Economy

[Missy]

And IMO since the world is that way IMO.....You can not make implementations that FORCE the cantr worlds to "need" items. You have to do it optionally. You have to make it "possible" to run cars on fuel but not "neccessary"

Repairs are a neccessary thing if you want to maintain your wealth and that takes away from "growing"
Eventually people get mad because they have to spend that time on that and it just sucks. People want to be able to say.."yes, your town might have sixty five cars, but my town has sixty five cars AND they run on fuel. AND our roads are top shape." They want to say, "Yeah you might have a six pirate crew, two dinghys, a raker and a galleon, but i have all that AND sails, plus my crew has diamond encrusted sabres and ruby earrings."

[sem]

By all means keep it possible for some vehicles to run without fuel. The poxy little bikes and rickshaws can run on pedal power, but the sports cars and limos should require fuel to emphasise the conspicuous consumption. (Of course if you really wanted to piss off the neighbours you'd need the ability to allow the road to their town to deteriorate back to a dirt track, while you built a bypass or two to go round them, but that's a whole other suggestion ).

[sanchez]

I think it was always planned that if you run out of fuel you can push the thing the rest of the way.... My point was that there should be more expendable luxuries. Fuel was a good idea in that sense in that it gave incentive to infratructure and would need constant production... like we're seeing with iron and steel as Missy said, but for no good reason. So, more new ideas for things that give rewards for infrastructure investment but don't last forever would be welcome.

[Missy]

Woah, I never thought about that! We can get rid of clothing by burying them with the corpses, that creates some market, but if people take clothes from corpses and don't get killed over it then clothes are forever. Buildings are forever and now that they can be renamed, they are also more easily transfered to a new owner. And there's been plans of making dinghies and darters dockable, that would make it possible to gather any vehicle there is, just as long as they are not lost in the middle of the sea. Tools can be repaired endlessly... So that we have production and a market is solely due to people hogging things to themselves and sleeping on them / keeping them in locked storages.

Here's an idea for the next statistics:
1) Number of iron shields in buildings/vehicles vs. number of iron shields in inventories.
2) Number of people holding a certain number of iron shields, starting from 1.

This would reveal the extent of HOGGING.

I would also say that you're wrong in some regard about people hogging things. Places all over Cantr have donation boxes. They put anything from bones to bone items and basic clothing items in them. They put food that noone wants. Graduating to wooden shields and longbows and hammers. And you know what some people do? They spawn, they hunt and they start a project for a needle, a knife and a pair of hide pants. It's not that people "hog" things. What town isn't it possible to ask for a tool in? I have never ever seen a town that wouldn't lend it's tools to people if they just asked, except for maybe the towns that kill newspawns for target practice. Never. Have people forgotten how to ask?



And you say "hogging." If you aren't going to work for something, why should I give it to you for free? (Work, also stimulates economies, don't forget. So giving things away could also HARM an economy instead of help it depending on what kind of structure/government you have.)

[Piscator]

I think it was always planned that if you run out of fuel you can push the thing the rest of the way.... My point was that there should be more expendable luxuries. Fuel was a good idea in that sense in that it gave incentive to infratructure and would need constant production... like we're seeing with iron and steel as Missy said, but for no good reason. So, more new ideas for things that give rewards for infrastructure investment but don't last forever would be welcome.

I thought a little about this and I noticed that it's damn hard to think of something that gives a benefit to the people who can afford it, but doesn't penalize the poor majorities.

Ammunition has the potential to be a good idea, but it would require a drastic change of the combat system and would be problematic for people who inherited a bow, but don't have access to wood, for example.

[Pilot]

Some successful cities in the Spanish Zone have invest in long term improvements encouraging common or individual enterprises and even giving financial support to merchants, people who prefer traveling over working in site or those who want to start in other places exploiting resources that are interesting for the majority.

One thing clear to all is that better roads helps everyone making distance shorter so there has been a big effort working in the subject. Assembly lines are working and people will have cheaper vehicles eventually.

Also radios were giving almost for free to many towns so there is contact between them and this helps commerce.

Economy there has been growing for some years now. If you don't see it in your zone perhaps you should ask yourself what you can do instead of waiting for others to do it for you.

[Money]

But selfishness is what drive the economy. In Cantr and outside of Cantr. Their is moe then enough stuff for everyone in cantr to have all their desires filled if the older peoples would just share it out. if they did though all your striving would be for nothing the economy would crumble with the sudden influx of goods and inlfation would go rampant in all resources. Same in the real world some people are selfish and keep things for themselves. We have anough clothing food and shelter for everyone in the world, if we would just share it out.

[ceselb]

The economy is a non-starter really.
I've seen a few chars trying to set up businesses making more complex things, like telescopes and sextants. The trouble is twofold, first you don't get much for your efforts. Unless you're unlucky and spawn in a poor location it would be faster to go on foot to get things to make iron to make a bike or something, then do another run to get what tools you need. At that stage you basically only have RP reasons to become a tailor/cook/telescope maker or whatever. Second is that the people who is interested in your services can't pay in things you need. If they could do that they would have made the item themselves.

Having more than one business in a town is practically unheard of as well, so corporate goods exchange almost never happens either. But I believe that can be solved by having more radios and repeaters. I've seen it work pretty well on a local level and reaching more people would only make it better.

[Joshuamonkey]

Some successful cities in the Spanish Zone have invest in long term improvements encouraging common or individual enterprises and even giving financial support to merchants, people who prefer traveling over working in site or those who want to start in other places exploiting resources that are interesting for the majority.

The Spanish zone is amazing. =p I've never met someone older than my character there though.

Creating iron and steel is certainly not purposeless. If we had an unlimited amount, we would create much more than we do, like better vehicles, weapons, shields. For Cantr, iron and steel is very much a currency, like gold in RL, except for the fact that the reason it is wanted is because of its functionality.

And trading in Cantr is certainly not equal. Traders can get bonuses for traveling distance. Companies can invest in vehicles, trading routs, tools...New people won't want to make the effort of making all the tools needed for a steel weapon, or all the complications needed for an engine vehicle. Such as...assembly line. Also, many aren't willing to make all the calculations needed to know how much iron and steel among other things is really worth.

There are many characters who care about the benefit of others and about the town. Not everyone, but some. Some people pay others to work on the roads. Some people help others because they feel like it. When my AJ character saw the town storage, what bothered him the most is all of the unused items. So many citizens working for free when there was unused items that they could be given. AJ was high up in the food chain until it was decided he was no longer needed...

[SekoETC]

The thing about Kiii is that the tools are supposed to be shared. Why would everyone need their own tools when they are only used every once in a while? But there is a slight problem in that community minded people really don't seem to care about earning things. There is a development path in that once you stick around long enough, you get better clothes, a better shield and a proper weapon. But for example if people are told that there are things like bone jewelry, crowns of daisies and random accessories like hats that could be gained for free, all you gotta do is ask, no one wanted them. They can't be given as rewards because it would be favoritism, since there's not enough for everyone. But people won't even take them for free. I think it was Troy who said that.

[Arlequin]

I think economy is awfully poor, and I'm amazed of how much wealth is rotting in English towns.

The worst thing is the lack of merchants and towns that store local goods they don't plan to use, instead of trading them for rare goods they wouldn't want to look for whenever they may need them.

The advantage of merchants over local traders is that they work with all goods. They'll trade everything as long as it is in enough quantity, so they function as a sort of a «human currency». My merchant sold 10 gram packs of rare spices for 25 days of work worth in cultivated flowers each. He doesn't need them at all, but he can store them until he finds a fine buyer (he sails a galleon).

Also, transport scale seems to play some weird role.

Back in the 1800 days, when longboats and sloops were the main ships in the Hislands, my Spanish tavernkeeper managed easily to buy things like cod, rice, tomatoes and carrots from coasting sea merchants. They always carried a bit of everything from town to town. After day 2000, everybody was moving into bigger ships, sailing further, trying to maintain bigger rolls, and exploiting rare and valuable resources. The "longboat traders" started to sell only for iron and steel, so they could build bigger ships, and since many towns were better supplied, they stopped bothering with cheap, burdening basic goods.

[Chris]

Sleeping is the #1 barrier to a better economy. My characters with access to store rooms are happy to give free food and weapons and shields to newspawns for just saying their names. They loan tools to active workers. But more and more, I've been seeing newspawns who don't do anything at all — they don't speak, move, pick up anything, etc. Just spawn and eventually die. And it's frustrating to loan a tool to someone who then just sits there in a coma. My traders go to towns and wait for days at a time for replies. Business that could be conducted in less than a day takes half a year. I understand if someone goes away for a weekend, but there are leaders who are only semi-active, playing two or three times a week as their regular schedule.

The suggestions for greater obstacles (more decay, vehicle fuel) miss the point. The economy sucks because (many) players suck. Putting more obstacles and drudgery into the game is only going to drive more people away or put them to sleep. I wasn't around in the good old days, but I suspect that the main causes of the difference were the size and activity level of the player base.

[Frits]

What people dont realize is that if groups group harvested resources they could harvest more then individual traders can. They could corner the market of said resource because they can harvest more then any other group can.they could also sell it at cheaper prices becuase it is so easy to get.

It is not like that. Most resources chars don't want/need to own a lot of. Some resources they do, like limestone but they are bulky so difficult to transport, then it might be easier to transport your projects to the source of lime. I only know one town that has quarries for export and it's densely populated and well organized, it's the one exception. Also you can't corner markets because of location, if it's too far chars will find it elsewhere.
The major thing harming a sensible virtual economy is the lack of waste, after 2200 days a heap of buildings and vehicles is still standing. A veteran player is not using that old bike anymore so it should rot away but it doesn't. Also it's not given away to someone without pay. What will happen eventually is the char dies and the tools, keys and vehicles and heaps of iron lie there for everyone to use.

[Bowser]

A days worth of work is worth a days worht of work.... period.

Anyone in power that needs something can build the machines to make the materials. A hematite drill may double your efficiency, but the poor given the opportunity to dig by hand will do so.

People have tried to set up economies so you can trade a days worth of wood for a days worth of iron, but the system has nver worked out right.

Any time I needed some sort of special thing like a log, I alsways built the tools then made the log. We do not have the number of active epole to have the log building specialists to be around.

Even if we had those people around AND active, there is not enough demand for a tailor or log builder to survive on that alone. 90% of what I have made. I have made on my own. I have built limo's, drills, roads, all machines, tools, and whatever...

Demand does not equal suppy. Period.

[J. Scott]

There are two things Boswer said above that I think are of some importance in this issue.
The first was that there were not enough people around for Cantr to have log-making specialists. Now, granted there are precious few specialists of any kind in Cantr. There are characters, of course, who for reasons of roleplay are devoted to a particular career, but that does not make them as necessary as an actual specialist.
That is because it is not, as Bowser stated, the number of people that is the problem. Rather, it is the second interesting thing he said: 90% of the things owned by his character were made by that character.

A major impediment, then, to Cantr forming a real-life style of economy is overly skillful inhabitants. For, although the "skill" system affects certain things, like time to complete a project or damage done in combat, it doesn't affect the quality of finished goods.

The twenty-year-old Cantrian, freshly spawned, has a skillset allowing him or her to hunt, carve bone weapons, forge steel weapons, build ships, sail the ships, build houses, build car engines, drive a car, tailor fine silk dresses as well as animal fur cloaks, repair anything, cut keys, pick locks, pave roads, cultivate a garden of flowers, and make bagpipes, lutes, or fine jewelry. The newspawn also knows a fair amount about physics and engineering (how else could one assemble a working radio?) and indeed knows every method for making everything that can possibly be made in the world (via the Wiki).
Not only that, but anyone can be an historian, poet, lawgiver, &c. because (and I wonder I've never read any discussions about this) every Cantrian is born literate* and possessed of an endless supply of paper and ink.

Given, oh, five to fifteen years of trustworthy service in a medium to large sized community, the Cantrian has access to enough resources to provide for most of his or her needs and wants without reference to any guildmaster or corporate entity. Some travel and trading might be required to obatin the materials for, say, a telescope. But having those materials, and having the innate ability to make a telescope yourself, why would you traverse the island to some far-off city to avail yourself of the services of an obscure telescope-making company?
Chances are it's full of sleepers anyway!

That is a round-about way of saying that the market in Cantr is strictly goods-based. And without a demand for skills, skills that affect quality (for the sabre made by a twenty-something novice works exactly the same way as one made by an octogenarian expert) as well as time, how can any kind of realistic economy arise?

*I emphasize this because we Westerners seem to be taking literacy for granted. However, I will venture to say that societies whose people live in straw huts, cook with dried dung, and hunt with bone weapons tend to rely on an oral tradition, being without letters.
And urbane societies, for that matter, have been known to contain high levels of illiteracy, despite such cultures' dependence on the written word.