Increased Smelter capacity

[The Industriallist]

Undermines the notion of making a blast-furnace type contraption, but...

Probably a good thing. Helps even out resource collection with smelting speed. Nasty, nasty shock to anyone who has smelted iron in the past years, but...

[Stan]

Looks like the start of an industrial revolution.

[julie2]

.

Helps even out resource collection with smelting speed.

Can you explain what you mean by this? Maybe, if you're sitting right on top of all three resources. Or maybe if you have a van, and good roads. then maybe, just maybe, resource collection was much quicker and simpler than smelting. Even then, I find it very hard to believe that this doesn't throw the balance out wildly in then the opposite direction.

[joshua johnson]

I think this is a bit too much.

Seven times is such a drastic, massive change, that it really upsets the economy altogether. It greatly cheapens iron and steel. Before Iron and Steel were very valuable trade commodities. Small amounts, gotten at great expense, could be carried for long distances to trade for goods. Now that is not true any longer. Okay, it still has some value, but cars used to be so novel and neat, now they will be come commonplace. It will also be far to cheap to build harvestors and drills and boats and such. It makes an iron shield cheaper than a wood one, possibly (I haven't done the math yet, but it must be close) If you want to change the iron smelting, move it up 50% from where it was, but not 700% please! Please move it back closer to where it was PLEASE.

[Surly]

It makes an iron shield cheaper than a wood one, possibly (I haven't done the math yet, but it must be close)

Wrong. To make 350g of iron you need to spend 6.38 days gathering the raw resources... and 1 day making, then four days making the shield.

A wooden shield take just under 4 days to make, compared with around 11 for an iron one, and that's not even including the cost of a smelter and the travelling required for 3 different resources. Do your research.

If you want to change the iron smelting, move it up 50% from where it was, but not 700% please!

Half of what it was? Get real. However, on reflection I don't think steel should have been changed. If you produce 350g of iron per day, steel should remain at 100g, to restore its value.

Please move it back closer to where it was PLEASE.

For iron, please don't. For steel, please do. You should remember that now you can effectively produce 54g of iron per day... which brings it back towards the old values, balacning the system and hopefully allowing the Cantr economy to grow again after nearly 2 years of stagnation following hematite.

[Lumin]

Oh no, the economy's collapsed. I guess all our characters will starve now.

[joshua johnson]

I guess I have to do the math to defend myself so here goes....

It is less than 6.38 days...assuming you are making it with coal and assuming you have pickaxes and shovels, which any blacksmithing operation is going to have or get...especially with iron so cheap...1.33 days crushing, .66 days getting hematite, .84 days to get the coal, .64 days to get the limestone. That makes 3.47 days to gather resources (not 6.38) plus a day to smelt the iron so 4.47, multiply by .86 (you only need 300g of it) equals almost 3.84 days compared to close to two days for somebody with no axe. It is likely that somebody getting a wood shield would not have an axe, since they would not have steel, because if they had steel, they would have iron and make an iron shield. Okay, I know...for iron add in the resource travel. Plus food to eat all that time. Plus machine overhead since you made a building and a smelter. So it is more expensive, but not as much more as it should be.

Note that even without gathering tools, the time is 5.61 days. ALso note that the time with a coal drill and hematite drill is down considerably lower than 3.47, although I cannot recall the exact values. Keep in mind that in some towns these drills and such exist due to the old riches...and so the past wealth does live on, without stagnating the economy.

No....I never implied the amount to be made would be half of what it was.....read...move it UP 50% would mean it going up by 50%, just like it says....so instead of making 50 iron per day with coal, you could make 75 iron per day. That is moving it up by 50%.

There is no reason to bring it back to the old values. A car was something special. Now it will not be. This is simply not needed.

[Talapus]

This is an excellent change. It makes iron about twice as easy to get, which is a great leap forward. Thanks Jos!

[Lumin]

Maybe steel production should remain the same, just because every society needs some kind of much sought after but hard to get thing for the greedy chars to go after, but other than that I think the new iron change is a great idea.

As for the arguments against it, well, so what if cars are no longer completely impossible to make? It still won't be easy --ground vehicles will be the domain of the incredibly wealthy for a long, long time to come-- but if more towns can now own even a bike or two, how is faster communication and trade bad for the game in any way?

And as for iron itself, the more out there in the general population the better. Would it really be that damaging to the game to raise the average person's standard of living just a tiny bit? (Hey, maybe one day one of my chars will actually get 40g of the stuff so she can make a wooden trowel, that would certainly be nice, but I won't start dreaming yet...)

I know in the short term this sucks for chars who've put a lot of time and effort into making or acquiring iron, but I think in this case you have to look at the big picture. Considering how necessary iron is for so many of the tools out there, the lack of it has really held back production. And if gathering the hematite fast enough has suddenly become a little difficult...well, there you go, even more opportunites for trade. Iron companies often being pretty organized to begin with, I think we might even start seeing long term trade agreements between them and whoever owns the hematite. Either that or more places are going to start setting up shop right there on the mountains and trading for food.

[mortaine]

Well, I joined Cantr shortly after the hematite change, and I have to say, I have no idea if this will affect anything, because:

1) Iron is the second scarcest resource, second only to steel. Therefore, among all my characters, they have probably only amassed an average of 10-30 grams of iron amongst themselves.

2) Because iron is so rare and hard to make, I don't even bother having smiths as characters. I tried, I really did, but since almost every step of producing anything requires an iron or steel tool, it just stopped being worth it.

I hate iron. I really feel that the iron problem is the #1 thing making Cantr un-fun. EVERY SINGLE EFFECTIVE OR USEFUL ITEM IN THE GAME IS MADE OF IRON. Basically, if you have no iron, you have nothing.

I laugh when I see the iron requirement for certain machines. Like anyone is going to use 400 grams of this exceedingly valuable metal as fittings on a loom. C'mon-- where are all the other metals? If I lived in a world like Cantr, I would be out there figuring out how to work nickle into screws and bolts for a loom, how to make a wooden lock, how to dig a fire pit without a shovel (I can dig a grave but not a fire pit? Who thinks of these things?)

As a result of the last 8 months of the Iron Problem, you now have two classes in Cantr: the Iron class, those who have iron and steel and can produce it easily, and the peasants, who have to defer to the Iron Class because the Iron Class has the effective weapons and shields and locks and crowbars and can bully you around. Every one of my characters is a peasant. Some of them are middle-class peasants: they have iron equipment, but it's only because someone else was extremely generous.

[west]

You guys are missing the most crucial point: It still takes just as much hematite, coal and limestone to make the same amount of steel. The only thing that's changed is how long it takes to smelt once you've gotten it all.

[The Industriallist]

My claim that it's evening out smelting and mining is based on my cantr economic theory. Basically I think most cantr characters can only be effectively used for simple outdoor resource collection tasks...they don't have the will or interest for industrial work of any kind. So a mining base can get effective workers much more easily than a manufacturing center.

Consequently, manufacturing of iron was much more of a chokepoint than producing raw material, and even more of a chokepoint than transport in many cases. Which was OK, if that's how it was going to be...but if the economy's going to be 'fixed' it made sense to change that.

As a result of the last 8 months of the Iron Problem, you now have two classes in Cantr: the Iron class, those who have iron and steel and can produce it easily, and the peasants, who have to defer to the Iron Class because the Iron Class has the effective weapons and shields and locks and crowbars and can bully you around. Every one of my characters is a peasant. Some of them are middle-class peasants: they have iron equipment, but it's only because someone else was extremely generous.

One of the few bits of social development the game has seen, to my mind...A society where everyone has is a truely dull one.

[Just A Bill]

Not to be greedy, well ok it is greedy, but it looks like only new projects get the bump in speed. Is there any chance the rate of production could be increased on existing projects. I set up a long (multi-week project) for someone to work while sleeping and the player left before setting the chareacter to work on the project...

[mortaine]

A society where everyone has is a truely dull one.

Spoken like someone playing at least one of the Iron Class.

Those of us playing the peasants and not having ANYONE in the Iron Class find society to be very dull indeed, with no hope of advancement, no hope of improvement, no hope. Cantr is a pretty sucky place if all you get to do is farm carrots, and get cheated in trade deals (I think I've seen iron actually be traded in good faith about twice, and I see iron trades gone bad almost every week.)

[The Industriallist]

Several in the iron class, actually. And not one of them got there by theft, either...

All of my characters have made it to iron at some point in their lives, except for the youngest. I've bought it with goods, and I've bought it with labor. A character only stays a carrot farmer if that's what they want to be...where in today's cantr don't you have another choice?

And I've traded for iron, and always gotten what I agreed to. I've never seen an iron trade 'go bad'. What do you mean by that?

Are you trying to get out of carrot farming by selling carrots? Because of all the options out there, that's definitely the most hopeless. I mean, do you really expect to trade carrots, which are the next thing to free, for iron, which is the most valuable thing there is? It may happen with the new collection limits...but prices probably are not going to be good.