Gathering limits - ProgD update

[Nick]

A McWater and a free smile.

[T-shirt]

However, no matter how organized or technologically advanced we get, the greatest inefficiencies will always be the slow interactions between people. Unless there are lots of well organized people, you can have a single point of failure in this trading, and then everything stops.

I agree with you on that.

[melbi]

A McWater and a free smile.

That would do.

[Camino]

Those that tend to be slow in responding are those that tend to have limited degrees of power and control. Activity determines growth for a character, the more you do, the more interaction you receive and the results will speak for themselves.

Trading is good, if it happens in a region and continues to work well then that is surely a sign that it... works. If people try to trade and it doesn't work then no doubt they will give up and go elsewhere or adapt. I see no reason for intervention or any sign of forced trading really through mechanics alteration. All that's happened is that an outcome has been given to an action.

We need our inputs to have outcomes and limited slots for building, harvesting and hell even people are not ideas to be concerned over but rather tools to utilise to take society in another direction.

[julie2]

Exactly, you can build veichles to overcome these obstacles.
And if you can't afford a car; build a longboat, or a tandem bike.

That is such a simplistic argument Nick. It takes yearstand years to build realistic land transport (and there are very fewplaces where you could develop techologicaly using nothing but boats for transport.) Why does it take so long? Well, apart from all the tme you need spend crushing hematite etceter,you have to effectively solve the transport problems before you can fetch the requisite resources at anything better than a snail's pace. In the meantime you've still got to eat. It's almost a catch 22 situaton: To supply your community with food and transport , first build transport. That's solvable, given much time, much help, grim dertemination, and the haoppy fact that food already grows on your doorstep( or your neighbours already solved that problem, and supplies it) but it makes for very slow development. Now, I'm not grumbling about the slow development (the ProgD are!).I'm just grumbling when people seem to thinkthey can force the pace of development by simply incrasing the pressure to the point whereyou badly need all that transport right now,and when some character embarked on the firststage of that process (say, gathering hematite in a neighbouring town) is going to be told to stop , go find one of these places where they're gathering far too much hematite already and trade for it instead.

What was it it said in issue#1 of the Webzine? Only some very tiny percencentage of travellers in Cantr are travelling by bike or car. It's a pretty safe bet that the rest of them simply don't have that option yet. If you're talking about the puplation of Cantr in gneral, you can't ignore those particular characters. They're the overwhelming majority.

[julie2]

It makes everything more complicated. Instead of simply being able to do things, you have to interact with more or less organized groups that may not be interested in supplying what you want.

Plus, as I said in another post, everything takes longer: an unpredicatible time longer. You ask a question, get the answer tomorrow, it's the wrong person, and the right person is asleep.

I saw in Akypor Forest south that restrictions on gathering were imposed, and people stood around for a real-life week trying repeatedly to get permission to gather wood. They then ran out of food, because they hadn't planned on the complication.

And I know that you consider this just growing pains or whatever.

However, no matter how organized or technologically advanced we get, the greatest inefficiencies will always be the slow interactions between people. Unless there are lots of well organized people, you can have a single point of failure in this trading, and then everything stops.

Well put. I've not witnessed theAFS situation myself but I could easily imagine that kind of thing happening, as soonas I heard about gatheringlimitations. And I can also imagine the large -scale effects on Cantrian society when that kind of thing happensall over the place. (why can't everybody?)And I really don't like them

There are various things our characters can do about that. Ask Nick, He's got all the answers. But inthe final anaysis,you're trying to squeeze bloodout of stone if you expect Cantrians to adapt and co-operate to the extent that the economy functions effectively under those conditions. Cantrians are just not equipped ftr it. We're warned when we start this game that cantr is a slow-paced game where a single conversation can take a week. Butat least (witha bit of forethought) Cantrians could arrange to be productive while they talk (usually by gathering resources). If they have to talkfirst, THEN wait their turn, THEN gather resources (Well, maybe; all depending on the answer they get ) that slows the pace down all the more, and Cantrians will have to carry so much food around to accomadate those blips, it will be a miracle if they've room left in their packs for trade goods Just as a final little twist: in many places, once you've got your gathering slot, you wont dare break off to have a word with somebody indoors, so outdoor-indoor cross- communication will become almost non-existent.