A building should matter long after its final stone is placed.
In a persistent player-driven world, property is more than scenery. A workshop supports livelihoods. A home protects its residents. A municipal building provides services to an entire community. Constructing one creates opportunity, but it also creates a responsibility that continues throughout the building's life.
We have now finalized the canonical design for Maintenance & Building HP V1. The design is complete and canonical; the full gameplay/runtime system is not yet implemented or live.
Buildings Have a Life
Every permanent Building has HP, but V1 deliberately avoids a maze of arbitrary condition thresholds.
A building at 100%, 50%, 10%, or even 2% HP remains fully operational. It does not become slower, lose storage, dismiss workers, reduce production or lock its services merely because its condition is poor.
The boundary is sharp and understandable: every value above zero functions normally. At exactly 0% HP, the Building collapses.
That distinction keeps condition meaningful without forcing players to memorize a collection of intermediate penalties. An owner can see danger approaching and decide how to respond, while the consequences of reaching zero remain permanent.
Weekly Maintenance
Every Building carries an authoritative historical record of the materials originally consumed to construct it. Those materials are not secretly stored inside the Building; the record describes what the structure was made from and remains the basis for maintenance and repair.
Each week, maintenance requires 2% of every original construction material. Every material is calculated independently, and every result is rounded upward to a whole unit.
A Building originally made from:
- 1,000 Timber
- 1,000 Stone
- 1,000 Iron
requires each week:
- 20 Timber
- 20 Stone
- 20 Iron
The same rule matters for smaller quantities. Two percent of 73 Stone is 1.46, so the weekly requirement is 2 Stone. There are no fractional maintenance materials.
Construction composition therefore remains economically important throughout the Building's entire life. What a structure required at the beginning continues shaping the resources needed to preserve it.
Stocking Materials in Advance
Maintenance uses the existing Universal Building Inventory. There is no separate maintenance chest or Repair Inventory.
Owners and authorized managers may place more materials in the Building Inventory than are currently owed, allowing a responsible household, business or municipality to prepare reserves in advance. At the single scheduled weekly maintenance event, the system examines that Inventory and may consume applicable available materials.
It does not continuously poll the Inventory waiting for supplies. The automatic check happens once per weekly maintenance cycle; repairs outside that event happen only through an explicit authorized action.
Neglect Accumulates
If a Building completely misses a weekly maintenance cycle, it loses 2% HP and that week's material requirements remain outstanding. Missing another week removes another 2% HP and adds another full set of independently rounded obligations.
Five completely missed weeks therefore mean 10% HP lost and five weekly maintenance packages owed.
This debt does not disappear merely because the next week arrives. An owner cannot neglect a Building for months, provide one ordinary weekly package and restore everything to perfect condition. The outstanding materials reflect the maintenance and HP that were actually missed.
Repair at Any Time
Authorized management does not have to wait for the next weekly event to make progress. Repair follows one direct interaction:
Deposit required materials → Open Management → Repair → Materials consumed → HP restored
The Building's original construction-material record determines what is owed. The owner—or a Character granted the Maintenance and Repair capability—places the valid materials into the Universal Building Inventory and uses the Repair action in Management.
Materials Keep Their Identity
Repair materials are non-substitutable. If the Building owes 20 Timber, 20 Stone and 20 Iron, supplying 60 Timber does not complete the repair.
Timber satisfies Timber obligations. Stone satisfies Stone obligations. Iron satisfies Iron obligations. This keeps each Building connected to the actual composition from which it was constructed rather than turning maintenance into a generic resource sink.
Partial Repairs
Owners do not need every missing material before they can make any progress. Partial repair is allowed.
If 20 Timber is available while Stone and Iron are still missing, the Timber component may be satisfied and its corresponding repair progress restored. The remaining material categories stay outstanding. Returning all the way to 100% HP ultimately requires every component associated with the missing HP to be fulfilled.
The Management view will make that state clear material by material, showing the original construction amount, the current outstanding requirement and partial progress rather than offering only an unhelpful “Materials Needed” warning.
Damage Is Damage
The system does not split missing Building HP into separate categories for neglected maintenance, future attacks, siege damage or other future sources. Missing HP is simply missing HP.
If a future event removes 30% HP, complete restoration requires the corresponding 30% of every original construction material, with each quantity rounded upward under the established rules. There is no separate battle-repair economy hiding beside ordinary maintenance.
This gives every source of damage one consistent answer: repair the structure according to what it was actually built from.
Public Information and Private Authority
Any player may approach a Building, press E, and inspect its public information. At minimum, everyone can see the Building's identity or type, its owner, and its current HP or condition.
Public inspection does not grant administrative authority. Protected Inventory contents, permissions and operational controls remain available only to appropriately authorized Characters.
The owner automatically holds full applicable Management authority and never needs to grant permissions to themselves. The owner may delegate granular capabilities to other Characters—for example, managing Inventory or a chest, controlling doors, or performing Maintenance and Repair.
Delegation is not forced into an all-or-nothing role. A trusted Character may receive the capabilities appropriate to their responsibility without gaining ownership, demolition authority or every other control.
At Zero: Collapse
At exactly 0% HP, the Building collapses. The physical structure disappears, its permanent Building aggregate ceases to exist through the authoritative lifecycle transaction, and a Loot Chest occupies the former location.
V1 does not leave behind a permanent ruined Building waiting indefinitely at zero HP, nor does it reconstruct the property automatically.
What Survives the Collapse?
Only what was actually stored in the Building at the moment of collapse survives into the Loot Chest. That includes the applicable current contents of its Universal Building Inventory and Treasury.
The materials originally consumed to construct the Building are not refunded. Timber, Stone, Iron, Bronze, Steel and every other original construction material were consumed when the Building was made. They do not magically reappear when it is lost.
This distinction is essential. Collapse preserves current possessions where the lifecycle permits, but it does not reverse construction or turn destruction into a source of free building materials.
The Collapse Loot Chest
The collapsed-Building Loot Chest remains for a maximum of two real-world weeks.
During Week 1, only the former owner and Characters who held the appropriate rights to the Building may access it. During Week 2, the chest becomes free-for-all. At the end of Week 2, it disappears with anything still inside.
If the chest becomes completely empty earlier, a 24-real-world-hour removal timer begins. Once it has remained empty for that full period, it disappears.
Until the chest is gone, the former Building location remains occupied. A replacement Building cannot be placed directly on top of it.
This collapse lifecycle is separate from voluntary demolition. Owner-authorized demolition retains its existing one-week Salvage Chest; it is not replaced by the two-week collapse rule.
Property and Responsibility
Maintenance gives construction resources a life beyond the moment a Blueprint is crafted. Timber, Stone, metals and other materials remain part of the long-term economy because persistent property continues to need them.
That creates reasons to prepare reserves, entrust capable managers and think carefully about the Buildings a household, business or municipality can sustain. Neglect carries a real cost, while timely maintenance remains transparent and predictable.
The system is intentionally direct: two percent per material each week, one shared repair principle, normal operation above zero, and permanent consequences at collapse.
Property ownership creates opportunity. In The City of Gold, it also creates responsibility.