Agar wrote:SekoETC wrote: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.
-cut-
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.
1. Though changing max resources gatherers to max active resource collection projects would be likely to force people into cooperation, there's no logic in it unless we imagine each farm, garden and stone quarry to be owned and guarded by the project starter. The meaning of the limit to resource gathering is to simulate the production capacity of the land. So even though I'd love to have something increasing cooperation, it cannot be forced by the programming but should be a social arrangement ingame.
2. So forget about point 1 and let's get on the other suggestion which is setting different limits for each individual resource instead of one limit for the total amount of resource gathering. Like Agar said,
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.
It indeed doesn't. But then again if we change limestone into carrots, it would make more sense because they are both farming items growing in the same sort of land. So we get to...
3. Grouping resources for setting the limits. Farming would be one group, if 8 people are farming carrots then you don't have room for putting potatoes there. But mining would have more categories because they are usually in veins instead of scattered around. (If they were scattered around then you should program getting loads of stone and random ores and gems as said in another topic.)
