Stop minority spawning

[SekoETC]

As far as I know, all language groups initially have their spawntowns that don't have characters of other language groups in them. But with people-centric spawning, areas may eventually overlap and we get bilingual towns. There was lately a question about this on the forums. About wether newspawns are allowed to know two languages if they were spawned in a bilingual area. In my opinion they should learn word by word and not use translators. But since there's been no rule about this, it's causing trouble as you can see from the CRB forum.

A solution to the problem, don't allow spawning on areas where the majority of people is of another language group. This way foreigners would only arrive due to their own free will, and with means of returning to their native lands if they want to.

I've seen a Polish person spawning on the English lands, with only one other Polish character being in town. The newspawn was pretty confused and, I bet, lonely as well. I doubt this person would live very long.

Cantr is a game. We have language groups so that people could choose to play in a language they understand. People may have a chance to learn some words from another language ingame, but I don't think anyone should be forced to live in an environment where they can't understand a thing.

[Jos Elkink]

Hmm, this might be a nice compromise to allow chars to spawn anywhere, but to avoid the problem of lonely chars in foreign areas. And it's still possible to affect in-game developments by simply creating a majority in a town if you want to capture it.

Can anyone play advocate of the devil here?

[Nosajimiki]

nope, I think it's a very reasonable thing. IRL somone born in a country will ussally learn the common language even if thier parents are foriegners so it makes since that only an english player would spawn where there are 10 english players and 1 polish, even if the polish player is a parent.

In terms of CRB I think if you are born in a bilingual area(especially an evenly mixed one), not knowing both languages would seem more of an OOC influence than having to learn word by word, because it is presumably a mixed culture. (if a player doenst know the other lang and wants to use it in game then I see nothing wrong with a translator in this case.) I think you should only HAVE to learn a language in game if it wasn't something you got to see readly where you spawn.

[T-shirt]

This is a good suggestion that should be implemented as soon as possible. Maybe have the initial spawning towns of each language group remain 'clean'; only characters of that language group spawn there, whatever language groups present.

[Piscator]

don't allow spawning on areas where the majority of people is of another language group

The problem I see is, that in some areas there nearly everywhere is a majority of a certain language group. On the German/Spanish island most places are dominated (by count) by Spaniards for example. Where should Germans spawn on that island. Just in one predefined town? On an other island?
I don't think I like that idea.

By the way, has a stronger populated area a higher chance to recieve a newspawn than an area with just two people? Or has every area the same chance of becoming the home of a newspawn as long as at least this two people are present? I'm not sure about game mechanics.

[Pie]

Piscator, I can say for sure (i saw it on the 'zine once i think...) The chances are higher if you have more peoples.

(hehe, I sound so official.)

Ok, as for you're post, we should make it so that only the majority population ethnicity thingy will spawn, unleas the other ethnisities, or language groupe, (in case i misspelt it) have more than 5 people.

[new.vogue.nightmare]

It's kinda odd how almost all my characters have managed to spawn in little pissant yabba dabba doo villages, one in a place with one visible person (asleep) and no food. Makes me think population doesn't come too strongly into play.

Anyway, I'd say just up the minimum spawn requirements. At least enough for a small enclave society to survive... like 5 or so people present. The cool thing, in my opinion, about people-centric spawning, is that it allows for the creation of self-sufficient colonies. Societies can take root and grow far away from their initial homeland. Completely restricting it to only majority populations would mean that in order to gain a foothold in a foreign land they'd have to first outnumber the natives.

Maybe I'm rambling so I'll leave it at that. Basically, boost the minimum spawn requirements. One sleeper and someone in a locked building shouldn't be enough to cause a spawn--it just makes things difficult for people.

[Piscator]

Thanks Pie.

Is the chance of an area to get a newspawn proportional to the population? If yes, it would be better perhaps to make it proportional to the number of possible couples. (I mean if there are just two people at a location there is only one possible combination for a couple, but if we have four persons we already have six possible combinations for "mating") That way newspawns would primarily arrive in densely populated areas, but there would be still a chance to arrive at a location with just two people.

[Jos Elkink]

That's very similar to just taking the square of the number of people, which is what we had for a while. We also had the square root for a while, because small towns were complaining they couldn't grow . Now I think we have neither and it's just proportional to the number of chars, with a minimum of two.

new.vogue.nightmare, the reason for having so many chars spawn in small towns is because of the huge 'tail' of Cantr town sizes. In other words, we simply have more chars living in tiny locations than in bigger ones. Don't we have a graph of that in one of the Webzine stats articles? Can't remember ... But yeah, chances are, I think, higher to spawn in a tiny town than in a big one, simply because we have so few big towns. Too many chars prefer to travel out and start their own little community over trying to get more of the power in their own bigger town .

Finally, if spawning fails because all locations have a minority in the language, the system automatically defaults to the original spawn locations. It always does so if it cannot find an appropriate density spawning location.

Increasing the minimum number of chars for spawning might be a good idea, but as I said, others will start complaining that small towns are having a hard time building something up.

Oh, and T-shirt, I'm against the idea of keeping particular towns 'clean' - I see no reason to do so. With proper density spawning, whole populations can move if they want to. E.g. move a language group away from another one because it's safer. The old towns can then be captured by the other language group. That's all perfectly legit game developments.

[Pie]

Yea, i'm not so sure we should increas the lowest limit for spawning, 'caus i once had a carrie that also had a traveling partner in this place, and newspawns started popping up, and now were becoming quite industrious.

[T-shirt]

Oh, and T-shirt, I'm against the idea of keeping particular towns 'clean' - I see no reason to do so. With proper density spawning, whole populations can move if they want to. E.g. move a language group away from another one because it's safer. The old towns can then be captured by the other language group. That's all perfectly legit game developments.

It is not my suggestion... I only supported it.
It bothers me to have characters spawn in a towns where they cannot understand a word of what is being spoken. Where the only people speaking their tongue are gone or permanently asleep.
I don't want to learn Polish, only because some fools were travelling through Polish the time my character spawned. If my characters would like to go to Polish territory, they should have to travel there.

I support the initial suggestion that newspawns should be able to communicate with at least half of the residents.

[Jos Elkink]

I think you misinterpreted me, T-shirt. I like the idea of requiring a majority. I just don't like the idea of treating original spawning locations differently from other ones.

[T-shirt]

I did misinterpret you, Jos. Reading how fixed spawn locations are treated, people will only spawn in a fixed spawn location, if another language group is larger there, if no other spawn locations are available.

My suggestion to keep the fixed spawn locations 'clean' (allow only character of the 'fixed' language group spawning) is not necessary.

[Nosajimiki]

I agree with pie, don't increase minimum population for spawning. I have two charies who were in very small places that have significantly grown, besides, the way resource dynamics work in the game sort of require large numbers of scattered populations, otherwise there will just be large unused areas of the map with large amounts of exotic resources that have no way of being gathered and traded without large towns having to go out and harvest it themselves. Maintaining outposts would be nearly imposable.

[Cdls]

One of my chars spawned in a seperate language area and there were a couple others that spoke english that soon left. One other char spawned that speaks english and when we would talk, this other person would tell me that I needed to speak their language in that area. That was kind of stupid since I chose to play an english char so I didnt listen to him. The char is working out pretty well, but I can see how it would be difficult for people to play.