Earlier today I was having a nice chat with an Aquamancer and a fellow Geomancer about potential ways to help perk up the economy's weirdness; currently people are actually forming suicide squads in the interest of running into villages, buying commodities, and praying they can get some of them back home. Obviously, the Magnagoran near-monopoly is a heavy influence on this, but even our commodity shop has an upsetting number of zeroes in it (this even with people like Daganev making detailed files on how to increase commodity production, etc.). There have been numerous suggestions on how to improve the situation. Mine involves the organization of a new common skill: Labour.

Labour is something like an endurance-based version of Influence: you have to keep working at a specific goal, regularly, or face your work being undone and experience loss. It would also need a small investment of willpower to reflect the mental discipline required to not screw up a long, potentially boring task (such as threshing wheat).

So what does it do? The basic idea is that one uses the Labour skill either in a village room (for things like fields or orchards) or in the presence of a specific NPC (for processing raw materials, such as hemp into rope). One must have completely full endurance and willpower to begin a Labour task. Upon completion, this task increases the potential production of the appropriate commodity. Existing commodity quests will still be required and still be profitable.

Our talk about the skill yielded some interesting results, but it isn't complete enough to officially parcel up and offer to the Divine as a Neat Idea; therefore, I come here to ask others for advice.

Some existing skills in other categories might make more sense in this skillset, but appropriate replacements should be suggested for their original locale (I'm thinking of woodchopping, here).

Our Progress:

Mining: helps increase silver, coal, gems, whatever as appropriate to location.
Farming: either cultivation, which increases plant growth, or harvesting, which gathers up mature plants.
Animal Care: groom sheep, chickens, and giant spiders to help keep them happy and productive.
Fishing: guess? Requires a pier or riverbank.
Processing: spin hemp into rope, card wool into cloth, hold dwarves' coats while they make steel, etc.

I'd love to hear other suggestions and advice on how this could be balanced. And hey, look, more nonviolent experience gain!

It's different from other IRE games, and I like the idea. Mining like in Imperian, fishing like in Imperian, too.

Although those who Trans the skill would get LOTS of experience. Maybe you can only do one at a time?

I think the point is to only do one at a time, like influencing denizens. If your village needs grain, go and work in the fields for a half hour or an hour. If your village needs marble, go down into the mines and hack away at the quarry walls for a while.

The idea has merit, but might be difficult to implement and regulate.

If it WERE to be implemented, though, it'd be worth it. Getting your hands dirty in an effort to help your favourite village.

Sounds like a great idea, assuming I understand your concept - I'd just suggest it be more or less like, you know, linking to an astral node. Takes time at about that rate to help increase production by teeny amounts. I'm not sure what kind of scales they work on though, but you get the idea.

This sounds like a nice idea.

I think it shoudl be done a little more specified though. Such that you can only farm, or can only deal with fields, or only deal with animals, etc. I'd also suggest to make what you yeild dependant upon how skilled you are. thus, the hgher skilled you are at say fishing, the more fish comms you pull in.

Couldn't that end up degenerating into something like crafting in lots of MMORPGS, with people just typing "farm wheat" over and over mindlessly?

But wow, what awesome wheat farming that would be!

Kinda like harvesting then? *g*

grooming a giant spider is like wipin before your poopin. makes no sense. it'll just try and eat you. hehehe.

Ooohkay.

I like Mary's idea of helping out the villages that way. But instead of just "harvesting wheat" and having perfect wheat comms, how about you have "thrash wheat", then "seperate wheat", then "bundle wheat". Each of these skills would be under the skill of wheat, in Labours.

AB LABOURS

Wheat

AB LABOURS WHEAT

PLANT WHEAT, sows the seed, THRASH WHEAT cuts the wheat stalk from the field, SEPERATE WHEAT gets the wheat grain from the stalk, and BUNDLE WHEAT allows you to neatly store your wheat in comm-sized portions.

It's a good concept, so good in fact that it's almost entirely covered by the pre-existing ways of generating extra commodities in the villages, of which already net you experience and/or gold.

There certainly needs to be some other key factor in it that would worth learning, otherwise it's just spending lessons on something you can do already.

So as not to be completely negative, my addition is thus: Make it a skillchoice, so it's either Labour, or Influence. Naturally, the skill would have to become as important as Influence for it to be an option.