Weather

[Solfius]

I was thinking that the obvious effect that weather should have is on crops.

I assume gathering rates are fixed in the database? Thus carrots are gathered at the same rate everywhere.

Would it be too difficult to have gathering rates linked to a location, so that you might get carrots in more abundance in someplaces as opposed to others?

Not only would this allow obvious differences, such as you get more stone if you dig it in a mountain location, get less food in a mountainous environment, some areas have richer coal seams than others etc etc

But it would also allow the implementation of some form of weather effect.

If each location had a 'weather' situation, as simple as temperature and precipitation, then the gathering rates for crops could be linked to the heat and precipitation over, say, the past five days. More rain, higher gathering rates, less rain and too hot = drought and almost no crops.

(Harvesters would need to ce changed somehow I guess)

It would be more effective if the gathering rates were calculated on the weather of the location, and all others in a set radius. A fairly simple implementation, not quite accurate, but it'd be a good change I think.

You may find that people migrate more regularly, 'moving with the weather' if the effects were enough to make a difference. I've always thought that nomadism suits Cantrians, but you really don't see it that much.

To bring up an old suggestion from somewhere:

The current situation is that resources are infinite, you just gather them.

What if in each town there was an amount of each resource, which grows and hence increases and decreases as it is farmed. Weather could affect the growth rate of the food in the ground.

The gathering rates wouldn't be affected, but the amount there to gather would.

That would pave the way for agriculture: seeds, farming, collecting the harvest etc.

Related:
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6074
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=5554
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=80
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1004
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2191

[zmaster]

Once wheather is implemented there will have to be ways to help offset the disadvantages of certain wheather. For instance, the suggestion about hail damaging cars, if this was the case, there would have to be a way to protect the cars from hail. ie garages.

[Avathar]

I don't think we should have for every disadvantage of weather something to compensate it. Like when storms and hurricanes come, you should be able to build cellars. Or the hail damaging car and garage thing.

We just have to deal with the weather, like people also have dealt with it in history when they hadn't tornado-warning systems and when they hadn't worldwide weather forecastings on radio and TV.

And if the disadvantages of the weather aren't too big, and there won't be areas with 24/7 storms well... then it is an adventage when the weather is good and there aren't storms or hail or rain or whatever.

[dryn]

I would like it if the weather was cyclic (as in seasons) This way you could predict to some extent when the snow was coming and stockpile some food.

[Arlequin]

Up.

Any status info on weather?

Could a simple drought be implemented soon?

It would happen only in locations with more than a few characters, since a few could still gather enough to live during the drought.

So, for a whole year, food gathering would drop to zero, and animals would return much less meat, milk and eggs.

A location limited drought would only be seriously dangerous for the town if there wasn't any food stored, and any food in nearby locations, and any traders. Otherwise, it would encourage sleepy smokers to move their buttocks and RP trades for food.

On the other hand, the drought would benefit communities at places with dangerous wildlife.

[Joshuamonkey]

There's something very important missing in all this. Balance. Way too many negatives compared to advantages. Don't make weather such a horrible thing.

[Darkle-ish]

I agree with Joshuamonkey.. out of all those posts there seemed to be only a few benefits suggested.

[Kel]

The current situation is that resources are infinite, you just gather them.

What if in each town there was an amount of each resource, which grows and hence increases and decreases as it is farmed. Weather could affect the growth rate of the food in the ground.

The gathering rates wouldn't be affected, but the amount there to gather would.

That would pave the way for agriculture: seeds, farming, collecting the harvest etc.

Heh, if that got implemented, towns would get much stricter. No more allowing random foreigners to harvest the hard-worked crop, they'd have to get permission and help out the town. I think it'd be interestingly realistic, but only for farming. If stone was somehow limited, or trees limited, we'd see the pain of deforestation and the destruction of nature by Cantrians. Which is, although realistic, not fun. I guess Cantr shouldn't imitate real life that much.

There really aren't that many benefits to weather. Collecting water in rain, maybe, and the appearance of mud on the floor after a heavy storm...Unless batteries and hybrid cars get implemented, I don't think there'll even be a "energy collector" that could mysteriously absorb energy from lightning. O.o It's sort of stretching it. Heheh, what's next, solar powered cars that run in the sunlight? Or an item called ice after hailstorms that can be dropped into beverages in glasses?

[Crosshair]

Finite resources would encourage the economy and give more use for a coinage system.

[Joshuamonkey]

Limited resources would mean that Cantr would have a limit to its growth, and that Cantr would die. Also, I think you overestimate the effects of pollution, especially with how things run in Cantr. It's primitive still, and there are few people.

[marginoferror]

Just like in the real world, limited resources do not imply the eventual end of civilization. You don't usually just "run out" of resources (except for forest, which you sometimes DO run out of, sometimes shockingly quickly) but instead you take the low-hanging fruit and the rest is harder to get at. Over the course of human development, techniques for accessing hard-to-get resources have kept pace or even overtaken the rate of depletion of most resources. And resources that really do run out are simply replaced with something else.

If limited resources are implemented like they are in, say, Starcraft, then it IS the same as putting a time limit on Cantr civilization. But as long as the implementation isn't retarded, it won't be like that.

[joo]

There should be some kind of time delay after a certain resource is depleted to allow it "recover". Then there would be an initial relative abundance of the resources, when it all becomes "ripe". This would stop people from depleting a resource, then continuing to feed off the trickle coming back -- and it would allow places that were before dead because all the resources were used up to suddenly come back to life, sparking a "gold rush" of sorts. The recovery period should be something like 1 cantr year, more or less depending on the resources.

As for weather, I don't think that things like storms should be implemented yet. It would be too extreme a change and would take too long to implement. The weather should be based on one or two scalar or binary values for each location, completely independent of each other (remember: locations are quite far apart from each other, plus linking locations by weather would mean more processing and progamming). Each location could, of course, have a base climate which would affect the limits on the weather, and these could be similar between close-by locations.

[Joshuamonkey]

It doesn't make sense that 3 or even 20 people in a town could cut down a forest within their life time with an axe. There is already a limit to the amoutn of people who can gather at one time. Things don't need to be made harder.

[Crosshair]

Can I just ask, about weather... what exactly is the idea that has been accepted...

[Solfius]

I think the general concept, the details of the implementation are generally decided behind closed doors, with ideas and inspiration taken from the thread