I would love to have some worker NPCs implemented, as in, NPCs you can assign jobs to such as collecting wood or farming. Of course they will collect resources much slower than you could yourself, but while you're busy exploring the planet, killing monsters, or annoying the locals, your worker NPCs could be collecting food for you and have dinner on the table when you return. The three basic things you would need per worker is: 1. A place for them to live. 2. A task for them to accomplish within close proximity to their house. 3. A chest or someplace for them to put their inventory. Potential types of workers: 1. Farmer - Plants and harvests crops while you explore. For this worker you would need to till a field close to the farmer's house and put seeds in farmer's resource chest. When assigning him tasks you can either assign him a field to work or he automatically picks the closest field. He will use the resource chest in his house but you can either assign him seeds to plant or let him plant whatever is in the box. 2. Lumberjack - Gathers wood. The lumberjack will start with the closest trees and keep going further out to find trees to cut unless you assign him a specific distance (close, midway, far.) This worker will return to the resource box after every tree felled. One of the main problems with this type of worker is if she wanders too far, she can be attacked and killed. 3. Miner - Gathers stone and ore. You can use the map to assign this worker to completely mine an area but the area must have already explored. There could be two ways to assign work to the miner, first highlight a large area and select a specific resource (such as copper) the miner would then try to mine all the copper in that area, being careful to leave a path back to his resource box. The second way would be have them mine EVERYTHING in a specific area, so if you want to make an underground city, he can dig the hole for you, if you want dig a shortcut through a large mountain, the miner is your man. The downside to the second option is he can dig himself into a hole he cannot get out of, so you either have to build him steps to get out, or plan your digging carefully so he doesn't get stuck in the first place. This worker is can also be killed if you're not careful. 4. Gatherer - Collects plants, mushrooms, flowers, vines etc. Like the Lumberjack, you just tell them how far to go and let them work. You have the option to tell them to focus on gathering certain types (like vines for bandages and clothes.) Also a worker that's prone to dying if you're not careful. 5. Builder - Can build houses using blueprints. The way the builder would work is you would collect or buy blueprints. When you assign the builder a task you take the blueprint with you, when you click on the blueprint an outline of the building will appear just like placing any other crafted item. Once you decide on a place for the new building little construction signs will appear marking the new building site. Each blueprint will have a breakdown of all the resources needed to build the house (stone-100, wood-125, wooden bed-1, wooden door-2, etc.) You will have to place everything needed for construction in the builder's resource box or he will just stop once he needs a resource that he doesn't have. Even add in an Architect's Drawing Board so you can create your own blueprints (if you want to create an apartment complex you could design a room and keep building rooms on top of each other.) Builders would be nice especially with so many planets, you may want to change your home planet and rebuilding your town from scratch would be a bit tedious without a little help. Every worker will stop working once their resource chest is full, they have no resources within their assigned distance to collect, or they run out of resources for their assigned task. While they will run when attacked, they are easy targets (worker strength scales to planet's level so they'll typically die in 2-3 hits.) Other options you could add is being able to assign a guard or a mercenary to protect the worker monsters wanting to dine on their delectable entrails. A leveling system so after a few trips, the gatherer finally figures out that every rose has it's thorns, learns to avoid them, and manages to work faster now that her hands aren't covered in bandages. Having to pay your workers because they have children to feed, or want to buy a pink flamingo for their lawn.
