No Tools: 27.75g/day
Tools: 33.41g/day
Machines: 36g/day
Before iron became difficult to produce, you could get 50g/day with your bare hands. So now, under perfect circumstances, you can't even make iron at 2/3 of the slowest old rate. With a pickaxe, you could harvest 100g/day. With a Iron Drill, you could get 200g/day. So, with LESS MACHINERY, you used to be ably to make iron at more than 5 times the unachievable modern rate.
To me, anyway, this poses a problem. Before the shift, ten days work could give you what is now an obscene amount of wealth to characters who didn't have the time edge. More than anything else, THIS is why older characters almost always have iron shields. They made them when they were easy to make. Many of these characters haven't made any iron since the shift, because they had no need, and often these characters are carrying little of value besides their extremely expensive iron equipment. Why escapes me. But Cantr works better when people are DOING something. These people should have to carry out some sort of function to maintain their standing as people with optimal or virtually optimal equipment.
Solutions:
Item Degredation (obtain more resources or your equipment won't work as well)
Higher-Tech Equipment (Wouldn't it be great to make someone's day by dealing them 10-15 damage over their iron shield? Make weapons that take resources HIGHER-TECH THAN STEEL or A SHIELD THAT'S BETTER THAN AN IRON SHIELD. How about a lightsaber? Aluminum and diamonds. Gives the highest-tech metal a meaning in life.
