Open country, and the rules that end at its edge.
Behind the plaza there is a gap in the hedge. Walk through it and the districts stop: no shopfronts, no floors, no ceiling — just ground, roads, and whoever else came out here. This is the one part of MetaScape that works this way, and the only part where anyone can be hurt.
You have to go looking for it
The Overland is not a mode you switch on and it is not somewhere you can wander into by accident from a shop. It is a place, on the far side of the plaza, reached on foot or in a car through one gap in a hedge.
Everything on this page happens out there and nowhere else. If you never take that walk, MetaScape stays exactly what the rest of this site describes.
Everything else about MetaScape is on the world page.
Where the rules change
Safe ground
Nobody can be hurt here
- Every district: the Market, Homes, Work, Events, the Wall, Metrix Prime.
- The Commons plaza and the whole interchange at the centre of the map — sixty-two metres across, and never claimable by anyone.
- A forty-five-metre bubble around each of the six district gates, so nobody can camp your way home.
- Everything past the rim at three hundred and ninety metres.
Open ground
Here, and only here, they can
- Everywhere else inside the rim: about seven hundred parcels of holdable country.
- The roads between the gates. They are deliberately not protected — the drive is part of the risk.
- Any settlement anyone has raised, including yours.
The Overland, to scale
- The interchange, 62 m. Where you arrive. Safe ground, and nobody can ever claim it.
- The rim, 390 m. The edge of the country. Nothing past it is holdable, and nothing past it is dangerous.
- About 700 parcels. The grid is 24 m squares — a house with a garden round it.
- The roads. They run from the interchange to each gate, and they are not protected.
Six gates home, 300 m out, 45 m of safe ground apiece
- The Market
- Homes
- Events
- Work
- The Wall
- Metrix Prime
Ground
The map is a disc three hundred and ninety metres across, cut into twenty-four-metre squares. A house is about six metres on a side, so a parcel is a generous plot with a garden around it.
- A parcel
- 24 m square. Claim one and it is on your deed until somebody takes it from you. Nothing else takes it — there is no rent.
- The rim
- 390 m from the centre. Nothing past it can be held, and nothing past it is dangerous.
- The interchange
- The 62 m apron at the origin where you arrive. Never claimable by anybody, ever.
- The gates
- Six doorways home, on a ring 300 m out, each with 45 m of protected ground around it.
- Holding it costs nothing
- You keep ground by defending it, or by hiring guards to watch it while you are away. You can hold as much as you can keep — which is the only limit on sprawl, and it is enforced by your neighbours rather than by a bill.
- Guards have wages
- Hired guards cost a little each day. Go seven days without paying and they walk off the parcel. The ground stays yours; it is just no longer watched.
Settlements
Five rungs, one at a time, and no way to pay past the first. Nothing is gathered or mined — a settlement costs time, and time is the part that is real during beta.
Tent
Somewhere to put your things down. It will not stop anybody.
- Takes
- 30 seconds
- Costs
- 5 SCAPE
- To keep
- nothing
- Guards you
- —
Shack
The first rung you can come back to life in.
- Takes
- 3 minutes
- Costs
- 25 SCAPE
- To keep
- nothing
- Guards you
- 4
Cabin
Worth attacking, which is rather the point.
- Takes
- 15 minutes
- Costs
- 120 SCAPE
- To keep
- nothing
- Guards you
- 10
House
A real holding, and a real thing to lose.
- Takes
- 1 hour
- Costs
- 500 SCAPE
- To keep
- nothing
- Guards you
- 22
Hall
One per alliance, and only an alliance can raise it.
- Takes
- 6 hours
- Costs
- 2,500 SCAPE
- To keep
- nothing
- Guards you
- 40
- A building has a condition from nought to a hundred rather than a health bar, and it guards you in proportion to it.
- You can come back to life at your own settlement from the shack upwards, as long as its condition is at least twenty-five.
- Take someone's ground and the building on it is yours, standing at forty per cent — enough to be worth having, not enough to hide behind. A captured hall comes down instead.
- Repairing costs about a third of the tier's price for the share of condition you are putting back.
Guards
Up to four standing agents per parcel. They raise the number an attacker has to beat, and they are the one thing out here with a daily wage — the ground itself costs nothing to hold.
Watcher
- Adds to your defence
- 3
- Watches out to
- 22 m
- Costs
- 10 SCAPE
- Wages
- 0.5 / day
Warden
- Adds to your defence
- 9
- Watches out to
- 34 m
- Costs
- 40 SCAPE
- Wages
- 2 / day
Sentinel
- Adds to your defence
- 22
- Watches out to
- 48 m
- Costs
- 120 SCAPE
- Wages
- 6 / day
Alliances
Up to fifty people under one name and one colour. An alliance is how you hold a stretch of country between you and how you raise a hall, which nobody can build alone.
Land is held by your deed, not by the alliance. Leaving one costs you nothing you earned.
The fight
Only on open ground, and only against people who also walked out here. What follows is how it behaves, so that nothing about it is a surprise.
- A hundred health
- Regenerating six a second once you have been out of a fight for twelve seconds.
- Shots travel
- They are not instant. A round leaves at forty-six metres a second and dies at ninety, so distance and a moving target are both real defences.
- Fists are always yours
- A punch does twelve and lands about three times a second; a kick does twenty-two and lands slower. You are never unarmed.
- You go down, not away
- At nought health you are down for forty-five seconds. Anyone can spend four seconds beside you and put you back on your feet at thirty-five health.
- Carry it home
- What you take off somebody is not yours until you have walked it back to ground nobody can hold. Go down in the open and it drops where you fell, for whoever comes past.
- The world keeps the score
- How you did in a fight is worked out by the server from what actually happened to you, not sent up by your own machine. You cannot be knocked down and still take the ground.
Found weapons
Being written now, and not in the world yet. The shape of it is settled: no weapon of your own and none to buy — everything is picked up off the ground where you find it.
- Five classes — pistol, SMG, rifle, shotgun and sniper — each on one of four kinds of ammunition.
- Five steps of rarity, from common to legendary, each ten per cent better than the last, so the best version of a gun hits about forty-six per cent harder than the plainest.
- Shields you find and drink, on top of your health.
- Chests that roll one step better than the floor does.
None of this is switched on. It is listed here because it is being built in the open, not because you can use it — check the badge, not the paragraph.
