How would you have implemented it?

[Solfius]

Allow natural healing at a low rate per day. It's absurd that someone can't recover from an injury after two years of sitting around, eating just fine, resting and doing nothing else.

That's how it always used to be, when strength equaled health/hunger.

Fix animals. If an animal attacks you, it doesn't get to attack again for 3 days. Why? Because it's too damn tired! If I get tired, why don't they? Seriously, though, the whole animal system is very broken,

I think that the animal system is being redone, that's what I heard at least...

[julie2]

Allow natural healing at a low rate per day. It's absurd that someone can't recover from an injury after two years of sitting around, eating just fine, resting and doing nothing else.

I agree.

I also agree that healing foods are not effective enough. However, I've read complaints on this boards that thieves gain too big an advantage by stealing healing foods, so if they were made more effective that would make that particular problem worse. The solution might be to make healing foods more effective, but slower-acting, so it takes several days for them to have their full effect. That would also be more realistic.

[mortaine]

Yeah, I don't know about that. My main gripe with healing right now is that the animals are killing 5 of my characters and there is nothing I can do about it. So, here's what I can see happening in barbarian lands (numbers fudged for CR sake):

Day 1: You get hit by a boar for 25% of your damage.
1: You eat 5007 g of grubs to heal yourself. You gain 5% damage back today. [now at 20%]
2: You get hit by a boar for 25% of your damage. [now at 45%]
2: You eat 5007 g of grubs to heal yourself.
2: You gain 5% back today [40%]
3: You get hit by a boar for 25% of your damage. [now 65%]
3: You gain 5% back today [60%, you ran out of grubs, are collecting more, but you are gonna run out of time.]
4: You get hit by a boar for 25% of your damage. [85%]
4: You gain 5% back today (leftover from Day 1 and 2, when you had grubs). [80%]

What do you think happens tomorrow?

[Nixit]

DEATH!!

[kroner]

the wild is a dangerous place! of course it's not nice to suddenly spring that on people who were already in the middle of it.

[Lumin]

Not only that, but damage seems to have the same effect as tiredness on productivity and combat.

I was wondering about that, glad somebody could clear it up. I really hope natural healing will be returned eventually; I'm not sure if the reason it stopped working was intentional, or just a side effect of splitting up hunger and damage.

I know the fact that people can't always be online is probably the reason for the one hit a day rule, but if you're holding a shield you automatically block, whether or not you're awake. And like I said, if you know you'll be asleep for awhile, go inside a building. Reading posts like Mortaine's makes me think my characters are spoiled on being able to stand outside all the time. (And anyway, I thought one of the reasons for furniture was to give people an incentive to go inside; wouldn't this do the same thing?)

I know locks can be hard to come by, but maybe that just means we need something that doesn't require iron? How about a good old-fashioned wooden latch or something?

Even something like three hits a day would be a nice compromise. (I assume; I have no idea how tired hitting another person makes you as all I'm going by is hunting.) It would give people chasing criminals an actual chance at stopping them, instead of just making it the current futile effort that no one even bothers with anymore. I imagine something like that would also be welcome in the areas that are overrun by animals.

[Nixit]

I know the fact that people can't always be online is probably the reason for the one hit a day rule, but if you're holding a shield at least you automatically block, regardless.

Well, shields just reduce, so if there were no limit, shield would not matter that much in the long run. But, yeah, three or two times might be good. Hitting actual people is a lot more tiring than animals, so two would probably be the max times you could hit anyone, but I'm not positive.

[The Sociologist]

Taking up Agar's challenge, here is my solution to how tiredness should be handled. I believe is is essential to fix two problems associated with tiredness that have in effect wrecked Cantr: (a) the destruction of economic rationality; (b) the effective elimination of warfare and conflict.

My proposal:

1. Tiredness from Projects.

In each Cantr hour 1% tiredness is added to a character working on a project. This is a flat rate and continues at 8% every day until 96% tiredness is reached, that is to say after 12 days.

However, the first 48% of tiredness has no effect on productivity, hunting or combat. That is to say, you continue producing at the normal rate and aren't penalized. After that, however, you are penalized more steeply and lose 2% productivity for every 1% further tiredness until at 96% tiredness you really are only producing at 4% of your capability.

In other words, you can work for 6 days with no production penalty at all before needing to rest. This will help to restore economic rationality to the game. Your characters have a regular activity/rest pattern just as you do in real life, and during the "working" period they produce at anticipated and easily calculated levels. It is essential to restore this predictability as the game currently has no rational basis for commerce or economics.

2. Resting.

You must actually start a resting project in order to rest. Merely standing around will not produce any automatic benefit. However, you have the option of using either (a) a resting button on the location page, or (b) clicking on a machine. The resting button on the location page is the equivalent of resting on the ground, though you can also do it inside houses, boats or vehicles.

To enhance resting using the location page, you have resting "tools" such as sleeping bags, reed mats, canvas hammocks, feather-stuffed hide pillows and the like. These are portable just like any other tools. I regard this as essential for backwoodsmen, travelling traders and the like. Beyond that, resting machines such as beds will work as currently implemented.

When resting using the location button only, without either tools or machines, you should regain the 48% tiredness in about 3 days, ie at 16% per day. That is to say work 6 days then rest 3. That gives a reasonably margin to play around with the relative efficiency of various tools and machines for resting, which should at the top end reduce the need for rest to less than a day.

It is again essential for the backwoods community that some basic resting tools should be very easy to make--from hide and suchlike--and should nonetheless give a decent boost to resting, cutting the time from, say, 3 to 2 days. There should probably be at least two categories of resting tools (much like knives versus bone knives).

A useful outcome of the above is that characters with houses and access to better beds will be able to set up a nice regular 7-day pattern, 6 days working and 1 day indoors resting--especially useful for those who don't play over weekends, etc. Currently, nobody has the foggiest clue when their projects will end.

3. Tiredness from Combat.

This will work in the same way. Hitting one person should cause about 12% tiredness, so you will be able to hit 4 at full strength and without effecting your combat efficiency. Obviously, you then need to rest after that. However, with this relaxing of the limits, some possibility of organized warfare should again emerge.

Bear in mind also that you can rest on ships or vehicles, or even on the ground (if you are prepared to take the risk of lying down in your sleeping bag on the front line!) And I really mean all vehicles--it should be possible to drape your sleeping bag over the saddle of your tandem bike and rest on that. After all, the Mongols could sleep on their horses!

I also believe that in the vehicle category, provision should be made for the better vehicles and boats to have "ambulance" capabilities--ie where better quality beds and the like can be built on board. But this is looking to the future, or perhaps back to the golden past when there were such things as the Lad Empire and when Lord Gregor's threats against Krif actually meant something.

At any rate, this is the minimum necessary to get warfare--or at least the possiblity of potential conflict--started again. Without that and the possibility of rational economic calculation, Cantr will die as a society simulator. In fact it is dying right now and has been doing so ever since tiredness was introduced.

4. Interim Measures

Until the above mechanisms can be implemented, all tiredness parameters should be set to zero. In other words no tiredness at all should accumulate until the system can be implemented properly. The current farcical scenario has no benefits whatsoever and is simply destroying the game.

[Lumin]

What he said.

Sociologist, any chance you could learn how to program?

[Nixit]

Yeah, I kinda like that idea.

[mortaine]

I like all of it except the "must actively rest" idea.

[Agar]

Hmm, how to fix Combat ...

Add weapon speed!

Huh?

Weapons right now have different levels of damage they do, and it's been alluded that they have accuracy, but that may have been someone's OOc knowledge. I don't know or care about the accuracy part, I'm talking about speed.

Give weapons a speed attribute that represents how easily they're wielded. Let's pick an arbitrary weapon for a baseline, I'm sure that's how programmers do it, but I don't have a dart board to do it all offical like.

Let's call billy clubs our baseline for wielding, and that is for you being able to attack twice a day. Now some things are going to be less wieldy than a club, some more. Like a Halberd would be less wieldy. You have an axehead, a spear point and a hook on a long pole, you need to take a moment to bring it to bear again after you've bashed someone with it. A saber would, sadly, be an example of something more wieldy. It's all balanced and stuff, letting you whip one of those around like a sharpened steel willow switch. So Halberds should only be able to attack perhaps once a day, or longer, say 12 hours, but sabers might be up like every 2 or 3 hours. Bone knives may even be every hour.

Is this a good thing? Well, you're still getting tired in any case with each attack, and they're still defending. You didn't forget about shields did you?

Give shields a speed too. Lighter shileds are easier to put in the way of incomeing blows. Lighter shields are usually not nearly as durable how ever, so that wood shield might block more blows from hitting you, but it's going to end up crumbling that much faster. Iron shield or a targe might only block about a third or worse the blows, but your murderer will be thrilled on it's relativly new condition.

Speed also lends itself to creating a new demand. Armor.

If shields become less effective when you're tired (and they do) and people keep jabbing you with bone knives, eventually you'll want to just strap shields all over yourself so they can't hit you even when you're tired. Wearing protection is called armor. Wood and Silk Samuri suits, Maximillion plate mail gilded with gold and silver, leather armour, padded hides, every kind of armor would now come into play. If a blow get's past your shield, if would have a small chance of finding a weakpoint in your armor, which would vary by the armor, and be reduced by a value based on how well the armor protects you.

So, you might be able to jab people lots of times a day, but you're going to wear your self out and then they'll drag you off or just beat blows past your shield and kill you. You'll have to strategise.

[Nixit]

I like it.

[julie2]

I know the fact that people can't always be online is probably the reason for the one hit a day rule, but if you're holding a shield you automatically block, whether or not you're awake. And like I said, if you know you'll be asleep for awhile, go inside a building. Reading posts like Mortaine's makes me think my characters are spoiled on being able to stand outside all the time. (And anyway, I thought one of the reasons for furniture was to give people an incentive to go inside; wouldn't this do the same thing?)

Defence is about more than holding up a shield. It's also about having the chance to hit back- or running away (if only there was somewhere to run to) Also your friends should have the chance to wake up and defend you before it goes too far. IRL you can arrange to have a wakeful guard 24-7, in Cantr thats impossible, so there has to be some way to simulate that effect. Slowing down the process of damage(whether to people or property) is the only way.

As for going into buildings just for shelter--hmm, presemumably none of your characters farm their own food, or theyre all awake several times a day, to switch projects. That's totally unfeasible otherwise.

[julie2]

I also lreally ike Sociologists ideas- apart from "must actively rest" (and I'm a little too foggy on warfare to comment beyond what I said- It's just absurd if aggressors can do loads of damage before anybody ever has the chancecto respond- which is how it used to be, I gather)

One of my characters recently inherited a business and you really have to be in that position to realise how impossible things are, since tiredness. She's just had to decide to abandon the use of tools- because they cause more problems than they're worth now they invrease tiredness; and managing her employees working patterns is nigh-on-impossible. She takes then off a job because they're tired. She cabn't tell then exactly when to come back. She looks around for someone else to take their place, and all the rested characters are fast asleep of course. It's not even much use accelerating rest under these circumstances. People rest longer than they need to because a) they don't know when to stop. b) they're probably busy IRL, anyway, when that time comes. Not only is tireness too much- all the time-scales involved are too short for Cantrian terms.