Today, let's have a look at how production and crafting works in the game. A vital part of the economy is the production of items players will need in one way or another. To do this you need three things:
- Know-how
- Resources
- A workplace
Let's go through those one by one and start with know-how. To produce or craft anything, you need to know how to do it. In the game this is abstracted by what I call the recipe. It is not really a cooking recipe, just a stand-in for a blueprint or a formula, anything you can imagine that tells you how to create something. Such recipes define what resources you need in which quantity to produce a certain item, resource or consumable. It further defines how long it takes to do so and how much effort in the sense of energy consumption it takes. Lastly, it defines what kind of skills are required to create it.
The skill requirements lead to a world, where it requires specialization to use high end recipes. For example specializing to be a high-level armorsmith might allow you to craft the "shiny breastplate of eternal shininess" but you might lack the know-how to learn a recipe to create a basic healing potion. While you can be a jack of all trades, the main idea is that you produce what you fancy and trade for the other things you need, so trade and cooperation is key.
Next, let's look at resources. This is relatively straightforward, the recipe tells you which resources you need and you just have to get them. However, coming by resources will not necessarily be easy. While probably everyone will manage to cut down a small tree, mining rare ores or finding special herbs is not that simple. Gathering is just a different form of production, where you need skills as well, but your input are energy, time and risk. Yes, you have to explore to find resources, you can't just "gather resources".
You either get resources while exploring directly or you find resource nodes. These nodes may be a mystery to you, if you just don't have the skill to gather from them. If you do, you still need the right tool, which you may or may not know how to craft yourself. And don't forget, that during exploring you might encounter dangers to your character. So you see, gathering is an essential part of production, but just like crafting it requires you to have know-how, resources in the form of tools, energy and hitpoints and you have to find them in the world. The later requiring players to actually learn where to get which resources, either on their own or learning it from other players.
The last part of production is the workplace. In the game, you can't just create a tool in the middle of a field or do alchemy by swinging a flask around, you need a workshop and alchemy lab to do that. You can imagine a workplace not just as a building where you do stuff, it also helps you to form the resources you have into the thing you want to create, by providing all the small things you need. Imagine for example creating boots. You likely need some leather to do so, but then you also need some thread to sew them, cutting tools and bootstraps. Or you want to make a lance, do you have a piece of wood that is actually long enough?
Since it would be extremely cumbersome to introduce so many different objects and tools to the economy the workplace is meant to abstract this. You will find all the tools you need in a workplace and all the small items required. It will even magically shape 5 pieces of wood into a very long one. Basically, the workplace is a substitute for everything I deem too complicated or cumbersome to introduce into the economy. But where do you find these magical places to do your work?
Workplaces are located in buildings, for example the citadel contains 100 workplaces to make edible goo and a small workshop to craft basic tools. More specific production will require different buildings, a forge to work metal, an alchemy lab for potions, a mill to create flour, etc. Now I mentioned the last time, that players will not need to own such buildings to produce, since I don't want to lock production behind a potentially large investment to get some land and put a building of your choice on it. In fact, a workplace is divided into workslots with 3 different settings.
Private workslot
This workslot is reserved for the owner. He can use it by bringing his own materials.Salary workslot
Such a workslot is meant for hiring players to work for the production facility's owner because you can't just work indefinitely by yourself. You define a salary and players who fulfill the skill (they don't need to know the recipe) can work there. The owner provides materials and the salary and the workers bring skill and energy.Public workslot
That one is the reason why I said everyone can produce. Instead of offering jobs, the owner can offer the workslots for public use. Whoever wants to craft brings their own resources, skill and energy and pays a fee determined by the owner. This allows everyone to craft without having to own production facilities as long as someone does and offers public workslots.
Salary workslots allow to become a producer and tycoon, while public workslots can be considered a passive income, not a fixed APR, but based on supply and demand. Keep in mind that the citadel will provide salary and public workslots to a degree, but in the end, a production facility is something that needs to be built and eventually defended against the void.
Let's have a look at a simple example, a makeshift axe. To produce one you need to own the recipe, which can be bought from the citadel. It is a one time unlock and allows you to turn 2 wood and 1 stone into a makeshift axe. The wood and stone you can get through exploring, but there might also be some on the market. It only requires unskilled labor, so everyone can do it and it requires a workshop. Luckily the citadel owns such a workshop and for a small fee you can craft your axe there. You can use your axe to more efficiently gather wood, or you can sell it on the market.
And that is it, production and crafting. A relatively simple concept, but its abstract nature allows to introduce endless production cycles and facilities as the game grows. But in order to there being any point to all of this production, someone needs to consume and this someone are the players and their characters. So next time I will talk about the claimed ones, the characters the players claim in the game, what they are made of, what they can do and their role in the game.
BR
thatclaimgamedev