Firan Survival Guide: ERP vs EP
From FiranMUX
If you want to, you can do general labor in exchange for money by selling energy. When you do this, it's either in a day-to-day hired job (selling EPs) or as a one-shot business transaction (selling ERPs). The latter requires a sponsor; the former doesn't. Whether or not you RP anything related to the various forms of employment and labor is between you and the other party.
Buying and selling ERPs
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ERPS AND THE MARKET |
As Firan is a closed economy system, and energy or labor (in the form of ERPs) is needed to create things, energy becomes a commodity much as any raw material might be. Certain vocations like farmers and craftsmen can turn ERP into enormous profits through their work. In the case of farmers, land will lie wasted in a season if they can't get the ERP to farm. Thus, there's a market for ERP.
ERP is often bought and traded on the Classified board, and the price can vary. Clans may also buy ERP from its citizens to work on projects within their districts. By searching the Classified board you can get a ballpark figure for ERP, and you can use the board to advertise either ERP for sale or ERP needed. ERP is granted to another person via the assist command, and stenis are paid out through either the pay command or by sending them via messenger.
What ERP means in an IC sense is fuzzy. It represents work done, though this work may be in farming a field, or making perfumes, it depends on who is buying it. Sometimes it is assumed that the person selling ERP is supplying laborers from their work force. This is a convenient assumption for those who might plausibly have laborers, such as nobles or middle class folks. In other cases it's assumed that the person selling the ERP is doing odd jobs off screen, allowing the purchaser time and energy to concentrate on their trade. Sometimes it's just left vague. On rare occasions you might find some RP over selling or buying ERP but usually this isn't the case.
In short, buying ERP can be useful for farmers and other people with labor intensive needs, especially if they can convert ERP into more money than they paid for it. Selling ERP can provide for some quick cash, and is especially useful for those in trades where they're having a hard time making ends meet through their craft (as is sometimes the case with auctioneers, merchants, or ropemakers, as a few examples). Remember, however, that you must have a sponsor to sell ERP if you're not a noble, and that you must pay sponsorship fees on what you earn.
Employment
Employment represents daily work done for one's employer. The hire command is used to employ a person for a certain number of 'work units' (sometimes 0) at a certain number of stenis per day. What these work units represent is somewhat nebulous, but in general an average job is 4 units of work per day. Some people may work two, three, or even more jobs, of varying degrees of involvement, but it's best to keep in mind just how much one is doing and whether or not it's feasible to actually keep up with.
When a person is hired they lose a certain number of EPs daily at 6:05 pm IC. These EPs are converted to ERPs and give to their employer. In return, money from the employer's inventory is given to their employer. If the employee has no EPs then ERPs are taken; if they have no ERPs, then they do no work that day and receive no pay. Similarly, if an employer doesn't have enough money to pay their employee then no energy is transferred and no stenis paid out. If either of these two conditions persist for too long, the employment may be terminated via the code. In any event an @mail notification is sent out alerting the other involved party of the fact.
You can choose to end someone's employment through either the resign command (if you're the employee) or the fire command (if you're the employer). A @mail notification will be sent out. You can also hire yourself out to an NPC for the day with the work command. This draws from EPs, but pays at a very poor rate. If you're going to be away from the game for an extended period of time staff may use the @hiatus command on you, but this is generally only in a case where you're set on vacation and have your character offscreen for an extended period of time as well.
Employment can be arranged through IC means, via word of mouth or the like, or it can be advertised on the Classifieds boards. In general it should be easy to find employment as people are often interested in obtaining ERPs from it. You just need to negotiate over a price or what it is you're doing. Clans, temples, and the Republic itself hires people in positions such as guards or soldiers or priests. Often a person's employment can be a source of roleplay.
In the past, hired employees have most often performed as servants or assistants of some sort, performing services that did not involve the creation of coded objects. As such, crafters tended to work purely on commission, and hiring employees was a service-oriented industry. One exception was in the hiring of cooks, who would be expected to purchase supplies and supply actual coded food objects for the family in return. More recently, noble families have been hiring crafters such as tailors or carpenters to serve their family as hired help, not on commission. The details of the contract will vary based on a number of factors: whether the crafter supplies their own raw materials, how much they are expected to produce, whether room and board are included, and so forth. One advantage for crafters in hiring on with a family is that steady income that comes from the employment is not subject to sponsor fees, and does not require a noble sponsor to accept.
