What is cotton?

[psymann]

Wondering if someone can help me.

I have some cotton. But I have no idea what it is or how to use it.


If it had been cotton fibres, I would know to use my spindle and make it into cotton yarn.

If it had been cotton yarn, I would know to use my loom and make it into cotton cloth.

It it had been cotton cloth, I would know to turn it into some clothes or sails or beds.


But it's none of these three. It's just "cotton". What is it, and how can I use it?

[carlaco]

According to the wiki, raw cotton can be made into cotton fibers with a cotton gin. After that, it can be made into yarn or cloth. If there's another way, I don't know of it.

[psymann]

Gah, oh yep, forgot that bit. Been a long time since I made any cotton. That's probably what my cotton gin is for...

*hides away in shame*

[nitefyre]

You can also make Q-tips out of them.

[joo]

You can also make Q-tips out of them.

[SekoETC]

IRL that would be. Unless you rp it. You can also use raw cotton for a bed. It's rather silly because you'd think that it was dirty before ginning, ain't the whole point of ginning to remove the hard plant matter? But since furniture requires relatively more materials than many other items, requiring to have the cotton ginned or even having cloth to make it stay together would increase the work requirement even more.

[Chris]

Cotton in Cantr sucks. It takes so much labor to be used for most relevant projects. The implementation may be more or less realistic, but it seems out of whack in terms of game play.

[psymann]

I like it that some things like cotton are hard to produce. Makes it easier to set your character up as a specialist. So many things can be done by everyone that people tend to do everything themselves. It's nice that some things are hard enough that you can focus on them, become specialised, and then trade your wares to others.

[marginoferror]

I'm not sure how it's related to specialization, because aside from the physical capital of a cotton gin, etc (which are minimal because machines are immortal and only one set is needed in any one community), there are no actual efficiency gains for large or repeated projects.