Improved Project Info

[RedQueen.exe]

I don't know if this should go under accessibility of interface or if it's a big enough idea to warrant its own topic.

I think one of the primary reasons we don't see certain types of behavior in cantr that we want to, in this case the existence of businesses and pay for work that work well, is that the interface is working against it. Perhaps I am alone in my experiences, but it is very difficult for me to keep track of more than maybe two workers at a time, and particularly difficult when someone comes along and starts assisting on projects I previously had only one employee on.

I think we could use considerable assistance from the interface for managing work. Accuse me of being lazy all you want, the bottom line is the more effort you make something require, the less likely people are to engage in it. This is why we see so many systems were people just work, and leaders hand out equipment and things based on very rough guesstimation. It's easier that way. If we're all fine with that remaining the most optimal solution, I guess nothing needs to change. There are two recommendations I would make and unfortunately, they would probably require a deal of effort to implement and so will probably never happen, but here's hoping.

One is to have the ability to get reminders on and be able to track projects we are not currently in the vicinity of. We'd essentially click a button for a project, and our character will have made note of it and based on the current number of participants, will set an "alert" to notify the player when the project should have completed based on the progress being made when the character last saw the project. This is not only good for employers, but even better for people that have to set automatic projects up and then work in a different area. (herb-growers working indoors, or brewers working outside).

Two, is to get better reporting when a project completes. Ideally, when a project completes, it would tell the player the average number of hours for that project, the ACTUAL number of total man-hours it took to complete, the percentage of work done by each participant, and the total number of hours spent on the project by each participant. This would allow in-game employers to more easily compute pay for workers without requiring the person to get out a calculator or configure projects in very particular ways.

I'm sure there will be objections based on some aspect of realism, but I'm really not convinced that realism really ranks near the top reasons why people play any particular game.

I'd argue we run into similar impediments that are currently discouraging more complex trade, and that's a good topic for another thread.

[Doug R.]

I'm in favor.

[Cwalen]

+1 here too, but personally I am confining my attention to two projects that require very little coding effort. When I see some progress there I'll look beyond those boundaries.