Gathering limits - ProgD update

[Jur Schagen]

The field or a mine wouldn't be bigger when You are using machines.

It's not bigger, but you can work it more efficiently. If you're in a mine shaft with room for one to work, you get more ores working with a pickaxe then with your bare hands, no?

Apart from that, there's an implementation issue here as well. It's pretty easy to calculate the amount of gatherers in town when the time comes to generate the proceeds of the project... but doing the entire calculation including skills (see Keves' post) and tools for all those other projects is a different matter...

The only advance of using machines is speed! One who have a tool, when others have not, has an advance and gather more

I disagree. He gets more, but not at the expense of others. But I'll poll it.

One who do such a thing must a communist

... or, very impressed by that guy wielding a sabre...

Oh and I agree that not working at full efficiency should be reported to the player.

And now using machines city can gather unlimited amount of resources, so where is land scarcity then?

True. That's because technically this is a completely different type of project. It should be changed, but that might take a long time, glancing through the Flyspray list...

If you were going to base it on how many were outside you could have given a days warning or something.

I did. See the first post, and the update post. Besides, I think the actual update was based on all pop, but I'm not entirely shure because the count method came from Jos' sleeve... and he's not around to answer that. PM me the name of the town if you want me to look into this.

[julie2]

And now using machines city can gather unlimited amount of resources, so where is land scarcity then?

True. That's because technically this is a completely different type of project. It should be changed, but that might take a long time, glancing through the Flyspray list...

Ummm...not long ago, the Prog Dept themselves were recommending that we build machinnes as a work-around to land scarcity. Now you're saying that you PLAN to ensure that it isn't effective as a work-around, by the time our charries have built the damned machines? (You surely must realise that these macines represent several years work even for a group of charries working in co-operation? You are playing the same game as the rest of us?)

Oh, come on, how many times do you think we can stand somebody shifting the goalposts on us before we ever reach the new objective? Do you that seroiusly mean that you want our charries to beat their heads against new and innovative brick walls all over the place? (all in the interests of making the game more difficult?) So much so, that you're purposely herding us towards the next projected brick wall?

To add indult to injury, the poor fools who took up your advice about building machines are going to be told (by other players rather than yourself, to be fair) "Tough. That's realism. Deal with it " (As if Govenments and industry always have to adapt to sudden radical shifts in the Laws of Physics at regular intervals, along with the standard everyday IRL problems such as plague, revolutions, key workers dropping dead out of boredom, and programming bugs )


My advice to other players: Dont even think of building machines unless you happen to govern the Town you live in, because there's no way of staking your claim to the land your machines are standing on, except by staking a claim to the entire town I's all one big, indivisible, field, remember?And when are they going to make private ownership of your "gathering slot " feasible? Not 'til Catr III is up and running, by the look of it. You don't get your own little plot of land to run your machine on, along with the machine, not for long anyway. You effectively do right now, because your machine doesn't encroach on the limited public space, but that's now been judged unrealistic. When the implement this change, then your machine will effectively get moved to the "public sector" and you'll standing in line for the chance to use it, same as everybody else. )

[Jur Schagen]

And now using machines city can gather unlimited amount of resources, so where is land scarcity then?

True. That's because technically this is a completely different type of project. It should be changed, but that might take a long time, glancing through the Flyspray list...

Ummm...not long ago, the Prog Dept themselves were recommending that we build machinnes as a work-around to land scarcity.

Did Jos say that? In that case it will probably be so.

Now you're saying that you PLAN to ensure that it isn't effective as a work-around, by the time our charries have built the damned machines? (You surely must realise that these macines represent several years work even for a group of charries working in co-operation? You are playing the same game as the rest of us?)

Oh come on... they aren't gonna be useless all of a sudden, they will still gather at four times the speed of untooled citizens or so. Apart from that, this ain't gonna happen anytime soon, especially if Jos indeed opposes it.

Oh, come on, how many times do you think we can stand somebody shifting the goalposts on us before we ever reach the new objective? Do you that seroiusly mean that you want our charroies to beat their heads against new and innovative brick walls all over the place? (all in the interests of making the game more difficult?) So much so, that you're purposely herding us towards the next projected brivck wall?

I'm not herding anyone anywhere. Before the slot limit, the harvesters were four times as good as the untooled gatherers. Now, they are better than that because they negate limits. I assumed we would be decreasing them to the "four times as good" like they always have been.

(As if Govenments and industry always have to adapt to radical shifts in the Laws of Physics at regular intervals,

As a matter of fact, they do. Ever heard of the Remington company? They were the world leader in typewriter production, less than two decades ago. I don't think they exist anymore (at least, www.remington.com goes to some arms manufacturing company's site). Clipper ships were obsoleted less then 10 years after invention because the steam engine was mounted into ships. I could go on but I won't.

Jur.

[PRUT]

The field or a mine wouldn't be bigger when You are using machines.

It's not bigger, but you can work it more efficiently. If you're in a mine shaft with room for one to work, you get more ores working with a pickaxe then with your bare hands, no?

But tools you are using won't ever change the potential capacity of the mine. You won't gahter more than is inside. I don't understand your post. I said that everything will be the same with gathering until the limit of gathered resources will be reached. So when the limit for stone is 6000g per day
and one person working - he would gather about 750g
ih he has pickaxe - he would gather 1500g
and etc.

Nothing changes until limit is reached, when total amount of resource gathered by all MUST, be reduced in proportion to maximum amount of resource gathered in that location.

Is it more clear now?

[T-shirt]

Nothing changes until limit is reached, when total amount of resource gathered by all MUST, be reduced in proportion to maximum amount of resource gathered in that location.

How can a limit be reached for resources that do not replenish or regrow? How can a stonequarry be empty one day and full the next? I can see how potatoefields can have a limited amount of harvested potatoes and how the area available to plant potatoes can be limited, but I don't understand for an oilfield. If I use advanced machines I do get out more and it won't influence others collecting oil. Only when all oil has gone, which can't in Cantr as resources have an endless supply. Only a ridiculous daily supplylimit that is replenished each morning, like Mozes' mannah in the desert.

[julie2]

I must say I’m Impressed with the detailed responses you’re giving to everybody , myself included ,Jur. *Smiles * Thanks. I mean it. Nonerthess I’m frustrated that my biggest concern (regarding the social and political implications of the change)about the whole thing gets consistently ignorered-- possibly because I’m expressing it so badly that nobody follows my argument? I’ll post some links to my previous attempts, when I’ve got five minutes I’m sure somebody somewhere on this board must share my concerns and maybe they can express them better?

[edit: my most recent attempt is here:
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=109749
Here's another:
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=109214
and another:
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=109545
and another:
http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=109397]


As for the Machine question…weeeeell, I appreciate that gathering rate will likely stay the same, (though I wouldn’t be confident of that much, either, in the light of some recent propsals) but that isn’t really the point. The main advantage of machines now, in my view, is that you still maintain your right to use the machines even if all the “gathering slots “ are occupied -- so it’s much as as if you own the partch of land which your machine is parked on. Private Industry can continue to fubnction independantly if it only possesses machines. Now, if you don’t own that land, but it falls instead wiithin the public domain (or the all-powerful local Overlord’s Domain) then your ownership over that machine becomes …well, academic. You might wind up with no opportunity to actually use it- and certainly less opportunity than you previously had. In fact, if the Local Authority manages that land as a whole (the only practical way of managing that land, since it IS an indivisible whole, as programmed) then the only sensible way to go from there, for the sake of efficiency, would be to either requistion or purchase all existing machines from their owners. To my mind, that preospect makes machne-ownership a highly dubious benefit (unless you ARE the town). Would you invest all your money in building a coal mine in someone else backyard, and just hope he'll ' be nice enough to let you come in and use it? Of course not. You'd stake your claim on the land first, or forget it, if you can't.

But this relates to that other argument, of course, the one that never gets a response from you, So I’ll shut up about it and hope that somebody else will do the talking

(As if Govenments and industry always have to adapt to radical shifts in the Laws of Physics at regular intervals,

As a matter of fact, they do. Ever heard of the Remington company? They were the world leader in typewriter production, less than two decades ago. I don't think they exist anymore (at least, www.remington.com goes to some arms manufacturing company's site). Clipper ships were obsoleted less then 10 years after invention because the steam engine was mounted into ships. I could go on but I won't.

Jur.

Hmmm…that’s a spurious argument. You’re speaking of new discoveries superceding old technology,and the economis disruption that results. . C’mon we all know that he Laws of Mechanics never actually altered, not at any point in the history of thr real world, we just developed a deeper understanding of those Laws, and the old machines (based on rather more simplistic principle) still continued to function just well as they ever did. Please cite some moment in history when the old tools stopped working as well as they used to, due to previously unsuspected physical limitations – along the lines of the dimesions of an area suddenly contracting from infinity (so far as you can tell) right down to the size of a box room (measured in exactly the same way as before) . Name some time we were therefore FORCED to develop more effective technology to cope with those alterered dimensions. Electonic calculators supeceded slide rules and log tables because electronic calculators were faster, more accurate etcetera not because the discovery of quantum physics somehow alterered the properties of matter, so that slide rules just wouldn’t slide anymore, or any similar Cantr –style cataclysm.. The properties of matter have never in fact been alterered in the least by any new scientific discovery, and they all new discoveries have increased our scope for harnessing the power of nature. Not one of our discoveries IRL reduced that scope .like current implementation does

But seroiously, I do understand that the Laws of Physics need to radically alter on occasions, because the game is in a state of dvelopment.. Just lets not pretend that it’s realistic when it does,. and that it happens all the time IRL. And let’s not pretend that it doesn’t demand a more radical adjustment on our part that some mere discovery ever demands


(Btw, yes I'm sure it was Jos who first suggested using machines as a workaround, because he liked the idsea of giving us extra incentive to build them, but that's been repeated by various people since)

[Jur Schagen]

That's the point about philosophical arguments, Julie... hardly anyone bothered to go into the issues I raised in my first post either...


First, here are some statistics for you. Please bear with me for a moment.

All over the game, there are 84,179 digging slots for 6,593 characters. Plenty.

Of course, this isn't fair; there are large unpopulated areas out there. For places that actually *have* a population, there are 4.305 slots. In places where there are three or more inhabitants, there are 2.981 slots.

Switching back to outdoors pop only now (not sure about Jos' trick), a report by region.

Code: Select all

region          slots    chars
Cantr           919     1046
Yarlitskov     603      290
Pok            807     1253
Shai            27        5
Kwor           394      516
Schwozar        78       24
Ducquasdal     101       23
Xortikran      487      836
Oorc           319      183
Ssonigo        442      190
Rukoppe        115       33


At first glance, this is indeed a point for all those arguing against resource slots. All over the region, there are insufficient slots for all, and these are bound to peak at some locations.

However, let's focus on actual active projects right now. For those 6.593 chars, there are *only* 1,279 active gathering projects with 1,356 participants. The rest is loitering, sleeping, travelling, manufacturing (I could do some research but that's irrelevant here), but NOT gathering.

Splitting that up per region as well (chars gathering, that is) yields:

Code: Select all

          chars
         gathering  slots
Cantr      285       919
Yarlitskov 109       603
Pok        397       807
Shai         2        27
Kwor       169       394
Schwozar    15        78
Ducquasdal   8       101
Xortikran  224       487
Oorc        42       319
Ssonigo     84       442
Rukoppe     21       115


That's a totally different picture... for an island like Pok, there are only 397 slots used of the 807 available. There are no regions where more than half the slots are used.

That might be caused because there are so many places where people cant't gather, you say? OK, let's take a look at that... How many towns are running at their gathering limit, or limit minus one to compensate for usage friction?

Running at full capacity.........................21
Minus one........................................17
Total "excess" pop in those towns...............405 + 182 = 587

Total towns with more outdoors pop than slots...148
Total "excess" pop in those towns.............1,782

Now, what do all these figures tell us? First, the excess pop figure is flattered - obviously, not all outdoors pop actually *wants* to gather, and never has been. They might be manufacturing stone hammers, building houses and roads, asleep and starving, crowbarring a boat, be roleplaying a sex scene, whatever. But even then, there's only 587 chars in towns where they cannot start a gathering project right now (besides, about 140 of those are in just three towns. I have reason to believe that this was temporary pop anyway). That's less than 10% of the total chars.

Most of the excess pop is located in big cities, with 40+ pop. These are hubs of the economy, with smelting and clothing industries, lots of buildings, machinery, boats, and vehicles, vast storage rooms controlled by powerfull people, etcetera. As someone said, you cannot farm for carrots if you spawn in New York City... so if you want to be a farmer, you have to move out. Same for Cantr... if you want to be a gatherer, go find yourself a slot, there are plenty of them. If you want to stay where you spawn, you should probably become an industry or construction worker, a trader, a cook, a clerk... The choice is yours, and you do have the choice.

Julie... you have asked me to comment on some issues. Hereby.

Some good points, Wichita. I'd like to add that you really need a certain population density before specialisation in manufature becomes seriously viable, especially in Cantr, where distances are so huge, instantaneous communication impossible., and your workforce and clients drop dead on you far too often. It beats me why the Prog Dept atre trying to cap the poulation of large towns, just as we're beginning to attain the requisuisite density in some places.

We are not capping them, we are capping their gatherers. We hope the chars will understand this and become industry workers, for industry is seriously underdeveloped in Cantr. You have no idea of the horrible relation between current existing stocks of raw materials (hematite, carrots) versus industrial output goods (i.e. iron, propane, cooked meat, etc.)

Yeah, but Cantr has certain peculariies which don't occur IRL. At a rough estimate, I'd say those towns cover something like 30,000 square kilometers on average (judging by the walking distance betwen towns) not 20 acres, so youd expect them o hold a lot more people- and you need them to hold a lot more people if we're going to seriously develop.

You shouldn't think like that... if we're talking 70 citizens right now, we say "big city"... IRL, this would be a mere one-street-town. In my view, in economic terms, each char represent thousands of people.

Also all the resources within that huge area are somehow crammed into a single indivisible "location" It's far too easy for one organisation to gain a monoply. I's far too easy for a totalitariam govenment to spring up. Throw ilimited gathering slots into that single, indivisible location, and that makes it just about necessary for a totalitarian government to sprng up,. There's no other vaguely effective way to organise that. (That's what bugs me most, The sudden loss of political diversity)

Despotism is indeed an effective organization... but it is bugged by other problems, most notably the Disease. And who says that this is the only way with slots introduced? You could either see the town leader say "Hey! Get off my slot immediatly, you lousy newspawn!" or "Hello sir. Our town has land scarsity, so you can't start digging projects just like that. However, if you sign your name at the bottom of that note over there, your turn will come within a matter of days... oh and here are some carrots for those days". With my chars, I have seen (variations of) those each.

Private ownership of some segment of that land shoud also be possible.
It shold also be possible to designate some part of that land as "common land " . It isn't. But the fact that resources were unlinimited as yet meant we didn't have to coinfront those problems before. We could act as if those things were possible, and nobody had any pressing reason to argue about it. I was hoping (and vaguely assuming) that the Prog Dept would A) allow the population to grow a bit more and B) Implement some kind of realistic land division sysem, long before they threw in the limited resource thing. I was shocked that they did it all backwards like this.
Now, this game won't be worth playing (not from my perspective) until that happens.

This was indeed how Jos originally envisioned it... on the other hand, this would have been hell to implement, and probably wouldn't have happened in a long time. If you ask me, implementing *some* sort of land scarcity (even all crammed into one spot), is "better" than no land at all, though this is obviously very much open to debate. Besides, now that this is actually implemented, I see way better how this system could get tweaked to allow for things like private land... something that couldn't have happened when all thought out beforehand. (Believe me - we tried and failed.)

Hmmm…that’s a spurious argument. You’re speaking of new discoveries superceding old technology,and the economis disruption that results. .

Well, I guess you are right. Nonetheless, the invention of the computer could be seen as a "Laws of Mechanics" for Remington (in the sense of not having influence on it). In Cantr, this doesn't occur because it is so simple for existing companies to start producing any item that the RD enters into the database, mainly because they all need iron.

Jur.

Edit - sorry for the un-readability of the tables... I hope you understand them...
Edit2 - Thanks, marol... did the other one too...

[marol]

Code: Select all

region        slots   chars   slots per char
Cantr           919    1046   0,87
Yarlitskov      603     290   2,08
Pok             807    1253   0,64
Shai             27       5   5,40
Kwor            394     516   0,76
Schwozar         78      24   3,25
Ducquasdal      101      23   4,39
Xortikran       487     836   0,58
Oorc            319     183   1,74
Ssonigo         442     190   2,32
Rukoppe         115      33   3,48

Now you see why Poles complain. Most of Polish population lives in Xortikran region and, as you can see, there is lowest slots-per-char ratio.

Jur, did you notice that after last changes complains are gone? I think current limits are high enough. For now. However there are new island under exploration and new cities are founded (like new Polish island in Oorc region), so current limits can strike them.

[marol]

And one more thing - you're saying that less than half of slots are used. That's correct, but ie. in Polish region most chars lives on small island and Poles don't event know about others, much bigger islands, so they stay unused. Also on that small island population is concentrated around few cities and large parts of that territory is unused because they are very hard to settle on them. And finally even locations without resources can be found! Are there any slots in them?

However still my opinion is that limits are high enough for now.

[Jur Schagen]

And one more thing - you're saying that less than half of slots are used. That's correct, but ie. in Polish region most chars lives on small island and Poles don't event know about others, much bigger islands, so they stay unused. Also on that small island population is concentrated around few cities and large parts of that territory is unused because they are very hard to settle on them. And finally even locations without resources can be found! Are there any slots in them?

Yep, there are. These are exceptions though, even if you include those deserts that only have sand.

And as I have said before, we are aware of the special problems in the Polish region, and are discussing ways to adress them.

[Jos Elkink]

Jur, many, many thanks for your extensive postings here! They're very clear descriptions of what is going on and you defend my case very nicely ...

The limits are now indeed based on actual populations, including those inside buildings and vehicles. The table you used is a twice-a-day count of total population, used for the spawning system.

KeVes and Jur, I have one question about the suggestion about an alternative implementation, that I hope you guys can answer very briefly and clearly (so many long posts to read! ) ... If we would make the following change:

Instead of not allowing more gatherers than the limit of that town, we allow an unlimited number of participants, but the resulting amount each turn of the gathering process, for each participant, will be multiplied by <number of slots> / <number of gatherers> if this ratio is lower than one (i.e. if the number of gatherers is larger than the number of slots).

To what extent would this implement KeVes suggestion? Would is suffice as an alternative to the current system? Would it create additional issues?

[AngelSpice]

I don't think I'd like that as if I have my charries work hard for a day, I don't want them to possibly end up with only a quarter of a day's worth of resources. So far, if I've come up against the gathering limit, my charries have something else to do with their time - repairs, manufacture, etc.

[Jur Schagen]

Instead of not allowing more gatherers than the limit of that town, we allow an unlimited number of participants, but the resulting amount each turn of the gathering process, for each participant, will be multiplied by <number of slots> / <number of gatherers> if this ratio is lower than one (i.e. if the number of gatherers is larger than the number of slots).

To what extent would this implement KeVes suggestion? Would is suffice as an alternative to the current system? Would it create additional issues?

That is indeed what is on the table... but may cause the next player riot anytime when this is implemented and players find out what it means.

Oh and I think there is consensus that there should be a message of this back to the player... like "Project gathering potatoes has finishished, 1000g ending up on the ground. You were working at 80% efficiency", or "Project gathering potatoes has finishished, 1000g ending up on the ground. You were hampered by overpopulation."... or maybe even at turn change (like dockable places), simply stating "Your gathering is hampered by overpopulation"...? It's up to you, really.

Jur.

[KVZ]

Instead of not allowing more gatherers than the limit of that town, we allow an unlimited number of participants, but the resulting amount each turn of the gathering process, for each participant, will be multiplied by <number of slots> / <number of gatherers> if this ratio is lower than one (i.e. if the number of gatherers is larger than the number of slots).

To what extent would this implement KeVes suggestion? Would is suffice as an alternative to the current system? Would it create additional issues?

Well, there is discussion and a poll if this change should make tools (and if possible machines too) will affect gathering of those who don't have tools and machines making them even less effective. I suggested that limit would be constant, but Jur suggested that limit should be flexible if using tools and machines. I think that my suggestion is more realistic but I will agree to any suggestion which will make slots to be only virtual but still allowing others to gather less.

That is indeed what is on the table... but may cause the next player riot anytime when this is implemented and players find out what it means.

I think that players will riot less with Jur's variant as poll shows (especially english one where are a lot of machines and tools). But I always said that if limit have to affect tools and machines then limits should be increased (and this for sure would give positive effect by making less developed but high populated regions like polish one more chances for develop)

Oh and I think there is consensus that there should be a message of this back to the player... like "Project gathering potatoes has finishished, 1000g ending up on the ground. You were working at 80% efficiency", or "Project gathering potatoes has finishished, 1000g ending up on the ground. You were hampered by overpopulation."... or maybe even at turn change (like dockable places), simply stating "Your gathering is hampered by overpopulation"...? It's up to you, really.

Without those messages no one will know when he should consider to change his policy or move somewhere else. I like variant with percentage, but there can be other with words like in skills too. But it is good to know how much overpopulation affect work, so simple message "Your gathering is hampered by overpopulation" will not work very good. I think that messages should be only after project completion to not flood game with messages (I don't want to check my chars each turn to see only there is limit working). If we talk about messages I wonder also why there no messages in multi-repetition projects after each repetition.

EDIT: And one more word: You must know, that when tools and machines are not affected that much by limits this will not promote trade in the game as you want Jos. Cities with eg. hematite and rice will just build tools and harversters and will not be forced to import food from other location and specialize on hematite.

[Jos Elkink]

Ok, so my interpretation of the idea is not too bad, then ...

About machines: the big problem is that it will make the system a lot more complicated if we want to check what tools or machines others are using on the same location. I'd prefer if it would suffice to know just how many people are gathering resources, rather than how they do it.

Information with a percentage at the end of the project is too complicated, since this percentage will keep varying while this person is working on the project. The only way would be either messages each turn (with precise details), or just one messages whether it was overpopulated or not ...