Resets and repops

[Adam Wiggins]

[snip...bunch of stuff which i don't have anything to add]
[JCL:]
> At the moment I've been intending to make the TrashCollectors (cf
> earlier discussion with ChrisG on removing waste objects) do this as a
> side effect of their normal rounds.  The base purpose of the TC's are
> to accellerate object decomposition, and provide an amusing (cheap)
> target and toy for users.

I suppose this depends where you're trying to go with your system; as
folks reading this list probably already know, I'm desirous of a more
serious (as in, no 'cute' stuff) and realistic mudlib.  I like the
above pretty well but personally I just don't want to see any 'system'
stuff while I'm playing the game, and the man-in-the-white-lab-coat falls
into this category (as does doors locking behind you, when idiot zone
builders don't flag their zones reset-if-empty).  We just keep a counter
that indicates how long the item has been in contact with a player; when
it gets to large in relation to a "decayability" factor for the item
(which is computed from size, material, and relative value) it disappears,
presumably picked up by a wandering goblin of some sort.  The one weakness
with this, of course, is that objects lying in frequently-travelled rooms
(such as the main street of a city) never disappear, unless picked up by
a player or NPC.  I feel that this is a strength, however - if there's
a huge pile of junk next to the fountain it doesn't go away without someone
cleaning it up specifically.  If the town wants to implement janitor-mobiles,
that's the builder's choice.

Reminds me of an early experience on one of my first muds, in which I quickly
found out why fighting cityguards was a bad idea:

> k guard
You slash the cityguard hard.
The cityguard slashes you very hard.
>
A janitor arrives from the south.
The cityguard does a quick maneuver, sending your weapon flying out of your grasp.
The janitor picks up a huge two-handed sword.
> get sword
You don't see that here.
The janitor leaves north.
> flee n
You flee head over heels.
Perimter Street
A janitor is standing here, cleaning the city streets.
A janitor is standing here, cleaning the city streets.
A janitor is standing here, cleaning the city streets.
> grum
You grumble.
A cityguard arrives from the south.
A cityguard slashes you very hard.

> >...Dwarven guards, when they get disarmed
> >or their left vambrace chewed up, have to go down to the armory and
> >get fitted for a new one.  Of course, things in the armory don't just
> >appear there - they are made by the dwarven smiths.  Naturally _they_
> >can't just make weapons and armor from thin air, they need the ore
> >brought up to them from the mines.  The miners of course, need
> >tools...etc etc. 
> 
> You get into coding a full economy -- a thing rife with positive and
> negative feedback loops (cf Palace's early economy mishaps and happy
> accidents).  Its something I don't think I'd even attempt.  What I
> think would be easier, and provide a LOT more fun, is to implement
> independant economies with their own internal methods of production
> and consumption which are not dependant on other economies.

Right, which was basically what I was saying when I said the system would
have to fudge things a little bit.  Actually, fudge quite a bit, depending
on the situation.  The main problem, as I said, is the size of the communities
you're talking about here.  In my example above, your economy is basically
a chain.  Chains are bad because if you break one link, every link above
it becoems useless.  Real economies (especially one this advanced) are
more like a tapestry, where tearing out a single thread doesn't bring things
crashing down.
Still, it's simple enough to do a 'real' economy and just have the system
generate raw materials if the link below your current link is broken.
These raw materials would, first of all, be only the basics - if the mines
get shut down it means that the smiths are only making iron and possibly
steel weapons for a while, and even then in limited quantities, and the
resultant products cost a lot of money.  If you bring them some raw materials
(particularly the better stuff, ie galvorn or mithril) they will command
a very high price.  Thus the system never 'breaks', but people are gonna
be anxious to get those mines in working order again in order to get
things back to 'normal'.

> eg  Mana comes in two forms, +ve and -ve.  Mana is required to do
> magic (sign dependant on magic used).  Magical objects have a mana
> sign (-ve or +ve), and consume mana of that sign, thus slowing or
> stopping their decay.  Magical objects react to opposite sign mana by
> accellerating their decay.  Should a magical object find no mana to
> consume they decay VERY quickly (no mana is worse than bad mana). 
> TC's and a few other objects produce mana (always in matched +ve and
> -ve pairs) at various rates.  Mana flows like a liquid thru rooms and
> spaces, attempting to have no two locations adjacent with different
> mana levels.  
> What's this mean?  Magical objects have a definite life span.  Don't
> feed them enough mana and they destruct.  The more magical objects you
> have together, the more quickly your local area becomes mana depleted
> (mana flows slowly) and the more quickly they decay.  Get sufficient
> highly powered magical objects together and they'll all destruct
> within seconds.  Keep only one or a few magical objects, and they'll
> survive on the local mana.  Want lots of magical items?  Better keep
> them all right beside a major mana producer (eg a farm of TC's you
> continuously feed trash).  

Excellent - I love it.

> Magic fights also become travelling affairs.  No-one can afford to
> stand still -- they run out of mana.  Then again, manage to locate
> yourself by a major mana producer, and you have a huge advantage.

Although I don't like most TSR and D&D-related products, I've always
thought that the setting for Dark Sun was very cool.  The magic system
there (if you didn't know) is very similar to what you describe - mana
resides in the surroundings (ala The Force) and is drawn into the caster,
instead of coming from within themselves.  This, of course, brings in a
whole new breed of magic-users.  The 'defilers' drain the land for
all it is worth, resulting in the land becoming useless for any purpsoe
for a long period of time, and really spiffy effects as the plants wither
and die, the land turns grey and then black, the rocks crack and turn to
dust.  Then there's the non-defilers (forget what they are called) who
respect the land (hmmm, how about 'Tree Huggers'?) and naturally have a blood
hatred for defilers.  Magic duels between the two are pretty interesting,
since the non-defiler is fighting to save not only herself but the land
around the duelers.  A duel between two defilers is pretty fun to watch, of
course, because they drain the land in no time flat.

> The nice thing about this sort of system is that it becomes self
> balancing.  Opportunities for mana consumption exceed mana production,
> so the system always runs starved (try to run it fat and you get
> positive feedback).  While there can be synergy between the mana
> economy and other economies, even positive and negative feedback
> (again cf Palace and the guns and coins), you don't get the direct
> causal dependancies where the stonemason can't build castles because
> the lumberyard has no wood because the robbers robbed the bank so the
> woodsman can't get paid for the trees he cut, and the elves can't sell
> their silks anymore anyway (no money), and now pro0hibit all tree
> cutting.

Well as I said, you need a lot of sources.  This is the nature of an
economy - base your production needs on any one source and it's only
a matter of time before the bottom falls out on you.  One only has
to think back to fourth grade history to think of examples - the south
states of the US circa 19th century and their slaves + cotton trade,
or more recently oil from the middle east (witness the gulf war).
In a mud this is only magnified by the incredibly small size of the
populations of a given town.  No reason we can't get it reasonably close,
though, and 'help it along' with a few tricks.

Incendentaly, nice to see that we're getting back to the horrendously long
and wandering messages that we had going last time around.  I love poping
up the first message and seeing, "You've seen 3%" in the corner... :)
(No, this is not sarcasm, if you're wondering.  I actually do love
really long messages which are generally talking about something completely
different by the time they get to the bottom...)