Farming and Grid system

[watermelonnose]

If the grid system is implemented the Cantr world it could be divided into areas of one, two and three dimensions.

The 1D areas would be for traveling from town to town. Paths could intersect at cross roads.

The 2D areas would be where people could settle. The settlement areas would be finite in size depending on the surrounding terrain. Any number of the available grids could be used for the town proper which could each have a finite number of buildings, no food growing or collecting resources in town except for things like flowers.

There should be a couple of grids in the town area dedicated as woodlands where people could hunt and forage for food or just enjoy a picnic. Foraging would yield only a little more than that needed to get by.

The grids not used for the town proper could be used for farming. Farming should take a greater effort than it does now. A farm would have to be prepared by building a fence around the grid, or I remember someone suggesting plowing the fields to prepare the farm, a good idea instead of building a fence. If the town wanted to reclaim the farm land for buildings a project to compact the soil would be in order.

The farmers would have to hire workers to operate machines or tools or bare hands for the food to be produced. The number of buildings on that grid would be limited once the farm was prepared. To get the seed for a
particular crop the farmer could collect seed from wild plants.

My contention is that food production is way to easy. (In Siom ~2000Kg potatoes from one haverster recently!) As a society building game, food should be a major component, but in most areas it has little value. I think food should have close to the same value to characters as iron does. Discounting the fact that individual characters place different values on things. If your character doesn't value iron substitute something that is of high value.

Food should not last forever when it is stored. Each type rotting at a different rate.

I like the idea someone had that the characters should have a varied diet or they would lose strength/health.

Other 2D areas outside of the towns would be where resources are gathered. Limiting the types of buildings that can be built in these areas to tool sheds and work shops with limited capacity to hold things.

The 3D areas would be great for mining as already suggested by others. It would really be great to first discover where to dig for minerals and then be able to lock the entrance to the mine. You would have to haul timbers into the mine to shore up the ceiling as you dug, build mine carts, etc.

[Solfius]

I think the best way to do that, to keep within the ethos of the game (leaving all the decisions like what to do where and where to settle etc) would be to merge those 3 different kinds of areas into one, except for travelling because travelling is just moving between two grids, so that would just be moving in a straight line

[Pirog]

I agree with Solfius.

Larger cities should be able to have a central core of just buildings and the surrounding locations could be used as farms/mines.

I really hope the grid system commes in effect.
It's the best idea yet.

[Meh]

But would a resourcless core of a city ever be used?
Chracters rarely feel the desire to move indoors.
There would have to be the other things like wheather/staminia to even cause people to want to move inside.

I am still partial to having a limited number of resource gathering projects being able to be done in the central location. Once these slots are filled with buildings or project then a place on the trails opens up as an close location that has a subset of the resources of the orginal. If that gets filled up this continues on with a subet of the subet. Or possbily each resource should be given a 50% to exist in a new location no matter how far away.

These close locations can be travel to quickly. So that boradband access isn't overly unblancing, it would take 1 cantr minute to move between these close locations. That's 5 minutes realtime which should be balancing enough for city chases.

[Solfius]

except the physical limitations mean the server only updates every 3 hours, so that's not possible to have a 5 min update for travelling

[Meh]

ick

So the smallest path would have to be at minimum of the time it takes the fastest vechcle to travel over a highway in one cantr hour. That still sounds fairly big.

That is unless the idea of setting the destination is used. Going between anyplace would take a minimum of a hour. You could choose where you stop at.

What should the maximum number of buildings, rooms, and resource projects be before it is full? 100? 1000?

I'm leaning towards 1000 but a resoruce project that takes two days for a single person to complete would be equal to 2 for the count. Tool & Vechicle building would take up 0 for most and 1 for some (cars & buildings).

So

number of rooms & buildings
+ number of resource gathering project days
+ 0 for all tool projects {jewerly, road improvmenets etc.}
+ 1 for all land vechicle and building projects
= total space

max space is 1000

[rklenseth]

I figure the grid system would work this way. A grid would be so big in space. You could perhaps travel over so many grids in a turn before you grow too tired to do so at which point you will not be able to travel anymore until next turn or even until you have slept or rested.

Anyways, Cantr II 2.0, I believe, is suppose to even more powerful than what we have today so things that can't be done with Cantr II 1.0 might be possible for Cantr II 2.0. And I'm bringing up Cantr II 2.0 because Jos, I think, said that the grid system would not be possible until then or at least wouldn't be worth putting in. Correct me if I'm wrong. I can't wait for a lot of the stuff to be implemented but we have to be patient because a lot of the Cantr Staff have real lives and can't program things twenty-four seven.

And on that note; any chance we can get a date for when Cantr II 2.0 might be implemented? I know Jos wanted to have it up by this summer but I guess things didn't pan out.

[watermelonnose]

I think the best way to do that, to keep within the ethos of the game (leaving all the decisions like what to do where and where to settle etc) would be to merge those 3 different kinds of areas into one, except for travelling because travelling is just moving between two grids, so that would just be moving in a straight line

I think it would be good have some separation between the town's business functions; banking, warehousing, baking, manufacturing, etc. and mining / farming. I can't imagine living in an open pit mine! Or doing my banking in the middle of the potato patch. As it is now everything is mixed together except those remote places with very limited resources.

It could still be determined IG how much of the land for farming and how much for the business part of town.

[watermelonnose]

[quote="David Goodwin"]But would a resourcless core of a city ever be used?

That is a good question. If most players chose to role play and use the town I think it would work.

Farms and mine grids would be limited to the type and number of buildings (maybe only something like tool sheds) encouraging the business part of town to be used.

I am also thinking that the mines and farms would be private businesses requiring a number of workers, but not open to the public.

[rklenseth]

I think the grid system will work where every grid will be the same amount of space and in each space only so many things can be done. Lets say each grid is 100 acres (probably too big for a grid space though). John uses 20 acres of that land to farm. Mike builds a house that takes up half an acre. Mary begins mining 30 acres for iron. Etc..... Understand? Mike later adds on a two more rooms to his building and now is house takes up an acre and a half. Anything that can be done or built on the land would take up space. You build a road and that could take up a few acres and depend upon what type of road. A highway would be bigger than a sand road. Once you run out of room in one grid then it can all spill over into another grid which would then be about the same amount of space. It would be possible for someone to travel a few space, which could be more spaces if you are using a vehicle or what kind of road there is. So lets say Quillanoi will take up 3 grids lengthwise and 3 grids widthwise. So it could be possible for a person to travel from one side of the city to the next in a turn.

[Solfius]

I think Jos will never allow the uses of areas to be set, so it all depends on how people use the space they have, so if the centre of a city evolves so it is just buildings then it is up to people if they stay there.

Agree with RKL, a grid square would be like a grid sqaure on a map, the same size.

I like David's formula, except vehicles should, like people, not be included in space taken up because they can be left on potto patches and stuff

[watermelonnose]

I like that last idea of rklenseth.

No one has commented on my contention about farming and food gathering. Do you agree or disagree?

[Meh]

Agree.

Random food gathering should provide enough food for two days? Farming would require a farm project by built once like a machine?
The sucess of farming would vary by day on the 20 day cycle and by location?
Anything can be farmed just certain things grow better in certain areas?
Existing harvestors would become "improved farms"?