Abolish Resource Slots

[Chris]

Get rid of resource slots. They are encouraging people to spread out in a game whose population is already too thinly dispersed. If programming is an issue, set all towns' resource slots to 1000.

[viktor]

i didn't think they were causing that issue, i mean, most places with larger populations either have machines that effectively increase the resource slots, or they are industrial enough to have lots of non collection work in town.
very rarely do i ever see towns with issues on the collection space, i have a few times in the past but even in a town with twice as many people as resource slots i rarely see half of them in use.

[Snickie]

I remember when my character made it back to a town from an extended absence, and there were thirty-something people there. All resource slots were being used, and it was very annoying because my character was very hungry. Eventually when one project was completed she quickly grabbed the open resource slot, and it was a battle of the resource slots until a third of the population left on a ship.

So I don't have a problem with them, and I don't have a problem with removing them either. I'm leaving it for the rest of the people to decide.

[Polt86]

I think the only place I've ever seen this as an issue is in Shai, and there it is cause by people gathering wood for boats so they can leave. Certainly not them leaving because of the limited resource slots.

[mikki]

I think the only place I've ever seen this as an issue is in Shai, and there it is cause by people gathering wood for boats so they can leave. Certainly not them leaving because of the limited resource slots.

And see.. if people would ask if there are any for purchase.. Might save those resource slots. Not like something can't be worked out for work wise. Or.. even better.. trade works wonders too. But yes, Shai has that problem on occasion.

[Doug R.]

I think the only place I've ever seen this as an issue is in Shai, and there it is cause by people gathering wood for boats so they can leave. Certainly not them leaving because of the limited resource slots.

And see.. if people would ask if there are any for purchase.. Might save those resource slots. Not like something can't be worked out for work wise. Or.. even better.. trade works wonders too. But yes, Shai has that problem on occasion.

They can't purchase a boat if they have nothing to pay for it with. They have nothing to pay for it with if they don't use a resource slot.

[Polt86]

I think the only place I've ever seen this as an issue is in Shai, and there it is cause by people gathering wood for boats so they can leave. Certainly not them leaving because of the limited resource slots.

And see.. if people would ask if there are any for purchase.. Might save those resource slots. Not like something can't be worked out for work wise. Or.. even better.. trade works wonders too. But yes, Shai has that problem on occasion.

They can't purchase a boat if they have nothing to pay for it with. They have nothing to pay for it with if they don't use a resource slot.

They can pay for it in exchange for work, and that work isn't likely to include gathering something.

[Doug R.]

I think the only place I've ever seen this as an issue is in Shai, and there it is cause by people gathering wood for boats so they can leave. Certainly not them leaving because of the limited resource slots.

And see.. if people would ask if there are any for purchase.. Might save those resource slots. Not like something can't be worked out for work wise. Or.. even better.. trade works wonders too. But yes, Shai has that problem on occasion.

They can't purchase a boat if they have nothing to pay for it with. They have nothing to pay for it with if they don't use a resource slot.

They can pay for it in exchange for work, and that work isn't likely to include gathering something.

Unfortunately, break-even economies, which most regional economies are, -especially- Teragotha's, don't allow for towns to pay workers. You need to generate income to be able to support a paid economy. Even if you pay someone in wood for painting a sign, someone still had to take up a slot for that wood, and now will have to do so again to replace it what was just spent. It doesn't fix anything.

[Chris]

Has anyone put forward a positive argument in favor of resource slots?

There are places with more resources that can be gathered than resource slots. What sense does that make? I think that someone figured that obstacles are necessary and did not think through the implications.

i didn't think they were causing that issue, i mean, most places with larger populations either have machines that effectively increase the resource slots, or they are industrial enough to have lots of non collection work in town.
very rarely do i ever see towns with issues on the collection space, i have a few times in the past but even in a town with twice as many people as resource slots i rarely see half of them in use.

I know of a town that has a population/slot ratio over 7. Many are sleepers, but still the situation is annoying for those who want to live in and be active in a big city, not in a tiny village (which is now the norm for Cantr, and not a healthy thing).

[cooldevo]

Has anyone put forward a positive argument in favor of resource slots?

The only thing I can think of is to keep resources from being over-harvested and thus over-saturating the market. As it is now, there is no worry about using up a resource because it never runs out. If a town of 30 people had 25 of them constantly pulling up hematite, that could cause a lot of problems with the in-game economy in that region. The price of hematite (and indirectly iron) may reduce in trade value because there is such a large supply of it in the game.

Personally, I would be quite cautious about turning off the resource slots without some sort of protection for the economy.

One way I could see it working without slot limitations:

1. A hematite mine is set to have between 'x'g and 'y'g of hematite (random amount between the range).
2. Mining reduces the amount left in the mine.
3. After the hematite is gone, the mine is empty and no more can be gotten.
4. After a period of time ('z' days) the mine is repopulated with a random value from #1 above, and process repeats.

I think the last thing that would be good for the game, would be to have a limitless amount of workers able to pull a limitless amount of resources from the slots.

[SumBum]

Cooldevo went into a lot more detail than what I was going to reply. Considering there's been several mentions of people wanting resources limited and the constant discussion about all the stockpiles, I'd say removing the slots would only make those issues worse.

Edit to add: The problem I do see with resource slots is that they aren't an effective way of accomplishing what they were meant to do. There is no balance to the system and the conditions of the town have no bearing on them. A place with 5 resource slots might have a huge population due to RP activity but down the road there are 2 people with 10 slots for the same resources.

I like the idea of having an actual (random) limit to the resources that takes time to replenish once depleted.

[Chris]

Some places have millions of grams of various resources. That is no reason to punish the poor places and poor people, and resource slots did not prevent it from happening. Bad design. If you have a problem with hoarding, punish hoarding. Have decay for large quantities.

You're talking about the situation as if the game were in balance now. It isn't, and resource slots are part of the problem. Cantr is in decline largely because the world is too big for its population. People are way too spread out.

[cooldevo]

Some places have millions of grams of various resources. That is no reason to punish the poor places and poor people, and resource slots did not prevent it from happening. Bad design. If you have a problem with hoarding, punish hoarding. Have decay for large quantities.

I wasn't around when the slot cap was implemented, so I am only speaking from what I have been able to gather from tidbits of information. You are very right on your point. There are some groups that probably have enough materials for several hundred generations. I'm not completely sold on the current system, but if we got rid of caps without finding a way to compensate, we'd introduce a potentially even bigger problem.

I think the biggest problem with the current implementation is that it is offset by harvesters. Once a town is rich enough to afford them, the towns get richer a lot faster than the poorer towns. Collection rates aside, it allows them to have a lot more people harvesting resources because they can mostly ignore slot limitations. That, IMHO, is one of the biggest hits towards the growing disparity between the "have" and "have not" towns. At one point in time it probably worked because very few could afford harvesters. They were something to strive for, and gave some extra perks to justify the hard work to build. A golden carrot, so to speak. Now they are a lot more common, and what used to be a rarity is now almost a staple in a lot of the high-tech developed towns.

I will say that I think slot limitations need to be reassessed. I wouldn't be able to support completely removing it without having another balance added though or we'd introduce an even bigger potential problem. Unlimited harvesting of unlimited resources for every town. Be it my idea posted previously, or another one proposed by someone else, I think we'd have to come up with a way to keep it balanced. The only two options I can see are to limit workers (current implementation), limit resources, or a hybrid of both.