Building Rentals

In Phase 2, it will be possible to rent out the production capacity of your buildings to other players. Building owners will be able to toggle an "Is Rentable" setting for each of their buildings, and also specify what percentage of a building's production a renter will need to pay to the owner upon completion of each work order. Perhaps it goes without saying, but owners who charge high fees will likely get less business from renters than owners who charge smaller fees.

Note that renters will not be able to level up buildings, change staked worker cards, switch building types, or anything else besides place work orders for that building's production queue. So control of the building and the plot itself remains completely with the owner.

When a building is rentable, any player from any region of Praetoria is able to place a work order in that building's queue. Doing so creates an unbreakable contract with the building owner, guaranteeing that the work order will be completed in at most the amount of time shown when the work order is placed (if not sooner). This means that while the building is rented out, the owner will be prevented from making any plot staking changes (of cards, titles, totems, etc) that would reduce the building's Production below the minimum amount established upon work order creation.

For example: let's say that a player is looking to produce Metal Bars but doesn't own any Foundry buildings herself. So she looks to see what Foundries are currently available for rent, and finds an attractive one with an empty production queue and a quite reasonable 3% rent. The rent page says it will take 1 hour to produce 1 Metal Bar.

She places a work order with that Foundry for 500 Metal Bars, and pays the Ore, Wood, and Food costs to begin production. Since the Foundry is producing 500 Metal Bars, the work order is guaranteed to take no longer than 500 hours at a rate of 1 hour per bar. It could be faster, if the building owner adds more worker cards to increase Production. But it cannot be any slower, as the building owner will be prevented from making any staking changes that would lower Production below that minimum threshold.

After waiting 500 hours (or less if lucky), the renter claims the finished Metal Bars. 3% of them (15) go to the building owner as a rental fee, and the rest go to the renter (minus any applicable transport fee and Castle / Keep tax). If no other renters have placed work orders in the meantime, the building's production queue will now be empty and the owner will once again be free to adjust staking however he or she chooses.

Note that the building owner also cannot change the rental fee of the work order while production is ongoing. That 3% is locked in once the work order is placed. Any changes to the building's rental fee after that will only affect subsequent work orders.