there are more ships than living characters

[catwill]

I am doing my part. Instead of building, I have recently purchased two tandems, a raker, and very soon another raker.

[sherman]

On journies around Cantr I have seen many abandoned motor vehicles (and most notably couple of buses) and I were really happy to lockpick lock and get the bus just to find that it had no fuel Seems like cantr has major shortage of fuel since there lies many motor vehicles around abandoned..

Also there is many buildings abandoned and inside them many good manchines.. too bad they usually require coal or something that you don't find and so can't use them But on bright side they have lots of goods to rob

[amatorfati]

The salvage portion of the economy is definitely disproportionately smaller than it should be. What we should expect to see is regular reconnaissance missions into the underpopulated regions, professional scavengers, et cetera. Instead, so many characters I see in the busiest of towns continue to labor endlessly at collecting resources that already exist in massive stockpiles that will not run out in the near future. It's mind-boggling. Sometimes, yes, it does make sense. Being a big city doesn't guarantee that the most active traders necessarily have access to preexisting stockpiles. But many times I do know for a fact that people have more available to trade or hoard than they could reasonably spend in many decades, yet they intentionally employ others in that town, usually younger peons, to waste valuable hours of labor outside or at machines to produce finished product, of stuff they will never actually need.

I'm trying to wrap my head around what causes this. Is there a mild taboo of sorts against salvaging abandoned property? Is it too risky? Is the lack of any real political hierarchies counterproductive to any systematic recycling?

[sherman]

I would guess its pretty political thing...Or people just find it easier to harvest stuff

[Draco]

Just my opinion, but I think it goes along the line of "Oh, no, we can't kill any animals. It doesn't matter if they're dangerous, those poor things have the right to live as well, we're invading their territory...". I don't know wheter is roleplayed, or it's something some players "drag" to their characters; because it's the same mindset regarding abandoned property, and I see it in some "new" characters.

Unless my character has been strictly educated into not taking someone else's property, the main concern should be "Can I get caught if I take it? Will someone notice something's missing?". Same thing with hunting: If there's a pack of dangerous/agressive animals where I live, I'm hunting those bastards to extinction by default. I think it's a lack of "primal" behaviour, for the lack of a better term.

[BosBaBe]

I agree with all of what Draco said. I find the vehicle and vessel hording rather ridiculous. I have a character slaving away to gather items for a raker, but there are hundreds of the things just sitting around. Some towns have fleets of vehicles but nothing ever happens to them. Someone tries to steal one and suddenly they are the most wicked person on Cantr. Sure stealing is wrong, but I must admit some of my characters would snatch a vehicle or vessel if they weren't terrified of getting locked away for a good portion of their lives if they got caught. I like the idea of salvaging though. It's technically not stealing.

And the whole not killing animals thing is a bit annoying. They don't hesitate to try to take a chunk out of us so why should we? As long as it's not overdone, I think it's fine to hunt. People need to survive after all. But you're always going to get that person who looks at you like you're a total git when you kill an animal to feed your town since there is no natural food resources there. :/

So yeah, sophistication is good, but the primal instinct really shouldn't be so frowned upon. But this is all my opinion really. I'm not saying all hell should break loose, but I hope you guys get what I mean.

[SumBum]

Salvaging is a very hit or miss career. It takes some time to acquire a crowbar, depending on where you spawn. Traveling is very slow and, again depending on where you are, you probably have to go through several towns before finding one that hasn't been picked over. I had a char who struck out once to make it big salvaging. He died with not much more to his name 10+ years later. I've also had chars who were very lucky and arrived at an abandoned town at just the right time. One of my chars just discovered more crap than she could haul on her tandem in three trips.

As for chars not wanting to kill animals, some of that might be attributed to when animals weren't reproducing or migrating properly. My memory could be fuzzy on that as far as what was actually broken or not. It used to be if a population got below a certain number then they'd most likely go extinct even without hunting. In places where there's no gatherable food source, consider it a form of wildlife management. You know...if you hunt things to extinction then you have none to breed more. But, yes, there are an annoying number of chars who think nothing of petting aggressive animals with one hand while they use their other hand to stitch up wounds caused by that very animal. I do have chars who dislike hunting for various reasons, though.

[Draco]

Salvaging is a very hit or miss career. It takes some time to acquire a crowbar, depending on where you spawn. Traveling is very slow and, again depending on where you are, you probably have to go through several towns before finding one that hasn't been picked over. I had a char who struck out once to make it big salvaging. He died with not much more to his name 10+ years later. I've also had chars who were very lucky and arrived at an abandoned town at just the right time. One of my chars just discovered more crap than she could haul on her tandem in three trips.

I agree that for a lone individual, salvaging is a very risky career, that can end up in either rags, riches or an early grave, depending on the moment you arrive. But for relativelty developed cities, especially those who are surrounded by abandoned settlements that once were inhabited, they have the possibility to outfit an expedition in decent vehicles, with enough firepower to stake a claim and protect it until they have scavenged it; which makes the activity much safer and more profitable (Though still hit or miss), but I haven't seen any of those, ever. I think that's what Amatorfati meant.

[BosBaBe]

True, but perhaps with more people getting involved and vehicles it would be a good idea? Many hands make light work, and with vehicles one can go out and explore far enough. Draco also has another point, nearby towns could branch out and salvage abandoned neighboring towns.

As for hunting, that issue with the migration and reproduction rates is understandable, but I'm talking about when there are plenty of animals around and they're just fine, but everyone is without food and you get frowned upon for killing one animal. xD That's annoying. Sure we don't kill all of them, that would be stupid since then there goes the population. Plus if one doesn't keep them at bay they attack more frequently. It's like saying tigers are a protected species, so they never get hunted. You're bound to have people being attacked by them constantly.

[amatorfati]

I deeply agree about the hunting thing, and the broader point made about primal instincts.

There's definitely too much OOC influence in the game that we just accept as axiomatic. The laws are the same in virtually every place. No stealing, no hitting other than mutually agreed sparring, no killing. This or that container or building has free stuff for all. That's about it. Soul-crushingly boring. How did this come to be? Did some civilization once exist that covered every known continent, and mandated these laws universally across the world? No? Then surely we should find it strange that the laws are virtually the same, not just in commonalities but down to almost always the same punishments, same wording, and same order of severity! Yes, in the real world, human cultures do have much in common, but they also tend to have absurdly distinct differences. We don't really see this much in Cantr unfortunately. Distinct cultures are very difficult to form, and people in-game often oppose them on OOC grounds.

So when people on these forums complain that too many chars are fleeing the towns to sail off into the blue never to return, and they accuse this behavior of ruining the game, I can't help but roll my eyes. This is nonsense. Interested, involved, and content chars don't suddenly up and leave. Bored, disillusioned, disenfranchised, and unhappy chars do. Punishing sailors can't fix this. Perpetual seafarers are a symptom, not a cause, of the decay of the game.

Food rotting even in containers and indoors would begin to solve this issue. Vehicle and building decay would be wise also. Not only is it way, way beyond the suspension of disbelief that characters today can commonly subsist on crops harvested more than a hundred years ago, but the implications of this have been completely horrible for gameplay. IMO mandatory death from old age would not be necessary if food, vehicle, and building decay are added. The game would finally feel more finished, I believe, if this happened. It wouldn't feel as broken as it does now, and we hopefully wouldn't see so many posts on the forums about how the game is long dead.

I would nearly go as far as to say even notes should decay, forcing players to be active about preservation of history and other records, but I already know it would be universally opposed, and part of me also doesn't like history perishing like this. Buildings and vehicles are different. There's nothing irreplaceable about these things. It's trivial to write down the history of a town; the physical stuff does not need to remain intact indefinitely for history to survive.

I agree that for a lone individual, salvaging is a very risky career, that can end up in either rags, riches or an early grave, depending on the moment you arrive. But for relativelty developed cities, especially those who are surrounded by abandoned settlements that once were inhabited, they have the possibility to outfit an expedition in decent vehicles, with enough firepower to stake a claim and protect it until they have scavenged it; which makes the activity much safer and more profitable (Though still hit or miss), but I haven't seen any of those, ever. I think that's what Amatorfati meant.

This is 100% what I had in mind. Lone scavengers are definitely going into a riskier business than would a well-supplied group bearing some official-looking note signed by local leaders authorizing explorers to peacefully attempt salvage.

[BosBaBe]

I agree with so much of what was said, I don't even know where to start. Deterioration would be a good implementation I think for most things. It adds struggle to the game. Where is the fun when everything is done and you have everything you need, then you just sit on your arse? Plus I'd like to have a creepy character that lives in a rundown house.

And it's very true what was said about laws. Everything is the same. It's this rigid society everywhere you go, with the only difference being severity of punishment. There are some towns who will slap you on the wrist for stealing and others who will kill you on the spot. Life has become monotonous, you spawn in a town with this standard society, you get what you want, then what? There is no struggle to survive, no different cultures, no sense of urgency. I started playing last year and just made more and more characters because it was -boring-. And then my characters will sit there supposedly sleeping, listening to the same chatter day in and day out. More than anything, I just see giggling and people chatting each other up, like the main thing in this game is sex drive and the search for romance. This I detest. I actually had a character who was sleeping, slowly starving herself, and some guy comes along and tries to convince her to go on living. How does he do it? By touching her and offering to sleep with her, screw actually getting to know her. And when she goes straight back to sleep, he says "At least have some fun with me before you die...". Appalling. I know some characters are purposely made this way, but the sad thing is this is most of what I've seen. And sure this might not be the right thread to voice this, but I can't care less right now (also that event happened weeks ago so 4 Day rule is still being followed). It just makes me sad.

So I really don't blame people for taking off, never to be seen again. I think we should start striving to fix these issues, and to try to be different. If I could have my own town, I'd make it a completely different society. And I think we should maybe try adding a more survival based system. It's so boring to just collect all the time and then have everything you want. And then everything stock piles up and there are tons of cars and ships lying around, and people running around in expensive things.

Ps. Sorry for the rant, but it's just getting on my nerves.

[hyrle]

I agree with the sentiments on building and vehicle deterioration, and I've long advocated for adding these items. Especially if it was setup so that vehicle deterioration and building deterioration would cause someone to be able to enter them (locked or not) when in a "crumbling" state so that they can easily be salvaged and either restored (with a lot of effort) or disassembled easier. This would cause people to have to maintain what they have or cause it to be easily "cleaned up".

On the subject of sailors leaving town... I recently had one do that. He took a boat and some tools and some food and just left. One could argue that his 12 years of service to the town caused him to earn these things, but he did it unexpectedly. Why? Because his girlfriend left him because he kissed another girl, and then once the breakup happened, the "other girl" rejected him, and then he watched the "other girl" go seduce someone else. And all of that was rather public, so he was embarrassed. If you think about it... NO ONE would want to be around that. So yes.. my character took off rather than blow up or get violent. Any of those reactions would be realistic given his situation and all the embarrassment around it. Did I catch some flack OOC for my choice? Yep. But it seems the logical alternative for my character.