Ok so first i want to say that the way it works now is completely boring/unrealistic. Here\'s my idea on how to make it interesting addition to gameworld.
This is just a draft, i can work on more details, if the idea is liked and accepted.
I. how would a guild get a mine ?
There are 2 ways of doing that:
1. Building new mine
a) Finding deposit
b) Building mine
2. Taking over control of mine from other guild (either by peaceful or war means)
a) Buying mine
b) Taking over mine
- Declare war , this will set the attack date for example +2 days from now. Notify defenders that there is going to be a war.
- Take over , attackers will have to take over mine in 2 hours.
- Keep control , for some amount of real time so that owners have chance to defend.
II. Administration
1. Mine Administrator
Person will be selected by guild leader, administrator will be responsible for mine. Might get a salary which can be either based on income or flat.
2. Administration aspects
- Setting sale prices
- Setting worker wages
- Hiring guards for mine defence (only when war is not declared, it will prevent hiring guards after someone declares war and firing them during peace)
- Expanding mine (*) will increase worker capacity
- Upgrading mine (*) will increase efficiency (amount of metal extracted from ore).
III Mine workers
1. Mine worker capacity
The mine will have limited capacity of workers depending on its size.
2. NPC workers
In general mine workers will be npc\'s, the higher the wages the more npc\'s will be attracted to work in mine.
3. Player workers
Any player having appropriate skill in mining can work and earn. If mine capacity is at full player workers will automatically replace npc\'s. During work player will get some experience. In game it will be something similiar to what is going on now: Player will have to mine ore, this wil be semi-automatic, but will require some attention. What i imagine is player will issue mine command, and he will mine until ore vein depletes, then player will have to find other ore vein to mine. Veins will respawn after some amount of time. This might be a bit boring and repetitive, but who said mining is fun ? Mining is hard work you do to earn some money.When player cannot carry any more ore he will have to go up to surface and unload ore, where he will get payment. Players should not be let out by guards when having ore in inventory (it\'s kinda hard to sneak carrying a heavy bag of ore isnt it ?). Also there might be a chance of random monsters appearing in mine (large spider, cave goblin, etc.).
IV Mine types
Ok who have seen a mine, where they mine coal, iron, gold, silver and all the other metals ?? That is simply not the case. Every mine will yeld one type of metal. Each ore type will have different difficulty to mine it. We should have all the popular earthly metals + some magical ones. There will be also gems. It might be sensible to have 2 or even 3 types of gems in one mine, but it would complicate things a little bit.
V Deposits
1. Finding a deposit. Deposits might be found using magical means, or by som mining specialists.
2. Deposits may vary in size and quality. Size means how much of ore can be mined before mine depletes, quality means how much pure metal will ore contains.
3. New deposits must appear somehow around the gameworld, either by automaticall respawn, or set by administrators.
VI Building mine
Building a mine over existing deposit wil require a large sum of money, and some time. It should be automated process done entirely by npcs
VII Selling mine products
1. selling the metal and gems to npc\'s, some amount of products will have to be sold to npc\'s, i would prefer completely player driven economy, but it may be impossinble during early days, so it needs some npcs
2. Selling to players, player can come to mine selling depot and buy some metal for his tradeskilling needs.
VIII Tradeskills
Players buy metals, gems to make something of them. It can be simply dagger, or some enchanted heavy plate armor. All this should be included in tradeskilling. This might be the hardest part to code. What i would suggest is making a flexible system which allows to craft almost anything based on what modifier some modifications give (for example Iron sword of swift, sword made of iron and imbued with swift spell), but also add a decent amount of unique named items which can be crafted using special components (for example Dragon scale armor). One thing is that recipes should be somehow kept hidden from players, i know it\'s open source, but it might spoil the fun knowing all the recipes before. They might be released by some quests, or finding old notes.
IX Player driven economy
Thats the most interesting economy model one can think of, what would it require to have player driven shops. I would make this guild based again, these might be one of reasons to build castles. When a player is in a guild which has castle, he/she can buy a shop and sell items crafted/found by the player. Shops should be taxed and taxes will go to guild bank. When the economy will start to expand NPC driven shops should be slowly removed, leaving only those selling really basic supplies, though those can be removed either if those supplies can be crafted by players.
Thats my idea of mining and overall economy system. I tried to make it simple and interesting at the same time. It might take some simplifications, but it\'s more or less what i\'d like to see. Waiting on your comments
