The Mechanics skill permits automated buildings (flax gins, brick machines, and automated mines) to be tuned to operate faster.
You can learn the Mechanics skill once from each type of school; each new school learned from increases your skill level by one, to a maximum of seven. You must have the Brick Automation and Mine Automation skills to learn Mechanics.
Every automated building may be tuned up to seven times, and will operate slightly faster each time it is successfully tuned.
Every automated building has seven "locks". Each level of Mechanics gives you one "key". When a tuning attempt is made, a random key is checked against all the locks on a building; if the key matches a lock, that lock is removed and the building is tuned to operate slightly faster. (Neither the keys on a building nor the locks held by a player are visible.)
Yon can only try to tune a building once every 20 minutes.
For example: Bubba Ho-Tep has a brick machine with locks 1, 4, 19, 27, and 30. Bubba learns Mechanics 1 and receives key #4. Bubba tries tuning the machine, and is successful. Now Bubba learns Mechanics 2 and receives key #7, which does him no good--he can't tune the machine any further. Bubba then learns Mechanics 3 and receives key #30. This key does fit the machine, and Bubba now has a one in three chance of tuning his brick machine to level 2 on any try. (He only has a one in three chance, because he has three keys and only one of them fits a lock on the machine.)
As you can see from the above example, higher levels of mechanics make a person more likely to be able to tune a machine (since they have more keys), but less likely to tune it on any given attempt (since a random key is chosen each time). Seven people with mechanics 1 are far more efficient at tuning machines than one person with mechanics 7.
Mechanics tuition:
| Architecture | 800 oil ** see below |
| Art & Music | 1 large sapphire |
| Body | 200 flint |
| Conflict | 100 leather |
| Leadership | 40 glass rods |
| Thought | 200 coal |
| Worship | 80 rope |
Devs changed the cost from 600 oil to 800, probably by accident, when the new "learn" interface was added to schools and universities. It has never been adjusted back to 600. -- Kaelo