Reclaiming Broken Locks

[Crosshair]

There's no need to be rude, Ap. I agree with you though, it'd be better if we had an object, cause at least it would make it slightly more labour intensive for "serial lock breakers"

[marginoferror]

I don't think locks are important enough to deserve any special treatment. Either stuff in general can be disassembled and recycled (recycling being a process much more fundamentally complicated than pounding something into shape with a sledgehammer) or it can't. Currently, it can't, and rather than tweaking the recyclability of individual objects we might be better off thinking of a more general rule.

[Appolom]

There's no need to be rude"

Sorry, I was just a little; you know...WHAT KIND OF AN IDE-- jk

[dingo]

Well I mean when the keys all get melted down your only option with a lock is to break it. I just didnt think it realistic that a 150+ gram lock could just disappear once you break it off the door...

[marginoferror]

It's also not realistic that I can't move or break down a small wooden crate I build by any means whatsoever. I think a general solution would be better than creating a special rule for each thing that should be recyclable.

[SekoETC]

Yeah, I bet everybody wants a general solution. The only problems are what if someone is stopped halfway disassembling a machine, can it still be used in that stage and can it be repaired, does repairing demand more resources (even though resources weren't actually removed from the object until the disassembling project is finished) and how long should it take to break something?

[BDubya]

I think when you break down an object with metal in it, the metal should become unusable until you melt it down.

So instead of manufacturing iron requiring hematite, limestone, and coal, it will require ususable iron, a heating source, and something else if anyone wants. .

[marginoferror]

BDubya, I agree with you, but in the current system where we carry around metal in perfect 1-gram increments and magically combine it with thousands of other 1-gram increments when we want to build it, that level of detail would be inconsistent. If realism is a goal at all, maybe we should make metal less divisible, less fungible and harder to work with in general?

[Rossato]

I think we should focus on easy gameplay and fun, not on realism.

[marginoferror]

Personally, I think realism should be a central goal. If things in the world behave realistically, you can understand the game without learning arbitrary rules. Rules like "you can't stop a project once you've committed materials to it", "boats only move on the hour", "you can only hunt one animal of each species a day", "land vehicles can't be loaded on ships by any means", "locks require metal except for locks that you build along with a vehicle", "you can't attack the same person twice until a full day has passed, but you can attack multiple people in the same day", "people only eat a few tens of grams of food a day, and don't need any variety in their diet, but some foods aren't nourishing and there's no way to tell in advance which they are"...

The more the game comes to resemble reality, the easier it will be for players. As it is, the game is an inconsistent mess of arbitrary rules. That's why I'm insisting on general solutions to problems that aren't obvious bugs - the very last thing this game needs is more special cases.

[Tiamo]

Making Cantr fun to play as a combination of an RPG and a society building game should, in my opinion, be the central goal. Realism and easy gameplay are some of the means to accomplish this goal.

I agree with marginoferror that the game is full of arbitrary, non-logical rules and procedures. This is because over the years hundreds of changes have been made to the game without keeping the central goal of the game, and the basic game idea, in mind.
Therefore i think the game idea, the key game mechanisms and the central goal will have to be redesigned and redocumented, and guidelines will have to be made for future changes to the game (for the code as well as for the tree of resources/projects/items). Don't rely on the minds and memories of the design team, write it all down!
After that everything within the game that is contradictory to this design document should subsequently be erased from the game, or changed into design-abiding procedures and elements, even if this hurts individual players/characters in the game.

[Missy]

Skipping the whole melting proccess.

Uh, no.
A broken lock is a brocken lock, NOT 10 grams of iron; also what if you were holding the key and someone else breaks your lock? Your key just randomly turns into 10 grams of iron, yes; VERY realistic

You see, things don't always make sense in this game for programming purposes. For example when someone dies, instead of dropping dead on a road they end up in a town on either end of the road. And there's various other things that happen in strange mysterious ways. I don't see anything wrong with the suggestion I made. When a lock is broken, the keys become exempt anyhow. So they're just taking up data-base space and space in characters inventories. It's a solution that doesn't harm anybody. Program it so that when the lock is broke, it becomes iron.

For the record, I am not against a machine to melt down old keys. I'd take whatever method I could get to get rid of old keys or unneeded iron accessories.

And yes, I agree, there's no need to be rude. You see I've been around since the late 100's early 200s of this game and so I've seen the implementation of crowbars and was around when people with locks on buildings was just as scary as your average pirates are, and have been around to await this godsend of an implementation of being able to get rid of old keys. It's not often I make a suggestion (because usually there isn't a suggestion out there that hasn't already been suggested since I've begun playing this game and I get sick of hearing them.) But I'm also really tired of waiting on some implementations that were approved years ago RL time, to be implemented. I need some damn place to put keys, and going in an abandoned building that has a lock on it to drop them, is ridiculous. It's not good for anything but taking up space. Just like the seven anvils in a prison that someone decided to add iron to and work on a little bit so that they needed built. Really, I could give two craps about the anvils because I guaruntee you that my chaacters combined have 20x more useless keys (in iron) than it takes to make those useless anvils.


Sometimes I day dream about dropping those useless keys on the ground so that Newspawns will pick them up thinking they hit the jackpot and run off with them.

[Appolom]

Now I feel bad.

Missy, the only thing I thought was dumb was a key magically turning into 10 grams of iron when somebody breaks a lock. If that was implemented, they would know when theives broke into something because their key is gone and they have an extra 10 grams. Sorry again, never ment to be rude!

EDIT: the? I ment they! theeeeyyy

[Missy]

The idea of someone realizing that the key turned into iron is unlikely if you're not given a message that says "Someone broke lock number 2828282 and you have 10 grams of iron." Especially because people don't usually check their inventories on a daily basis.

Add to the fact (unless it's been changed, I haven't heard any lately,) people usually already know when a locks being broke because you can hear that happening. "You hear someone trying to break lock 38383838 to courthouse and jail" or whatever it is that it says.

[Appolom]

What if you are in a different town?