Increase required quantities for vehicles by x10

[returner]

Just a quick one here.. currently we have a major problem with how easy it is to make vehicles, in particular motor vehicles. To try and dull the number of motor vehicles being made, we've implemented fuel however that's not helping.

Vehicles are too damn easy to make, and are wholly unrealistic, even for a game/society simulator. I proprose we multiply the resources required to make a vehicle by 10, which is absolutely fair.

Literally, your characters are not making the cars we envision. They're not even sturdy. Really, they're just a floor, and a few thin panes of glass.

Take a stationcar for example. The frame weighs about 7000 grams, which is 7 kilograms. This is less than the weight of a real-life baby.
The windows and wheels weigh under a kilogram.

In total, if I were to exaggerate, a stationcar weighs about 10,000 grams, or 10 kilos. I understand that the kilograms in-game are not matched to real life, but 10 kilos of iron is NOT hard to obtain. That is the issue here.

However, if we are to look at the weight-realism issue, I have to ask.. how the hell can 7 kilos of steel and iron support up to FOUR people, of a combined weight of almost 250 kilograms?

If there is a 7kilogram piece of metal suspended in the air somehow, and 250 kilos drops on it, I guarantee it would break.

ENDRANT

[wadko]

Not cool.

[returner]

Can you elaborate / explain why? I can only assume that by saying 'not cool', you personally dislike this suggestion because it inconveniences your characters.

Cars should be a very complex thing to make. They took thousands of years to invent in real life, and are damn heavy. Nowdays it wouldn't be uncommon to see a man in his twenties with a bone spear or longbow driving around in one.

[theguy]

Well most of the excess vehicals are ones that have been made before not really new ones (I think) but its still not that easy to make a van or something easier than it was before but not that easy not everybody owns one especially island with Burgeo thats still developing

You also missed the fact that now those vehicals need petrol adding an upkeep cost as well

[wadko]

returner, I'm playing this game for fun not as a punishment. I don't want my char to work 1 year irl till it can build a simple car.

In addition, for me there are more important things to implement than making a lot of chars life miserable.

[SekoETC]

Weights in Cantr don't make much sense in general. In real life you'd also be able to produce several kilos of iron and steel in a day, I bet, you just needed much bigger equipment. Likewise you could cut down several trees in a day and they would be very heavy. Since Cantr doesn't allow dragging things behind you down a road or using animals to drag things, transportation would get very difficult with increased rates, even though it would make more sense. Not to mention current resources in stock would lose their value. So it's probably best to accept that the weights are not linear and most likely at the upper end of the scale, a kilo actually means a ton.

[returner]

Well most of the excess vehicals are ones that have been made before not really new ones (I think) but its still not that easy to make a van or something easier than it was before but not that easy not everybody owns one especially island with Burgeo thats still developing

You also missed the fact that now those vehicals need petrol adding an upkeep cost as well

Actually, I mentioned that in my second sentence lol...

returner, I'm playing this game for fun not as a punishment. I don't want my char to work 1 year irl till it can build a simple car.

In addition, for me there are more important things to implement than making a lot of chars life miserable.

I'm sorry, I understand you are playing this game for fun. But no matter how primitive the car is, no human or Cantrian should be able to develop a technology so advanced in a primitive world, (both in real life and in a simulated life) in under a real life year.

If you work together (!!!) and ACTUALLY SIMULATE A SOCIETY, then it would not take a year to make a car. It would take a couple of real-life months, from scratch.

This suggestion encourages people to work together, which is the whole idea of Cantr, is it not?

However,

Weights in Cantr don't make much sense in general. In real life you'd also be able to produce several kilos of iron and steel in a day, I bet, you just needed much bigger equipment. Likewise you could cut down several trees in a day and they would be very heavy. Since Cantr doesn't allow dragging things behind you down a road or using animals to drag things, transportation would get very difficult with increased rates, even though it would make more sense. Not to mention current resources in stock would lose their value. So it's probably best to accept that the weights are not linear and most likely at the upper end of the scale, a kilo actually means a ton.

This is an issue I also considered while posting this.. You're right, if the frame of a vehicle is 20,000 grams, a character would be unable to put it on.
Two possible solutions are this:
1) Divide up the car parts into 'Panels', and you'd need X number of panels to add to the Car Project.
2) Once 'garages' are implemented, perhaps you add the iron to a machine, which builds the part, which then adds it to the Car project.


It's too easy to make cars.. cars don't deteriorate yet, and as someone recently said - there are more cars in locations than people.

[Snake_byte]

Returner, you should take into consideration, someone working alone and from scratch. Why don't you collect everything you need by yourself and then come back and tell us if your opinion has changed. That would include resources to make all the tools you need and then, even more to make the actual car...

However, most people work for others who have vehicles made or the tools and resource already gathered to earn the things they need more quickly.

So yeah, it doesn't take that long, sometimes, but you can't go and penalize the ones who have worked for it. Because, it does take quite a bit of time already, even if everything -is- in one area. Maybe it doesn't seem that way because of successful trades, but then again, that's a good thing that EVERYONE worked hard to accomplish.

[Piscator]

You didn't miss the fact that cars need fuel now, but you missed the point why it was implemented. Fuel isn't supposed to keep people from building new cars or the reduce the number of existing ones, it's supposed to make owning a car a continual investion.

The big flaw in Cantrian economy is that only building something new costs you something, not maintaining your wealth. The economy only works, while there is still something new to build. If that's not the case anymore, the demand for new resources and labour, and thus their worth, ceases to exist.
In the past it has been tried to counter this trend by creating new things to build, sometimes with insane costs (furniture), but this can only slow down the final economic collaps and makes the gameplay generally more tedious. Upping the prises of vehicles falls into the same category. It's not a solution for anything.

[KVZ]

I am against this suggestion. There are other ways to make Cantrians life harder but still fun.

[returner]

It's not about making Cantr life harder.

It's about making cars rightfully harder to get.

Cars need to be a 'golden age' thing.

You know, something an empire is only capable of building..

..something only a successful civilization or society can build.

I should turn this into a poem.

[Marian]

Cars are already a lot harder to make than they used to be. If you make it even harder, people will just stop making them altogether, and that doesn't help anyone. It would hurt developing communities, just like all the other changes to make things harder have (pretend like you had to start a new civilization from scratch and duplicate the accomplishments of this one, only before you started God decided to completely change all the natural laws to be 10x more complicated and slow for a laugh) and established towns wouldn't even care because in most older places there are already more higher-end vehicles than active people.

You disregard fuel pretty quickly when it's actually one of the better changes we've had in...well, a very long time, and does a lot of what you want. Legacy cars are useless now without regular trade and infrastructure to support them. You know, things only a successful town or empire can provide. Random 20-somethings won't be cruising around in cars anymore (not that they really do now except if they stole it...) unless they're very well connected.

Most of your arguments are from a realism standpoint, and sorry, but what game are you playing again? Cantr is not even close to realistic in so many areas...cars are honestly a pretty random and trivial thing to be focusing on in comparison. You could replace all vehicles with horses and buggies tomorrow and it would give you your 'realism' fix but it still wouldn't solve the core problems with game balance. Just try to relax and have fun anyway, okay?

[returner]

Cars are already a lot harder to make than they used to be. If you make it even harder, people will just stop making them altogether, and that doesn't help anyone. It would hurt developing communities, just like all the other changes to make things harder have (pretend like you had to start a new civilization from scratch and duplicate the accomplishments of this one, only before you started God decided to completely change all the natural laws to be 10x more complicated and slow for a laugh) and established towns wouldn't even care because in most older places there are already more higher-end vehicles than active people.

You disregard fuel pretty quickly when it's actually one of the better changes we've had in...well, a very long time, and does a lot of what you want. Legacy cars are useless now without regular trade and infrastructure to support them. You know, things only a successful town or empire can provide. Random 20-somethings won't be cruising around in cars anymore (not that they really do now except if they stole it...) unless they're very well connected.

Most of your arguments are from a realism standpoint, and sorry, but what game are you playing again? Cantr is not even close to realistic in so many areas...cars are honestly a pretty random and trivial thing to be focusing on in comparison. You could replace all vehicles with horses and buggies tomorrow and it would give you your 'realism' fix but it still wouldn't solve the core problems with game balance. Just try to relax and have fun anyway, okay?

You raise good points and I actually agree with you.

I guess I'm suggesting things from the wrong angle. I want to see Cantr as a more realistic Society Simulator but it seems the majority of the players want it to remain as an RPG.

If I wanted to play an RPG, I'd go play WoW or the myriad of other (better) text-based RPG's. Cantr currently is an RPG with a taste of a Society Simulator and I always believed that Jos wanted this to be a Society Simulator with a taste of RPG. (if you read this Jos, please confirm/deny).

I'll stop with the society/realism encouraging suggestions from here on, clearly they're unwanted and clearly players prefer to have a quick fun materialistic game rather than a long-lasting character.

This is where reveri.es will defeat Cantr.

[Marian]

I'll stop with the society/realism encouraging suggestions from here on, clearly they're unwanted and clearly players prefer to have a quick fun materialistic game rather than a long-lasting character.

If you really looked at the tech tree, I think you'd see there's nothing 'quick' or 'fun' about most of it, it's already so bogged down in things that need machines that need tools that need machines that need tools and some random hard to find resource to make. I think there's resistance to this kind of suggestion mostly because people don't want to see it bogged down any farther - IMO we're already to far on the side of realism at the expense of fun. A lot of the existing tools/weapons/vehicles are from the past when they were much easier to make, and a lot of characters are just coasting on what the characters before them did, because the alternative is too daunting to even think about. Try browsing through the build list to see what you would need to make some of the more complex stuff from scratch and I think you'll find it's plenty hard enough. Then consider the fact that all your character needs to do is grow potatoes, and pretty much anything they want can be gotten by sucking up to the person holding the keys, and ask yourself if you can be bothered.

Sadly, that's the state Cantr's in and has been in pretty much the whole time I've been playing. I ranted about this in another thread earlier so I won't really get into it here, but what it boils down to is there's not a whole lot of motivation to do things unless you just enjoy motivating yourself for the sake of it...why it's still so insanely addictive in spite of that is anybody's guess.

[returner]

Yes but you don't NEED to make complex things, like you said. You just need potatoes. If you live in a primitive area, you will want a basic shelter (shack?) with a lock on it.

Then maybe you'll make some more advanced tools and produce iron a little more faster.

Then maybe even a bike.

Then you'll want more people living with you to expand into a city.. maybe a few houses, and a few jobs (resource runner, guard, clothier, etc).

THEN you'll want to start making more advanced machinery and tools..

And finally, once you have even more people and a bustling city, you might want to speed things up with vehicles. Maybe a motorbike?

At the very end, when you have everything you need, you'll want the best of the best (Because you can actually afford it) and you'll make a van.


-------------

However, this is what I feel you are saying:

Okay, I'm 20, I'm by myself, and I want to make a radio or a car.. geez, there's already a lot of resources and tools required, this is hard enough as it is..
When really, these high-end things should be left to leaders of large groups/towns etc to initiate.
We have too many extremely-aspirant people in the game.

You see too many 20/30 year olds leading groups and towns.. jumping the gun.
Cantr is a game which only gets really good in your fourties and older.
So it IS a slow-paced game. It WILL take you real-life years to get anywhere.

Anyway, this is majorly off-topic and a little rant of mine.
All the good original players who had the same mindset as me have now left or forsaken it for self-obtainment or materialistic shortcuts.