Maximum number of resource gatherers

[mordiken]

I haven't seen any change yet in trade between cities but hopefully it just early still. All it's done for me is make me even more angry, close second to repairing. Seems like all the improvments go into making everything harder and much less fun. Appreciate the trying though i guess, its better then going no where.

[Agar]

I have a problem with this now. There are 4 projects for gas in a large town. My character CANNOT work on her project because there are already the max number of people working on that project. What gives? There is really only ONE active gas project, do you mean to tell me that the limit is ONE?!? That's not funny. Please change these limits...

To my knowledge they are not bound to a certain resource but the amount of resource gatherers is the combined amount of all the people working on resource collection, be that farming, mining, fishing or so on. I think it should be divided a bit, and hey, how about counting only the number of active projects, instead of the workers? That would increase cooperation because you could still join someone else's project even if you can't work on your own. You'd just have to ask them to share.

This sounds like a much better idea than the current setup. That way, while people can't start thier own project, they can at least help people get thier projects done so that new projects can be made. I, for one, wouldn't even care about getting a share of whatever resource they were gathering as long as I could get a chance to get my own.

In the current set up, only the seven or so most well armed or important people can gather. Thats it. Everyone one else must either starve while they wait, travel to other goods and hope they won't be killed or jailed for gathering resources (the intention of this idea), or build things.



Now that I think about it, isn't this implementation missing its own mark? The idea, if I remember what Jos wanted to do correctly, was to promote trade. Now, this maximum number of population gathering may do that to some minor extent, but it will be a long an inefetive process. Characters will have to change the way they act, governments will have to alter the way the care or surpress thier populace, and Cantr will change for everyone. It will mainly spread the population out from the large centers where no one will get a chance to gather thier own resources to the smaller towns where there's more opprotunities to gather things. It will simply level out the average population.

If it were changed so that the limit was maximum number of people gathering each individual resource, then there would be an increase in trade. If there's already the two or three people gathering limestone in a particular town, then people would have to trade with them, or travel to another town and either gather it there or trade with the two or three people gathering it there. While the limits would be lower, perhaps even as low as one in some areas, it would increase trade and not level the population.

Even with lower limits, the individualisation of resources would ease the burden on characters and fulfill the intention of this feature. How can we really justify in character that the guy gathering limestone is keeping us from gathering potatoes? It just doesn't make any sense.

[Snake_byte]

I have a problem with this now. There are 4 projects for gas in a large town. My character CANNOT work on her project because there are already the max number of people working on that project. What gives? There is really only ONE active gas project, do you mean to tell me that the limit is ONE?!? That's not funny. Please change these limits...

Nowhere is the limit 1 ...

Why doesn't anyone get it? The limits are for ALL the resouses in the area. They aren't seperate.
If you have 6 different resouces in one location and and a limit of let's say 8, you'd be able to have 8 PEOPLE working on THE LAND. This means local resources and not manufactureing, repairs, or building ect... Only resources.
So if there are all 8 people working on the one resouce then no one will be able to get anything else from this location untill one of those people stop working.
This is as clear as I can make it...

[CyboRKg]

To my knowledge they are not bound to a certain resource but the amount of resource gatherers is the combined amount of all the people working on resource collection, be that farming, mining, fishing or so on. I think it should be divided a bit, and hey, how about counting only the number of active projects, instead of the workers? That would increase cooperation because you could still join someone else's project even if you can't work on your own. You'd just have to ask them to share.

This sounds like a much better idea than the current setup.

Better? I don`t think so And much worse then KeVes`s idea...

[julie2]

hey, how about counting only the number of active projects, instead of the workers? That would increase cooperation because you could still join someone else's project even if you can't work on your own. You'd just have to ask them to share.

I like this idea. You could have a maximum number of workers per project , same as with machines, of course. The way I would envisage it is- you onlyhave so many fields, or farms at your disposable, but of course you vcan several people working the same piece of land.

I just don't see this idea working as a means of stimulating trade, anyway.
I think it will reduce trade, instead, for several reasons.

1)There's no getting round the fact that fewer people are gathering resources. And those that are are inevitablly spending time kicking their heels whilst they wait in line, so much less stuff is being gatherered. Therefore there's less in the way of surplus resources to trade. Your chances of travelling huge distances only to find that nobody can or will trade with you are increased enormously. I think that risk (and the distances involved) already put a lot of people off, even before this recent change. I've since noticed one or two traders suddenly decide to settle down, and I execrt that trend to continue. I've also noticed that only one person has succeeded in getting a stone--gathering slot in Blojt, and that several others are currently plaintively asking to trade for stone- because they can't gather it themselves. That one guy is going to have to workbloody hard to meet the demand- let's hope he doesn't need it for himself! In the meantime what canthese prospective traders do. They can't gather food for themselves. They could maybe make some tools or clothes or something- if they have the right materials on them(or if they an trade for the right materials. Hmmm...) Next effect to come- those who specialise in manufacturing will be put out of business , because there's nothing for unemployed fieldworkers to do except manufacture stuff for themselves.

2) As has been pointed out, the gathering slots will largely be under the control of local government. So the small, independant traders will lose access to resources. That drastically limits your options on who you can trade with. It also drastically limits your channces of gathering stuff for yourself, if youyou stray outside the place where you have citizenship.
No wonder some of the people who used to prefer a travcelling lifestyle are now thinking of settling down instead.

A far better way of stimulating trade would be to reduce the distance between towns (or to increase the travelling speed) It's just not realistic- and never was - that you have to travel days to the next nearest place- and that the available resources will be completely different when you get there. Its like having to cross a large county (or even a small country) just to reach the nearest farm or whatever, followed by a whole year's travel on top of that to arrive at similar establishment if the one you were aiming it is closed for business(which is all-too-likely, now). It's also not realistic that the whole of the countryside over such a large radius can so easily come under the control of a single Lord, or whatever, who is able to over see all of the land all at once. Nor is it realistic that you can't effectively have seperate privately-owned plots, nor areas of common-land (OK, you can agre to subdibvide your slots in that way; but enforcing such an agreement would be impossible, in practice). The way I see it, the unrealistic "unlimited resources " was a way of balancing some of the effects of these other shortfalls in realism - and also a reflection of the fact that towns had not reached their intended maximum size (was I wrong?)

[Slowness_Incarnate]

What I was trying to say before is that it might be a glitch of some sort. Wasn't the limit supposed to fall on the max number of people that could work on a certain crop? If so...there IS only ONE person working on GAS in that town. I think it's a glitch. I'll go report it in the bugs section of the forum now.

[TatteredShoeLace]

Why doesn't anyone get it? The limits are for ALL the resouses in the area. They aren't seperate.
If you have 6 different resouces in one location and and a limit of let's say 8, you'd be able to have 8 PEOPLE working on THE LAND. This means local resources and not manufactureing, repairs, or building ect... Only resources.
So if there are all 8 people working on the one resouce then no one will be able to get anything else from this location untill one of those people stop working.
This is as clear as I can make it...

What is the matter with you people? READ.

EDIT: I only quoted Snake Byte because he answers the question so well....a question that just keeps getting reasked.

[Agar]

What I was trying to say before is that it might be a glitch of some sort. Wasn't the limit supposed to fall on the max number of people that could work on a certain crop? If so...there IS only ONE person working on GAS in that town. I think it's a glitch. I'll go report it in the bugs section of the forum now.

IT'S THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE IN THE WHOLE TOWN WORKING ON ANY OF THE RESOURCES AVAILABILE, NOT THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE WORKING ON JUST GAS!!!

It's not a limit on resources gatherers. It's a limit on how many people out of the population are gathering. One person can be working on gas, even ZERO people can be working on gas and there can still be no way to start gathering gas because it's not the gas that matters, it's the number of people working on gathering SOMETHING in that town.

[Snake_byte]

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To stimulate the Cantr economy, I just introduced a significant new feature. From now on, each location has a - randomly assigned - maximum number of resource gatherers. This will not affect any current activity, but when you try to join a new digging or farming project, there will be check how many people are already farming or digging, and if the maximum is reached, you cannot continue. You can still start the project, but you cannot work on it. This should seriously increase trade between different locations. This is the kind of feature that is very simple to implement technically, but difficult to test with few players. So it`s somewhat `in testing`. If the game balance is badly damaged, we can still retract the change, or alter the limits.

About what it affects:
- only resource gathering, not machine / building / repairing / etc.
- only participation in projects, not creating projects
- the number of people working on digging projects is counted, not the number of active projects
- people that are currently working on a project won't be stopped - but if they stop now, they will in many cases (about 300) not be able to immediately restart again
- the number of slots stays constant per city ... I was thinking about making small, rare random variations, but probably not ... there is one number for all resources together ... the number is randomly set, within a range depending on the type of location

Now who needs it to be more clear than this???

Edited: I found BOTH these explainations on the FIRST page of this thread...

[Agar]

This is the kind of feature that is very simple to implement technically, but difficult to test with few players. So it`s somewhat `in testing`. If the game balance is badly damaged, we can still retract the change, or alter the limits.

Ok good, can we get on that?

[Songthrush]

Indeed.

No offense, but this kind of benighted attempt to bottleneck the gathering of resources shows a lack of foresight and little care for the wishes of the players.

Newsflash: it already takes more than long enough to gather resources, and there's a huge variety of them scattered over huge distances, needed for creating various items. This bottleneck you seek already exists, and unreasonably bending the stick more does nothing to "promote trade". What is the point of promoting trade anyway? Is the meaning of life to be found in trade, or something - why should it be supernaturally promoted all of a sudden?

How about shifting focus onto designing more realistic and entertaining social game dynamics. More options for project management to be used by the initiator would be great: so that having others working with you actually brings advantages. Special factory buildings which could allow the owner to give out "slots" in it to workers, and the workers automatically produce more faster. The closer the Factory gets to its maximum number of workers, the greater the bonus amount the factory owner recieves in the "storage area" of the factory every day. Things like that would promote "organization" a whole lot better and without the aggravation, if that's what we are interested in.

If newspawns cannot gather resources and aren't interested in in-door repair jobs at the mercy of some bigshot city leader (slavedriver), that is it, they are as good as done for. I mean, just think about it: you are new, perhaps you don't even know the game that well yet. What do you do? What are you supposed to do with yourself, if you can't even gather resources like wood?

Even if we forget about all of the above, how can we not understand that such a system makes no sense whatsoever, without a well-developed facility for the granting of gathering permissions (slots) to individuals by other individuals (leaders of the city etc.) Why does this aspect of it have to be handled by the awkward and unnatural drag-a-person-to-building mechanism, which, by the way, STILL comes with the mystyfing SQL bug.

The intro blurb of the game said: "no concept of ownership will be coded", but now we've got a new motto: "organize slot ownership in your city or die".

Since we do not even know what the limit is for any given location until we exceed it, it's all reduced a poorly thought-out hack that brings nothing but extra annoyance to players.

[Snake_byte]

How does it NOT promote trade?

Now a location with food or whatever can't just keep it to themselves because there are other things you need like hematite which will need trade routes to aquire now since you can't just go there and simply gather it anymore.

A location with food can now feed up to maybe 4 other lacations that have none on a steady amount always rolling in with the people they trade with for other things such as limestone, hematite, coal, healing foods...

Trade routes now need to be organized for survival.
If these aren't made quickly then a lot of charries will die of starvation beacause everyone is disorganized and refuses to help work with this.

Not only do players come here and voice their "opinions" but IC I'm having the hardest time trying to get people to understand what is going on and getting them to do what needs to be done in order for this to work.

Now I don't know if they're RPing being clueless or they really don't understand but it's beginning to become very frustrating.

It's hard to help feed a community when everyone just doesn't want to cooperate with the changes. That's fine, ever heard of natural selection? Think it doesn't happen in Cantr? Well it does and those that don't help WILL die. That's a fact.

[Songthrush]

What, you're proud of making life utterly impossible for your NEWSPAWNS?

What natural selection are you talking about, when you've just bottlenecked the resource gathering in the most unnatural and unrealistic way? There is no way for players to increase the RANDOM number of slots they are left with!

It would make a small amount of sense if management implemented a way for cities to increase farmland or build mines to dramatically increase those slots AND have a good way of giving them to specific characters. The way it is now, there is nothing whatsoever natural about not being able to collect some potatos for your starving newspawn.

I will tell you exactly what will happen in your "location with coal" scenario: everyone there will die/get bored/leave the game - while exactly the same happens in the location with potatos, and two months later the population of Cantr is 1/3 of what it is now, with handfuls of "well organized" people surviving in locations with natural food sources.

If that's the kind of game world you'd like to create, many players might exercise another kind of natural selection and simply find another game to play.

The player department frets over the "unfair advantages" of so-called mule characters, and same-player cooperation, but for some reason it is perfectly acceptable to leave existing Cantr characters (who were free to collect resources for all of their life) with everything, while newspawns, who have nothing, are limited by our very clever trade-promoting resource harvesting limitation from day one.

Since we've established that there's nothing fair about the present Cantr game rules and we crave to have more elaborate organizations in Cantr, simply remove the mule-character ban and the number of player organizations with more than 3 active members will dramatically increase by that week's end, which by the way would not be a bad idea at all and could never unbalance the game due to the huge distances involved in travel, plus the 16 character limit.

[Snake_byte]

(1)What natural selection are you talking about,

(2)It would make a small amount of sense if management implemented a way for cities to increase farmland or build mines to dramatically increase those slots

(3)simply remove the mule-character ban and the number of player organizations with more than 3 active members

1- Natural Selction: Can't adapt, you die.

2-There are and they are called tools and machinery. There are drills and harvestors to help, as you say, dramatically increase production.

3-Tell me how would this help at all? Even you're mules wouldn't be able to help you gather... What are you talking about?

[Songthrush]

"Natural selection" is a special term used by Darwinists, followers of the theory of evolution.

This "Natural selection" is just an explanatory guess, an aspect of a scientific theory and not a "fact of life" as you keep ignorantly repeating. "Natural selection", especially the kind that occurs in the animal kingdom, is extraordinarily wasteful, and need not have any place at all in a fantasy social world such as Cantr. Particularly as I've elaborately explained above why there's nothing at all natural OR fair about our new resource bottleneck.

To put it in your Darwinist lingo, I have adapted by challenging the management to reconsider their changes as soon as possible.

The current resource bottleneck implementation is an atrocity.