Economy

[Chris]

Chris, if the project is made too easy to complete, then won't that erase the whole purpose of implementing building rot? For those who actually want to get rid of some buildings, that isn't cool. Maybe if they made it so that only someone with the key to the building could repair it, it would work. But otherwise it wouldn't.

There should be an active (but not too fast) way to destroy a building. If you have a town full of people, you shouldn't have to wait for a building to rot.

Maybe it could be handled like hunting. Once per day, you can maintain or degrade one building. If you have certain tools, you will do more repair/damage per attempt. If someone is fixing a building that the town leader wants destroyed (or vice versa), it will be as obvious as someone breaking the hunting law.

[Tiamo]

Why not simply a demolishing project, needing a hammer, a sledgehammer or a pneumatic hammer for efficiency? Once the project has started the building would be unusable, but the space would be occupied until the project is complete.

Demolishing can be started only when the building is empty, or 'deserted'. The result of the project would be part of the building material, depending on the state the building was in when the demolishing started.
And partly demolished buildings should be rebuildable, using part of the building material used for building the original building, depending on the state of demolishment.

By demanding that a building is empty before demolishing can start (and by making it a time-consuming project), massive ravaging by pirates or vandals can be avoided.

But this would ONLY be useful if building space would be scarce, like i suggested in an earlier post. For a streaming economy it is imperative that goods are not only produced, but also consumed (by decay, by eating or by fulfilling other, yet to be implemented, 'needs').

[Sekar]

Chris, if the project is made too easy to complete, then won't that erase the whole purpose of implementing building rot? For those who actually want to get rid of some buildings, that isn't cool. Maybe if they made it so that only someone with the key to the building could repair it, it would work. But otherwise it wouldn't.

There should be an active (but not too fast) way to destroy a building. If you have a town full of people, you shouldn't have to wait for a building to rot.

Maybe it could be handled like hunting. Once per day, you can maintain or degrade one building. If you have certain tools, you will do more repair/damage per attempt. If someone is fixing a building that the town leader wants destroyed (or vice versa), it will be as obvious as someone breaking the hunting law.

Now this I like! That way, if someone wants to destroy a building, it would take them at least several years alone, so that eliminates the possibility that a thief or someone just being an ass can destroy the building. In order to repair the building, it would take the same amount of time. But if it was already fully repaired, the people who own it won't have to be constantly repairing it like items. Brilliant.

I am sure that if this can be implemented, all those towns with far too many buildings and too little people will be grateful.

[Money]

*puts thread back on track*

The problem with cantrs economny is that only goverments appear popular in the resource gathering modul. They can be quite in-efficent when gathering resources from far off places and can cause a large part of the population to go without resources.

[SekoETC]

I'm not sure if I quite understood what you were saying. Private people do travel for resources all the time, and private companies tend to send resource runners. Some governments limit or tax resource gathering but there are usually several places on an island where to find a certain resource, so if one town has high taxes, people might rather try their luck elsewhere. Also if a town has a drill/quarry/harvester that allows one to gather 4x the average rate, either you let people use it with an up to 25% tax, which leads into you getting lots of the resource for free, even if you wouldn't need it yourself and no one brings in anything worthy of trading - or then you say that only citizens can use the drill/quarry/harvester and outsiders must bring resources to trade - but there is a chance that by the time someone has managed to gather the resource you were asking for in return, the town doesn't need it anymore or the leader / quarry owner has died and the rules have changed. Or then the wannabe resource acquire-er finds another place that has a no-hassle policy - even if they had to gather by hand, that would take less time than traveling to another place, gathering a resource there, transporting it to the place that has the quarry and trading for 4x the rate. No one pays for transport, if someone claims they are paying you for transport it actually means that what they are paying you with is overpriced, or that they're not going to pay you at all and are just trying to lure you into a lockable building so that they could get away clean.

The main problem with sending resource runners is that mostly you need to send them on foot because if you give them a vehicle, you must make sure that they are either personally fond of you and the town, or that what ever you've promised to pay them is worth more than the vehicle - because chance is the person realizes having a free bike is worth more than sacrificing several years of your life to earn for example a wooden cart. With radios you could theoretically stay in touch with the towns along the route and say if the bike XYZ strays from this and that route, that means it was stolen. And also make sure that the name wasn't changed.

You could give your vehicle some extra signs that say "Property of town A, limited to route A-B-C. If you see someone trying to alter or remove this sign outside town A or driving outside route ABC, that means the vehicle is stolen". But that would require the law enforcements along the route to give a damn.

Boats are even trickier because they can go anywhere on the ocean, and aren't always within view range of a town.

Not to mention people getting the sleeping sickness and dying.

Trains would be very useful since they would be limited to established railroads.

[SCUBA]

Back to track?

I thought the main topic in this tread was the built in economy. I e the job of the RD. I am no longer a member of the RD after my play pause. But I think that the main problem with the Cantr economy is the lack of desire. Characters soon stop need more things. There should be much more built in consumption.

Food - this already exist but is today way too cheap.
Gasoline etc - should be implemeted ASAP!
Harvestors should not work wothout fuel.
Repair shoud cost material.

Instead, things that you HAVE to use time to do sould bo away. Cantr is a slow game, and many whant not to have to do many things. I think that the game should change towards less make your characters buzy all the time. And more towards getting the things they whant to achive thire goals.

[nateflory]

The main problem with sending resource runners is that mostly you need to send them on foot because if you give them a vehicle, you must make sure that they are either personally fond of you and the town, or that what ever you've promised to pay them is worth more than the vehicle - because chance is the person realizes having a free bike is worth more than sacrificing several years of your life to earn for example a wooden cart.

I will have to disagree here. I have played, and run into, a few characters who gladly run resources for others and happily give back the key/car/bike/boat when they have returned to their hometown.

So while I do agree that the economy is driven by selfishness to a certain extent, it is unfair to paint a broad picture of every character being overly greedy. As mentioned earlier in the thread, not all characters are leaders, some are simple workers who gladly just labor for their home towns and DO help smoothly run the local 'economy'.

[Money]

Yes yes thats true but it is also true but it is still also kinda hard to trust people. I know I had a charrie who almost scammed a town if they werent poor why couldnt they have given me a vehicle or even a tool? Basically it sometimes takes to long for trust to develop. But I know that I can also find trust worthy charries on demand if need be.

[Dogonabun]

Yes yes thats true but it is also true but it is still also kinda hard to trust people. I know I had a charrie who almost scammed a town if they werent poor why couldnt they have given me a vehicle or even a tool? Basically it sometimes takes to long for trust to develop. But I know that I can also find trust worthy charries on demand if need be.

So I guess your evil plan's first fruitation didn't bear too much fruit?

[Missy]

I personally think it's wrong to implement things to try and stimulate what's already possible IC.

I don't get what it is you people want to see so that you can believe there's an economy IC. Do you want spreadsheets detailing imports/exports of goods from towns/governments on a yearly basis? Because that's never going to happen. I've got a real life too, and it'd be totally different if I was my character with my characters life instead of my own.......... But there are towns that have routes to follow for drop off and pick up of items, and without these necessary stops production of iron/steel at home is impossible, and growth/pace stops. If it stops then people dont get paid or what someone can work for begins to diminish. THAT is ECONOMY!

Yes, it's become slow in certain towns. (Depression of sorts.) But that's for two reasons. 1.) Repairs. 2.) Lack of people taking intitiative/lack of players in general and thus lack of characters over-all.

I don't see how making more requirements and necessity IC, such as requiring cars to use fuel, food becoming more rare/a commodity, how that's going to help you see the economy you people apparantly dream about. (I don't know...Maybe you're expecting to see China or something.) If your town's small and it already can't handle making import/export on a regular basis just to make steel (which is a necessity in game.) How do you think that a need for fuel in cars is going to help you? You'll finally get that hot ass sports car that you always wanted and now you'll figure out that you have to build a still etc to make fuel. Build a well. Insure a constant source of oil if it's not local to you...

This conversation doesn't make sense to me. You can talk all you like about how to improve economy IC through implementing mechanics, but the fact of the matter is, the only thing that's going to make a good economy is YOU the player, using your head. Looking at maps to find good locations, convincing other people to work for a good cause, insuring resources not native to your hometown are able to be gathered/traded for at wim and of mass amounts. You can't sleep for a year at a time and expect that people are going to remain working loyally for you in this game. You can't expect that people will work for a cause without being shown you're willing to pay them with results of whta it is they're gathering for you. I don't care if that's a promise of a limo when they retire or the promise of some decent clothing..The problem actually lies in following t hrough with what you promise, because once you follow through for one person other people will see you're good for your promise and suddenly you have an entire posse of people saying "Hey...If that's all I gotta do to get me one of those, then I'll help you too.."


Coins? There's a problem with coins. If a banker is asleep for six days the entire world for which a coin system is based, will stop and sleep too. Plus they cost resources. People don't have the time to spend on making coins, paying someone to gather the resources to make coins, much less the people to go around and insure everyone's using the coin system. (Granted, once implemented and the town accustomed to using the coins it would be a little easier than it would be at first,) but it's hard to even get something like that going/keep it going with such a massive decline in players. (At least on the English side.)


I say, if you want better economy IC----Start advertising the game to get more players. THEN and only then, consider adding things that are going to make cantarian lives more difficult by required need.

[DylPickle]

*High Five*

I agree that every thing in game is based on the play of the players.
I would say 95% of the problems in game are due to we, the player base, not the cantr-guts the PD and RD toy around with (variation of things that can be built, however, lies in that other 5%. That's always fun).

The problems with economics in cantr all goes back to the players making their characters. There are far too many characters that sit on the extremes of individualism and communitarianism. What cantr needs is some more moderation, some more balance (by the players and players only). It's very possible and very easy to give your characters reasons to consume, to expect payment for work, to trade for profit, to adopt different societal ideologies, to find motivation for conflict...

But hey, cantr players are just too complex to miss these behind the scenes simplicities, right?

[Tiamo]

The lack of 'economy' does go back to the setup of characters. And to the setup of the Cantr world.

All characters are proficient in all skills, even when you are working on a project awkwardly it will be completed in a reasonable time. So, any character can do anything in the game, given time.
The main resources in the game are well spread over the islands and lands. The resources for all important production can be gathered by one character, within a reasonable time. There is no need for trade of 'exotic' resources.
The sources of all resources are freely accessible by any character. There is no practical way to block the gathering locations away from a character.
And finally, there are lockable buildings and vehicles! This means that characters can hoard almost infinite amounts of goods for personal use only. In vehicles they can even take it all with them.

This all means characters can create a sizeable economy of their own, without needing any other character. Without needing trade, without needing organization. Without any bonus for cooperation or specialization.

There would be a lot more economy if characters would benefit more from cooperation, specialization and trade. Or even need it to get above a certain level of existence.
So, characters should NOT be automatically skilled in all skills, some projects should only be possible when several characters cooperate, there should be more types of consumption, needing a bigger variation of goods than just 'nourishing food' and 'healing food'. Access to some of the resources should be harder, as should individual hoarding be.

Humans need more than just eat to survive. Maslov tells us there are a lot more human needs. Let Cantrians have them too...

[Missy]

There would be a lot more economy if characters would benefit more from cooperation,

No I disagree with your statements Tiamo. You already CAN benefit from cooperation. You can become a larger organization than the last large organization if you learn how to cooperate instead of doing things all on your own.

Again I say it's a player thing. They tried to implement things in the past to encourage Quote"~~cooperation~~"unquote. It doesn't work.



I would re-word your statement to say "There wouuld be a lot more economy if characters and their players realized what could be possible if they weren't all thinking about their own goals."

The fact it doesn't happen is not a result of poor mechanics, but a type of people who began to play this game reading the "you can be anything you want to be" and taking it full throttle.

[Tiamo]

You can become a larger organization than the last large organization if you learn how to cooperate instead of doing things all on your own.

I don't quite understand this. What is the benefit from being (part of) a larger organization? What can any organization do (economywise) that cannot be accomplished by a single character (given enough time, of course)?

The only thing i can think of is shared use of machines and tools. Apparently that is not enough to induce systematic economical cooperation in the game. So, if we want more economy in the game, i suggest introducing more, different benefits from cooperation (and specialization, and trade).

[SekoETC]

I think the point is that most players have limited patience, so things have to be done relatively fast. Imagine this, you gather resources to make a whole smithy shop, tools included, just to forge one longsword. It takes years. Then you spend several more years in getting enough materials for a darter, all this so that you could attack a stronger foe without the risk of getting caught. But by the time you have everything ready, you are not taken seriously because you are an old man. Be that in Cantr, age shouldn't mean a thing, but it does affect the mental image of characters.

But yeah, there should be project that couldn't be carried out on your own, at least not without advanced tools. For example building a cottage, try lifting a long plank or log by yourself without any machinery. But if you had someone to hold the other end, it would be much easier. One problem is that the mechanics do not allow dictating a minimum requirement of workers, only the maximum. And also we can't have tools that would be optional but speed things up. If it was possible to include tools like that, we could have for example sewing machines without having to set up duplicate projects with different times of completion.

And in fact, when it's about producing items, you can't add two methods for producing a certain item - instead you have to make two projects that produce two separate but identical items. I think this is a big designer flaw. If the programmers had known that the world would get so complicated that items might be produced in several different ways, for sure they would have implemented items and their production methods separately. If this had been done, there would not be a problem of machinery outputting items either! But currently the method of production is bound to the item itself. An item can only be produced by one type of project.