Workplaces, Factions, and Settlements

Quick jump links:

➡️ How to get a workplace

➡️ How to get a faction

➡️ How to get a settlement

👷 Workplaces

Workplaces are businesses your character can own or work at, that create materials and currency for trade. They are primarily meant to foster RP and engagement between players.

How do they work?

• Every character has a set amount of Work Points. When the workplace is open and active, those Work Points tick down over time, with each workplace tick earning your character currency.

• Work Points can also be spent on resources on the workplace menu, which creates items and materials for the business (ingredients for restaurants, axes for logging camps, etc.). Work points recharge slowly over the course of 72 IRL hours.

• Currency is earned regardless of whether you are the business owner or an employee, and you should feel free to hire as many people as makes sense for your business. The amount of currency earned is based on the settlement taxes and benefits of the area you are in. If you are not part of a settlement, the base pay is 1 coin per workplace tick.

• When the workplace is open, all patrons and workers can freely take and move items within the boundaries. If you are concerned about patrons walking away with items, most items can have an Anti-Theft Strip applied. Anti-Theft Strips can be made with one Scrap Metal and one Ripped Sheet, and any item you apply it to within the bounds of the business cannot be removed until you remove the strip.

• When workplaces are closed, non-employees become unable to access items in containers/on the floor, similar to safehouses they are not a part of.

Some staff-created workplaces will be "owned" by NPCs. In those instances, any player can accept a job there, but they must meet the minimum skill level to do so (for example, First Aid level 6 to work at an NPC-run clinic).

How to Get a Workplace

1. Decide what kind of business your character wants to run. Refer to the chart above for the options. Businesses should make sense for your character and ultimately generate resources for RP or RP itself, not just as a way for you to solo-grind.

2. Create the area that the business will be in. You can take over an existing structure, or build your own. Decorate it with tiles in a fashion that looks realistic to what your business will be—so for example, lots of bookshelves, desks, and comfy chairs for a library, or tables, seating, counters, and shelves for a bar.

   • For solo resource-generating workplaces like logging camps and farms, a small structure is usually required, like a storage shed and area for workers to rest in. Pointing at a big empty field and saying “here” isn’t sufficient.
   • (Optional) Create a build ticket to have a builder put the finishing touches on your space. This isn’t necessary if you have sufficiently decorated it with tiles you have scavenged from the world, but it may help.

3. Open a Workplace ticket and ask for the space to be turned into an official workplace. You will be able to claim ownership of it, and hire/fire employees. Promoting someone to business partner will allow them to do the same.

You can also ask the mod to include a portion of a back room that is safehoused, so that customers cannot access it even when the business is open.

👮 Factions

Factions are ways to help manage groups of players who are rallying around a specific cause, job, settlement, or shared interest. You might create a Faction if you have an extensive business and you want a place to help manage all your workers, a specific organization banding together to fight against the infected, or a hardened gang of criminals looking to cause trouble.

• Factions will get their own private faction chat on the Discord, which all faction members can access and talk in OOC. Factions will also get their own private IC message board, which allows the characters in the faction to leave IC notes to each other.

• Each faction has one or two designated Faction Leaders. Faction Leaders have the final say in faction decisions, can access the OOC faction leader chat, and have control over what goes into Faction Journals.

• Faction Journals are similar to character diaries, where you can post IC or OOC information about the faction for non-members to see. This could be anything from a mission statement to a picture of the faction members goofing off. They are a good way to track your faction's development over time.

Faction Requirements

To make a faction, you need:

• At least 4 people (including you)
• At least one designated leader (or two, if you think you can share)
• An image or logo that represents the faction

The faction logo can either be a generic Discord emoji that will be repurposed as an image that represents your group, or you can create a custom image to do the same.

🏙️ Settlements

Settlements are a system designed to let players build, manage, take care of, and work in their own towns. Settlements have governments, city employees like guards and politicians who are paid through taxes, and special benefits to workplaces within the settlement limits.

You can only be a member of one player-run settlement and one official hub (like this season's Sapphire Hills) at a time. You can still live and work in a settlement without joining (with permission from the settlement leaders, of course), but you will pay much higher tax when working at a settlement workplace (20% on top of the regular tax).

How do they work?

Settlements vary depending on the Government Type and Settlement Specialty you select. Each of these options has certain requirements and offers certain bonuses.

The Settlement Specialty offers bonuses to certain workplace types in exchange for theming your town around it to some degree. Choosing a specialty is required, most types are easy to obtain. The specialty options are:

• Farming Hamlet: Should be built around farmland or have player made farms, must not be in an urban area.
• Woodland Outpost: Must be in the middle of a forested area.
• Mining Town: Must be away from urban areas and bodies of water.
• Factory Town: Must have factory machinery either already existing or moved there by you.
• Drifter's Den: Must have a seedy dive or meeting place.
• Fishing Village: Must be by a large body of water. Rivers count, large ponds do not.
• Motorworks: Must have a junkyard or auto repair shop.

Each of these settlement types offers a 10% bonus in income to the following workplace types:

• Farming Hamlet: Farms
• Woodland Outpost: Logging Camp, Hunting Grounds
• Mining Town: Mines
• Factory Town: Munitions Factor, Gun Crafter
• Drifter's Den: Drug Den, Brewery
• Fishing Village: Fishing Pier
• Motorworks: Mechanic Shop, Scrapyard

Additionally, once you have a settlement, you can select a Government Type:

• Anarchy: You don't organize at all. Tax rates are locked at 0%. You gain no bonus to income.
• Autocracy: You have a single leader with ultimate power, +18% to all workplaces income. Requires a place for your defense force to live/work from (to protect their leader).
• Monarchy: Autocracy but with a fancy crown. +18% to all workplaces income. Requires at least one civil building (town hall, king's court, etc.).
• Oligarchy: Several faction leaders working together to run a town, meeting regularly to make decisions. +21% income. Requires at least two civil buildings.

Lastly, you can set the Tax Rate in your town. Taxes will be necessary to pay city employees like guards and politicians. There are two different methods to tax citizens through:

• Income Tax takes money from workplace salaries (every time your workplace energy ticks down, there's a chance your earned coins might vanish to taxes).
• Sales Tax, which applies only to player-created, NPC-run shops set up in the town. Regular RP trade is not taxed, only the vending machine-style NPCs that you have created to sell things for you.

With each workplace paying a base rate of 1 coin, bonuses and taxes on the workplace will sometimes look like you gaining or losing a coin. For example, a 20% income bonus from a settlement means that you have a 20% chance to gain one extra coin. A 25% tax means you have a 25% chance to lose a coin to tax. Thus, sometimes you may earn 0 coins in a tick (the tax triggered but the bonus did not), 1 coin (both or neither triggered), or 2 coins (the bonus triggered by the tax did not). On average, you will come away with the base income plus the total bonus, minus the total tax.

How to Get a Settlement

In order to be eligible for a settlement, you must have:

• 15 people
• A space that is clear of infected
• A space that is open to all players. Walls around a settlement are not required, but if you have a wall, you must leave obvious gates and signage indicating that players can come in.

Step by Step:

1. Decide which Settlement Type you want your settlement to be, and make sure that it fits the area you have chosen.
2. Make a list of the 15 people who are interested in joining the settlement.
3. Clear the area of infected.
4. Build any required buildings, including any structures for the government type if you want the government to be something other than Anarchy.
5. Create your settlement's name ("Whoville", etc.).
6. Put in a ticket to request your new settlement be made! A mod will work with you to make sure you have fulfilled all the requirements and create the boundary of your new town.

Once you have your settlement in place, you can adjust the income tax (15% minimum and 40% maximum) and sales tax (4% minimum and 30% maximum), create rules for your town, and look into promoting and managing government and law enforcement, and shelling out for infrastructure.

Infrastructure is an optional bonus you may purchase for your settlement at a recurring cost from the settlement's coffers. You can choose to shell out for these bonuses, but you will have to make sure that your settlement's income is higher than its expenses. Expenses are charged "monthly"-- 1 in-game month, or 5 IRL days.

The four current infrastructure options are:

• Municipal Generator (for your civil building, infinite fuel/condition)
• Secondary Generator (for a second public building, infinite fuel/condition)
• Dock (if your settlement is close to water, allows people to use fast travel to get there. You will have to build the dock yourself before fast travel can be applied to it)
• Short-Range Shuttle (allows for instant transport to one nearby neighboring settlement)

In all three instances you will have to open a ticket so that a mod can come set up the infrastructure for you. If your settlement goes broke and is unable to pay its expenses, the infrastructure will be removed!