Working against a project

[Mafia Salad]

This may sound a little weird, but hear me out. I think this is a more general solution to the half of my sabotage post http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7434 that wasn't already accepted. And it’s a more character oriented, instead of mechanics oriented way of doing things.

Being able to work against any project that somebody can work on. I think resistance other than words and hitting is an element of society that is missing in Cantr. Here are some examples to show you what I'm talking about.

A non-violent town has a law that says you can't build weapons. Somebody starts a weapon project. Instead of dragging the person off into a building and being stuck with an unfinished weapon project that someone may start up again and finish without you knowing. The town (or some part of it) can work against the project to the point where it turns back into raw resources. (lets just say that -10% complete)

Someone sabotages a smelter and you can't smelt you steel because of 1g of coal. you simply work against the project until it frees up the machine and leaves the coal on the ground.

You don't want your town to improve the road to the mountains because the boogie man lives there. So you work against the road improvement until they drag you off and throw you in jail.

If someone is gathering potatoes and its against the law, start putting them back into the ground while you wait for the person with the jail key to wake up.

I think it would be good to have a point where the project disappears. And not to have that point at zero because then it would be to easy for someone to end your project before you get started. That's why I used -10% in the example. It would probably also be a good idea to make working against a project less efficient than working on it. So if it's one person for and one against, the project will get accomplished. It will just take a while to do it.

[Leo Luncid]

Sorry if I'm overlooking something, but I don't see what you mean by saying 10%. Do you mean for a project to get fixed down to 10% of it's progress, having the person resuming to doing the project longer than expected, or having the project get worked against to nothing and resulting in 10% of raw resources it was used in that project??? Or what???

[Thetaris]

I really, really hate this idea. I hated it since I read the topic.

Check out Flyspray, they're implementing something like this. A project will eventually lose the amount worked on it, which has the exact same effect if you drag someone away from the project.

It'll clog up the ProgD's list with more useless make-Cantr-life-easier, when you can just do it the normal way.

And think about it for one second.
1) It wouldn't work for harvesting projects of food. (Imagine walking up to someone harvesting carrots, and replanting the carrots the man has in his hands)
2) You don't see many police unbuilding a gun someone's made illegally. Rather, they ban them from constructing any more or put him in jail and put the gun in safe storage.
3) If you're effiecient at making something, and the man's expert, no one could stop him! You'd need two or three people to stop him!! And if you're going to use two or three people to stop him, you're better off using two or three people to drag him into a jail!

[Hellzon]

Sorry if I'm overlooking something, but I don't see what you mean by saying 10%.

I think he means that the progress bar should be worked down to -10% (as in, 10% below 0) before the project is undone.

And Thetaris, chill. ProgD has my sympathies, but "they have a lot to do already" isn't exactly a good argument against suggestions. They are going to implement projects "rotting", that's cool. But shouldn't it be possible to put some effort into unclogging machinery and removing graffitti, removing it faster (but still taking some time)?

[tiddy ogg]

I wondered about this idea. Maybe you could restrict it to non-resource-gathering projects if that upsets someone's sensibilities.

[Torch]

I wondered about this idea. Maybe you could restrict it to non-resource-gathering projects if that upsets someone's sensibilities.

Excellent idea!

Especially in a few places where there are numerous unfinished buildings that will never be done since the names can't be changed, this "unproject" idea is excellent.

Oh, and Thetaris, in response to your points:

1) I agree, as solved above,
2) Only because they choose not to, but if they so desired they could. In Cantr you simply can't
3) It'd be nice to see something other than jail as an answer for everything in game. (Or death because people have no interpersonal skills and have to kill first instead of other solutions And we wonder why wars rage on IRL) Plus it'd make for some interesting conflict: One "team" working to build something, and another working to prevent it.

[Pieter de Groote]

I like the suggested undoing of projects, a lot.

But, only when a project has no current participants.
The mechanism should be used to get rid of the old undesired projects, not to sabotage running projects.

[Mafia Salad]

I suggested this because I'm seeing a big trend to automating a solution to every problem we find in game. I think it would be a much better society simulation to let the characters work the problems out, not the unseen system.

If somebody does something stupid in real life, then other people need to fix it/get rid of it. It would be nice and easy if we could just wait around and it would all go back to normal, but that doesn't happen. If it did I wouldn't have bothered to make my bed this morning. This would give us an IC solution to getting rid of building projects with stupid names and other stuff like that.

[Hellzon]

I agree with Torch. It would be interesting to see if punishments other than jail or death would be used if they were possible (which they aren't at the moment)

As for stupid names, I assume PD will still remove projects with outright offensive names?

[Mafia Salad]

Ok I have the time now to write up a defense of my suggestion to Thetaris' objections.

I really, really hate this idea. I hated it since I read the topic.

Check out Flyspray, they're implementing something like this. A project will eventually lose the amount worked on it, which has the exact same effect if you drag someone away from the project.

It'll clog up the ProgD's list with more useless make-Cantr-life-easier, when you can just do it the normal way.

I don't think you understand my post. The Flyspray implementation your talking about is a make-Cantr-life-easier solution. With it all you need to do is wait around and then poof the project is gone, isn't that handy. What I propose will need people to work on it. It will only make Cantr life any easier if you use it to IC, it can just as easily be used to make life miserable. And that's what I like about it. It puts more power in the Characters hands and they will be able to use it in different ways. We might actually see the monotony of councils and single leader town governments in Cantr gain a bit of flavor and diversity when it comes to their laws. Right now the big difference when it comes to laws is "How much jail time?" or "Should we kill?" with an occasional tax on gathering or a 'don't even think of hurting this animal' law.

And think about it for one second.
1) It wouldn't work for harvesting projects of food. (Imagine walking up to someone harvesting carrots, and replanting the carrots the man has in his hands)
2) You don't see many police unbuilding a gun someone's made illegally. Rather, they ban them from constructing any more or put him in jail and put the gun in safe storage.
3) If you're effiecient at making something, and the man's expert, no one could stop him! You'd need two or three people to stop him!! And if you're going to use two or three people to stop him, you're better off using two or three people to drag him into a jail!

1) I wasn't thinking about realism when I suggested the undoing of the harvesting. I was thinking about the way the game is played. It isn't realistic that you don't get any resources until you finish gathering in the first place. I mean if you spent four days harvesting carrots, and your project is only half way done, you still have no carrots for all your work. IC it would be a lot easier to understand gathering resources as a long time spent in preparation followed by a quick grab of the things you were gathering. Believing that a character is actually picking carrots the whole time is just a widespread assumption from our OOC understanding. So working against a harvesting project makes just as much sense as the way we already harvest them.

EDIT: My example with the potatoes in the first post was a funny visualization aid, based on the OOC assumption. Unfortunately typing doesn’t have the emotion that speaking does so most of its humor was lost.

2) You don’t see police unbuilding a gun someone has made illegally because that person isn't making the gun in front of the police station with the plans laid out for the world to see. If that were the case they would drag that man off and they wouldn't leave the half finished gun and plans out on the street.

3) As for your last point, that is a very good IG option and will probably be use often, I even used the RL equivalent in my last paragraph. But lets leave it as just an option, not the only way of dealing with it.

This would give towns without a locking jail or access to the iron needed to make a lock another way of enforcing laws aside from death. OR it could be used in dozens of other ways. It's would be a widely available option with all sorts of implications. A way of molding society instead of a house cleaning program.

I can understand see where you can't work against a project that someone is working on would make sense too. but lets leave these things in game and let people get dragged off or killed or whatever the characters decide and put less mechanical barriers in the way.

As for names that are stupid and offensive, The PD doesn't get involved in ones that are only offensive in game. Like if someone build a monument in Karnon that said "The Senate is Evil" I don't see why the PD would remove it. But I can see why the people of Karnon would want to tear it down so they don't have to see the half finished eyesore in their town.

[Hellzon]

We might actually see the monotony of councils and single leader town governments in Cantr gain a bit of flavor and diversity when it comes to their laws. Right now the big difference when it comes to laws is "How much jail time?" or "Should we kill?" with an occasional tax on gathering or a 'don't even think of hurting this animal' law.

Funny 'cause it's true. That's the gist of all laws I've seen (including the "sacred animal" one).

So working against a harvesting project makes just as much sense as the way we already harvest them.

Indeedy! I fell for Thetaris argument first, but you are, of course, right. Implementing a more realistic system for gathering might be a good idea, though. (Such as, you just get fed one tick's worth of resources per tick. Might get wonky with the rounding if the amount per day is very low, though.)

2) You don’t see police unbuilding a gun someone has made illegally because that person isn't making the gun in front of the police station with the plans laid out for the world to see. If that were the case they would drag that man off and they wouldn't leave the half finished gun and plans out on the street.

Bravo. Sadly, I just know someone is going to say: "So in Cantr they would finish it and put it in storage." At present, sure, but reversing it would be a nice option, and probably would be used (hey, it's probably a bunch of iron or steel if it was a decent weapon).

As for names that are stupid and offensive, The PD doesn't get involved in ones that are only offensive in game.

I meant things that are offensive OOC. Such as "The King looks like an anal-copulator, & his grinning kids look slutty & gay!" or such. But you probably got that...