Maximum number of resource gatherers

[julie2]

I’m not sure about this change at all. The big drawback I see is that it will only help to justify those nasty dictatorial governments who won’t let newspawns or visitors farm their own food; and it will engender even more of those bastards. It does, also, effectively limit the size of cities, just when we were glorying over getting more players It wll disccourage travel to a great extent, because people will need to stay at home to be guaranteed a supply of food, or anything else come to that. When they visit neighbouring towns they won’t be able to rely on gathering food while they’re there. Traders and resource runners will have to consider that their journey might be completely wasted if they’re refused permissuiion to gather the goods they set out for- or that their food might run out before their turn comes up. This will probably bring about the collapse of resourse running, and lead to lots of people wasting their time, just waiting around for permiossion to farm or to mine. Also, whatever system the local governments come up withto apportion resources, there’ll be plenty of people (newspawns , notably) just wandering in and screwing it up.

I think other (probably much more difficult) changes are required to balance this out and make it workable. For one thing, we need an effective means of stopping people from joining resource-gathering projects short of dragging them into jail or killing them. We need a means of extending the town beyond it’s limits if food supplies become too badly affected- by converting some of the surrounding land into arable land, for instance, and/or creating a satellite town nearby. It just isn’t realistic that you have to make a ten day journey to the next nearest place. There’s clearly an awful lot of “wastel and “ out there, which could surely be used. (And how about making it possible for wanders to pick berries along the way or cook meat along the way? Right now , there’s nothing you can do to sustain yourself if you’re inbetween towns). Most of all, we badly need a means of subdividing the land within towns into “plots “ so that all of those subrgoups within the town who have some kind of establisherd right to farm , mine, or whatever can contintue to do so without treadingon one anothers toes. Some of the land could belon to the government, for example, some to The MiningCompany, and sonmme could be set aside as “common land”, perhaps. It’s not reasonable to expect the entire poulation of a large town to co-operate to the requisite level, otherwise. That doesn’t even happen IRL, and Cantians simply have a lot less time in which to organise themselves

That last point is particularly important. Dictatorial forms of government are rife in Cantr because dictatorship is simple. Unless we keep the social organisation simple, then it falls apart through inefficient communication. It’s no use coming up with systems that demand a high level of communication and complexity, because communication in Cantr is necessarily slow and simplistic, dure to the mechanics of the gam.e Complex political and economic systems are likely to screw up, badly, because people can only spend a feww minutes per day talking business- and even then, you’ve got the problem of key workers falling asleep. I think its often the case that the spirit is willing, but the Cantrian flesh is too waek. It's hard to get anything inbewen "do exactly as I tell you" and "Bugger evetbody else, I'll do it all all by myself " to work This change makes the latter policy nigh-on-impossible, but it doesn't help any of the other alternatives to flourish. Instead it creates a situation where there's no time to talk (especially not at Canrian speeds),because immediate action is required to protect resources, not just once, but repeatedly. Th only workable solution to that situation is (arguably, perhaps) something along the lines of Martial Law.

One of my characters is currently trying to work out realistic ways of implementing her Socialist/Anarchistic principles, in spite of all the the usual peculiar Cantrian communication limitations. This change actually makes that all the harder to do. Jos said (ironically) that this system would work to prevent anarchy --by which he meant social disorder, I guess, though that isn’t what anarchy actually means. The sad thing to my mind is that he’s probably right, just as stated. An anarchistic form of social order is going to be struggling all the more, as is any form of democracy, because it’s so much simpler if one man stands up and just tells people what to do. And if newspawns are threatening to overwhelm a fragile economy by taking too many of the wrong resources, then that will actually need to be addressed swiftly and simply (ie, by authoritarian means)

(Yeah, OK, I'm repeating myself. I know. I'll shut up now -for a little while at least)

[Lumin]

Sounds like a good idea to me, we've been needing to do something about these magical infinite resources for a long time.

Of course it remains to be seen how well it'll work in practice. I haven't noticed any real difference yet, but most of my characters are in small towns anyway.

BTW, while we're on the subject of changes, what's going on with the water?

[julie2]

Btw, does this mean that if too many people are gathering potatoes/ coal/ etc. by hand, then you won't be able to use your harvester/coal drill/etc.
That could be horribly inefficient, couldn't it?

[Lumin]

The big drawback I see is that it will only help to justify those nasty dictatorial governments who won’t let newspawns or visitors farm their own food; and it will engender even more of those bastards.

How is that a drawback? Seems like common sense to me. After all, in RL would you want some people from another country just showing up to cut down a forest or set up mining equipment on a mountain without having to pay anything or even get permission first?

Traders and resource runners will have to consider that their journey might be completely wasted if they’re refused permissuiion to gather the goods they set out for- or that their food might run out before their turn comes up.

Traders are supposed to trade for resources, not gather them themselves. If they for some reason insist on wasting all their time on it, then they should work out an agreement that gives them the right to gather ahead of time. In fact I imagine non-citizens fees or taxes for gathering will be good for the economy.

Edit:

Btw, does this mean that if too many people are gathering potatoes/ coal/ etc. by hand, then you won't be able to use your harvester/coal drill/etc.
That could be horribly inefficient, couldn't it?

If it's horribly inefficient enough to be a problem than maybe whoever's in charge of the town should do something about it?

Like I said, this sounds like a good way to encourage trade, and I sincerely hope it works. As such I'll be resisting that reflexive urge to poke theoretical holes in every change until I see how the game is actually affected with my own characters.

[Just A Bill]

I second Julie2's question about drills. I also have a question as to the max num of workers, is that max set the same for all cities, does it vary from city to city? Some cities have more useable land than others.

Perhaps we could add additional fields, mines, ect, basically extending the city limits, possibly that could only be used for one specific resource that wouldn't count against this limit. You might require a small trip to get to the new fields, and it might bring the towns closer to their neighbors (think eastern corridor(sp))

As to how this will affect the game and its societies, It should tend to favor smaller cities, or those with harvesters. It also might also encourage hunting/cooking as with one days gathering you could cook for many days and end up with more days worth of food. It will be fairly difficult to support a large town without gathering machines.

[julie2]

Traders and resource runners will have to consider that their journey might be completely wasted if they’re refused permissuiion to gather the goods they set out for- or that their food might run out before their turn comes up.

Traders are supposed to trade for resources, not gather them themselves. If they for some reason insist on wasting all their time on it, then they should work out an agreement that gives them the right to gather ahead of time. In fact I imagine non-citizens fees or taxes for gathering will be good for the economy.

Most so-caled traders are, in fact, self-employed resourse runners. so yes , they do gather stuff themselves. The trouble with prior agreements is that they're thoroughly unreliable because Cantrian govenments are not cohesive enough, due to aformentioned limits on communinication. The next government official you meet , on your next trip, is unlikely to know nor care about any agreement you made with his sleeping predecessor. I've encounterered this problem many times over, even in my characters home towns, where it ought to be considerably easier.

Fees and taxes are already in operation in some places. There's nothing to stop towns implementing this, if they want to, anyway, and there's nothing to stop towns saying you can't gather resources unil after you've reched an agreement with the town. That happens already. However, people do starve to death, whilst waiting for the wheels of buerocracy to turn, and this will happen all the more now.

Like I said, this sounds like a good way to encourage trade, and I sincerely hope it works. As such I'll be resisting that reflexive urge to poke theoretical holes in every change until I see how the game is actually affected with my own characters.

If we poke theoretical holes soon enough, we might avoid some of the actual holes. Many big changes like this one only actually have a serious direct effect on a minority of characters (and a slow but far-reaching domino affecxt on most of the others) so you always get large numbers of players saying "It's not a problem",even when it is, in fact, a problem.
Experience, therefore, isn't necessarily a good enough guide. Ok, things get sorted out eventually, but sometimes it's at the expense of industries collapsing and a lot of good players losng heart and quitting. So I'm inclined to pick holes as quickly as possibly, because the faster they're picked, the faster they'll be patched.

Anyway, if the decision was made on theoretical grounds, it's entirely apppropriate to argue against it on theoretical grounds isn't it?

[Slowness_Incarnate]

I haven't been affected yet, but I alsready saw screaming about limits. -prepares for the worst-

[KVZ]

I wonder how big/small those limitations are. I hope that number of active people in Polish locations is small enough, so I will not see those working soon. I also think that it would be more realistic to limit per one resource then per all gatherers. And that would make people to use wheat when they can't gather carrots.

[The Sociologist]

In principle, this new change is the correct way to go. Scarcity is the basis of markets, so without scarcity, you can't really have proper markets. My congratulations to Jos.

Traders and resource runners will have to consider that their journey might be completely wasted if they’re refused permissuiion to gather the goods they set out for- or that their food might run out before their turn comes up.

Traders are supposed to trade for resources, not gather them themselves. If they for some reason insist on wasting all their time on it, then they should work out an agreement that gives them the right to gather ahead of time. In fact I imagine non-citizens fees or taxes for gathering will be good for the economy.

Most so-caled traders are, in fact, self-employed resourse runners. so yes, they do gather stuff themselves.

Unfortunately this is true. The "bonuses" paid to traders never really compensate them for all the time spent travelling, in my opinion. So towns will have to have a system of licensing traders to collect resources in the town, after making their trade, for some (possibly limited) period of time, before they proceed on their way again. Towns that don't do so will simply see few to no traders after a while. However, this would be a defect of town politics, not a defect of Jos's idea as such.

The trouble with prior agreements is that they're thoroughly unreliable because Cantrian govenments are not cohesive enough, due to aformentioned limits on communinication.

Alas that is also true, but there are such things as libraries for notes and other forms of publication.

That happens already. However, people do starve to death, whilst waiting for the wheels of buerocracy to turn, and this will happen all the more now.

Again these problems can surely be addressed in-game. Travellers will be more alert to the need to carry concentrated foods such as cooked meat, while towns need to watch their reputations and delegate authority to deal with visiting traders. Once again this does not go to the principle of what Jos id trying to achieve.

But is it working at all?
I'm not sure if the system is working. It was working, but affecting participation in iron refining projects also. Now that that's been fixed, I'm not sure...

[Agar]

Firstly, What's wrong with dictators? They're a form of government, rather effiecent in cantr, not always repressive, often helpful, and rather nice when you're on the right end of them. You don't like it, you can leave, get your self killed insulting them, or go elsewhere and start your own.

Now as to the drills and machines issue, see the red highlighting here:

About what it affects:
- only resource gathering, not machine / building / repairing / etc.
- only participation in projects, not creating projects
- the number of people working on digging projects is counted, not the number of active projects
- people that are currently working on a project won't be stopped - but if they stop now, they will in many cases (about 300) not be able to immediately restart again
- the number of slots stays constant per city ... I was thinking about making small, rare random variations, but probably not ... there is one number for all resources together ... the number is randomly set, within a range depending on the type of location

Hope that answers everything.

Meaning, the machines already have a maximum number of workers, and aren't counted against the number of people digging by hand. So if there's a hematite drill in town, and the limit for gathering hematite is low, like 6, you can have 6 people digging hematite by hand, and two, or however many (been a while since I was on a drill), drilling it.

So in a way, you can increase your towns ability for gathering a resource by making the machine to gather it.

Now, I don't really get the bit with the blue in it. Jos or anyone want to clarify that some? Does that mean all towns can have the same number of people working, but the ratios of how many people can dig potatoes is different from town to town, or each town has different numbers of people total that can be working or ... ?

[Agar]

Just to point out, as I've stated 1000 times so far, the values of vehicles WILL lower upon the time when they are made from parts rather than one large project. This is to encourage specialization as well (Example: A tire company, an engine company, a frame company, etc) and make it cheaper for the characters. So that more vehicles exist. At present, everything seems to be harder for the character, but I want to give you all a present and make something EASIER. Something rewarding, too.

As well, the Stone Quarry exists in the Machiney listing. Used for... digging stone. It's a drill. Sort of.

You need medium rope though. Gives a use to the rope machine.

That's all well and good, but I can't see how many of those log thingys it takes or where we're to get the timber for the logs ... Something in mid-implementation?

[Genevieve]

Now as to the drills and machines issue, see the red highlighting here:

About what it affects:
- only resource gathering, not machine / building / repairing / etc.
- only participation in projects, not creating projects
- the number of people working on digging projects is counted, not the number of active projects
- people that are currently working on a project won't be stopped - but if they stop now, they will in many cases (about 300) not be able to immediately restart again
- the number of slots stays constant per city ... I was thinking about making small, rare random variations, but probably not ... there is one number for all resources together ... the number is randomly set, within a range depending on the type of location

Hope that answers everything.

Meaning, the machines already have a maximum number of workers, and aren't counted against the number of people digging by hand.

Hm, I read this rather differently. To mean that BUILDING Machines and fixing them isn't going to count. However nothing says the USE of the machine doesn't count. I thought Jos said somewhere that they count not the number of projects, but the number of people gathering resources (by whatever means).

Jos?

[KVZ]

and the limit for gathering hematite is low, like 6, you can have 6 people digging hematite by hand

1. But there is no limit for hematite or any other resource, but limit for all resource gathering workers put together.

Now, I don't really get the bit with the blue in it. Jos or anyone want to clarify that some? Does that mean all towns can have the same number of people working, but the ratios of how many people can dig potatoes is different from town to town, or each town has different numbers of people total that can be working or ... ?

2. See point 1.

[west]

That means if the number for your town is six, you can have six people on hematite, six on potatoes, and six on water, etc. (that's 18 if you're counting) He wanted to make slight variations so say, it was seven for hematite and four for potatoes and seven for water (18 again), but he didn't.

That's what that means.

[Black Canyon]

Okay. Now I'm confused. It was my understanding that there would be a specific cap for resource gatherers... not the specific resources themselves. For instance.... 18 in a town...regardless of what they are gathering. Do I have this wrong?