Things that annoy or puzzle you about Cantr

[Money]

A bigger problem to me then city states is the complete lack of imaginative leadership in a vast majority of locations. 1 leader who dispenses materials, tools/weapons, influence and employment is the general model of governance I've seen during my time playing Cantr. While indeed it is an effective model I would hardly call it one destined for success, no town is going to grow much when all they have to attract more citizens then the neighbouring identical twin government is a slight diffrence in rp styles, resources and a few open positions of power. Honestly I've seen many people just leave a location because they know that if they travel around a little and show that they are active that they will be offered a position as town guard leader, head trader, operator of the foundry or something along those lines. A leader needs to offer something above and beyond the ordinary if they wish to attract more people/become successful beyond the simple accumulation of resources (which doesn't take much more then time to procure).

[Majix]

A lot of whispering annoyes me. That's much worse than conversations I'm not part of.

[Mr. Bones]

and capitalism is allowed, although rarely practiced.

Can't have capitalism when the price of the raw commodities are fixed by the game mechanic. Cantr is designed to support a barter society, and it does that very well.

I beg to differ, I have a business owner who makes a profit off of his wares. Even in raw goods you can make a profit by selling rare resources for local ones. I say it is rarely practiced because private businesses are rare. Most people end up working for the town, scavenging or just collecting resources for personal use.

[Doug R.]

I once saw someone try to trade emeralds, a resource whose origin is unknown to the English zone, at a marginal markup and get told off by the other party that they only trade tooled rate for tooled rate and the offer was insulting.

[Sunni Daez]

Yes, but emeralds are not a necessary item. They are a vanity product. I seen someone trying to trade them less than half the rate... this was turned down, simply because they are only used in jewelry.

[Bmot]

Yes, but emeralds are not a necessary item. They are a vanity product. I seen someone trying to trade them less than half the rate... this was turned down, simply because they are only used in jewelry.

I think I have a char that would happily pay that for emeralds...

[Doug R.]

Sure. And it's a valid response to say that you don't need them, and you don't want to trade. But to imply someone is cheating you because they're marking up one of the rarest resources in the game?

My point isn't about emeralds. It could have been anything. It's the "day's labor" mentality that dictates all trades have to be even. About the only things you can mark up are manufactured goods, because most people don't bother to sit down and calculate the break-even price (and it's not in the wiki). I did run a successful trading company that made a profit on delivering off-island goods, but only because the deliveries were contracted before-hand and the prices agreed upon. If I had gathered the resources first and then tried to offload them at the same price, I can almost guarantee I'd have been turned down, because people ignore the fact that at some point in your life you had to go and get this stuff, and were getting nothing for that effort at the time.

I'll also add that I still would not have made any profit on it had my crew actually asked to be paid. At least I had worker apathy working in my character's favor. Even pre-contracted, I guarantee no one would pay even a break-even price for a crew of 4 to sail to another island and gather something for you if each character wanted compensation. They'd just send their own townies who work for free.

If a day's work is worth a day's harvest, then it's impossible for anyone to ever profit by hiring someone to work for them, because 100% of their effort is going towards their wage. If there's ever going to be anything other than a barter economy, workers need to accept less than a day's harvest for their wages, or the end result of their work needs to equal more than a day's harvest. The latter is only possible with skilled characters or using machines, and almost no one in the game takes advantage of this (why should drilled oil be SO MUCH cheaper than hand-pumped oil? Because the consumers run the Cantr economy, and there's no scarcity to give the suppliers leverage). Even then, the advantage is narrow, e.g. 50% max boost do to skill, and a few times higher on a drill. Compare that to modern industry where one man can churn out thousands of times the product on an assembly line. THAT is the backbone of capitalism. The game is rigged for a stagnant barter economy, and it's developed as only it could within that framework.

[Doug R.]

And along this point, I'll add that there are far too few manufactured goods in Cantr. Even in real life, the profit margin on stuff you pull from the ground is low. We pay $20 for a widgit because we don't know that it cost them $1 to make it. If Cantr had more complicated and desirable manufactured items combined with a less transparent manufacturing process, things might be very different.

In Cantr, the only thing that meets this description is booze. The prep times combined with fermenting times make them a nightmare to calculate the cost (complicated and less transparent), and people will pay what you ask, so long as there's no competition.

[SekoETC]

Cheese is even worse than booze because on top of maturing time, there used to be no way to calculate the cost of milk. Now with animals it might be possible, but I don't know if anyone has bothered to do it.

[Sunni Daez]

I don't disagree with you Doug... not at all.

[Doug R.]

Good example of complexity, Seko, but I don't see a demand for cheese in the game. Booze has rp-driven demand so characters can get drunk with their friends. Cheese is a culinary curiosity at best. No one is going to pay for expensive cheese if there's 30 other cheaper things they can trade for that do the same thing. Booze was all implemented at the same time, so all booze is the pretty much in the same ballpark cost to effect. Foods are all over the place. We tried to make more expensive foods more potent, but now that we can store food in our stomach, it has lessened the attraction of this because we don't have to carry it in inventory. We should expand the diversity of food effect, and not just expand the diversity of the food itself. If cheese did something interesting that no other food did, then people would want it and pay for it.

[SekoETC]

I at one point suggested a morale stat that would be boosted by eating various things instead of the same thing each day, and you would get a bonus for rare and expensive things. It also included physical favors or services currently left to rp, such as massage and hugs. As far as I can remember, a lot of people hated the idea because it would be just more clicking to fill a bar. But imagine if people had a need for services such as hair cuts, manicures, getting their feet washed, etc, and could gain pleasure from it, that would create a need for human contact instead of every man for himself. Of course some people could just drown their sorrows in drinks and overeating. There would be multiple ways to boost your morale.

[Bmot]

I at one point suggested a morale stat that would be boosted by eating various things instead of the same thing each day, and you would get a bonus for rare and expensive things. It also included physical favors or services currently left to rp, such as massage and hugs. As far as I can remember, a lot of people hated the idea because it would be just more clicking to fill a bar. But imagine if people had a need for services such as hair cuts, manicures, getting their feet washed, etc, and could gain pleasure from it, that would create a need for human contact instead of every man for himself. Of course some people could just drown their sorrows in drinks and overeating. There would be multiple ways to boost your morale.

Hmm, might not be a bad idea, but then drunkenness and fatness should be added, too, I think.

I (think I) like this, it'll change a lot in how work is handled in Cantr, I think, needing time to cut hair, wash, and stuff like that.

[SekoETC]

Drunkenness is programmed, there are simply no values assigned to any of the drinks. It doesn't have any effects until you reach falling down drunk, though.

[Doug R.]

Hey, here's an idea! Let's give weak characters an advantage! Alter healing food so that it's effectiveness is reduced by strength.

(starting suggestion thread)