Cantr II Discussion Forum

All right, I can see how the Did You Know? thing could be interesting, but really, this one just depressed me and made me think about quitting. It dredges up all the thoughts and discussions about resets, changes to the game, the problem of the dwindling player base and the glut of finished products in the Cantr world, lack of purpose or anything material to strive for, etc.

Ouch.

The problem with vehicles is that currently they can't be disassembled, while people can die, and considering the game has been running for over 10 years, of course it's natural that the number of vehicles will exceed the number of people at one point.

All the more reason to introduce vehicle & building rot and disassembling, in my opinion. I do realize it's hard to know what to do with what's inside... but it would help remove the glut of unused finished items and buildings in the game. It makes sure that what's owned gets used.

A sad commentary on the greed of human nature that gets carried over into the game. I don't want to bring the communism/capitalism debate back up that seems to loom over the game but its odd to see such "wealth" in the game controlled by so few. For example a town with a population of five. A young character has to build a wooden cart when there are five rickshaws and four tandem bikes that haven't been touched in thirty game years or longer just sitting. Characters packing around bone shields when there are iron shields crumbling in a locked room. Things like this just make me shake my head. Although in the real world I'm a capitalist and fiscal conservative, Cantr is a different world and there is no need for the level of greed that exists in the game. Okay off my soap box.

bnlphan wrote:A sad commentary on the greed of human nature that gets carried over into the game. I don't want to bring the communism/capitalism debate back up that seems to loom over the game but its odd to see such "wealth" in the game controlled by so few. For example a town with a population of five. A young character has to build a wooden cart when there are five rickshaws and four tandem bikes that haven't been touched in thirty game years or longer just sitting. Characters packing around bone shields when there are iron shields crumbling in a locked room. Things like this just make me shake my head. Although in the real world I'm a capitalist and fiscal conservative, Cantr is a different world and there is no need for the level of greed that exists in the game. Okay off my soap box.

This. Times a trillion.

Many towns have vehicles in case of emergencies, and don't wish to give them away to the first adventurous newspawn that thinks he/she deserves one. Agreed some of the richer/larger towns have things in abundance, but I can't see this as some sort of general problem over all.

In my experience the situation Bnlphan describes is not the standard. I have seen characters who give away considerable parts of their wealth if they think someone will make good use of it. I have seen a large inheritance be voluntarily divided amongst all citizens of the town. I have seen several leaders who would give any of the town's wealth to citizens with a good plan.

Besides, i think it is just common sense to not give any newspawn everything they want for free. Tanstaafl!

It has been said, the abundance of vehicles (and buildings) is caused by the fact they don't decay. There is no political or behavioral background to this, it is just inevitable with the current setup of the game.

Tiamo wrote:In my experience the situation Bnlphan describes is not the standard. I have seen characters who give away considerable parts of their wealth if they think someone will make good use of it. I have seen a large inheritance be voluntarily divided amongst all citizens of the town. I have seen several leaders who would give any of the town's wealth to citizens with a good plan.

Besides, i think it is just common sense to not give any newspawn everything they want for free. Tanstaafl!

It has been said, the abundance of vehicles (and buildings) is caused by the fact they don't decay. There is no political or behavioral background to this, it is just inevitable with the current setup of the game.

I think almost nothing should be given away for free but there are rarely even opportunities to work for unused tools or vehicles. I have once seen one of the scenarios described above but in my (more limited than most, I will qualify) experience people are more than happy to just sit on things rather than share/sell/give them to anyone.

I actually had a character...give away a car, with fuel in exchange for a not so spectacular bike and a promise of bringing back a resource someday. Miraculously...this young person brought back the resource and then some.

hyrle wrote:I do realize it's hard to know what to do with what's inside...

Not -that- hard. Only allow ships to be dissembled while docked to land or a harbor, search all rooms for stuff on the ground and in containers, then move it all to the floor of the harbor/ground once the project is finished. Besides which, I think people should be emptying their ship/vehicle before taking it apart anyways.
Or even easier there could be a condition that searches for things on the boat and will not allow the project to start until the vehicle/boat is show as empty on the item/resource search.

It's totally possible and not super hard to for the more than qualified programmers working on cantr. Problem is more likely they have a lot on their plate and not enough people to get little things like this a priority.

But... that was already known, from statistics

Apologies for this, but in my humble opinion, polish zone is a bit better developed than english one (but I have only limited info on that).
There are multiple cities, where only 2 or 3 people live, but there are tens of buildings, and tens of vehicles (of "good" kind, like motorcycles, cars, rickshaws).

It also comes from newspawns that have decided they neeeeed to make everything for themselves and not work for things already made.

Sunni Daez wrote:It also comes from newspawns that have decided they neeeeed to make everything for themselves and not work for things already made.

I have four characters right now. Not one of them spawned in a place where it was possible to work for a vehicle or boat.

One spawned in a busy place, very active, awake leader... but not awake enough ever to pay attention or respond to requests for such... after 40 days of frustration from being ignored for little discernable reason, this character just went ahead and built a vehicle.

One spawned in a deserted but clearly rich location, with only four people in it and an ancient, rich leader who just felt that everything belonged to her. 30 vehicles there, and just like in the above example another character ended up having to build his own cart.

One spawned in a place where had to walk for days to get to the nearest populated town... when he got there, there were tons of vehicles and boats... none of them being used at all, by anyone. In all his time there he's never seen anyone use one.

And one spawned in a place where there are many ships but almost no ground vehicles. That character has a reason for not wanting a ship... but even had he wanted one, he couldn't have gotten one. In fact another character that spawned at the same time had to, you guessed it, go off to a forest to get the wood to build her own.


This is not a statistical sample, but these characters have also traveled quite a bit now and it seems to be pretty much the standard. Places where there are organized systems for working toward your own vehicle or ship exist, but are far more the exception than the rule.

I have seen places begging people to take smaller ships, carts and even bikes.

I'm with saztronic here. Newspawns aren't the problem - most newspawns will jump at the chance to work for a good vehicle. But most towns either hoard everything, or only offer the newspawn the most basic crap: 'Oh, you really want this raker nobody is using? You can't have that... It's too nice. But you can work 20 days for this dinghy here.'