Why leather handles/hilts?

[The Industriallist]

But then it wouldn't be the same weapon with a substitute component, it would be a similar but seperate weapon. Weapons don't remember what you put into them, do they?

[The Sociologist]

Now the problem with hilts are that they are already divided up by three sizes (large, medium, and small). Now if we were to break that down further into hilt covered by cotton cloth, hemp cloth, raw hide, rubber etc... That would lead to literally two dozen new objects in the database which is something that programming doesn't want us to do.

The other problem is that currently there is no way to determine which material used is better. Raw hide would be easier to obtain than cured leather but raw hide in reality would not last as long as cured leather. The same goes for cotton, hemp, or rubber. In reality rubber would probably be the best shock absorber than leather but rubber doesn't exist on every island and for the islands that do have rubber it is still as rare as salt. Also, in the future rubber will have to manufactured like steel and iron.

Just a few points. Firstly the part of the sword you seem to be discussing is the grip, not the hilt. Historically, grips were made of horn, wood, antler or ivory, only sometimes wrapped with leather or bound with cord. Leather has nothing to do with absorbing shock; it is the tang which absorbs shock. Finally, I've never heard of a rubber grip.

So, Google for "sword grip" and perhaps add other keywords such as "horn", "antler", "corded" and so on. All the answers will be there.
eg.
http://www.regia.org/sword.htm

The below is quite fascinating also. Note that a kind of fish skin was the most popular covering in Civil War grips! And leather played a role also. But then there was also bare horn, wood, pewter, the use of gold and silver, and so on.
http://hometown.aol.com/machood/us1850grips.html

While I'm fascinated with the new bow weapons and fully supportive of them, I regard the new swords as frankly boring. Just an endless list of the same old thing. So please add all the necessary new bits such as grips, pommels and so on, and make some effort to have them made of historical materials also. If bows are going to take an eternity to make, I think the same should apply to swords.
.

[The Industriallist]

With exception of certain extremely difficult varieties, such as the 1000(ish) fold steel blades, swords IRL are much faster to make than bows. At least they are if you have iron, a forge, and tools. I expect a blacksmith can put out at least one sword/day (at mediocre quality maybe, but still...) A bowyer would turn out a bow...probably not more than two a week. Probably a lot more for finicky things like laminating a composite bow (real, not cantr-style )

About the rubber grip...of course not. No one ever had rubber suitable for the job while swords were still practical (rather than traditional) weapons. But in cantr we do, and they are.

As for the rest...I like your opinion better. I don't know the facts well enough to form my own.

[kroner]

But IRL, balancing the fact that bows took longer to make was the fact that they could do damage at long range... since bows and sword have absolutely no difference in game except that swords tend to do more damage, I don't see a problem with them taking comparable time to make. If some sort of ranged attack was added then it would be a different story.

[The Industriallist]

I would say that bows have the edge of requireing only the cheapest of materials, whereas swords require the most costly (at least, for weapons). That justifies taking a lot of time to assemble. I don't know if it justifies beiong weaker than the standard war shield and taking a long time to assemble, though.

[trage]

Oooh Oooh I have an idea, if you are going to complain so much I will hand you the 10 grams of leather you need.

People, they are trying to encourage trade and co-operation, Cantr is made to be a community type of game, you are not suppose to be self sufficient. Honestly it's not that hard to get 10 grams of leather, trade for salt, trade for leather, ask people where salt is, ask someone to get you salt, they split the weapons into two groups for a reason, you make the blade with your steel, then you trade for the handles. There are many ways to trade for it. Just find the right one and do it. We don't need to make steel-grade weapons any easier to get than they already are.

[The Industriallist]

You don't encourage cooperation by adding one more resource to go pick up. The fact is, there are already plenty of annoying resources you have to gather to make steel weapons, including a small amount of salt for a bellows. And very, very little trade in them. Trade doesn't happen, because everyone with the willingness to travel to get resources finds it easier to get all the resources than to find other people like them.

Also, technical points: Steel weapons are extremely hard to make, and many of them probably take as much grunt work as a composite recurve bow, plus extensive resource collection. The illusion that they are easy to make comes from the huge backlog of steel and iron that contaminates the Cantr economy because of the previous production mechanism. And at this time the hilt/blade split is fairly pointless, at least trade-wise -- All hilts (except the small bone hilt. I still don't know if it can replace the regular small hilt) are made with steel and leather. That is, the full set of resources used to make the entire weapon.

And now the slightly off-topic bit:
[rant]People who go on about cantr being a community game are causing more damage to the development of the economy you're talking about than any other factor in the game. I've seen a majority of newspawns turn up and say "where can I get a job?" No worker recieves any type of regular payment or allotment of goods. No one who becomes a 'worker' trades for themselves, since they don't have any property to trade. This depletes the population of players who care to do anything more than sit around and emote, and who therefore might have characters who participated in trade.

It's getting worse lately. People spawn or drift into town and ask, not even for a job, but for a way to help the community! People with goods give them away to total strangers, people without make a career of handing their food production to anyone who asks. This is not good for the characters, the community, or the world.

Learn some self-interest, people! Cantr is a (semi-)reallistic role-playing game. NOT a 'community-based' game, or some 'lets all be friends' RP chatroom[/rant]

Obviously, characters without material self-interest can be valid. But flooding the world with them is not.

[Pirog]

The Industriallist>

Our real life ultra self centered capitalism isn't the only way to live.
I would say that a lot of the communities where people help each other out and attracts newcomers to stay by being friendly might be lare future powers, while places where everyone is working for themselves don't seem to come very far...

The Stoneknights is one example...they are handing out sabres and other incredibly valuable items to people they have known for just a short time, and they are thriving!

[The Industriallist]

Even if it's working, that's really, really stupid.
If any of my recent characters had spawned there, maybe their success would change. If the character could figure it out. That's just too exploitable.

But my argument doesn't say you have to be a rabidly greedy capitallist. But...you just finished talking about trying to encourage TRADE. Trade can't be encouraged if the world psychology is contaminated against it. Which it is. OOC. I can't figure out why.

And even 'cooperation' (which I would think free trade is...) is based on self-interest somewhere. In reality, or anything remotely reallistic (self-interest need not be purely material). In cantr, people will work for many, many years and get nothing but a hunting bow and wood shield for it. And they'll be happy. Even when they're 36ish and see a man in his early 20s with a sabre, iron shield, and bike. (yes, I've seen that. And I bet the idiot is going to return the bike to his employer, even though it's the most valuable thing they could ever give him, and they couldn't even know if he ran off with it.) There's no envy, not much greed except in the stupidest characters. That isn't life.

Side note: clothing companies and such have no hope if no one trades. They can't retool to produce all their needs. Should clothing be made only by overpowered organizations with too many unpaid peasants on their hands?

[Lumera]

I could see the logic behind a smaller, more close-knit community giving food or weapons and protection to its members, and of people who actually live there volunteering to work on buildings and roads and other group projects that in theory would help everybody, but I agree that in general Cantrians are too freakin' nice. The game is easy enough without handing out freebies left and right; if a newspawn or traveller asks for food, put them to work on another project to pay for it, or at the very least make them pay it back. Right now it's pretty uninteresting to play the selfless, compassionate type who helps everybody, because in the current environment that kind of character doesn't even stand out much.

If my characters come into a town and even ask if it's okay to gather food, or mentione they're running low, I've got people falling all over themselves to hand them weeks worth of food. I could theoretically send them from place to place and never have to do a bit of work.

Of course, people may not be as generous with other resources as they are with food, I'll have to test that out sometime.

[Agar]

Iron! Oh my gosh, in Olip West, an old character saw a new spawn woman ask if anyone had iron.

I thought it would be funny, since I'd never even made the stuff, much less handled it, to "Point", and say "and laughs"

Tony Roberts (before he got shack ... err ... "hitched") pointed at ME and Laughed, then handed the woman 200g of iron! Not ore, not Hematite, refined, workable IRON.

Now when I apologise and wallowed in the dirt, he gave me some too, and I thought that very nice of him, but rather mentally unbalanced.



Yes in Cantr, people all know most of the collection rate for materials and refuse to trade for anything less than even day for day rates. THAT is killing economies. Why should I trade, especially in a foodless area when I have the food, for even days? I could just sit there and eat the darn food and collect the wood myself at the same rate as I did the food.

Do this math: Lets say you want 15000g of wood, just so you can hold nothing but wood. Collection rate is 300g a day barehanded. 50 days. Ok, now you need to eat those 50 days, so you stop the next town over and grab some carrots. Each day you eat 40g of carrots, and you need 50 days, so you need a total of 2000g of carrots. Collection rate is 400g a day, so in 5 days you have enough carrots to gather 50 days of wood. Why bother tradeing? Just get it yourself, after you've got a few more carrots for the trip there.

In case anyone feels the need to edit those specific values, I'll write an alternate explaination here.

Go to the game and do the math, if you want to gather as much wood as you can carry, you only need less than a weeks worth of carrots to eat while you gather it! Why trade straight days?

[Pirog]

Even if it's working, that's really, really stupid.

Not if it's working. Gathering a huge supply of personal wealth isn't the only way to gain power in Cantr. Generosity is rewarded with loyalty in many cases...and that can be worth more than a sabre.
When the clan controls the lands from where they would have to buy strategic resources expensively earlier the generosity will even pay itself back economically.

But my argument doesn't say you have to be a rabidly greedy capitallist. But...you just finished talking about trying to encourage TRADE. Trade can't be encouraged if the world psychology is contaminated against it. Which it is. OOC. I can't figure out why.

Why do you assume that it is based on OOC decisions?
Cantr is different from real life...few people are starving to death, diseases doesn't exist (if you don't count the sleeping sickness) and few people have a very hard life. In such a society it can be more important for people to feel a part of the community than being important figures without friends.

In cantr, people will work for many, many years and get nothing but a hunting bow and wood shield for it. And they'll be happy.

Perhaps it is other things than the salary that makes them happy...

And I bet the idiot is going to return the bike to his employer, even though it's the most valuable thing they could ever give him, and they couldn't even know if he ran off with it.

Again, you seem to be very locked in your capitalistic thinking.
Stealing the bike would brand them as thieves in their home towns...have you even considered that they might like their home and want to stay there? Or that they would feel bad if they stole something expensive from a person that was nice to them?

Side note: clothing companies and such have no hope if no one trades. They can't retool to produce all their needs. Should clothing be made only by overpowered organizations with too many unpaid peasants on their hands?

But people do trade.
You can make an excellent future in the clothing industry. The Tenneks, a tailor shop consisting of two people in Siom, are making great business! They have even been paid in iron for their fine hemp clothes...and have now set up trade routes for getting new fabrics.

[The Industriallist]

Even if it's working, that's really, really stupid.

Not if it's working. Gathering a huge supply of personal wealth isn't the only way to gain power in Cantr. Generosity is rewarded with loyalty in many cases...and that can be worth more than a sabre.
When the clan controls the lands from where they would have to buy strategic resources expensively earlier the generosity will even pay itself back economically.

If generosity is being repaid with loyalty, that means it's working. But to assume that some recent-spawned stranger's loyalty can be bought for a sabre, or that it even exists, is relying far too much on the unreallistic psychology of cantr.

Now, from a pure greed perspective, my impression is that one of the best things you can do is join that clan and wring tons of goods (which, atypically, they don't consider to still be clan property) out of them. So loyalty pays in this case. But...to expect everyone to be buyable, or willing to buy into your (psychotic) clan, isn't smart. Actually, if they formed the same view of the clan that I have, most of my characters would be unwilling to join.

When did the clan ever have to buy critical resources? I know of only one place where a resource is available to outsiders through trade, but not any other way.

But my argument doesn't say you have to be a rabidly greedy capitallist. But...you just finished talking about trying to encourage TRADE. Trade can't be encouraged if the world psychology is contaminated against it. Which it is. OOC. I can't figure out why.

Why do you assume that it is based on OOC decisions?
Cantr is different from real life...few people are starving to death, diseases doesn't exist (if you don't count the sleeping sickness) and few people have a very hard life. In such a society it can be more important for people to feel a part of the community than being important figures without friends.

I assume it's based on OOC decisions because:
-What Agar said about trade. If you actually had any interest in trading, even at a profit to yourself and no cost to any of your dependents, you wouldn't be refusing to offer anything more than the merchant had to have paid (or spent) to get resources you need.
-Because on spawning there is no reason to immediately, before anyone living there has spoken and (my impression is) generally without reading any notes, decide that you want to live somewhere forever and get a job. Any job.
-What kind of mind would feel amply rewarded when sitting in a building for years on end working on project after project, getting nothing to keep, and generally not even talking to their fellow peons? Evidently the mind of the average career-seeker would.
This indicates an OOC desire to join communities, without any hint of the basic question of reality "what's in it for me?" (that is not a capitallist-only question)

As for lack of need...you mean kind of like the modern first world? Where people still tend to be greedy like sharks in a feeding frenzy?

In cantr, people will work for many, many years and get nothing but a hunting bow and wood shield for it. And they'll be happy.

Perhaps it is other things than the salary that makes them happy...

Must be. Maybe it's the opportunity to sit in a room operating a machine for years, with no outside stimulation but the occasional burst of boredom from one of the other willing slaves? Or to end 10 years of service on the point of someone nut's sabre because while the nut got a sabre and iron shield in his early 20's, the worker still hasn't gotten his iron shield because the boss is distracted and/or not producing iron?

And I bet the idiot is going to return the bike to his employer, even though it's the most valuable thing they could ever give him, and they couldn't even know if he ran off with it.

Again, you seem to be very locked in your capitalistic thinking.
Stealing the bike would brand them as thieves in their home towns...have you even considered that they might like their home and want to stay there? Or that they would feel bad if they stole something expensive from a person that was nice to them?

Yes. Yes I have. Have you even considered the temptation inherent in an object that in these fallen days will take over 10 years to get, and is widely and validly regarded as being worth that (with another 10 years worth of gear added)? In exchange for needing a new residence and possibly suffering some guilt? Yes, that would certainly stop some, maybe even many, people. But those would be people with strong attachments to their 'home' or extremely strong guilt responses. Not any given 25 year old who'se been working for the company all of 60 days.

Taking the loot is the default move for a person, not the exception.

Theft IRL is deterred by the fact that many thieves are caught in developed countries. That's a lot more risk than the 0 chance that you would ever be caught you went AWOL on a mission with someone's tandem bike.

Side note: clothing companies and such have no hope if no one trades. They can't retool to produce all their needs. Should clothing be made only by overpowered organizations with too many unpaid peasants on their hands?

But people do trade.
You can make an excellent future in the clothing industry. The Tenneks, a tailor shop consisting of two people in Siom, are making great business! They have even been paid in iron for their fine hemp clothes...and have now set up trade routes for getting new fabrics.

So far, that's one clothing company I've heard of that's been payed in anything worthwhile (other than free slaves) for their work. And that's in Siom...where I think many 'deputies' have access to iron that they can at least treat as their own. So there's actually a middle class (by modern standards) or knighthood (maybe more accurate) that can actually buy things at prices worth selling them for.

[Lumera]

What Cantr really needs are some characters willing to take advantage of the rampant idiocy and exploit some of these oh-so-willing victims as much as possible. Maybe that'll teach people a little common sense.

Most of my characters are either the honest, independent type, or else they're trusting little lambs who just do the work because they were asked nicely and assume their boss will eventually pay them.

However, I do have a one who operates under the philosophy that a fool and his resources are soon parted She was sent off with a load of supplies just a couple of days after spawning in, and because she'd already been thoroughly annoyed by the disorganization and stupidity of her hometown, decided that she could find a better use for the stuff than those morons at home ever could.

She's quite intelligent, keeps a diary that records details about every person and place she comes across (including the name of anyone who's slighted her in the least...) and is just beginning to get a grasp on how gullible people really are.

Barring any unforseen tragedies, I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with her.

[Agar]

You're not the only one. I have a character who's been making maps, well, I have several doing that, but anyway, while visiting some places he is just amazed people want to live under some of the rules of a place. He's been making notes, and someday, with enough people and weapons and vehicles ... and crowbars ... things will change.