Cars

[The Sociologist]

Having ten people on 10 tandem bikes is superior to having 10 people in a single equivalent vehicle for these reasons:
1) Ten people arriving in town on separate vehicles are militarily more impressive and more flexible. Politics in Cantr is all about "shock and awe".

True, if all those "bikers" have the samwe load, and can be organized well enough to all leave and arrive together. But if this is not well enough coordinated... well, you just might end up supplying a rival town with bikes as they pick your "bikers" off one at a time.

I don't mean killing, neccisarily, but I've seen a simple example where a small number of bikes from one place was sent to another, for whatever reason, and at least the first two bikes ended up getting stolen and sent down different roads because there was sufficient time to do so between the arrivals.

Undoubtedly this would have met some retalliation by now, my char didn't stick around to see what followed, but still... having some of your bikes swiped and the people originally riding them locked up, doesn't sound that impressive.

I don't understand how they got stolen. Unless the characters dismounted? That wasn't a good idea unless they were taken by surprise.

Of course, the same goes for a fully loaded van if it gets stolen and the people originally on it are locked up, but still, with more people arriving at the same time there's a bit more chance that there'll be at least one awake who might be able to do something.

A van has only one lock, and is unlikely to be full enough to stop others entering it. Same with a bus--unbelievably risky, unless you want to spend some 1000 or so Cantr minutes trying to load the damn thing with sand. On the other hand it's very easy to setup a tandem bike so that it's too full for a second person to enter it even if they do break the lock.

Or have they fiddled the game mechanics again since I last looked at it?

[Nick]

Most rich people won't need cars as long as no movement is necessary in daily life.
In Halifax, for instance, I go places in a car sometimes. Even if I am not travelling across the country. To visit a friend, go to the store, the bank, et cetera, I will most likely use a veichle.
When you can infinitely move around in daily life, yet it takes days to go to the next location.. well this is the main reason most governments only rule one location. The only real reason to travel is to do resource runs.

Once roadmap is implemented, you might see more cars.

[glitterdown]

Who owns car? People who own all the machines needed and have large amounts of metals. Usually those people are powerful in their town so they rarely leave. The sad part is that the ones who should have the cars are the resource runners. I lent my tandem bike to someone to get me some limestone, they never came back. I spent a lot of energy working my way to the top and now that I am in a position to have a car, it seems It would be best if I demoted myself back down to resource collector.

My characters own a Limo, 5 Vans, 2 passenger cars, 4 sportscars, a handful of motorbikes, and too many boats to count. I haven't ridden a bike in years and who know where they are now. Most of my vehicles stay parked in the town I reside in.

Bowser hit the nail on the head here. The only exception I've witnessed is that of Siom, who use vehicles to great effect, but only the most trusted are allowed to use them. They're currently building a scad of new cars too. Siom also has a pretty self-motivated police-force compiled of many active people, so if a vehicle was lost, it's easy to mobilize a few people to run off (on other vehicles in their fleet) and retake it. As in the case with Mouse and his grand escape. They're able to make use of the benefits and control the risk.

Many other places are just not that organized. I know one character of mine is constantly seeking helpers. He had a partner, and they sunk all their resources into a tandem bike to speed the gathering of limestone. He returned with one or two batches, and went out again, disappeared, never to return (killed or quit I'd guess). He risked it again with another partner later, and he went to a nearby town and fell asleep there for 2-3 years (I had another character in that town), when the guy returned he kept asking for more of an equal footing, and I knew he was just an inactive lout and a big risk, but after a few weeks my character gave him another chance. He left him completely in charge of operations while he went trading, only to return and find him deceased and the keys to his entire operation as well as quite a lot of equipment in the hands of some newspawn, who thankfully had hung around and not dashed off like the one who had robbed the corpse of another partner of this same character in between the two examples above.

Not true. My power characters travel lots. Your slant is unduly pessimistic and you seem to be missing out on the concept of "social capital". Try reading Fukuyama on Trust.

Trust in Cantr is a train-wreck. You can take your Fukuyama and shove it, frankly

Oh, my last case for the problem with vehicles, is that they are just too conspicuously valuable. You come into a town, and everyone and their pirate-mom wants to kill you for your keys and your vehicle. It's an absolute leap of faith to ever get off the darn things. Why would you want to own something that takes you someplace really fast, where you can't ever step out of it except in your own town, and that instantly makes you a target for murder and theft? You'd have to be an absolute nut-job to think that a vehicle for the every-day Cantrian was something they could even manage.

Maybe if they were more common, but still. Leave it unlocked for 5 seconds and someone's jumped onto it and rode off into the sunset. how are you going to catch it/them now?

I'd rather walk, often.

[Coramon]

Who owns car? People who own all the machines needed and have large amounts of metals. Usually those people are powerful in their town so they rarely leave. The sad part is that the ones who should have the cars are the resource runners. I lent my tandem bike to someone to get me some limestone, they never came back. I spent a lot of energy working my way to the top and now that I am in a position to have a car, it seems It would be best if I demoted myself back down to resource collector.

My characters own a Limo, 5 Vans, 2 passenger cars, 4 sportscars, a handful of motorbikes, and too many boats to count. I haven't ridden a bike in years and who know where they are now. Most of my vehicles stay parked in the town I reside in.

Bowser hit the nail on the head here. The only exception I've witnessed is that of Siom, who use vehicles to great effect, but only the most trusted are allowed to use them. They're currently building a scad of new cars too. Siom also has a pretty self-motivated police-force compiled of many active people, so if a vehicle was lost, it's easy to mobilize few people to run off and retake it. They're able to make use of the benefits and control the risk.

Many other places are just not that organized. I know one character of mine is constantly seeking helpers. He had a partner, and they sunk all their resources into a tandem bike to speed the gathering of limestone. He returned with one batch, and went out again, disappeared, never to return (killed or quit I'd guess). He risked it again with another partner later, and he went to a nearby town and fell asleep there for 2-3 years (I had another character in that town), when the guy returned he kept asking for more of an equal footing, and I knew he was just an inactive lout and a big risk, but after a few weeks my character gave him another chance. He left him completely in charge of operations while he went trading, only to return and find him deceased and the keys to his entire operation as well as quite a lot of equipment in the hands of some newspawn, who thankfully had hung around and not dashed off like the one who had robbed the corpse of another partner of this same character in between the two examples above.

Trust in Cantr is a train-wreck. You can take your Fukuyama and shove it, frankly

Oh, my last case for the problem with vehicles, is that they are jsut so conspicuously valuable. You come into a town, and everyone and their pirate-mom wants to kill you for your keys and your vehicle. It's an absolute leap of faith to ever get off the darn things. Why would you want to own something that takes you someplace really fast, where you can't ever get out of it except in your own town, and that instantly makes you a target for murder and theft? You'd have to be an absolute nut-job to think that a vehicle for the every-day Cantrian was something they could even manage.

Maybe if they were more common, but still. Leave it unlocked for 5 seconds and someone's jumped onto it and rode off into the sunset. how are you going to catch it/them now?

People in Cantr can't be trusted. (Generally Speaking) I have very few trusting charachters those who are trusting usually get ****ed over in the end.

[Marian]

My chars who are rich enough for it to matter hardly ever trust anyone else with important stuff either. It's not that I think they're going to get robbed, but it seems like I can never rely on anyone to not go into a coma while holding my tools.

[Coramon]

Exactly!

[Marian]

But I've always thought that it wouldn't be such a problem if there was a way to get stuff from people without killing them. Like if you could knock them out or tie them up or something...I know that'd be pretty rude to do to a worker, but not as rude as murdering them. That'd give chars who aren't sociopaths (the majority, I'd hope) another option, and probably make for better laws about thieves.

[The Sociologist]

My chars who are rich enough for it to matter hardly ever trust anyone else with important stuff either.

Ah but then you are missing out on the great challenge of the game. There have only ever been a few geniuses who played Cantr, one of them being the player of Gregor Mac Gregor. In order to be powerful you need to build up social capital. There are strategies for doing so, but the strategy least likely to succeed is all this nonsense about "democracy" and Hobbes and the individual as the basic social "atom". Even capitalism required the extended family to get going, let alone monarchy, feudalism and earlier forms of dynastic rule which needed it all the more.

The key defect in Cantr is the inability to build up social capital, and the key reason is the OOC nonsense that Westerners get forcefed, this being an utter distortion of how their societies actually work.

(America, for example, is a highly coercive state ruled largely by hereditary elites who purchase political control to the degree and amount they need when they need it. This is accomplished principally by buying congressmen. Ordinary Americans have freedom to speak--but nobody is listening--and freedom to shop (encouraged) and freedom to belong to bizarre cults and think the world is flat. Congratulations. )

But importation of this ideological nonsense about how Westerners think their societies work into Cantr simply distorts the simulation. It should by now be glaringly obvious that what works best is clan as replacement for family. The analogy is hunter-gatherer band, schoolyard gang, army platoon, etc, etc. By the way, the resulting structure need not necessarily be called a clan. Most "businesses" in Cantr in effect operate as if they were clans (almost none pay regular wages), and the same applies to various orders of knights, communes and the like.

[Missy]

About trust with vehicles: You buy a car, which you've worked hard to get the money to get it in the first place, do you let other people borrow it?
I don't know about the rest of you, but my husband doesn't commonly loan his car out.


I can't see any reason why cars should be extravagently easy to obtain.


KDS Region as an example: Do Krif and Drojf not have cars because they are hard to make? Do they not have them because of the resource situation due to politics? Do they not have them because of their unwillingness to do something about their political situation in order TO be able to make them? Do they not have them because of lack of organization with-in their own governments? If Seatown Forest was owned by Drojf, would it have had a car a long time ago? If MacGregors owned Seatown Forest, would anyone else in the union ever have a car? Well maybe, the rest of the union would likely then be owned by MacGs lol Or is it because of the lack of trust in that region, for people to use the materials in a way that would produce cars? Is it that they only trust people with those materials who don't have a capably productive bone in their body?

These are things that have to be solved IC'ly I think, and easily could be, but it's a matter of characters figuring it out and if they can't/haven't/don't should we really try to enforce a change through some programming quirk?Cars cant be that hard to make if Siom's about to spit out four of them.


I don't blame that there are few cars on the idea they're hard to make,b ecause really they're not. Cars can be made extremely quickly if you/your town is in a position for a good influx of the resources in order to do so. (Whether they are or not, is completely an IC issue. Because it's up to towns themselves to insure they do/don't have a good influx.)

A lot of that however, bears on how active someone is. Seeing as, if a resource guy dies---well, you're shit out of luck until you find a new one and sometimes the time it takes to discover that person even died. Somethibng like that can set a town back for years.


Unlike those who have frequantly stated that they don't trust people with their goods if they're rich, I'm very much trying to reverse this with one of my characters. It's called, "Give a little get a little." You can't learn to trust someone if you don't give them any rope with-which to hang themselves if they should so choose at first. And if they don't hang themselves at first, it usually means there's a reward of some sort. But there is in any case, regarding trust.

IE
You give a person a piece of information believing they wont tell it to someone else, but knowing that they could because they have a mouth. What that person does with that information is up to them, but what they do do with it, dictates what you will do in the future. IE tell them more info, not tell them more info. The person you give the information to, knows those are the stakes---So if they want to be given more information they make a decision in order to keep getting it, else they don't and don't get anymore.

But you know that every person is different, so why do so many people have a hard time trusting because they were burnt one time with a person stealing a car? (I don't deny that there are some characters who seem more trusting than others, who I'd put in the car before I would others. But I also try to find situations where the person I wouldn't put in the car, has some rope. Passes test, okay, get in the car. ) And of course, even those you trust can change at the drop of a needle, but if you don't take chances you wont ever get anywhere, you wont ever know and there's no progress to be had.

[The Sociologist]

About trust with vehicles: You buy a car, which you've worked hard to get the money to get it in the first place, do you let other people borrow it? I don't know about the rest of you, but my husband doesn't commonly loan his car out.

Precisely, but he might well lend out a bicycle. That's why I go the bicycle route.

I can't see any reason why cars should be extravagently easy to obtain. KDS Region as an example: Do Krif and Drojf not have cars because they are hard to make? Do they not have them because of the resource situation due to politics? Do they not have them because of their unwillingness to do something about their political situation in order TO be able to make them? Do they not have them because of lack of organization with-in their own governments?

Yes, Drojf and Krif lack anyone with the capability to organize the making of just about anything. Any person with such a capability would obviously leave the entire region.

Of course, Mary Williams is capable...

I am quite happy to agree with the idea of cars being difficult to make. Frankly, Jos's violent increase in the rate of iron production a while back swung the pendulum back in favor of lone individuals and small partnerships just when some players were showing success in rebuilding larger cooperatives. I had been in favor of faster iron production, but maybe in the context of large industrial factories.

So the model swung back to favor small partnerships, most probably with each partner owning his or her own bike. A tandem bike can bring back some 40K of resources, which is all that a small partnership can process of any material in a reasonable period of time. This is a game balancing issue, but I therefore don't see the motivation in building a car, unless it is for ooc reasons, or unless you need to carry a humungous amount of food and sand to bridge a road across several stages of desert...and almost no town governments in Cantr are any longer organized enough to attempt such feats.

[Joshuamonkey]

Well, I have a character with a tandem bike, one with a dirt bike, another a sloop, others longboats. The one with a dirt bike is very annoye that they couldn't make a road motorcycle instead because of the roads. So that's something I'll get characters on one time or another.
Actually I already have one. The roads production has been increasing because many towns have gathered the resources by now and also find the roads useful, because they have gathered the resources for cars. Maybe in another RL year. In RL it took us a long time to make cars.

[Dee]

I have a character who finished building her sportscar, but is still working on the engine.. I hate engines!

[TatteredShoeLace]

I would like to ask if anyone knows of their car radio reciever working? I just tried to speak to my employee in the car and they didn't hear anything on the freqency. Help?

[Peanut]

I would like to ask if anyone knows of their car radio reciever working? I just tried to speak to my employee in the car and they didn't hear anything on the freqency. Help?

You're T?

[olaf]

Or MtT?