[MUD-Dev] Containing automation?

[Timothy O'Neill Dang]

On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Matthew Mihaly wrote:
> On Mon, 19 Jul 1999, Koster, Raph wrote:
> 
> > There aren't many muds where there is an economic system at all, so
> > they all tend to be fairly basic, based on simple a + b = c types of
> > things. Eminently dull to actually manufacture things, and extremely 
> > automatable.
> 
> Hmm, yeah, that's true. If you're going to go with an economic system of
> that type though, why not just let the players hire mobiles to do the
> grunt work? Assign specialties to each type of work, and have general
> labourers. Each type of work takes X investment in raw materials and X
> investment in labour-hours.

I see what you're saying, since the other style of production is so dull
and automatable. Unfortunately, if we did what you say above it makes it
even more dull. It does level the playing field, which is a good thing.
But it moves the production process up to the level of management
decisions rather than character actions. Then you're moving into a trade
war style of game instead.

Ideally, I'd like for the production process to be entertaining and
non-automatable. I'll settle for inoffensive and non-automatable.

------------------------------
Timothy O'Neill Dang/Cretog8
timothy at nmia.com
H: 505-843-6966
W: 505-244-8803
One monkey don't stop no show




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