So it's about time to plan things out for UMC. Here's the main projects we should probably focus on. In short: We're going to be present at every exit out of spawn.

Overworld Presence

During this revision, most of the UMC amenities were split between the Overworld and the Nether. There was the overworld resource farm (crops, trees, netherwart, etc) and the nether for the lotto, map, enchanting, and crafting. While we certainly helped new players with a protected nether portal and a successful farm, I think focusing more on the Overworld than the nether (in general) would mean helping more players. Rather than abandon the nether outright, we would focus more on builds in the Overworld next to spawn and the nether would be secondary.

I think we should try for the highly suggested plan of a ring around spawn. This will be difficult and does have a pretty good chance of falling through. However, I think it's worth a shot, and we can certainly come up with designs that will be good even if we don't have a perfect ring.

The build plan is rather simple:
- Have 4 builds on the cardinal roads out of spawn, directly outside spawn protections.
- Connect those builds with roads around spawn, and have a decent buffer around the roads on both sides.
- As needed, fill that buffer with embassies. Best spots (right next to the cardinal roads) need to be claimed and built on within days of the request, or they will be back up for grabs.

That way, even if the overall plan of a perfect ring falls through, we will be able to have a very obvious presence to new players and will have plenty of space to showcase embassies.

The four builds will be a massive crop farm, a horse ranch, a main UMC building, and an animal farm. The crop farm will host as many plants as possible, including a tree farm, and will hopefully be about double the size of the current one. The horse ranch is expected to be gigantic once we get a good number of horse breeds and mats. The main UMC building will host the UMC maps, FAQs for joining a city or finding good build spots, an embassy directory, and sign ups for embassy spots. The animal farm will host all other animals, including chickens, sheep, cows, etc, but the main purpose will be so people can breed their own and lead them to their own areas rather than massive wool/egg/etc farming.

There will also be a lot of signs explaining the ring to players, so they know to follow the road around the UMC area around spawn, and that it is also player run rather than admin run. I think this confusion leads to a lot of mixed up expectations for both the mod/admin team and UMC helpers.

Once the basic builds and connecting roads are completed, adding a trolley system around the ring would also be a nice touch. Perhaps a compact CARBON one to show off redstone. (But mostly because we never do anything simple... ever.)

Nether Presence

With all that in mind, we will NOT be abandoning the nether in any way. The nether will still have a building around the portal to protect players from ghasts, though it won't be quite as complex. There will still be a rail station (CARBON), and since 1.6 doesn't seem to have messed with redstone, we should be able to replicate the design quickly and efficiently once we have the materials (which will be a LOT of redstone!). There will also be the main lotto branch if smiler100 is up to it, especially now that a more compact design for the automation has been made.

I plan to also help on roads to portals if cities cannot get them done on their own or don't have workers to spare. That said, UMC will not be planning on doing it unless this is the case; there were several instances this rev where there was miscommunication with cities with multiple mayors, which led to a lot of frustration on both sides. If a city wants to do their own road, UMC won't be working on their road. If the city wants help or would prefer to leave it to UMC, we will work with them on a design and do it for them.

I'd also like to remind cities that they can also probably check with the RBA for getting quick roads in the nether. They were unbelievably amazing this rev in the Overworld, and I'm sure there'd be plenty of volunteers who'd like to make some awesome nether roads for the portal cities.

Since the nether seems like it'd be pretty neglected, we may work on adding death spleef and PVP arenas to the nether once the main Overworld projects are done. It's difficult to add arenas near spawn due to the high demand for space, but the nether is another story.

In general, these are the thoughts and ideas that were brought up in many chats, reddit posts, etc by a number of people. I've tried to bring those together into a well-rounded and feasible plan so that it's something we know we can get done, still going to be amazing to see once it's there, and definitely focuses on helping new players.

If you have any suggestions for improving the plan, additions, or any other comments, feel free. I'll be messing around with different styles of builds to hopefully come up with tasteful and impressive designs we can use for all the builds mentioned above.