Selecting tech level of spawnpoint

[wichita]

Here is another crazy idea that might offer a compromise for people scared away by the thought of Burgeo.

------

At character generation:

Select technology level for spawnpoint:
- primitve (many wild animals, few buildings or vehicles, etc)
- medieval (more domesticated animals, buildings and vehicles, basic weapons)
- modern (many buildings, many vehicles, advanced weapons, tamed animals)


------

Some of us enjoy playing primitive characters facing the danger of living with wild animals, struggling to forge a society out of nothing. Some of us enjoy playing mild and rather uneventful lives in a peaceful little rural community with a moderate level of technology, but nothing too advanced. Others of us like to play in large, bustling, modern metropoli (metropolises?) where everyone has a vehicle and is busy working together towards some great new advancement.

At least these are a handful of situations envisioned when a player spawns a new character. On one hand, the spirit of the game expects us to deal with the cards that we are dealt upon spawning. But on the other hand, there are a wide range of lifestyles for our characters to enjoy. It is kind of hard to play a steel merchant when you spawn on Burgeo, and kind of hard to play a bushman chasing elephants when you land in Quillanoi - not kind of hard, very hard.


So might it be possible to work out some sort of algorithim to skew the spawnpoint towards a more suitable location to what the player has in mind? The options would need to be simple and broad, to keep the original spirit of the game in mind, but it would also help to avoid so many situations where "nobody wants to exist fearing the next animal attack" (because some of us do).

[deadboy]

If it's doable, I really like this idea. Besides that if people have a preference it could lead to larger metropoli like the golden days, which would be a good thing

[Nakranoth]

If it's readily possible... I like it... if it isn't... oh well, I won't loose sleep over it.

[km17]

same here, i wouldnt mind a couple wild chars running at elephants.

[MrPenguin589]

There are domesticated animals?!

Anyways, I kinda like this idea. But I also sorta don't. Not sure why, though.

[sanchez]

There's steel in places where animals far outnumber people. Perhaps that would be a good criterion, animals-to-people ratio, or does that fall out from people-to-buildings?
This makes me nervous but I think I like it.

[N-Aldwitch]

Against.

Spawning should be random.

When you're born you don't decide to be Asian, or American.

Similar thing here. When you spawn you don't decide where.

[Pieter de Groote]

Against.

Spawning should be random.

When you're born you don't decide to be Asian, or American.

Similar thing here. When you spawn you don't decide where.

Spawning in Cantr should be totally random because you can't choose your birthplace in real life? What a lousy argument.
In real life you don't have 15 lives and the option to kill yourself and get another chance as often as you want.

Playing Cantr should be fun. It should not necessarily be as close to real life as possible.

I like the suggestion.

[tiddy ogg]

Undecided. I think you ought to do a survey of players to judge their preferences. If too many want one particular scenario, it will skew the game.

[formerly known as hf]

I say yes, but no player should be allowed more than 5 characters spawned under any one option, so that, if you choose to play all 15 characters, they will be evenly spread.

Also, it shouldn't be implemented if most people are just going to choose the most developed places, but would be good if more peope chose to spawn in 'primitive' areas.

[deadboy]

Undecided. I think you ought to do a survey of players to judge their preferences. If too many want one particular scenario, it will skew the game.

I'm sorry, but if it skews the game towards the option that the players deem to be the funnest, whilst still allowing those that want to choose the other option to choose the other option , isn't that making the game better, not worse

[Antono Flavio]

I think that if you don't like it, you just have to travel around.

[SekoETC]

The options should go "primitive, medieval, modern and random".

It annoys me that in primitive communities, there are newspawns openly wishing they had cars when they have never seen such a thing. And I have been against all sorts of electronics in Cantr because they're not logical, we don't have the power sources, they work like magic and everyone somehow knows how to make them. Sure cars are a bit of a must-have in a game that doesn't allow animal-pulled carts, and radios are a must-have when we don't have jungle drums and smoke signals.

It's unfortunate that the developpers have concentrated on adding the modern means instead of historical ones... but I'm sliding a bit off topic here. If we had this system, I would most likely spawn in primitive or medium tech societies, leaving out the modern. So it's well possible there wouldn't be a big pileup in the modern. Like who wants to spawn in Quillanoi or Siom, seriously? There may be a lot of machinery but in places like that no one has time for a lonely newspawn. There is no time for being stupid and childish and learning about things, you go work in a factory straight off the crib.

So the biggest problem would be figuring out which tech level all the locations belong to.

[in vitro...]

Yes, yes, yes, yes! I love this idea

[wichita]

The options should go "primitive, medieval, modern and random".

Oh yeah, random. I was thinking of that as I was writing it, but didn't follow through. Thanks for finishing my thought, kulta.


The skewing is a risk, but from what I have seen (data not shown) I think it might turn out alright. The biggest problem I see is how to define the tech level, and in many of the non-English and non-Polish groups, there really isn't any real difference between spawnpoints.


A simple population check might not be too bad. People only seem to really lump up in the most developed areas.

Animal/Character ratios are going to be a bad criterium, unless we are classifying the animals. Maybe if elephants,rhinos,lions,wolves,bears were weighted higher than cows,goats,sheep it could still work out.


The key to the compromise would have to be that the options are very broad. We don't want to competely narrow in the choices to every detail. The main goal should be:

"Do I want to have a reasonably good chance at fighting off wild animals with a stick?"

"Do I want to have a reasonably good chance of earning a vehicle within a few years?"

-------------------

Another approach could be to simply check the objects of each location and classify the location by tech level.

bone/stone -- iron/steel -- aluminium

By the time a place is settled well enough to be producing aluminium, I beleieve that the animals will be in check for the most part. At least that is what I have heard happened on K-Island way back when. Species present could at least be used as a second criterium in this algorithm.