What we know:
Urban Habitation Complexes (UHCs for short), are new underground "modern" cities built in and/or nearby the "old" surface ones, for several advantages:
- Nearly completely self-sufficient, excess water is filtered and recycled from sewage, other parts of the sewage can also be recycled for various uses such as fertilizer
- public transportation being the main method of transportation saves energy
- it's craploads harder to nuke an underground city
- etc.

We know that Reno and Las Vegas will have equivalent UHCs beneath them. Someone (I forget who), had the idea that Las Vegas has been surpassed by one of its suburbs in later years, so I nominate that it be the Henderson UHC.

So, let's figure more stuff out about these UHCs. What kind of public transportation can we expect? Law enforcement? Survellience? Population? Etc?

EDIT: To Clarify, there is still a ruined city above these UHCs, and this is only Reno and Las Vegas, the other towns will be above ground.

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Underground? Why? Would the expense be justifiable with the problems in the country? Where'd the tech come from to do this?

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Sorry, somehow I thought this was already decided, it's been mentioned several times on here and in IRC. It's ok though.


- Less maintainance of roads, as only public transportation (subway trains) and elevators are used.
- Public transportation usage saves energy, hence saves money
- We can say that they are/were partially (heavily?) corporately financed.
- Self-suffiency saves money
- Environmentally friendly
- In some places, the space is needed
- I had the idea of a "second cold war", causing the government to want cities that can stand up to nuclear weapons more effectively. (this wouldn't quite be a first, we wouldn't have the interstate highway system if it weren't for the Cold War)


Eh? Don't we have the tech already today? I'm not talking about hollowing out a huge underground area and building skyscrapers, I'm just talking about building downward instead of upward.

If you wish, we can say that they're partially underground.

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How do you see this enhancing the story? What's the point?

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Underground cities are cool. This also means that we don't need to figure out how to put skyscrapers into an isometric view, we just put the ones on the surface in ruins.

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I have no clue about the story, but some cities are build "above ground" already. Like Seattle, I think you can actually walk underneath the city.

And they plan to do this now in New Orleans.

Maybe interesting, maybe not.

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Well, I meant underground, not above. And yes, that's true about Seattle, and about some parts of Atlanta even.

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Well, that's what I mean, under the city you could have a small underground city of <name here> .

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Well, we wouldn't have to worry about rendering open environments at least if everything's underground.

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As another possible advantage, why not throw in that the time period prior to the perception crash encountered a great boom in geothermal power technowlogy. The cities, having to be self-sufficient, would have to generate their own power as power lines would be subject to attack, and with geo-thermal power now in this future a very viable source of energy if it's done well, it'd be the easiest to protect, especially considering it'd be under the city (I'd say a large layer underneith it, perhapse larger than the city itself) and it'd be near-impossible for any raiders to get to. Not only that, but a huge power plant would provide jobs for many of the UHC's inhabitants... And power plants give us a target of interest for attacks, and a cool place for fights to take place in. And of course it IS 40 years into the future, there probably will be some sort of material-science advances at very least that make it easier to build an underground city... Laser-sharpened or carbon-fiber drills for instance.

Sounds sweet, think about it, an NPC at the elevator just before you leave could warn you that things are dangerous above ground. It would be a cool setting if people lived underground for security reasons, and above ground creatures and bad guys are at. You could have missions to venture far from the main UHC and talk to people, using underground trains that take you places. Hey one mission could take you on a train that busts down and is being attacked, and you have to fight your way out.

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Not EVERYTHING, you go above ground for the small towns, and for the ruins of the old cities. The thing that was worrying me was Skyscrapers and other HUGE buildings, they would be very annoying to go behind and stuff in an iso game without rotation. So, we can just put all the skyscrapers in ruins, and have people living in the ruins (poor people). Law isn't enforced much outside this UHCs, though. I guess I should clarify that, in the original post.

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I like the idea of the majority of cities being built underground. IMO, it offers more stealth oppertunities, and stealth, being cool, is a good thing. However, I think that we should make the above-ground parts of the cities look like they were scrapped for materials and used in the underground cities, instead of abandoned. Maybe a little bit of both.

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This sounds like a good idea to me.

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Agreed.

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Henderson UHC would probably have a Masonic Lodge in it somewhere, as cheesy and conspiracy-like Masonic stuff is, they're still around, and still would be around after the perception crash.

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How would they fit in gameplay-wise? This might be an area of creature feep.

Dialogue and npcs, just like any other organization.

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Again, creature feep.

that was already included in existing features

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