OK for those who are staying, I (Minister of Industrial Development) *am* really trying to get a lot of businesses to be available for those who want to run them. I'm going to be a little careful because of what we've seen with the buildings of ragequitted/inactive players taking up room in the capital, being inoperative and unrepairable, and leading to sudden bottlenecks. BUT I really think people who want to run buildings should be encouraged and accomodated - it's interesting, gives you something to do while you're doing a long mining/chopping/engineer/etc job, gets you interacting with customers/suppliers and I think people naturally work harder for something they have ownership in.
As a first step, 1 person has a sawmill building and I'd like to create at least another 2, and even more as demand increases. Timber is incredibly useful and used in so many other materials and buildings. And please, if you're just going to stay idle all night, set up long chop work instead - there is already a pretty good market for wood and it really helps us. Also a brickworks, then a couple of iron foundries. People who do well at these lower level business will be given first crack at the steelmill, glass and other higher level buildings.
So if you have interest in running a sawmill, brickworks or ironworks, please get in touch with me in-game. If there's a huge demand (and I hope there is) the first chances will go to those with the most days, balanced against activity level and availability.
Also if you've got any mines on any of the mining plots older than Whitemountain Quarry (ie any plot older than yesterday), please finish them off and delete them because we'd like to delete the depleted plots and get to work on new ones. I've also raised mining land rates to try to balance the increased income of mining with excavators and income to the government. The rates are high but really shouldn't be a problem to miners with excavators. The government will also be placing and selling mines and frameworks on some mining plots.
And if any miner does not yet have excavators, any medium/high level builder without cranes, or any serious farmer without tractors, please get in touch with me in-game so we can get you maximally productive.
Edit: And high level builders (>100 builds/tick with cranes) who want to build please get in touch with Rilder (or me if he's not on and I will forward your interest to him).
Edit2: these will be jobs with wages/contract pay sufficient to cover depreciation on cranes.