The fantastic skill system...

[Solfius]

Right, Industrialist, according to Darwinism, anyways. Cantr is based on Lamarckism.

According to what I just read on the Wikipedia, what Industrialist just said sounds exatcly like Lamarckism.

Anyway, I don't think it's possible for Cantr to have Darwinian evolution, from a programming point of view.

[Junesun]

Sorry, I was referring to west's post. I'm distracted at the moment, sorry.

[west]

Um...but how can they have genetics if there's no child-bearing? Are you saying that a characters starting stats are based on the stats of the people in the town where they spawn, when they spawn?

That's certainly...interesting.

[Nick]

Um...but how can they have genetics if there's no child-bearing? Are you saying that a characters starting stats are based on the stats of the people in the town where they spawn, when they spawn?

That's what Jos said in another thread, and I tend to believe him.

[Black Canyon]

Does that mean that skill sets of new spawns are based on the skill sets of people who currently reside there... or the skill sets of persons who spawned there, regardless of whether they are still residing there?

[Nick]

Does that mean that skill sets of new spawns are based on the skill sets of people who currently reside there... or the skill sets of persons who spawned there, regardless of whether they are still residing there?

The people who are still living there... or else it really would have no bearing on survival of the fittest now, would it.

[kinvoya]

That's certainly...interesting.

It might be interesting if people could actually figure out what their skills are. Say all the good coalminers go to a coalmining town and generate even better coalminers until we have uber coalminers who consider everyone else inferior and control the coal of the world or some such scenario based on skill. That would create some intriguing societal interaction. But since most of the good miners will never know that they are good then...ummm...not so interesting.

It will work for natural selection in the animal heavy areas but not for much else, so far.

[Black Canyon]

Does that mean that skill sets of new spawns are based on the skill sets of people who currently reside there... or the skill sets of persons who spawned there, regardless of whether they are still residing there?

The people who are still living there... or else it really would have no bearing on survival of the fittest now, would it.

Good point. However..... given that many towns are predominately filled with new-spawns who are in the process of starving to death, it's a bit disturbing.

Perhaps we should start killing them off quickly to prevent them from tainting the gene pool.

[Nick]

Does that mean that skill sets of new spawns are based on the skill sets of people who currently reside there... or the skill sets of persons who spawned there, regardless of whether they are still residing there?

The people who are still living there... or else it really would have no bearing on survival of the fittest now, would it.

Good point. However..... given that many town are predominately filled with new-spawns who are in the process of starving to death, it's a bit disturbing.

Perhaps we should start killing them off quickly to prevent them from tainting the gene pool.

The best way to improve your gene pool is a swarm of animals. They kill off the weak, leaving only the strong.
Newspawns inherit the increasing strength, and over time the "race" of that town grows stronger.

[The Industriallist]

given that many town are predominately filled with new-spawns who are in the process of starving to death, it's a bit disturbing.

Perhaps we should start killing them off quickly to prevent them from tainting the gene pool.

They can't be contaminating it much, since there skills are based on the existing populance's skills...unless the formulas are set up in such a way that a newspawn typically changes the average rating for the next newspawn, you can save your strength and let them starve.

[Surly]

Hunting skills are definitely messed up. From the experience of a couple of my characters, you train both blocking animals AND attacking animals by being whacked. Also, both my rough-and-ready Spanish character (who was killed by the implementation of hunger as separate from damge... he died carrying at least 4000 kilos of efficient healing food) and my similarly rough-and-ready desert character (spawned there) were abysmal at hunting. Blocking 14 damage maximum (after lots of training) on an iron shield, from animals, is just ridiculous. Similarly, my character who never failed to block ALL of an attack before the stats change, was almost killed when he had an iron shield and a war hammer by a character with no shield and a composite recurve bow. So, yes, I'm thorougly against stats as they are implemented. They destroy RP and consistency and logic and combat and survival and just about everything. I don't think there should be a such thing as starting stats, and since the engine for training is so contrived, there shouldn't be any trained stats either, at least not for fighting. Really, all they do is harm flexibility and a variety of other good things.

I see somebody agrees with me...

On the subject of inherited stats or whatever... I agree with that. But only if stats are actually sorted out...

Surprising that.

[Dee]

confusing!

[The Sociologist]

:? confusing!

Correct. Nobody who's posting here seems to know what's going on or what they are talking about.

What I have determined so far is that you can have category "1" hunters (weakest) spawn in Djorf Hills South and the Kriff Hills (lion country), followed immediately afterwards by a category "4" hunter (strongest) spawning in Drojf. I questioned earlier why Drojf should be producing "supermen", but nobody commented or answered.

(Note: it's not my fault the game keeps having almost all my new charries spawn in an area of four towns.)

Three possibilities:

1) There is still a massive randomization factor mixed in with the "genetics" and I just happened to be "unlucky" in two cases and "lucky" in one.

2) The supposed "Lamarckian Genetics" process has not been implemented yet, or at any rate does not work with averages.

3) The system may randomly assign your newspawn to have a "parent" in the town and then awards you the skills of that parent. Therefore, so long as there is at least one category "4" hunter in Drojf, you have some small chance of inheriting their skill.

Overall, however, my experience with spawning new charries recently suggests that this supposed "Lamarckian" system produces no observable results so far and may not even be properly implemented yet.

If (3) is how it works, however, then yes, someone could build themselves a "barbarian horde" by driving out or killing all category "1" and category "2" hunters. There are ways to determine which are which and it isn't very difficult to do.

So if you gradually ended up with only category "4" hunters in "Pirate City", then only category "4" hunters could ever spawn there, unless of course there is a randomizing "mutation" factor also.

Anyhow, over time the game will start to resemble "Darwin Pond" rather more than a roleplay game.

[The Industriallist]

Missing a large possibility:
We have very little evolutionary effect, and little or no skill-growth effect. We started with huge random variations. Thus your assumption that spawning into a harsher environment ought to make you tougher is based on the false premise of some sort of equilibrium having developed.

We're nowhere near an equilibrium. Also, as far as I've seen, your survival only depends on skills if you have a shield...which many newspawns won't ever get...

[swymir]

The problem is cities are full of weak people and cities are where newspawns keep coming. The people who are good at hunting go to the remote areas where there aren't any restrictions on hunting.

But I like the skills system. I trust in the staff and whatever they do I will support except to make the game more like the other billion internet games.