village manager?

lionon · 2018-11-20 08:48:13

In my opinion a usual problem of 5-20 generation villages are a lack of management. (Almost) everybody tries to do something useful, some better than others, but often some critical thingy is overlooked. In an Eve-Village eve is usually manager and the 2nd generation one of the children does this pretty well. After generation 5 it starts to get chaos and only if the town is big and stable enough it doesn't matter anymore and can get over one or the other shortage..

Should we try to establish a village manager? Somebody that everyone reports to and tries to keep the big picture?

Could be a nice job for elders to stay inside the village and who already seen the surroundings and what state the village is in their adult life... The last task of the manager would be to appoint a new one.

Often when I ask my mom what to do, she has little idea, and yes as soon I as mum have babies I even have less..

Booklat1 · 2018-11-20 12:12:37

The best way to manage labour is if you're an experienced enough player to notice when others are trying to help but not really suceeding and you happen to have a similar task needing working on.

Yesterdady a girl was making fast roads near berries, which is absolutely a bad thing to do as it makes filling bowls a pain in the ass. I' been previously making a path to an iron vein so when I saw her I immediately explained and asked for help. Even gave her my bag as I got older. I had gotten people to smith iron i've gathered in this same life so we were pretty close to mining that vein even though most players in this city were new and we were quite behind on tools and iron when I was born.

You seem like a person that tries to do their best, you'll soon be able to manage people without even noticing.

ClownBaby · 2018-11-20 12:19:19

That would definitely be cool, it's something we should try to encourage as the playerbase becomes more stable. I think a mom would be ideal for the job, from 15-40 she runs around town and checks everything out. Afterwards, she could be the manager from 40-60.

The problem right now is the ideal candidate for manager are the most qualified players, but they are needed to do a lot of things themselves to keep the town stable. If we get to the point where most players know 1-2 jobs very well, I think it would come more naturally. If we can convince enough players to be managers, it could eventually become "meta", and people will adopt it on their own if it is a good idea in practice.

Elsayal · 2018-11-20 12:46:03

Booklat1 wrote:

The best way to manage labour is if you're an experienced enough player to notice when others are trying to help but not really suceeding and you happen to have a similar task needing working on.
Yesterdady a girl was making fast roads near berries, which is absolutely a bad thing to do as it makes filling bowls a pain in the ass. I' been previously making a path to an iron vein so when I saw her I immediately explained and asked for help. Even gave her my bag as I got older. I had gotten people to smith iron i've gathered in this same life so we were pretty close to mining that vein even though most players in this city were new and we were quite behind on tools and iron when I was born.

You seem like a person that tries to do their best, you'll soon be able to manage people without even noticing.

You are a boss !

SirCaio · 2018-11-20 13:01:55

What if we could write notes and stick them on a sign, repurposing it as a "news/jobs" board, where we could request stuff like "need ropes", then people would always go there to look for jobs instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off tryng to find something to do. (this idea is not originally mine, it has been suggested before somewhere in the forums, I'm just bringing it up again because it's a good one )

lionon · 2018-11-20 15:07:51

SirCaio wrote:

What if we could write notes and stick them on a sign, repurposing it as a "news/jobs" board, where we could request stuff like "need ropes", then people would always go there to look for jobs instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off tryng to find something to do. (this idea is not originally mine, it has been suggested before somewhere in the forums, I'm just bringing it up again because it's a good one )

Ja, I know there are notes, my idea would be similar but different.. having a library you could pop kids in to read up, like rules of the village, plans of the village, or "how to farm"... Right now every sign is a little life project...

Last edited by lionon (2018-11-20 15:08:34)

Reiker · 2018-11-20 15:11:50

SirCaio wrote:

What if we could write notes and stick them on a sign, repurposing it as a "news/jobs" board, where we could request stuff like "need ropes"

The problem with this is it's way less time and effort to just make yourself some ropes than to go through the process of making a pencil, paper, and a sign.

Starknight_One · 2018-11-20 15:58:41

lionon wrote:

SirCaio wrote:
What if we could write notes and stick them on a sign, repurposing it as a "news/jobs" board, where we could request stuff like "need ropes", then people would always go there to look for jobs instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off tryng to find something to do. (this idea is not originally mine, it has been suggested before somewhere in the forums, I'm just bringing it up again because it's a good one )
Ja, I know there are notes, my idea would be similar but different.. having a library you could pop kids in to read up, like rules of the village, plans of the village, or "how to farm"... Right now every sign is a little life project...

There was a village with a library of notes that a teacher, or their mother, was supposed to read to the kids. By the time I spawned in, the tradition had been almost lost. Cultural institutions have a hard time surviving a lack of people in the village.

We had a request a while ago for a 'quest' system. This could very well work like that. Add a /joblist command, which only works when holding a 'Blank sheet of paper - &writable'. If that condition is met, it changes from 'blank sheet of paper - &writable' to a 'blank job listing - &writable' upon use of the command. You then speak the words of the job, such as 'One rope and three string needed'. The job listing contains your name, as well as what you're looking for. Someone could then pick it up and type /jobaccept, which would put the job givers name and the job text along the bottom of your screen, just above the food/temp area on the UI. When someone comes up to you and gives you the things you wanted, you type /jobdone.

Alternately, a process of making dyed paper could give us 'job slips'... pink paper, maybe? (I know pink slips are bad, but at least it's a connection, right?) Dipping paper into red dye could give us that, and we'd have a purpose-built item that requires us to prioritize which use to put our paper to, as well as the dye. We'd still need the slash commands, I think, but it could be that you type "/joblist Need three chunks iron at forge" to create the listing. (You still need a charcoal pencil, of course.)

To make it something desirable (other than just helping the village survive), perhaps completing an accepted job gives you the effect of increasing your current Yum bonus by 1 or 2, to simulate the effects of good morale. Having one of your jobs completed is already desirable, of course.

It would have to be restricted to posting OR accepting one job at a time, so if you have something you need done, you can't be working on someone else's task. This would also prevent buck-passing, as if I could post multiple jobs, I'd accept all the jobs I could, then repost them as my jobs, getting a big Yum bonus for having other people do the work while I act as a middle-man. There'd probably also need to be a timer, to prevent daisy-chaining that process throughout the village (passing around a carrot seed, for example).

If you die before the job you posted is done, the job disappears. If you die before completing a job you took, the job becomes available again. If you post a job and then realize it's unnecessary, you can type /jobcancel to remove the listing without dying.

New assets list:
blank job listing - &writable
job listing, writing happening - &written
job listing, available - &openjob
job listing, pending - &takenjob
job listing, complete - &donejob

And finally, on the subject of papers that have writing... can we use rubber to make erasers, please? Take coagulated rubber, place it on a plate, and chop up with flint/knife. Makes one eraser (I was going to say more, but we only get one ball if we make those, so...), which will return a note or a job listing to blank state. Give it, I dunno, 5 charges with a 10% chance to use... and have the recipe output have a 25% chance of tearing the paper, rendering it worthless (like random notes that say 'George' are now).

New assets list:

coagulated rubber (in hand)
coagulated rubber on plate
rubber eraser on plate
rubber eraser
torn piece of paper

Last edited by Starknight_One (2018-11-20 16:00:45)

BlueDiamondAvatar · 2018-11-20 16:05:33

If you want to be a town manager, build roads. People who build roads learn where the good stuff is, and they've usually traveled around enough to know what is going on and what people need to work on. If you want to ask a "town manager" a question, ask your local road builder. If they are a good one, they've cased the area to figure out where the next road is most needed.

And Booklat, I recently ran a berry patch adjacent to a road, and it was fine, once I learned to keep my stash of bowls and baskets on the opposite side of the patch (off screen) from those on the road. I also was able to collect my stash of bowls by running down the road, so a road near a berry patch isn't all bad.

I won't try to finish the road on the fourth side of a square patch again, though - now I've spent a life running a patch. But road building near a patch is a pretty good mom activity. I learned road building from a mom who built the road on two sides of a berry patch while I was a kid.

And back to the town manager issue - there's a lot of folks who don't like being told how to play their game by a manager, and it's pretty easy for folks to start turning on manager types as leeches who aren't doing enough work. Again, road building establishes that you are a benefit to the community, even while you keep tabs on who is doing what, make witness to the murders, celebrate the victories, etc.

My next step is to learn how to set up signs, so people can quickly see what jobs are being done, and set clear "I'm baking here" boundaries. I also think we could establish the habit of building "yum boxes" that get filled with the different kinds of food a town is making. It could teach the new players all the food they are running past while trying to get to the berry patch to keep from starving, and encourage people to diversify the foods available in their hometown.

Last edited by BlueDiamondAvatar (2018-11-20 16:12:09)

Starknight_One · 2018-11-20 16:30:20

The problem with stone roads near the berry farm (or any farm, for that matter) is that they put you into fast movement mode. I can't count how many times I've wanted to go to the berry farm and wound up running past it multiple times. Leave a space. Better to put wooden floors around the berry farm, THEN put a road down next to that. It makes it much easier to grab your bowl to farm if you don't risk running off to Timbuktu with a misclick, and you can still get there quickly when you want to.

pein · 2018-11-20 17:11:26

just go to the grumpy apron guy who has the knife
if you ask nicely and offer help most of us answers

generally are many rude people and bad intention, smart asses who ruin everything, so managing takes some cruelty, like taking out excess babies and killing ignorant people
even if you do everything people will curse you for any small issue so not really aplicable

Floofy · 2018-11-20 17:21:51

Personally as a player i never felt the need to have someone tell me what to do. Its generally fairly obvious what we need. But i can see that a lot of players could need that. The most annoying thing is when we badly need a tool, and i am smiting it, and there is like 3-4 people just WATCH ME do it. And they don't even assist me, all they do is either move my tools around, or stand on it to hide it.

Tramax · 2018-11-20 22:33:15

Prior to steam launch when it was semi-regular to be in a place where a crown was in the town I played a round where in working diligently two elders agreed that I had earned it.

Putting aside my pet project to have them brief me on what scouts had discovered I politely used the crown as a symbol of office. Instead of running up to people and saying "I'm queen - do what I say!" I would approach other townsfolk and say things along the lines of,
"Hiya Jim. Seems we need some more iron tools. Do you know how to smith?"
"Would you mind taking over the forge?"
"Oh okay then don't worry about it I'll find someone else!"

At the end of the day, I'm just advocating for being diligent in your job until that's rewarded with a crown. If that day comes - don't be a dick. Just use your game sense to show people that a village manager isn't a bossy boots.

lionon · 2018-11-21 12:04:07

Yes, Tramax, I didn't think of a "boss superior" like Floofy rightfully disagrees with, but someone who tries to keep the big picture and reminds of critical things..

Or also someone people could come to to ask like "where do I find rabbits..." etc.

Starknight_One · 2018-11-21 16:39:51

Tramax wrote:

Prior to steam launch when it was semi-regular to be in a place where a crown was in the town I played a round where in working diligently two elders agreed that I had earned it.
Putting aside my pet project to have them brief me on what scouts had discovered I politely used the crown as a symbol of office. Instead of running up to people and saying "I'm queen - do what I say!" I would approach other townsfolk and say things along the lines of,
"Hiya Jim. Seems we need some more iron tools. Do you know how to smith?"
"Would you mind taking over the forge?"
"Oh okay then don't worry about it I'll find someone else!"
At the end of the day, I'm just advocating for being diligent in your job until that's rewarded with a crown. If that day comes - don't be a dick. Just use your game sense to show people that a village manager isn't a bossy boots.

Exactly. If I get to establish the tradition, the crown isn't a symbol of authority; it's more a sign of service. "I wear this so I stand out, so you know that I'm working to make the place better and can ask me questions." Sometimes that does mean prodding people, but you can be polite about it. If you don't want to do what I ask, or have another project you'd rather do, just tell me and I'll find someone else to bake pies. Just be warned, I get cranky if I don't get my pastries.

Floofy · 2018-11-21 17:10:09

lionon wrote:

Yes, Tramax, I didn't think of a "boss superior" like Floofy rightfully disagrees with, but someone who tries to keep the big picture and reminds of critical things..
Or also someone people could come to to ask like "where do I find rabbits..." etc.

There is a difference between some sort of boss that tells everyone their jobs, and gently reminding someone of a more urgent need. As an example, yesterday, i was focussed on getting rabbits (key step in going for iron tools) since we already had a farm. Nobody else was doing that job and it was truly needed. But when i came back, some dude told me "Hey bill.. we really need help with food right now" because they just had a big baby boom and were very low on food. So i temporary helped them out by getting some bananas.

karltown_veteran · 2018-11-22 05:17:37

*clears throat* *casually drops ten page essay on why satan would be a great ruler of towns* *casually strolls away whistling*

pein · 2018-11-22 08:24:34

honestly if you got any self respect you don't put on a crown, i seen too many noobs rp around calling people names, or be total noobs
if im a guy im not totally pissed on the too many kids, so if i see someone willing to learn i grab him/her
i was carotporting with a kid
then asked the other to empty a well i made, i carried him empty buckets, then a cart of buckets and we filled a cistern i made

the other life i taught stewing to a lil girl and we did it twice, she was very perceptive, didn't needed to tell many times, was a newbie and excited, and gonna be a good player, she was explaining to her kid afterwards, i made 3 new crocks and already made one, so she couldn't do it afterwards, but still told the steps to the kid, and i played along, as i had a chefs hat, i gave to her and told she is now a master chef

anyway you can toss a kid to a guy, sometimes as a boi i feel the need to take care of a kid, only one is enough or maybe two, but still got more time than a mom who has 8 and the 2nd asks questions while the first still doesn't know what to do, or they just toss them when they grow hair and poor kid walking around until gets bored
i seen on my eve runs, just giving a dumb task and positive confirmation, they can be slightly useful, but just distracting them with no real use is better than letting them alone do what they want, they just die in a few minutes

so just choose a task, you see lot of clay? tell them to bring to the kiln, maybe they do it one by one, you can tell them is faster in a basket, then show how to make some new bowls and plates and let them do it, a purpose can change their fate, and they may give grandkids, you might end up with a tons of plates but that's not an issue
the other job i used to give is cutting butt logs into board then we make a road around berry, its not that hard or not that i couldn't do it, if they get the hand of it, i run with a cart and get more butt logs, i could do it both and the time gained might not be that much, but if they do it they get used to it and might do next lifes

it requires prep as i needed the empty crocks to be made, or the butt logs and tools stacked, and when i tried to teach the other how to plant stew plants we had no soil or water, so i had to act alone and couldn't teach, and generally no tools, no pen cities don't let us teach a lot, i do the axe or the pick or whatever needed and i even get annoyed if people disturb cause is time sensitive

i generally go to babies and tell stuff we need, and just make hats, bread and sheep and answer questions, but for the most part im doing the scavenge and the prep, kinda hard to set more than two people on connected tasks they can d and help each other

Booklat1 · 2018-11-22 11:05:34

BlueDiamondAvatar wrote:

And Booklat, I recently ran a berry patch adjacent to a road, and it was fine, once I learned to keep my stash of bowls and baskets on the opposite side of the patch (off screen) from those on the road. I also was able to collect my stash of bowls by running down the road, so a road near a berry patch isn't all bad.

But there is no adantage of building fast roads inside the village or more specifically, it's structures. It's wasteful and less practical. The best I can think of a fast road inside a village is from bakery to pen if they're too far (which shouldn't even happen).
Why would I want to disable a side of the berry bushes to people who are feeding sheep/making compost? When you gotta feed sheep fast you cant wait for the one good side of the bushes to be always fruiting.

Is it absolutely awful to have fast roads near berries? nah.
Is it an annoyance for anyone counting on every tick for efficiency? yep.

Its not just farmers, newbs sometimes die because they cant eat the berries as they start insta walking the road when try to get food (usually already later than they should)

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2018-11-20 08:48:13

village manager?

#2 2018-11-20 12:12:37

Re: village manager?

#3 2018-11-20 12:19:19

Re: village manager?

#4 2018-11-20 12:46:03

Re: village manager?

#5 2018-11-20 13:01:55

Re: village manager?

#6 2018-11-20 15:07:51

Re: village manager?

#7 2018-11-20 15:11:50

Re: village manager?

#8 2018-11-20 15:58:41

Re: village manager?

#9 2018-11-20 16:05:33

Re: village manager?

#10 2018-11-20 16:30:20

Re: village manager?

#11 2018-11-20 17:11:26

Re: village manager?

#12 2018-11-20 17:21:51

Re: village manager?

#13 2018-11-20 22:33:15

Re: village manager?

#14 2018-11-21 12:04:07

Re: village manager?

#15 2018-11-21 16:39:51

Re: village manager?

#16 2018-11-21 17:10:09

Re: village manager?

#17 2018-11-22 05:17:37

Re: village manager?

#18 2018-11-22 08:24:34

Re: village manager?

#19 2018-11-22 11:05:34

Re: village manager?

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