resource depletion

[SekoETC]

How would you define using a building? Being in it? That would actually be a handy way of avoiding the problem of defining what happens to people in a building when it collapses. If a building wouldn't gain deterioration as long as there is a living person inside it, it could never be destroyed while someone is inside. Buildings might still have to be repaired if they have been standing unused for years, but if they were used regularly, deterioration would happen so rarely that it wouldn't need to be taken into account.

[Jos Elkink]

I like that suggestion ... About buildings/vehicles/deterioration, I mean ...

[Razorlance]

I agree with this...

Why did people settle in real life, why aren't they all nomads? Because they noticed that by staying in one place you can produce food safely. There should be no quick farming projects. The duration should be fixed but the amount of people working on it would affect the amount of outcome.

There could also be foraging where the project duration could be set between 1 to 8 hours, but the results would be greatly randomized and generally smaller than with long-term projects. This might save someone's life if they arrive in town 90% starved and need to get something quickly, but it would not be a reliable method of sustaining yourself. If people had to dedicate 5 to 20 days to farming in order to get good results, this would encourage some people to become professional farmers while others would start buying food from them.

Wow. A very simple idea that would help the problem (without making it impossible for newspawns) and makes a lot of sense. I like it.

...and this.

Basically we could decrease the manually gatherable amount of food by 50% or more percent and introduce fields as a new type of machine. They would be slightly more effective than manual gathering as it is at the moment but would have an minimal output of let's say 20kg.

Make a days foraging just enough for about 2 or 3 days worth of food and then fields have a minimum participation of about 3 or 4 people as well as a minimum output. Perhaps instead of introducing fields just alter the current attributes of the harvesters to achieve the result as fields.

Another change I'd like to see if we do get bigger towns, and I think it's been mentioned before, but filters on the events page, i.e. buttons to only show certain things, like movement of people only, people giving you items, etc. And possibly better control on how much events we can see. Why does it currently 'forget' all the events once you reload the page several times? I'd like to see buttons at the bottom for one day, two days etc upto maybe seven, and then all events and get it to remember them.

But in the end if you want people to gather together you have to provide an incentive to do so.

[tazer]

I hate to bash on Jos's Idea but I think you will have the reverse effect you want if you put in resource depletion. Im not gonna elaborate as many people already have.

I think you should make the world smaller the same way earth was "made smaller" which was just get more people and increase travel speed/ease.

Travel speed is already pretty fast so we just need more players. Before we get more players however these goals needs to be accomplished:

1. Website reliability- Alot of players aren't going to come back because of this crash and it's hard to get new players unless the game is stable.

2. Speed- The game is to laggy for many players.

3. Final step is just to get more players interested. My suggestions for this are banners that players can put up on websites, incentives for voting on top game websites/ refferring players. And just asking the player community to help you recruit.

PS: More instant commmunication is nesscarry I personally like the fax machine approach (Radio but you can just walk into the room to see if any messages were received since you last checked.

[tazer]

Oooh I just realised how much I liked the idea of Cantr III.

I think food is way to easy to get, in Cantr III it should be harder to get. problem with making it harder to get now is all the big towns having hundreds of years of food already stored.

I personally think people should only be able to get 3 days worth of food for every day they work on the BEST food untooled (2 days on the worse ones) and harvested food should be NO MORE THAN 7:1

[Doug R.]

3. Final step is just to get more players interested. My suggestions for this are banners that players can put up on websites, incentives for voting on top game websites/ refferring players. And just asking the player community to help you recruit.

We've already done all of these.

[Andu]

must doooo!---> Building degeration

[El_Skwidd]

I saw a word used in a different post that is way cooler than bump...

*necromance*

Sweet.

Anyway, going back to Jos' idea... it's a great one. Basic economic principles: scarce resources must be allocated to fulfill unlimited wants. In Cantr there is no scarcity. What we have now is a fun game where you can produce whatever tools you want if you're willing to put in the time and effort. You can get a job and stuff but all of that is really kind of OOC because you could just do it yourself if you wanted to. You can RP with some great writers. There's no reason to fight a war other than ideological differences, which are hard to come by. Number one reason for a turf war? You have it, we want it, and we're going to kill you to get it.

Even beyond war, this opens up possibilities for legitimate businesses that would not be possible under the current system. Limited resources are a step in the right direction if we want to "shrink the world" and force people together.

Fields were mentioned as a type of machine; fantastic idea. Perhaps that'll finally give a widespread use to that mysterious resource called water.

Other concerns:
-I agree that server integrity is more important, but the lag seems not to be as much of a problem anymore. Am I alone in saying that?
-Recycling has to be implemented alongside of this change, for obvious reasons.
-Reception by players: would this really be horrible? Do you think we'll see a mass exodus because of this change? Or do you think that the new legitimate obstacles and dynamic world will actually increase player intrigue and perhaps attract people looking for a strategically oriented game? It's hard to play Cantr strategically because there needs to be some sort of economic confine to create strategy within.

EDIT: last post was seven days ago, so that's hardly a necromance. T_T

[formerly known as hf]

Wow, not sure how I missed this. Resource depletion was one of my very first (if not first) suggestions / posts here...

The way I see it, I would avoid absolute depletion. Each resource at a location would have a raw amount of currently available, and a rate of replenishment (either universal, but possibly differing between locations).

Forms of farming, then, would maybe not increase the amount gathered so much, but increase the rate of replenishment - thus requiring that people stick together to maintain viable farming communities - I agree with Doug here that food is potentially too plentiful in the game. Cities should rely upon a number of farmers - not massively so - but to a much greater degree than they do.

It would also give incentives to police resource gathering. If each location only had a certain rate at which resources replenish, they would have to be managed much more closely.

Of course, some raw materials might not replenish at all (coal, hematite etc.). What this would mean, I'm not sure. Probably wars... Many places in Cantr can currently shift vast quantities of raw materials out of the ground. I would imagine there would be a rush to extract all that can be extracted as quickly as possible and stockpile it, as Doug suggested. In the short term, this might spark some fun. In the long term, it look unlikely to be healthy for the game.


Here's how I would envisage a good means of solving how large Cantr is (other than reducing travel times, which would be something else to consider):
- Nerf base collection rates for food. If you being self sufficient with your hands, digging food and hunting should be all you have time for.
- Farming increases the capacity for production (ups the replenishment rates for food) and means that ensuring a steady supply of food is the prime reason for people to gather together.
- Mining etc. is limited by eventual resource depletion.
- This could potentially shake things up, as, for too long, gathering the raw materials was the best way to do it. Now, fighting for it becomes a viable strategy.

In the long term, I would introduce some form of prospecting. New coal veins, stone quarries etc. should be available for discovery.

Unless you want an entirely nomad society (and with the current dullness and length of travelling, this is Not a Good Idea.) a Cantr made of of very large farming hubs, with mining / gathering outposts seems a potentially better set up than what we currently have.

Forcing cooperation and tension is a good thing, forcing people to uproot all the time is not. This might force a few communities to become smaller, some will become larger, but it'll eventually settle down. With hard-coded limits on resources and a constant migration to find them, this poses too many questions for the longer term vision...

[BZR]

I'm not sure if we really need the resources depletion.

Cantrians would turn into Nomads, like mentioned before. <- IMO.

I think that we need:

- vehicles fuel - but without biodiesel, propane and oil would be enough - some constant trade would have to be estabilished in oil -rich locations

- building, roads, vehicles repeairing, but only using resources (bricks, stone, wood etc)

- some automation for players (NOT for chars) in doing the most time-consuming tasks. Maybe an option "Pick up all often used and older tools in the location". And then "repeair all often used tools in your inventory". Do we really need so many differnet tools? Especially hammers:P It just makes players dizzy.

- Always visible in the interface key "Get outside" which would automagically takes you out of all rooms and buildings, avoding many clicks and refreshes. Especially useful, when you have a storehouse inside another a workshop.


This game is original, we can't let it die

[Marian]

Do we really need so many differnet tools? Especially hammers:P It just makes players dizzy.

Yeah, I would definitely be all for the streamlining of the manufacturing process and the whole thing where parts of tools are used to build other parts of tools so that you can build a tool to build part of a machine, but that's probably something for another topic.

I've already put my two cents in this thread but just wanted to say again that I think some kind of a limit on resources is a good idea, and if done right (well, there's the catch...) it wouldn't force 'nomadic' societies but the exact opposite, if a higher level of technology or cooperation always meant bigger returns while trying to scratch out a living on your own became more difficult. (and the cooperation part should not always require the technology, but could be an alternative...four career farmers out in a field with hand tools gathering enough to feed a town versus one guy on a harvester that took a group effort to build.)

I just want to see an end to the whole thing with a newspawn sitting down in the middle of a busy town full of cars and machinery determinedly carving his little bone knife and digging up potatoes all by himself because he's just too freaking 'independent' to have anything to do with anybody else for any reason, I'm seeing way too much of that lately.

[Andu]

I'm not sure if we really need the resources depletion.

Cantrians would turn into Nomads, like mentioned before. <- IMO.

I think that we need:

- vehicles fuel - but without biodiesel, propane and oil would be enough - some constant trade would have to be estabilished in oil -rich locations

- building, roads, vehicles repeairing, but only using resources (bricks, stone, wood etc)

This game is original, we can't let it die

These things must be implemented.