Collaborative City Server means that we are all working together to make a big city. We all mine together and put all our materials together. One base. We all pitch in setting up processing systems, and all our efforts come together to finally make the city. It would take a year or two, I am sure. Cities are really big projects. It will be a full-blown, ever-expanding (maybe) city.
I've built cities before, a tekkit one that has thirty members, and a vanilla one that had somewhere between 20 and 30 members. It was possible only with EE2 and a terrible economy in my favor, respectively. But, in FTB, it took me a few hours to make a processing system, how is it going to take you so long, especially with 17 members, like you said?
Also, have you thought about new players joining into the pre-begun server? What if they don't want stuff built for them? If someone is banned or quits, you'll have more room for more people, because I doubt you can get all the players you need and 100% of them will be on and active in one shot without a few bans or additions. What the server I play on does, is have a big spawn, with machines and stuff that everyone can use, and villagers, and some members live there. Then, some of the other ones go off and do their own thing, so they can do things their own way, and maybe use FZ instead of RP, and use a different set of mods, or do whatever they want. Then, they may go to use the machines, go trade, or go see their friends. What if your server ran like that? People could choose to live in the village or they could live in an outpost through Mystcraft, Portal Gun, or railcarts, because they won't feel as pressured into going on every day and making sure their job is done.
Yes, villages do give responsibility, but what if people who want to join are lax and want to take their time. I personally like working on multiple things at once. If someone agreed to the job of sorting system, what if they get bored or frustrated? They can't go work on something else, like I would do, and come back later, they'd have to work on that sorting system until they finished. Sometimes, when I'm building, I can't figure out a way to do a certain wall or furnishing, so I'll go mining instead of standing there, thinking, and doing nothing. I find the "job" way is a bit tough, especially since this server is going to be geared towards younger members. They won't want to put in hours of work mining, or setting up a sorting system, or building one elvish build after another without anything to "spice it up".[DOUBLEPOST=1362021044][/DOUBLEPOST]Also, you should just make one build, just a spawn, to give everyone an idea of what they're going to be building. Then you can go all survival mode and build everything else, because what happens is you won't have the right mats for the build, so you'll make a temp home of cobblestone, and you'll expand and expand and expand, and you'll have to remove and remove and remove and replace and replace and replace for that feel.