This has been mentioned before, so it is not a brand new idea. However, this is a formal discussion.

The Plantation Manager

You will be able to HIRE plantation managers. Every plantation could have 1.
Plantation managers will be generated by the game, slowly, with time. You will be able to hire one directly from the game for a small fee (gold coins) and place him in charge at one of your plantations.

Manager Attibutes

Managers will start with some basic attributes that will improve over time. These attributes will improve parts of your plantation operation. Improvement of these attributes will be related to the actions you make but most importantly time.

List of Attributes:
Man Management
The manager will interfere on your options on acres management and will improve distribution based on his ability, where possible.

Judging Ability
Based on this attribute, your manager will select the weakest and most unhealthy workers whenever you fire workers.

A manager with good attributes on both man management and judging ability, will also improve conditions for remaining workers whenever someone dies.

Knowledge
The more knowledgeable a manager, the better information he will provide in managing your plantation.

Level of Discipline
The higher this attribute, the more focused to the task at hand your workers will be (ie, reduced chance of fires, revolts).

Adaptability
Adaptability will help the manager to improve faster.

Motivation
Managers with motivation, will help your workers to perform better at bad conditions/infrastructure.


Contract/Transfer System

Plantation managers should be a trading asset. Which means that you will be able to sell your managers to other players or buy managers from them through a central marketplace (new one). The specific marketplace will be later used specialized crew as well (future feature).

Will the baseline game generated manager have some random attribute allocation or will they be zero'd out?

Random attribute allocation.

I think it would be worth while to allow players to hire a manager that has zero attributes from the start, and an offer a better manager later after some time.

I think it would also be good to allow the player to pick where they want the manager to focus.

I like the random selection - it is more real life; that said, the ability to provide some training and experience should create a better manager, but never the perfect one.

This is a "delegation" of operations - the ability to get away from the plantation and onto other enterprise operations, such as trade routes, national duties, guild duties, exchanging cannon fire and voodoo curses with your favorite adversary.

We do already delegate our naval officers - they are automatically assigned a ship or fleet. We then tell them in general terms to trade, go fish, go to this port, attack that fleet. We currently have nothing to obtain better officers. (That's another topic for and from another time.)

This also creates another marketable enterprise - hiring managers - do we really need that? Maybe later, but I feel the more hands off it can be operated, the more can be done elsewhere.

Gotta lousy manager? Fire him and get another. Better yet, make him a naval officer in one of your fleets (put him on a fishing scow where he belongs, or as powder monkey on your weakest sloop - let the laws of natural selection deal with the blighter.)

I would rather see officer development with these features - that said, this manager program might lay the groundwork to do just that....

Bottom line, do we need a plantation manager - yes! Just how deep down the rabbit hole do we want to go with it?

Sir Henry Morgan wrote:I would rather see officer development with these features - that said, this manager program might lay the groundwork to do just that....

+1 Absolutely. Plantations should be the ground work as it would be easier to implement such a feature to work out the bugs.