The Mechanics skill permits automated buildings (brick machines and autolooms, but notably not flax gins) 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.
Tuition costs:
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 locks on a building nor the keys held by a player are visible.)
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. It doesn't make much sense to get anything more than Mech 1 or 2 considering vastly higher number of wasted tune attempts at the higher levels.
--I disagree...I tuned a brick machine when I had level 1 mechanics, I went back when I was level 4 and was told I could not tune the machine again until I learned more. At level 5 it told me I was unsuccessful, but may or may not be able to tune on later attempt. Since there are only 2 fail messages, you know if you can tune the machine or not. Having less keys is only the way to go if you plan on staying at 1 forever...since the machines I will want to tune the most haven't been built yet, I don't find this to be a good strategy. -- sketchwick 4 june 2005
Yon can only try to tune a building once every 20 minutes. A tuning attempt will give one of several possible responses:
* Heard that tuning a loom did not increase speed but decreased number of twine/thread used. Is that verified ? No. This is not the case - My autoloom is tuned to 2 and consumes the same amount of twine and thread as a untuned loom. (OldJoe, 12 May 2005) - Now it's tuned to 4 with no change in material consumed per unit produced. (Old Joe, 7 Jul 2005)
--It should also be noted that even with level 1 mechanics you can tune something past "level 1" Three people with level 1 mechanics could get a level 3 tuned machine. I didn't think this was clear before. -- sketchwick 4 june 2005