some needed balancing

[kroner]

in the past the cantr economy was something unstable in that:
1) tools were too easily made without infrastructure
2) once things were built, they were here to stay, meaning that the net amount of "stuff" in cantr was always increasing.

the combination of these two was very bad since high quility stuff was being produced at a rapid rate.

the cantr staff then began to combat these problems, starting with the first, by making production more and more drawn out and complicated, requiring more infrastructure. then the second issue was adressed with item deterioration.

but there are still a fair number of issues that remain.

-machine deterioration: only end products currently deteriorate. this means that deterioration misses the mark completely. it's intention was to balance things so that the "old money" entrenched wealth nolonger had such an advantage, since they would have to pay to maintain all of their infrastructure. but this infrastructure that gives them such an advantage goes untouched. for example, suppose there's man who owns a building full of machines. with these machines he's able to make sabres, which he gives to his friends or sells. deterioration now affects the sabres, but not the machines, meaning that the man can continue to make new sabres whenever he feels like it without any cost of maintaining his machines, yet the people he sells/gives sabres too are all the more dependent on him since their weapons will eventually break. plus buildings and machines tend to make up the higher levels of wealth. most characters own a stone hammer, but relatively few have a smelting furnace. it's important that eventually machines and buildings will also suffer damage. deterioration (i think) should also be based more on use than on time.

-repair: the ability to repair damaged items as a cheaper alternative to replacing them when they broke would of course aleviate some of the concern that deterioration is too harsh.

fortunately both of these fixes are already planned and should be introduced when the programming department can get to them. but now i get to the crux. the crux, i say!

-effectness/ease of production/durability balancing: for any given tool, machine, weapon, etc, there are 3 major factors that have to be considered.
1. effectiveness: how well the item does its job (think bone club v. crossbow).
2. ease of production: how easy the item is to make.
1. durability: how long the item takes to deteriorate.
there's been a steady decrease in the ease of production of most items as cantr has progressed as a game, but for the most part it has continued to be well balanced against effectiveness. in other words, items that a harder to make are appropriately better at doing their job than their cheaper counterparts. the problem is that durability has never been balanced against the other two factors. take the example of crossbows and sabres. both are appropriately difficult to make for the damage that they do, but crossbows deteriorate at a ridiculous rate while sabres are fairly durable. with this third aspect introduced, sabres are completely unbalanced and crossbows are garbage. in cases like this, one or more of the 3 aspects needs to adjusted so that things are once again balanced.
additionally, with so many variables now available for a given item, it would be nice to have more choices. many tools and machines only have one type, usually very difficult to produce, but also with high durability and effectiveness. now that ease of production has decreased so much, this makes attaining these types of items near impossible for many characters. what we need are alternatives to current machines and tools that have higher ease of production balanced with either significantly lower durability and/or effectiveness. examples would be the bronze idea that was suggested. other building materials like cement/concrete also fall under this category.

so in short, i'm challanging whatever department is in charge of implementing resources and items (resource department?) to do a better job balancing things, taking into account the 3 major aspects of each item, and also to make more choices for any given item type so that characters can choose what balance of effectiveness, ease of production and durability is feasable for them to produce.

[rklenseth]

Yes, that would be Resources that would be responsible but a some of what you ask for just doesn't exist yet and would need programming ie. repairing so it would also involve Programming Department.

The only reason why deterioration is now in the game is because I jumped the gun and set values for weapons, protection, and tools. Programming, I think, wasn't ready for us to set the values that is why there isn't any repairing right now. Deterioration hasn't been set for machines, vehicles because I'm sure people don't want to see there huge machines crumble to dust before they are able to repair them. Plus, I don't think Anthony would let me touch them.

But all your ideas are good and I believe there are plans for implementing them as soon as they can. All staff members have real lives and Programming has to build the code from scratch and then test it. Then Resources has to set all the values for every single object in the database, which is ever growing, which takes time. So all we ask is for some patience.

[kroner]

cool

what i was asking for is balancing with the things that are already in place. and some new stuff. that's independent of programming (most likely).

[The Industriallist]

Yes, even if we are doomed to degredation resets until the repair function comes in (we don't need to be! Really we don't!) it would be nice to know that when it goes live the world will be suitable for it.