The characters don't get paid, per se. I spent a fair chunk of last night thinking about why that is after someone in the comments mentioned it, and wrote a response on the blog to why we're not doing that (which is here )
There are a whole wack of great story-driving outcomes of characters, i'm so taking suggestions for this.
Great points about the complexity of economies. I would rather see you sidestep the gritty underbelly of a working economy if you can just model it on a macro scale.
I believe you already have traits. Traits will allow you a strong macro scale economy.
I'm pulling things out of a hat here, trait-wise, so don't consider the specifics please, more the method.
Aggregate traits.
Wealth trait = Economic Tier * Education * Work Ethic * Creativity
Say you have a foreman, who is tier 2, but with a poor education, poor work ethic, and poor creativity. It is entirely possible that one of his workers at Tier 1, with very high education, work ethic, and creativity might have a higher wealth trait, because they don't waste as much, and are constantly trying to do more and improve their lot in life.
Education might be improved at a school. Work Ethic would be problematic, and would probably only increase if they are fired from a job, and their education allows them to understand why. Creativity. Well, creativity could come from having kids, and raising them, or perhaps exposure to squidbunnies. Sanity and Creativity do share some of the same brain space after all.
Aggregate traits might be useful for more complex things like politics.
Political success = Wealth Trait * (1-Sincerity) * Appearance * Aggression * number of politically active friends
Like I said. Just examples, but I tried to make them make sense. I figure that players should be able to control who "leads" their colonies, and who the foremen are, but it would be interesting if the characters could lose happiness because they work under a moronic boss, and you could see that in their actions. Workers talking to each other about their bad boss, and then talking about who a good boss would be. Citizens talking about the colony leader, then talking about who they would prefer to be in charge.
The player could use this to help guide them to better colony efficiency. Maybe. See below.
For cults, it would be completely outside the power of the player to control their leadership. Joe, the third shift steam pipe tester at the widget factory might have better leadership stats than the colony leader, and if they were both introduced into a cult, over time, Joe would emerge on top, leading the cult.
Cults would then start trying to shape the player's decisions, the cult members starting to talk badly about even good leaders, and talking well about their own desired candidates.
Wow I seem to have started with the whole wealth thing and run all the way to politics and cult interference. Two whole steps. Sorry about that