Hello again! Today’s concept came from a discussion thread by @paploo117 / @Danielbridges regarding classes for organizing and cataloging your items. One idea I was thinking about as a means to extend the use of this profession was a way to ‘display’ rarer items, since they’d be closely involved with your goods and inventory. I wasn’t really sure how closely the two seemed to connect, so I figured I’d throw out this spin-off notion of mine as a separate class concept and see how it was received by the community:
The Curator
Curating is the organization and maintenance of collections and exhibits, oftentimes in museums and libraries. The Curator would be a passive class/class group that allows for the creation of “collections/exhibits”, or even entire museums, of rare items or goods. Their specific tasks would be to define the actual “exhibit”, but also be responsible for cleaning the area, catering to patrons, and promoting it–if the exhibit’s too big, the Curator won’t be able to keep it in good shape or attend to guests, and its value will drop. The nicer the exhibit and the rarer the items on display, the higher the value.
And the higher chance of theft! As your items become more valuable, you’ll need to build cases or cordons and acquire heavier security to ensure your cultural displays are kept in a pristine, secure environment (specifically-tasked soldiers?). Think of it as a risk-reward mini-game in your home city. Of course, the exhibits can be temporarily closed during large combat situations to provide greater safety of your items, but it might also help to have vaults for some of the items if you’re going to be pillaged.
A basic perk of this class and function would be increased morale for your own people, but could also be coupled with higher chances of more migrants and better traders; they could be directly tied into a ‘value-boosting’ strategy for your settlement. Think of it like the ‘Grand Hall’ idea present in Gnomoria, where the items and materials used in its creation define its wealth value.
Having more Curators allows you to upkeep more exhibits at once, giving greater score and city value accumulation. Just don’t overdo it and make too many of them, or you won’t have enough workers to collect and build things, and your soldiers won’t be able to protect everything! I figure the class should be fairly expensive to make, being that a “museum” likely wouldn’t be much of an earlier-game concept. Having it be a little harder to obtain might also prevent its bonuses from being over-exploited, at least to a degree.
