Worker Costs

In the dairy year

Summer collection is a person, not a magic pipe. Skill shortens the round. Fatigue and night work make it sloppy and expensive. Winter is when the wage bill sits next to fuel and tax in the Cockpit.

Vanilla hired workers are free. Free labour kills the reason to manage a crew. This chapter puts a cost on every hour.

The feel

You hire across tiers. Higher skill costs more and gets more done. You can pay by the hour or by the hectare. Cheap crews exist. They feel cheap.

The Esc Realistic Farming workers page is the glance. The tablet Personnel app is the desk. One door into the suite, not a second pause-menu island.

How it works

Two payment modes, switchable any time:

• Hourly: wage = base rate × hours worked × skill multiplier
• Per hectare: wage = base rate × hectares worked × skill multiplier. Implements that do not report area incur no charge.

Three wage tiers, or a custom rate that bypasses the tiers (set custom back to 0 to use the tier again):

Tier	Base	Skill 0%	Skill 50%	Skill 100%
Low	$15 /h	$12	$15	$18
Medium	$25 /h	$20	$25	$30
High	$40 /h	$32	$40	$48

Skill multiplies between 80% and 120% of the base. Workers are paid every 5 real-world minutes. Game speed does not multiply the bill. A worker fired mid-interval is still paid for time already worked.

Settings save per savegame. Ten languages ship. Multiplayer and dedicated servers are supported.

The in-game manager

Pause menu → Realistic Worker Costs (the worker icon):

Page	What is there
Dashboard	Active workers, next payment countdown, farm balance
Wage Settings	Cost mode, wage level, notifications, debug, reset
Worker Stats	Per-worker cost, refreshed twice a second
About	How it works, wage table, version

The same controls also appear under Pause → Settings → Game. A Reset Settings button sits in that footer.

On the Farm Tablet:

• Worker Costs shows status, wage level, cost mode, month costs, and the Pro Staff roster when that ladder is present.
• Personnel is the hire desk: roster (level, lifetime hours, jobs, status), a rotating recruitment pool, and payroll. On a dedicated server the roster lives on the host. Hire and fire are sent there.

How you use it

• Hire with intent. Do not staff a quiet winter like a harvest week.
• Assign the milk round to someone who can finish it.
• Watch fatigue. A tired legendary hand is not a bargain.
• Use the manager. Console commands exist if you want them (workerCosts lists them).

The outs

Dairy Core reads skill on collection. Time Guard says when the wage hits the account. Pro Staff, as you climb, can soften wages and fatigue. Tax sees the year. Workplace Triggers can sit next to this as off-farm pay. The Cockpit weighs this line against fuel and the milk cheque.

What you need

This mod alone makes AI labour cost money. Dairy Core is why the milk round matters. Time Guard keeps the settle honest. Farm Tablet is optional depth. Pro Staff is the long softening. None required.