Has Cantr become better or worse?

[west]

My position on such matters has been made abundantly clear in the past.

While I generally am against the creeping featurism that over time has made cantr more and more difficult to play (and by that I mean requiring more and more meaningless drudgery: now we must name every person and place we go to, spend most of our time repairing, go through a lengthy process to manufacture anything, etc.) I have adjusted to and eventually accepted each change that has come along. However, I still don't like
many of them. My opinions on the matter are roughly correspondant to farmer's.

I have become accustomed to the hematite change, especially since Resources FINALLY upped the daily production (but no the production ratios) of most machines. That's where the terrible bottleneck was.

I don't like location amnesia, particularly. I liked the old names, although some new names are entertaining I suppose. But for my exploring characters it makes it much harder. I've had to name locations "Forest NNE of Mid Landing on West Shore" and the like. Ridiculous.

I didn't used to like the skill system, mostly because when it was introduced it severely screwed up many of my characters' RPed careers. A professional guard who regularly did 42 damage with his crossbow suddenly could barely do 17 to an unarmed person? My characters were in their forties at this point.

But nowadays I've grown accustomed to the skill system, even though I don't particularly like it. It takes some of the "Your Imagination Is Your Limit" out of cantr, which I don't like at all. Now it's more like "If The Character Who Wants To Join The Guards Happens To Spawn In A Place That That Is Possible And Also Happens To Be Good At Hitting People, Your Imagination And Your Character's Skills Are Intersecting. Yay!"

Distributed spawning (as opposed to spawn points) I'm indifferent to, except that it tends to burden organized, prepared and trained expeditions to or populations in dangerous places (Burgeo, Aki, etc) with a surplus of helpless, clueless newspawns. In that instance it is annoying.

Item deterioration is my least favorite change. Yes, there was a problem with people hoarding weapons and tools. The haves withholding from the have-nots. Big deal. Life has always been that way. Deterioration was a reactionary programming change that has severely impacted a lot of my characters who don't necessarily have time to sit around repairing things, but need those things anyway. It's frustrating. Grrr.

Animals I'm in favor of. Dynamic naming of people has been around so long that I've almost forgotten what it was like beforehand, but it's also good. Clothing is nifty, but the descriptions are terrible. I'd prefer a bulleted list of items worn, hotlinkable to lengthier descriptions, rather than having to try to decipher exactly what "He is wearing a length of cloth is fastened around the waist" means.

[Surly]

The hematite change, whilst good in principle, is flawed.

Care to explain? Was this the original switch from minable iron to hematite ore, or subsequent changes? And what is flawed and why?

I will, of course, be happy to explain.

The switch from minable iron to hematite and refining iron ore is a change I think was good, and necessary. That is what I meant when I said it was good in priniciple. However, the fact that the steel values remained the same drove steel prices out of balance with all the values for things requiring steel, beyond the affects of the iron change.

However, that is almost incidental to the main mistake, which was making the Iron refining use limestone and coal/gas/charcoal. While this seems good in principle, giving it the same resource requirements as steel screwed up the entire balance of the game... while it may have been realistic (I have no idea, as I am no expert in metal refining), the game balance implications were not addressed.

The way I feel it should have been handled is by allocating different resource requirements. One (of iron and steel) should require limestone and coal, the other some new resource added with hematite and gas. Or something along those lines... as it was added, steel became more highly refined iron, nothing more, and we had the ludicrous situation where 1g of steel is worth less (in terms of amount of labour used) than 1g of iron...

[Hellzon]

Allright, I bothered hallucinatingfarmer. Might as well bother west with my n00bish opinions.

I don't like location amnesia, particularly. I liked the old names, although some new names are entertaining I suppose. But for my exploring characters it makes it much harder. I've had to name locations "Forest NNE of Mid Landing on West Shore" and the like. Ridiculous.

Realism... *sound of west throttling Hellzon* Anyway, there is also the issue of different language groups. Assuming that locations are named according to the nearest language group, you might have Spanish people living in "Spitzberg (west)" and Swedes having to decipher turkish location names. Basically, people need to be able to name places in their own language without having to tell every single clueless newspawn that the jumble of letters (in the russian and chinese zone, where I assume different alphabets could be an issue) actually mean "Fritz Forest east".
But I do agree that Jos Elkink is much better at naming places than the average IG cartographer.

Distributed spawning (as opposed to spawn points) I'm indifferent to, except that it tends to burden organized, prepared and trained expeditions to or populations in dangerous places (Burgeo, Aki, etc) with a surplus of helpless, clueless newspawns. In that instance it is annoying.

Well, without them, how would you populate Burgeo/Aki once they become civilised? Importing people constantly? I bet the populations outside spawn point would be MUCH lower if they were still used. Especially on other islands.
But yeah, that poor woman who spawned near my cartographer on the middle of a mountain (ergo: no food) probably gets a prize for "most screwed newspawn ever". We were able to feed her, though...

I can dig the rest though. I realize how skills were supposed to encourage trade. Pity it doesn't really work.

/Hellzon

[Pie]

I have to say that everythings goin good. Item deterioration hasn't worked out, But it creates stress, and that makes a more in-depth cantr.

Hematite, though, I don't like. In some places there should be iron, and then in other places, there should be hematite.

And if you REALLY want to make iron and steel harder to get... Don't add steps in the prosses, It would be the same. Its like an asembally line. Add one step, but the cars still come out at the same rate. YOU NEED TO MAKE GETTING HEMATITE AND THINGS HARDER!!

Food, I think food should be balanced differently. Less food per day. Don't change the eating habbets. There will create more demand. LESS SUPLY, MORE DEMAND SHIZA IT!!!

BASICLY, the thing is, Its all ADAM SMITH'S WORK!! SUPPLY AND DEMAND!!! LESS SUPLY, EQUALS EVENTUALLY MORE DEMAND, CREATING MORE TRADE IN THE PROSSES!! There's your trade problem.

The amnesia was to make the players have more controll over theyre environment. So that peoples can rename places to theyre fancy. Many times places have been named after privious places(I know a place called odesa in rutia, and theres one in nebraska, and I'm sure alot more, Also, New York is an example of this.)

As fore skills, They should be more varyd, I agree. Make more steps, and make it so that peoples don't be good when they spawn. Also, Make skills more detrimental to work. That would create a puzzle peac sociaty. More intricate.

Distributed spawning is a very important matter. It makes it so that new places have a chance to LIVE!!(Dump peoples dibate this matter..... BECOUS I'M SO RIGHT!!)

Item deterioration....... I somewat agree. This makes peoples with stuff not want stuff.... I think that it's cind-of a bad idea.... What I think should happen, is that item deterioration should be seriously varyd between outside inside and other places(i don't know any other places..... but... maby) AND oil should be able to be used to automaticly repair somthing, and you should be able to do things to lessen deterioration when you build somthng, with like, for bows, put a lamanent thingy on it.... I can't remember what its called though...

I think that just about wraps everything i think about.(AND MY IDEAS WILL WORK!!!! ITS BEEN PROVEN BY FAMOUS PEOPLE... AND ME!!!!!)

[MakeBeliever]

I started the game a little while before everyone forgot each others characters names.
But seeing as i was trying to learn it all in one go, i just got adapted to keep up with the changes.
After all the game says somewhere when you start that it's always being adapted and improved.
The only one that i didn't like was repairs.
And now i've grown to hate them more, especially when it takes you over six turns just to get required tools from a small repair safety job to work with... to make something a little special that will soon be laying next to the mountains of repairs.
But on the upside one of my chars got to see Devon Dobbs and a Guard stuck on a repair job and that was rarther amusing at the time when they first came in.
But it was after the repairs came in that things became so much slower, and i don't mean pc slower i mean within the characters.
Quite a lot of older characters around mine suddenly turned from lively leaders to being buried under mountains of repairs spending most of their time trying to get people to repair all the things..
Gone where the days of running around grabbing the tools and getting busy with plans..Now it's give me a moment to go find the tools from storage, Knowing your char is going to be standing in a quiet room for absolute ages and all your wanting is a shield and a dodgy longbow that you placed in a small repair so they don't fall apart for the person helping plus your tools.
How can anyone play a decent thief these days when most of the good tools are stuck in repair.
You may as well kiss goodbye to a quick getaway.
I won't even mention Crowbars...just don't go there.
Apart from that, name change is good. Your Character shouldn't know a new place anyway, so a name shouldn't matter. And you only have to check the old maps in Game, it's all there to find out the old names.
If you havn't seen the new Gallagher Atlas 1523 you should check that one out if you come across it. I really liked that one. A great eye opener to the size of Cantr..
Cantr still feels a big world to me, and other characters who try and are true to their characters will always be the main reason i play.
Some players have small attention spans and you lose a little hope, but even a few of the bad spellers and lack of capitals ones are a hidden gem when they improve..
Maybe mine are enjoying it now as they are a lot older they certainly have a lot of scheming going on..
The animals are better now with their numbers.
Food changes and skills are a doddle and i've never had a problem with collecting with any of my chars, even with limited slots try trading someone always wants something you have.. unless it's bones as no one wants more ruddy bone knifes to repair then they have too..
If i could change anything now without actually changing anything to my characters it would be repairs.

[Kreed]

Most people seem to be agreeing that tool repairs is a big fat failure..

So why is the deterioration of tools so fast? It should be at least twice if not three times as long?
Either that or it should be applied dynamically, very quick for a bone knife...I've used tools like crowbars my whole working life in very tough situations on farms and the like and I've yet to see one needing repair!

[Solfius]

I will, of course, be happy to explain.

The switch from minable iron to hematite and refining iron ore is a change I think was good, and necessary. That is what I meant when I said it was good in priniciple. However, the fact that the steel values remained the same drove steel prices out of balance with all the values for things requiring steel, beyond the affects of the iron change.

However, that is almost incidental to the main mistake, which was making the Iron refining use limestone and coal/gas/charcoal. While this seems good in principle, giving it the same resource requirements as steel screwed up the entire balance of the game... while it may have been realistic (I have no idea, as I am no expert in metal refining), the game balance implications were not addressed.

The way I feel it should have been handled is by allocating different resource requirements. One (of iron and steel) should require limestone and coal, the other some new resource added with hematite and gas. Or something along those lines... as it was added, steel became more highly refined iron, nothing more, and we had the ludicrous situation where 1g of steel is worth less (in terms of amount of labour used) than 1g of iron...

Unfortunately, steel does use the same raw materials as iron; it's to do with removing oxygen and impurities from molten iron to create steel.

The coal provides the required heat, while the limestone reacts with the impurities to form a dross which is skimmed from the top.

Steel requires oxygen to be pumped through molten iron to lower/increase the amount of carbon and create a better metal.




Now, forgive me if I say something that doesn't make sense, but I'm going back a bit now, and my memeory is a bit fuzzy, but hemetite was a realism change as far as I was concerned - I've always preferred accurate, if scaled down, ingame systems - but I think you made a fair point with the game balance.

My support for deterioration was based upon the idea that diferent materials deteriorate at different rates, restoring the balance to steel and iron, as iron wouldn't last so well as steel, but I don't know if that has actually happened or not.

The other thing which would have lessened the impact of refining would have been different material options, eg stone, bronze, iron, steel hammers and other such options, which would give the choice between short lived but easy-to-make tools or longer lasting versions, which are harder to make.

As for the production ratios mentioned elsewhere, I can't remember how they were decided, but if it were me I would have used the chemical composition and equations to work out the amounts.

[nitefyre]

With the current splash of opinions, polls, and lengthy comments, I should let you guys know we're running a tad short on articles for webzine@cantr.net . Our preferable deadline for articles is June 1st. I surely think if anybody would like to write a formalized article, probably in a column form, about these hot topics, it would prove both interesting and insightful. Do it for posterity.

p.s. but we'll accept articles about other things and in other, creative, forms.

[Pie]

So, how do I submit them?

[Sarah]

Send submissions to webzine@cantr.net.

[Surly]

While all your points seem correct, Solfius, my issue is with the way is skews game balance. In real life, more than just raw limestone, iron ore and raw coal is needed... this is one of those situations where the idea of realism is skewed and stretched by Cantr's limitations, leaving the unbalanced result. Not anyone's fault in particular, just an unfortuante fact of Cantr life.

[SekoETC]

Solution: Increase the relative amount of iron needed for making steel and speed up both projects.

[T-shirt]

Speed up both processes? The speed with which iron and steel can be obtained is quick enough. Rope and aluminium are slow. They should be speeded up instead.

The difference in compexity between different processes is bad in Cantr. A vehicle needs a large amount of resources but no required opjects. A van does not need wheels for example; just some rubber.

A stone quarry needs two different types of logs amongst other things.

A radio needs various semi-finished products. A smelting furnace none.

[Surly]

Solution: Increase the relative amount of iron needed for making steel and speed up both projects.

The better solution would be to reduce the steel production per day back to 100g, or maybe to 350g as well. However, the problem is more to do with it requiring the same resources than to do with speed... there is no difference between the iron stage and the steel stage, same resources, same machines (well... the one difference is a pair of bellows) ... at least aluminium requires soda, and an alumina refiner.

And in reference to what T-Shirt said... has anyone tried making quarries against making a drill? Quarries are soooo much more difficult, not to mention more expensive...

[Mykey]

I am sorry, that has interfered... I understand this question. I invite to discussion. Write here or in PM.