Varied quantities of resources

[formerly known as hf]

I've been saying this for a while now.

The problem is, many areas only have one source of the important materials, making this kinda pointless...

[Pieter de Groote]

places are already limited by resource slots ie: some places may have hemitite, but only 3-4 slot so that it never becomes a major mining company.

Nonsense. Just build 20 hematite drills. Machines like drills, quarries, digging machines and harvesters don't use gathering slots.

[T-shirt]

I've been saying this for a while now.

The problem is, many areas only have one source of the important materials, making this kinda pointless...

I can't see why areas having one source of the important materials makes this suggestion pointless.
With this suggestion the amount at which a resource can be collected is not a fixed value for every location where that resource is found. It is a fixed value for every single location, but will vary between locations.

A mountain location might have both bauxite and hematite available, and a neighboring location might have only hematite, but that hematite could be poor in the first location (only 482 grams a day) and rich in the latter (967 grams a day).

[wichita]

So, it's just like skills, only it screws over all characters in a location equally? No....actually....it will function as a skill amplifier.

Hello, you are awkward at farming? Guess what. This is a friggin' briar patch! Good luck!! Hahaha! Screw you!

That should be a popular implementation.

[T-shirt]

Forget it, Wichita. This is a serious suggestion.

Your objection also works the other way around. An expert farmer on rich soil will be twice blessed.

Please don't just shoot and burn this suggestion, but actually think about it. Will it do harm? No; some locations might be a bit poorer or richer in resources, but on average nothing much will happen.

What will happen is that it might become tempting to travel to the next location for a resource, while it is available here. Trade, travel and communication will be boosted.

[wichita]

Oh it is a serious suggestion and it does have its merits. I am just pretty sure I am predicting what the end reaction will be, or if not, should be, because I fail to see why this is much different, in the long run, from what we have now. Sure it should help some towns, but I doubt that it will help some towns. It will just add more noise to the trade confusion and bog it down even farther, adding just one more layer to the conversation which is already so abysmally dull for too many people.

I haven't seen many interesting, economically influential, resource restrictions in quite some time now. We used to have this very thing in effect until certain characters began to lighten their grip on things. Can't get limestone from those guys hogging it all? Well, its free to gather just a bit down the road....

In game solution.

[T-shirt]

Oh it is a serious suggestion and it does have its merits.

That's good to hear. I hope that more people think of it that way and that the suggestion will be accepted soon and implemented sooner.

I am just pretty sure I am predicting what the end reaction will be, or if not, should be, because I fail to see why this is much different, in the long run, from what we have now.

Here you go again. First you say it does have it merrits, and immediately after you say it has none.

Sure it should help some towns, but I doubt that it will help some towns. It will just add more noise to the trade confusion and bog it down even farther, adding just one more layer to the conversation which is already so abysmally dull for too many people.

The suggestion is not about helping towns. It's about making this town different from the next. Even though we both have potatoes, stone and corn.

I haven't seen many interesting, economically influential, resource restrictions in quite some time now.
We used to have this very thing in effect until certain characters began to lighten their grip on things. Can't get limestone from those guys hogging it all? Well, its free to gather just a bit down the road.... In game solution.

I have no clue what this has to do with this suggestion.

[wichita]

The idea has its merits != I love the idea and it is guaranteed to work.

As for the final point, the heart of this matter is to make gathering resource X in town A easier than accessing resource X in town B, thereby providing a dynamic aspect to resource acquisition. This is what occurred in various regions of the game in the past do to the legal restrictions imposed by player governments in the pre-skills era. What we had as a result was a very colorful economic tapestry similar to what we are trying to achieve by scaling the gathering efficiency of different locations. Is that assesment of the situation and proposal completely off track?

And the best art of it all was, it was all created by the players for the players, so staff shouldn't have recieved much blame for it - though I think staff did recieve some blame for it because it created the Blackrocks vs. Kwor, for instance.

Only in this case it will be randomly enforced by coding and as soon as trade and productivity in a once thriving area is reduced because of this change, the staff will recieve the blame because we delivered what was asked for.

[T-shirt]

Of course you get the blame. That's what you're staff for.

That can't be changed. Rejecting this suggestion will not change that either, so please do accept it.

[Nosajimiki]

I agree with wichita, it's a nice idea in theory, but the ramifications are more dangerious than I think you are considering. IMO you should either have this kind of thing skill based or region based b/c when you stack them, they multiply eachothers effects and you wind up with a lot of players who can no longer feasably fend for themselves. There is already a big problem with susicidal newspawns b/c of skills, now the players who want "good" charies will be tring to kill off both newspawns with bad skills,and newspawns with nerfed resource abundancies.

And yes you can build 20 hemitite drills if you want, but somewhere with few resource slots is hard to get the kind of resources in to make one drill, much less 20. I've seen one hemitite mine that's too poor to smelt it's own iron, and I've seen another that has mutliple drills and around a dozen iron and steel workers, the big difference: one had 3 or 4 slots, the other has 9.

another problem I see with it is that it is another recomendation to make cantrian life more challenging. As is, there is too much interdependancies which makes almost every city either too tied up in maintainance of it's economy to grow, or too dependent on it's neighbors to allow conflict. We need more ways to stabalize the stagnation brought about by skills and repairs before adding more simaller features. If more people could become very rich, then world powers would arise, spread, and overlap so that there could be more opportunities for disputes of power and the resouces avallible to engage in open warfare. As is it's almost impossible to have a charie cappaible of even fighting in a real cantrian war until age 30+ (locked vehical, crowbar, good weapon, and good shield) but now I'm rambling off thread, but I'm just saying this recomendation would tweek the game in the opposite dirrection of where it needs to be going right now. After other issues have been fixed, it might work, but as of now it wont.

[SekoETC]

now the players who want "good" charies will be tring to kill off both newspawns with bad skills,and newspawns with nerfed resource abundancies.

Excuse me but resource gathering variations would depend on the REGION, not the character. Therefor anyone gathering in a certain spot would be affected by the shortage or abundancy regardless of their personal skill level.

Example:

Town X is not in a forest. It has a hidden rate of 100 grams of wood per day. An expert character will start a project for 100 grams and will finish it in 0.75 days. An awkward character will start at the same time and finish in 1.25 days. They both get 100 +/- random(0.2). The basic amount depends on the local availability. The time it takes to gather depends on the skills. If you change the basic amount (100) to anything, the ratio will remain the same.

[T-shirt]

IMO you should either have this kind of thing skill based or region based b/c when you stack them, they multiply eachothers effects and you wind up with a lot of players who can no longer feasably fend for themselves.

Then you should lessen the effects. If for example skills can reduce the gathering rate by 50% now, it should be halved to 25%. And the gathering rate per location can vary 25% from the average. That way if your unlucky, you can still gather at only 50% (because you're awkward and in a poor location) or lucky and be able to gather at 150%, but with this suggestion there is something you can do about it. Go find a rich resource location for the resource you want to gather.

[T-shirt]

Example:

Town X is not in a forest. It has a hidden rate of 100 grams of wood per day. An expert character will start a project for 100 grams and will finish it in 0.75 days. An awkward character will start at the same time and finish in 1.25 days. They both get 100 +/- random(0.2). The basic amount depends on the local availability. The time it takes to gather depends on the skills. If you change the basic amount (100) to anything, the ratio will remain the same.

I would not suggest to hide the gathering rate of a resource on a location. The 100 grams of wood in your example. I suggest the base gathering rate this local rate is calculated from is hidden. Thus you see that you can gather 100 grams a day here, but do not know whether it's a rich location and the average gathering rate is only 50 grams a day, or a poor location and the average gathering rate is 200 grams a day. You can travel to other locations and try to learn the average gathering rate for a resource in the region.

[Pieter de Groote]

To me, the main advantage of the suggestion is that there's no longer (the idea of) a fixed price for resources. It gets more dynamic and will have a possitive effect on trade.

For example, the current situation is that when someone gets into town offering wood, people calculate the day value, maybe add some percentage for travelling time lost, but it's always based on fixed amounts of gathering and travel time.

Maybe some players/characters take effects of skills or restriction in gathering because of laws or gathering slots into account, but I've hardly ever seen that happen.

When wood no longer has a fixes gathering rate of 300 grams per day, but somewhere between 200 and 450, based on the forest where you get it, the price of wood will not automatically be based on the time spent in gathering. The demand for the resource will have much more influence on the price.

I support this suggestion.

[SekoETC]

"There might be some wood here. Estimated average to be gathered in a day: 50 grams."

"The area seems rich in wood. Estimated average to be gathered in a day: 1000 grams."

This way people would know what to expect and could size their projects accordingly.