Please let us see our exact % effectiveness for projects.

[The Sociologist]

While the new meters are great in some respects, the inability to see our own exact % effectiveness when starting a new project now makes it impossible to work efficiently, especially in short projects.

It also gives a huge advantage to anyone prepared to load a screen dump into a graphics processor, count the pixels, and gradually work out the precise formulae the game now uses. Every computer game can be 'cracked' in such ways, but do we really want to give a boost to such pedantic nonsense?

It's clear that at least some of us would like to see this one critical value--overall effectiveness for project work--still expressed as an exact numerical value. This is because projects themselves work in an exact numerical way. This poll is so you can express an opinion on that.
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[Pirog]

You certainly got a point in that some people will learn to abuse it and gain unfair advantages from that, so I'm for it.

[The Industriallist]

It also gives a huge advantage to anyone prepared to load a screen dump into a graphics processor, count the pixels, and gradually work out the precise formulae the game now uses. Every computer game can be 'cracked' in such ways, but do we really want to give a boost to such pedantic nonsense?.

I will, absolutely, do that as soon as I can. If necessary I will do it seperately for each character.

Also, since I don't do too well with pictures, I'll be converting my values to numbers as soon as I get over my lazyness and make a template. I won't talk about them...but I didn't usually anyway.

So really...if I don't have numbers I will figure them out, because they're too important not to.

EDIT: I just reallized we can now detect other people's exact strength and tiredness too. I don't think you wanted to do that...

[Molested.Peach. (cky)]

Well, I don't know about projects but the new Health.. I would like to see a percentage still. I don't like the bar all the way up; I want to know if I have 2 days to live. Or 1. It's hard to estimate.

[Spider]

I have a question, one of my guys is working on pumping water....he is really tired, i would guess about 37% of the bar....can't really tell, but its more then 1/3. The project is a repeat thats suppose to finish every hour but with him being tired he can't finish it that quick so now my question is when does fatigue get add? I mean, i have some others working on some projects which haven't finished and have no fatigue, so is my character's small repeat making him tired quicker then if he was working on a big one?

[kroner]

there are 197 pixels in the bar. this doesn't include the first pixel line, which is red even when the bar is empty.

[viktor]

The Sociologist is a genuis, "It also gives a huge advantage to anyone prepared to load a screen dump into a graphics processor, count the pixels, and gradually work out the precise formulae the game now uses."-The Sociologist-Sun Nov 14, 2004 8:22 am.
thank you now my characters will still be able to determine trade values for healing foods

[kroner]

ok, so if you check the properties of the meter image, the defining properties are listed in the web adress. the last number is the fraction that the bar is full, ie the damage, tiredness, ect value. so no pixel counting is necessary.

[The Sociologist]

ok, so if you check the properties of the meter image, the defining properties are listed in the web adress. the last number is the fraction that the bar is full, ie the damage, tiredness, ect value. so no pixel counting is necessary.

Even better, kroner! So you just view the page source and look for something like:

<TR><TD>Tiredness:</TD><TD><IMG SRC="image.progressbar.inc.php?width=200&height=20&proportion=0.065"></TD></TR>

My point remains of course why should we be having to do this to find a number? It is really unnecessary. And then I guess we'll then need to put that together with the other bars to get the eventual overall impact on productivity, surely? I'm afraid I really hate games where I need to do a lot of this sort of thing.
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[Pirog]

Wouldn't it be great if people just played game like the should be played instead of always trying to win them by using bugs and trying to uncover values that was meant to be hidden?

[The Industriallist]

So the game should be played without any effort to produce things? Because if you want to produce things, you want to know how fast you can produce them. And for that, you need the numbers.

If they don't want that, take away the number of days on manufacturing projects, the grams/day on resource projects, and why not...the % completion as well. And tell us that that's what they want, so we don't have to guess why these terrible things are happening to us.

[Pirog]

So the game should be played without any effort to produce things?

That depends on how you mean. I don't think Cantr should be about optimizing the production/economy. The kind of players who constantly does that is ruining almost all games...from fotball manager games to society simulators to dungeon-looting games.
The ones that learn exactly how to jump in shoot-em-up games so it is virtually impossible to hit them etc. They often win the games, but they also often ruin the point of the game with their urge to win by any means necessary...

[The Industriallist]

Powergaming in real life is called success...Other games the spirit of the game is not necesarily embodied in what the game actually does (as in the jumping...I'm quite sure if you were in a gunfight bouncing like that wouldn't help any...). In cantr, unless stated otherwise, the game world is exactly what the game is about. Optimization within it's confines is just a sign of a character who knows what he's doing.

But besides that. With this chaos, I'm about ready to quit trying to make any sort of economic action, because it's just not going to work. That leaves the entire game gutted from my angle. You can still...maybe...massacre people with existing weapons. Yay... and you can still RP. With only those left...I just don't see the point. RP without the whole system backing it is empty, and violence is too. Cut out the economy, and the game will deservedly die. Cut it down to effectively random chance, and it will suffer badly, at least. Do that but allow people with some math and computer-use skills (myself included) to bypass some of the problems...DOOM.

[kroner]

pirog>
it's better that everyone know how to work the game rather than just the people who are able to figure it out. that's why i posted that discovery on the forum. if people kept it a secret so that they alone could take advantage of it, then there would be a problem.

this is also why it's so silly that the envelop exploit has to remain secret. it's hardly an exploit if everyone knows about it.

[The Industriallist]

pirog>
it's better that everyone know how to work the game rather than just the people who are able to figure it out. that's why i posted that discovery on the forum. if people kept it a secret so that they alone could take advantage of it, then there would be a problem.

this is also why it's so silly that the envelop exploit has to remain secret. it's hardly an exploit if everyone knows about it.

This one's even worse...the envelope thing can be detected, in theory. There's simply no way to detect reading the bars. So if reading them is banned, only people who choose to be honest will be effected by the ban.