Recruit Wages/On-going Fees

[Reinhardt64]

Every time I do a play through of Kenshi I always end up at this really awkward point that results in me either setting the game aside or just starting over. From my reading through other people's experiences I have a feeling I'm not the only one. In the early game money is basically everything (unless, I guess, you're running a solo thief character... then it's nothing). You need money for food, equipment, materials, a place to live, etc, and you work your butt off trying to get it. However, once you get set up with your own crafters, resources, farmers and the like, money very quickly stops being super useful. You go from barely keeping a hundred cats in your pocket to having hundreds of thousands in a very short time span. Sure, you still need it for the food-on-the-go when you're away from base and the occasional replacement member if you lose someone, but it's still pretty much pointless after you have a well functioning base set up.

So my suggestion is to have some sort of wage for your members, so that you continue to need money. Nothing ridiculous, maybe either have it fixed based on what their starting fee was. Say, the 3000 cats guys have a wage of 300 a week (or whatever time integer and percentage works best). That way if you get someone weak and stick with them it pays off in the long run because their wage stays low. Or have it adapt to what their skills or, or how much work they're actually doing. Obviously that last one would require all kinds of algorithms that would probably result in little to no improvement over the others. I feel like this would help the game itself. Right now hiring people on is basically buying them as slaves since you pay someone once (I don't think it's them, because where the heck did that 3000 cats go?) and then they do whatever you tell them to. Once proper slavery is implemented in the game I feel like there won't be enough of a difference with the current system.

There could also be some exceptions to the rule. Beep wouldn't require a wage because he doesn't know what money is. Ruka might not either because I think she just wants to win back her Shek honor. Also there's that religious zealot in the HN that probably wouldn't require a wage because... I don't know. Religious zealot reasons.

Anyways, I'm also wondering if this is just me thinking this would be a nice addition because I'm weird, or if other people share my opinion. Feedback would be great as well as suggestions to altering the specifics. Thank you.

[Alexfighter]

But are the squad members spending the money of their wages? No, you're managing everything: you buy their clothes, buy their foods, so basically money is the money of everybody. If they had some free time and go some bar to spend it on their own.. But no, you as player are basically everbody.

It's true that money becomes not so useful with time, but that's what happens when you''re capable of producing everything you want by yourself. I think the challenge of the game simply changes from managing your money to managing your production.

[Reinhardt64]

I could see that if there was actually any challenge to managing your production. As it is, it's "find a useful piece of land > build a mine > build a refinery > use your resources to make stuff" and it's all automated by permanent jobs. If, for example, copper/iron resources could run out and/or you had to rotate crop types or leave farms fallow to regain nutrients, then that would be a step in the challenging direction. As it is, however, it's entirely fire-and-forget. You go from scrounging up money where ever you can (engaging, challenging, rewarding) to setting permanent jobs and getting everything with minimal continued effort. Sure it's a nice reward for having struggled through the first "portion" of the game, but it's still completely auto-managed after the initial building of your base. I regularly take out 20-30 members from my base leaving only my farmers and wall guards (usually around 10 people) and I never even have to glance back at my base while I'm out adventuring. I seem to remember at some point in the past that the HN and UC would come around asking for taxes (i.e. protection money) if you would living on their land, however I haven't had that happen in quite some time. Things like that would ensure that money is still useful.

I just feel like something that is such an important mechanic in the game should never feel useless. Also, with all the promises of a "living world" I feel like it would almost be necessary for your members to eventually have their own money that they spend on stuff. Otherwise they're basically just robots that you order around.

[philthymcnasty]

What about the free characters, and the rescued slaves? Those guys would be free, and this would break the balance by forcing cheap people to only hire free people.

I propose a different approach: tiered taxes. If i am a small farm in united empire territory, and can not afford the 3000 cats taxes, then i should have to plead to a noble for a special privilege to build out there, and promise not to compete with the slavers guild. Then, when i make a lot of money, I would pay a percentage of this in taxes until i became a noble myself. Because i pay a huge amount of taxes, thus funding the empire, I would have my butt kissed at every step of the way in UC territory. They would even let me hunt peasants for fun....

The downside is there are not enough ai/sims things running in the background to make this be a good shogun simulator. That would be neat. A dystopian samurai life simulator filled with love and sorrow. I would pay 60 bucks if this was a DLC.

Another option would be paying the tech hunters to bring back ai cores, or to outsource research. That would help things a bit. pay them for a random tech.

A third option, if the squad member cap never happens, is a serf guild that is similar to mercs. They can come in two flavors: rented slaves with low skills, or top tier serfs who only work but will live, collect a wage, and you do not have to feed.

a 4th option that i prefer, and does not appear to be too much work, is ordering materials and supplies from the merchants. So the material trader comes to the base, and instead of just buying and hauling the materials yourself, you pay him a lump sum and he drops it off in a tagged storage bin. Only you can tell him to leave by placing an order for next time.

As it stands, my brewing and drug operations at the edge of the spider plains and swamps has netted me 1.5 million cats. I am not attacked enough out there, and I have no expenses. While i do have a good amount of mods installed, not enough of them are affecting the economy to make them noticeable, and i know enough tricks to be this rich anyway.

The problem is that the money is not the issue, but a symptom of the issue: Lack of end game content. So you got masterwork armor and edge 3 weapons? ok. Too bad you ran out of stuff to do.

Outside of going full Conan the barbarian and conquering the whole continent, I can not think of any other end game content to add.

[Skavies]

This is only a short term solution, but if you tied the strength and frequency of "tax collecting attempts" whether it's extortion form bandits, or donations to samurai, or whatever to your credits, that would make you want to stay poor at least in the early game before you can defend your self from telling them to shove off, that would be a step in the right direction. Additionally, you could have it hurt your relationships with EVERYONE if you fail to pay the protection taxes. Word will spread of a new threat that doesn't play by whatever passes for rules of the society. What good is money if you have no where to spend it?

[UltraDelux]

I AGREE. on what? im not sure. yes it does seem wrong that you can just buy people. yes the men and women on our screens arent actually buying anything on their own, but even if it cant be figured out how to make them have a need for it... we should still have to pay them. at least it seems to me. or if not, then yes, some greater use for all the amassed cats

[Grimmrok]

Why do people want to have a "pay your pawns on a regular basis"?

I mean, what happens if you have 0c.?
Does the whole crew leave?
Leaving you with no character to play with?
Or is the idea that "you don't pay your starting character, but yes for everyone else"?
If that's the case, then you're missing the point that you play as ALL characters.
The "protection" fee, which is the initial payment, is pretty much to limit you from just hiring everyone and sending them to their death, or to slavery to turn into profit. It's not for "oh you pay him to work for you, that's reasonable".

You play as all of them. You are all of them. All their money is shared. All their money is your money. Sounds like communism, but a version that actually works.
This is not a kind of game that you can implement capitalism into. Or at least into the player's position.

[lucidmadness]

only if they pay me back for all the food, armor, and weapons i give them