunity for more mineral lore here.

Not gonna put a ton of mechanics talk into this, unless people like it.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Guild Logo

The guild can now design a logo at the command console! Not really a lab thing but anyway:

a simple interface lets you drag various shapes (squares, circles, gears) etc onto a grid. Then you color them. Symbols for things in the game (monster type, status, spiral knight, etc.) are available too. A small text limit.

A special Homecoming shield (given to all knights like the Lionheart Honor Blade etc. except every player rank gets the same shield) will display your guild's logo if you made one, or display the Spiral Knights knight head if you're guildless or your guild didn't make a logo.

A giant carpet can go in the center of rooms with your guild's logo on it. Banners and capes possible too!

Small idea, not gonna elaborate too much. Just mentioned it on the shuttle thread under how the shuttle looks and there ya go!

Similar thing in another game: Guild Wars 2 logo editor.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Research takes time and money. The lab requires both 5F wings to be installed.

Like the Haven Laboratory, a guild's laboratory has lots of opportunities to change and evolve, adding new things as new things are added to the game.

------Pros/Cons------
Cons:
Potential for wasting of materials on silly aesthetics. Oh wait, that's already a thing.
Unfair bias to guilds. Hard to avoid.
Bias to established guilds/players. Hard to avoid.

Pros:
Giving guilds a solid function in the game. Work together, grow together.

------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!