Cantr II Discussion Forum

I think there needs to be a machine "cotton picker", or something similar to bring the price of cotton cloth back into balance with its hemp counter part.

Currently;
Hemp Cloth can be made at 273.3g per day
Silk Cloth can be made at 51.0g per day
Cotton Cloth can be made at 43.5g per day

The easiest way that I see to bring cotton cloth back into balance is to simply increase its gathering rate via a “cotton picker” machine. Whose cost and gathering rate I’d like to see discussed.

This table converts cotton picked into cotton cloth produced per day. Hopefully you will find it a helpful reference, during this discussion. I would also like to point out that even if cotton was something you could create from thin air (infinite gathering potential) the cost of cotton cloth would still not match that of Hemp, simply because of the extra processing needs of cotton.

And where does this leave Silk; its already only available in a small number of towns. Will changing the price of cotton cloth hurt an already rare commodity?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cotton Gathered --> Cotton Cloth produced per day
----------------------------------------------------------------------
100g --> 43.5
150g --> 57.2
200g --> 67.9
250g --> 76.5
300g --> 83.5
400g --> 94.4
500g --> 106.9
750g --> 115.4
1000g --> 123.2
1250g --> 128.47
1500g --> 132.21
1750g --> 134.715
2000g --> 137.209
2500g --> 140.393
3000g --> 142.598
4000g --> 145.455
5000g --> 147.223
10000g --> 148.521
50000g --> 151.984
100000g --> 154.369

Infinite --> 154.754
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Calculations are based on 5900g of Cotton Cloth
requiring 9750g of picked cotton and
requiring 38.125 days of work to process.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Until people start to put more value on furnature or clothing that have no actual use or purpose, the cost doesn't matter. I treid to have a tailor character and I did okay when clothing was a new novelty to toy around with. Now I have a room full of clothes.

People who want clothes only want leather to look tough or silk to look all silky. Cotton dresses may be in demand, and hemp is acceptable when you are just wanting to not be someone wearing something not worth mentioning.

In close, I would like to reiterate, no one care about the cost of cotton. Wear a fur coat.

Cotton has at least one major use: the bed and futon. They are far superior to the cot (or anything else) for resting, though with tiredness what it is, that's not a big deal. Still, cotton has a use - enough that my workshop foreman character sent people out specifically to get cotton.

But I don't agree that cotton rates are out of balance. Not all paths to a goal product need to be equally efficient.
Where cotton is interchangeable with other fibers (clothing, bowstrings), the rates are irrelevant, either because the product has no real value or because the quantities used are insignificant. Where cotton is the only fiber that will do, it doesn't matter how its gathering rate compares with that of others.


Also, this should probably be in the Suggestions forum - polls don't generally add much in the early stages of discussing a suggestion anyway.

Good arguements guys, good arguments. I'll summarise them.

"Hardly anyone uses cotton, why bother balancing it?"

Brilliant.

Works well with other features too.

"Hardly anyone has vehicles, why make them easier to use?"

"Hardly anyone prepares food, why balance food?"

Err ... Wait, those are horrible examples! I expect a cotton picker or an increase in harvesting rate any day now.

My only tailoring had ben done with hemp and wool, so I don't know enough about cotton to vote. I disagreee with Bowser though, it's not true that people only want silk or leather, it depends on the character. for me the 'blue collar craftsman' wears hemp or wool or both, the tough type wear leather (you were right about that at least), the upper middle class city dwellers wear cotton (the robe would be perfect for a priest or priestess, but they'd be their own category), and I've never had anyone wear silk, but if I did I'd imagine they'd be wealthy merchants who were either elegant or snooty.

(I Realize Cantr doesn't really have 'blue collar or 'upper middle class' people, but the way I picture their personalities is similar)

And I noticed there are some new clothes that even make it possible to whip together a decent outfit out of fur and hide, now, fpr that 'rugged wanderer' look.

Ok I understand and agree that if cotton is your only resource to make (bowstring etc) it really doesn't mater much on gathering rates are, as people will collect it, and the costs of produce (bows) will adjust itself accordingly.

But what of the intrinsic understanding of what cottons value is.

Gold is worth more than silver; silver is worth more than glass. And the gathering rates of these materials reflect that.

But cotton cloth has a cantr value per gram similar to that of diamonds. And even silk per gram is cheaper. When you see a simple cotton dress, what most people intrinsically believe is that it is a basic well-made garment (much better than hemp - which is true). But in actual fact, that simple dress cost the wearer more than twice the gold ring on her finger.

If the only value we place to cotton cloth is aesthetic, than can we have it balanced with the other useless aesthetic items in the cantr world?

elTegra wrote:...to bring the price of cotton cloth back into balance with its hemp counter part.

What you are missing, is that cotton cloth and hemp cloth are two very different things. Hemp cloth is very easy to produce, and thus the items are generally "lower quality" or "less complex" then those made out of silk or cotton. The cotton and silk items are described as being fancier then the hemp clothing, and are therefore harder to acquire (both through the rarity of the base resource in question, the complexity of manufacturing, and the rate of generation). That said, I wouldn't mind seeing a cotton harvester, along the same lines as the food harvesters that doubles or triples the output of cotton. Not only for the clothing aspect, but also because rope is needed for quarries, and hemp is not always an option (1000g of medium rope made from cotton takes over 50 days).

Cotton needs to be hand picked. I suppose it could be balanced a bit, for example what's up with the 1000 g to 800 g in ginning? As far as I know, cotton comes in fluffy balls, what waste material is there? Exept the leaf sort of things. Those hardly weight 20%.

And most of my characters would be just thrilled to get cotton clothes.

Ginning is the process of removing the seeds from cotton, so it is more than just the leafy bit - but still, the total weight loss from picking to pure fibers is (according to Wikipedia) under 10%.

Uh HUH! So change that part. I knew the poll was flawed. ^___^ Also there shouldn't be much loss in fibres to yarn part, though I don't know if there is now.

There is curently;
33% loss in ginning
8.7% Loss on the spindle, and
1.2% loss on the loom.

If 1200 cotton can still be processed (gin) per day, and reducing the loss of ginning to 10%, without changing any gathering rates;
this would take the amount of cotton cloth produced per day upto ....

...

53.4g per day - Similar to that of iron and silk.
--> Hemp is 511% cheaper

... If you added a device to increase the gathering to double, or tripple inaddition to the more efficent gin;

Double Gathering = 97.19g Cotton Cloth per day
--> Hemp is 280% cheaper.
--> Silk is 190% more expensive

Triple Gathering = 115.99g Cotton Cloth per day
--> Hemp is 236% cheaper
--> Silk is 227% more expensive.


Personally I kinda like the more efficent gin, with the "equipment/machine" that does double gathering ... i think that reaches a nice balance.

........ Boy..... *looks around at all the people trying to prove that they can use the internet better than everyone els*

........So.......... Back on topic....?

I like the idea of balancing somthing like Cotton. Cotton, really, isn't as good fealing as silk, so cotton should be more common than silk, and silk is cooler, thus it should be more expenciv in cantr....

Actually, what you are trying to do is mach cantr reality to the real reality in the real world... and as we all know, cantr is not earth, But... Since we are all earthlings, and not cantr-lings, than we need to have a suficiant link to the reality of earth, so that we can comprehind everything going on in cantr..(such as... 25000g of stone for a house..... more like a shak...... with no roof.... only some stone to mark for the wals....)

My two centce.... wich are now werth a dime... WOW!! SOON ILE BE RICH!!!!

Pie wrote:........So.......... Back on topic....?

I think it hasn't really deferred from the topic... and elTegra was using mathematics for that stuff, not the internet..

Looking at some of that... yea, I could say that cotton could afford to be a little more efficient, or at least have some sort of nice machine to help anyway. That would also help with the resource spots in some towns...

Woah, cotton is labour-intensive to produce! Who would've thought...?

No offense or anything, but do you recall the primary use for agricultural slaves in America? It was to pick cotton. Why? Because cotton is labour-intensive to produce!

Every step of the way is difficult and demanding with cotton, it's a higher-quality and non-smelly result that makes/made it such a popular fabric.

The primary problem I see with implementing a cotton picker is with realism vs. game mechanics. If you want to be realistic, you'd have to add another layer of processing between machine-harvested cotton and hand-picked cotton. Y'see, when you harvest it with a machine, you pretty much have to take the bundle (well, you know, not necessarily the WHOLE plant) of it all together, which gets all the leaves mixed in and is a very machine or labour intensive process to remove. I'm not using this as an argument against it, I'm just saying it's significantly more difficult to sort out machine-harvested cotton than other machine-harvested materials that are out there.

Of course, from a game mechanics perspective, you'd be harvesting a different resource if you were to get some cotton with the leaves themselves still in which still needed to be processed.


From my personal perspective, cotton should be MUCH easier to gather than silk, but a bit more difficult to process. Whereas hemp of course is easier than both to both gather and process...Call it roughly 5 hemp, 3 cotton, 1 silk when all's said and done.


In conclusion, if it ends up happening, it's going to have to overlook some pretty annoying aspects of realism. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

James Bowen wrote:...if it ends up happening, it's going to have to overlook some pretty annoying aspects of realism. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Realism is secondary to game balance. Ideally game balance can be achieved in a realistic manner, but that is not always possible.