Radio, grouping of projects, faster animal reproduction...

[KVZ]

I have five suggestions at once:

1. Make radio to communicate on distance and allow recognition people by voice then.
2. Make possible to group many projects into one big project queue list allowing to work one after completing other. This will help with burying dead bodies and other tasks and will make projects list shorter.
3. Animals should reproduce faster! On Polish island there is low number of them and I never noticed they reproduce
4. Making such things like stone hammers should be shortened. Two days to produce stone hammer is to much.
5. Deterioration of items should be tweaked up. Things deteriorate to fast! Or repairing time of them should be shortened.

[Agar]

1: Heard many many times. No. Cantr is not ready yet.

2: I like this idea, don't know how it'd be programmed, and it's just a convienance, so good idea, but low priority.

3: Come to Aki. Take a field trip with Ryoko. Shut up.

4: Does it really take two days to make a hammer? How can that be justified? Two days lashing a rock to a stick? That's silly, and all of you on staff know it. I could understand taking a while to carefully smooth a bone to an edge, but it's a rock on a stick, you're just going to beat things with it, not preform brain surgery, shorten it.

5: Item rot seems to be balanced to me. Some things do rot rather fast, but if you pay attention to them, you'll be ok. I think it's mainly the bow issue. Bows do seem to rot faster than needed, I'm not sure how long it takes to repair them, so that might be looked at, but other than that possible issue, it seems to be functional.

[KVZ]

3: Come to Aki. Take a field trip with Ryoko. Shut up.

Well, so maybe to decrease aggresion of animals and make their attacks doing less damage first and then incrase reproduction rate. Or allow to get resources such as hide and small and large bones from dead bodies as someone on Polish forum suggested?

[SekoETC]

1. I agree Cantr ain't ready for such technology yet, actually I won't like some hi-tech things either that are in the game already...

2. Would be a good idea but if it's possible to queue many projects then you don't necessarily have to check in to start a new one and that might lead into huge automation on boring regions. But I still like the idea.

3. Yeah maybe animals should reproduce faster but not unlimitedly, make it logical, if there is much of small animals then the big animals will eat them and reproduce faster but if you hunt their food, the predators will come rarer. The growth of population shouldn't be linear but an S-curve.

4. I've been thinking about this also but it would require adding the queuing projects first because I think you can easily make several bone needles, loincloths or other small items a day, but you shouldn't have to be required to log in five times a day to start new projects.

5. No, items do not deteriorate too fast. I'm guessing it only seems that way for you since you have so little animals and bones are more expensive. In other places people wouldn't bother repairing bone tools but would merely throw them away when they get old and make new ones. You might have a good reason to develop alternatives since animals are such unsure a source. I hope you have some way of smelting metals in there, I find it sad people can't make even copper knives if they don't have any better choice.

Well, so maybe to decrease aggresion of animals and make their attacks doing less damage first and then incrase reproduction rate. Or allow to get resources such as hide and small and large bones from dead bodies as someone on Polish forum suggested?

It's amazing in some places animal projects are just lying around in huge useless heaps and in other places they're terribly rare, and yet there's no trade. I haven't noticed much of animal attacks in ages, decreasing aggression wouldn't make much sense.

And I like the idea of using human bones and hide, it should be made available. Probably places where animal products are abundant, using human parts would be considered disgusting but you have a good justification for it. You should be proud of having such a special region. I hope the resource department and programming give you more logical choices.

[Surly]

3. Animals should reproduce faster! On Polish island there is low number of them and I never noticed they reproduce

I actually agree. And before people say anything, my character lived for 30 years of Aki island. I know how bad it gets. But the point is that bone tools should deteriorate quickly, but also be very easy to replace. If bones were more readily available, that would become viable... but currently bones are quite valuable in some areas.

Also, for bone tools to work as an idea, iron and steel tools need to be more effective. And detiorate A LOT SLOWER and be repaired MUCH QUICKER. Otherwise bone tools are better value.

5. Deterioration of items should be tweaked up. Things deteriorate to fast! Or repairing time of them should be shortened.

Well, once you accept that it bears no relation to RL, detioration is fine.

It is the repairing which is flawed. Currently it would take me 21 hours to repair my stone hammer. You think 16 hours is a long time to make it? How can 21 hours for repair be justified? Take the stone off the stick. Reattach the stone. Hammer repaired... 1 hour max.

And my iron shield would take me 23 hours to repair. Seriously... iron is not more durable if the repair rates are so high...

Item rot is not realistic, but we're going to have to live with it. Item repair is a direct solution for item rot, while it is unrealistic in RL-terms it is realistic in item rot terms.

[The Industriallist]

5. Deterioration of items should be tweaked up. Things deteriorate to fast! Or repairing time of them should be shortened.

Well, once you accept that it bears no relation to RL, detioration is fine.

It is the repairing which is flawed. Currently it would take me 21 hours to repair my stone hammer. You think 16 hours is a long time to make it? How can 21 hours for repair be justified? Take the stone off the stick. Reattach the stone. Hammer repaired... 1 hour max.

And my iron shield would take me 23 hours to repair. Seriously... iron is not more durable if the repair rates are so high...

Item rot is not realistic, but we're going to have to live with it. Item repair is a direct solution for item rot, while it is unrealistic in RL-terms it is realistic in item rot terms.

Yes, I think repair time is proportional to rot time, uniformly for all items. So if you repaired the shield every 10 days like you would a bow, it wouldn't take too long...but since it lasts for years, you leave it for a while and end up with three days work.

So stronger materials, rather than resisting rot better simply can absorb more of it before they fail completely.

It's amazing in some places animal projects are just lying around in huge useless heaps and in other places they're terribly rare, and yet there's no trade.

Simple. Most cantr players believe in absolute value, or something close to it. Since they 'know' that bones are cheap junk, they aren't going to pay enough for them to be worth transporting, despite the fact that they can't get enough locally.

[Jos Elkink]

It's amazing in some places animal projects are just lying around in huge useless heaps and in other places they're terribly rare, and yet there's no trade.

Simple. Most cantr players believe in absolute value, or something close to it. Since they 'know' that bones are cheap junk, they aren't going to pay enough for them to be worth transporting, despite the fact that they can't get enough locally.

You say it's simple, but I find it really awkward ... how come?

I mean, I know you're right, but it's something about Cantr that puzzles me ...

[SekoETC]

Jos, that's because people can't stop thinking OOC - if they know their characters are being screwed over in trade then most of them won't take it, even if the character had no knowledge of the value of things. The only way you can trick somebody in trade is trading with newbies. Otherwise you need to count the daily worth based on collection rate or you won't get a trade done. This is probably because there are so many players who are underlining Cantr is not a roleplaying game but a society simulator, when in this case you need to have the role on. Also if someone sailed on another island and tried to give the "savages" some glass beads, they wouldn't be fooled by that... exept that currently glass beads are rarer than diamonds and thus might be appriciated more.

[The Industriallist]

Seko's hit a lot of it, but I'm going to put it my way anyhow...

I don't entirely understand it, but I think it's because people are used to worlds where the cost of something's pretty much the same everywhere, and don't put in the abstract thought to reallize why that doesn't hold here.

IRL, transport costs aren't often noticable to consumers. You can buy many things at the same prices anywhere in the country, whatever country it is you live in. What's more, you have no clue what the production costs, the transport costs, and the profits to each business involved are.

In most mmorpg games of any ilk, you know exactly what an item is worth, or can figure out soon enough with a little research. Any item or resource is worth about the same anywhere, since it's usually trivial to get from place to place. So things trade at their inherent values everywhere.

Then come to cantr. After not too much time you have both IC and OOC knowledge of the production rates of most resources. Thus you conclude logically that the value of a resource is inversely proportional to it's production rate, which in a very fuzzy sense is valid. You stop there. There's not a big enough market (often not even two people take an interest in a resource that everyone in town could use and can't get locally. Sometimes not even one.) to cause competition and show people what the good is really worth to them, so they often never get past their first conclusion.

So when the man walks into Drojf looking to trade 3 kg of wood, he gets offered to trade day for day. Maybe someone will reallize that wood is actually of special value, and offer some small pecentage of profit...say 1000 grams of stone per day of wood. And of course it's quite likely, despite that price not being worth the trip, the trader will often agree, either because he hasn't thought it through either, or because he's gottent the same lousy offer in every town for 15 days and want's to get on with life.

[PRUT]

I have five suggestions at once: 3. Animals should reproduce faster! On Polish island there is low number of them and I never noticed they reproduce

He is right. I've never seen an animal which reproduce. Maybe this is a legend of Cantr Greenpeace? I polish island (comparing for example to english ones) there are
• much less species
• much less quantity of animals

When I saw wiki entry for animals I was shocked how many of them exists. We have just wolfs, horses, pigeons, boers sometimes hawks.

So, in english area, bone things are everywhere, meat are wasting laying on ground and in polish ones is has value of iron.

Why are such differences?

[Agar]

Increase, JUST A TINY, TINY BIT, the reproduction rate of the newspawn target species. Rabbits, pidgeons, raccons. I think they're the ones that don't attack ever too. But just a little more chance of seeing them.

They're driven out of many areas from 20 yr olds splattering them with thier bare fists, and hardly ever reproduce. Has anyone seen more than ten of any one of these in any location? Other than Aki, where they're all we DON'T hunt.

[Surly]

The really unrealistic situation is the locations with wolves, cheetahs and lions that outnumber the smaller animals...

Seriously there should loads more rabbits in Cantr. Rabbits breed like elephants in Cantr...

It's small bones that are needed most, isn;t it? And fur... so make rabbits breed like rabbits, and no-one (except the server ) will complain. And cut down on the travelling of said small animals. Rabbits don't tend to travel as far as wolves do...

[Jos Elkink]

Jos, that's because people can't stop thinking OOC - if they know their characters are being screwed over in trade then most of them won't take it, even if the character had no knowledge of the value of things.

Well, there's basically two things that struck me when reading that: 1) that means people are bad in their roleplay and it's truly a pity. It would be more fun if people let themselves being cheated at times ... 2) it doesn't really explain why people are not willing to pay more for a resource they need and cannot get otherwise - I mean it's not 'being screwed' if you live years travelling from the nearest salt depot and you have to pay a lot for your salt when you need it. So it's just kind of weird, actually, the way it operates in Cantr. (And that also is my reply to The Industrialist comments.) So I agree with you guys in your analysis, but it's still strange ...

Do auctions often occur in Cantr? In our lego game, I noticed that it was always auctions that gave the best revenue to sellers, and also showed better what the real prices of goods were. In Cantr, auctions could very well be implemented, and would be quite cool.

Why are such differences?

Because otherwise the game would get very boring. Now, if you ever meet the English (and that shouldn't take too long), you can trade your iron for their bones ... I understand that new language areas, like the Polish and the Turkish, need some resources to be able to get started. But part of the game is dealing with harsh circumstances - they force you to organise, and they make your societies strong. Machiavelli once wrote (in The Discourses - highly recommended reading if you like Cantr, btw) that cities are stronger if they survived harsh periods, compared to those where all necessary goods and safety was always at hand.

The really unrealistic situation is the locations with wolves, cheetahs and lions that outnumber the smaller animals...

Yes, I know, and it's one of my top priorities to change that. But it's also a lot of work, and I keep postponing it ... I need to remove the whole 'animal packs' system and individualise them - after that, I can make them attack each other, eat resources, eat each other, allow them to enter buildings or something, have them domesticated, allow people to rename them, etc. etc. - all of that requires individualisation. So once I get that finished it will probably take a while to find the right balance (be warned! ...), but it will allow me to make it more realistic and gradually implement a lot of features people have asked for with animals.

Seriously there should loads more rabbits in Cantr. Rabbits breed like elephants in Cantr... It's small bones that are needed most, isn;t it? And fur... so make rabbits breed like rabbits, and no-one (except the server ) will complain. And cut down on the travelling of said small animals.

Personally I have no objections ... this is RD stuff anyway, so I'm not involved

[AngelSpice]

Do auctions often occur in Cantr? In our lego game, I noticed that it was always auctions that gave the best revenue to sellers, and also showed better what the real prices of goods were. In Cantr, auctions could very well be implemented, and would be quite cool.

My charrie participated in an informal one and ended up paying 10 days of wood for less than 3 days salt. (the seller offered it to the highest bidder.) HOWEVER, he had an axe and it sped up gathering of the wood and it saved him the walk to the city with the salt and back which would have taken more than a year IG, so he still feels he got a good deal.

[SekoETC]

Yeah and one of my characters had to work days in the stone quarry just to get a hide bikini... D'oh. (This is in the area where animals are rare, in that place there's just hawks.)