[Tinn]

OK, thread read. Now I feel kind of bad for posting so many replies in a row.
...And now I'm over it. More replies!

Originally Posted by SoylentOrange

How about combining them into four stats?

Physical- anything relating to completing a task of labor.
Mental- anything requiring book-smarts, like accounting and so on.
Emotional- Anything requiring people skill, like administration, being a receptionist, etc.
Maternal- A catch-all for all the cow-ish activities like expressing milk, giving birth, raising new cowgirls, etc.

Ooh, seconded. Having too many stats with obscure or overlapping purposes would make the game harder to write, balance, and learn.
I'm not sure about 'Maternal,' though - if the game is going to focus on a relatively small number of cowgirls, opportunities to give birth to and raise them might be slim on the ground. Maybe 'womanliness' might be a better fit? Unless we go with the 'faceless extras' idea, or have some kind of child-management system like Flexible Survival did, where calves effectively boost their mother's stats and affect vents... Hmm.

Anyway, I'm gonna go ahead and suggest some skills/abilities that would presumably be affected by or based on whatever stats the game ends up having.

Administration - The ability to make calls, balance accounts, and otherwise do the paperwork and bookkeeping that a business needs to survive. Every action that involves stuff outside the farm (organising outgoing milk shipments, ordering in supplies, buying cowgirls, etc.) could require a certian number of skill-hours be spent on it before it is completed. It might be sensible to split this skill into a variety of related ones, but it'll depend how much detail we want in this part of the simulation. Potentially, this skill could also include getting discounts on purchases, or extra cash on sales.
Breast Size - Duh. Given the focus of this part of the forum, I suspect this stat will be a priority on a lot of farms. Come to think of it, it'd be interesting if different cowgirls had different preferences for ideal breast size - and it'd be a lot better for your accountant's morale if she really liked waterbeds. Then again, I suspect a lot of players have their own preferences for size, so maybe that particular gameplay element should be avoided.
Conversation - This could affect the chance of a cowgirl telling you about issues that need your attention, instead of just lowing mournfully. It could also be involved in improving cowgirl morale, and in many game events.
Cooking - Because an all-grass diet is inappropriate and unhealthy for the more human kinds of cowgirl, as well as the presumably-human player character. This skill could be important in improving morale, as well as ensuring better nutrition.
Dairy processing - Perhaps this should be rolled into Cooking, but as someone mentioned, milk-based recipies should feature heaviliy in this game - perhaps heaviliy enough to have their own skill. Either way, selling cheeze, yoghurt and butter instead of milk should be a viable way of increasing your farm's profitability. This could potentially also incude making dairy products with potion-like effects, e.g.: weight gain cheese, BE milkshakes, and energising yoghurt.
Pasturing - The ability to maintain, expand, and care for the rolling green hills that keep your cowgirls happy, healthy, and fed. This should probably also include making hay and storing it for winter, assuming we want our cowgirls to eat grass.
Labouring - This could be a catch-all for all varieties of rough-and-ready farm labour that don't get covered by something more specific: Repairing fences, digging irrigation ditches, checking soil salinity levels, hauling things from one place to another, digging cellars, raising barns, and so on. Hmm... I'm not imagining some kind of harvest-moon-like scenario, where you have to repair or rebuild half the farm's facilities before you can use them.
Lactation Rate - I'd like it if this was seperate from Breast Size. I mean, sure, lots of activities that increase one would be expected to increase the other, but having them seperate could increase the variety of cowgirl builds possible, and makes the strategy slightly deeper. Personally, I reckon this stat should determine how much a cowgirl lactates, but not whether she lactates in the first place. That can wait until you dose her with the right medicine - or until she gets pregnant. All cowgirls lactating all the time could make for easier gameplay.
Mechanic - modern farms involve a lot of machinery, and older ones will have carts and tools that need repairing. A skill to fix things that break could be the difference between meeting a deadline and not having the cash to buy new milkmaid uniforms.
Medicine - Feverish cowgirls might set the heart racing, but in the long-term, keeping cowgirls healthy is an important part of keeping your farm (and relationship with the girls) running smoothly. This skill could be used to treat illness, and could passively increase the chances of spotting it in the early stages before it becomes severe. This skill could also possibly allow a cowgirl to suggest ways of improving nutrition, or of achieving certian physiological improvements.
Milk Capacity - If the amount of milk a cowgirl could store was distinct from the amount she could produce, then it could become part of the strategy of which girls to milk, and when. If a girl isn't milked often enough, her production could start to decline - but maybe that's what you want, if you're trying to train her for non-milking duties. Hmm... Maybe this should be rolled into breast size. Or maybe it shouldn't, and cowgirls could occasionally have Bazongas of Holding.
Milkmaid - The ability to extract milk from another cowgirl for storage and sale. Perhaps cowgirls should be able to milk themselves, too, if they can reach their own nipples. The player character should probably have this skill, or something similar. I'm assuming mechanical milking machines won't be a substantial part of this game, 'cause why would we let a machine have all the fun? (Unless the game also includes robot milkmaids, of course, but that's probably getting a little out-of-scope.)
Observation - This skill would represent a cowgirl's attention to detail and situational awareness, and could be checked in a whole lot of events.
Sensitivity - This would presumably have an effect on morale - while milking, at least. And possibly in other circumstances, if any 'Sexual skills' are involved in play.
Sexual skills - To let cowgirls improve each other's morale while the player character is busy. Of course, high morale could also be achieved though other means, but I suspect that enough players will want this particular feature that

The above skills make certian assumptions about the game.
Firstly, it assumes that the game will focus on managing the amount of time spent on a particular list of activities that includes farm maintenence, bookkeeping and paperwork, milking, cowgirl care, milk processing, produce sales, social interaction between cowgirls and social interaction between cowgirls and the player character, as well as including a variety of random events, possibly involving NPCs, that are based on what the player character (and the cowgirls) do. Other kinds of activities - or a completely different game - might require a drastically modified, extended, and/or shortened list. Ooh, how about:
Agriculture - For taking care of crops, assuming we don't want to have a purely-dairy farm.
Tax Evasion - Fun in any era, but not necessarily appropriate in a peaceful farming simulator.

Secondly, it assumes that the game will have a reasonably modern-day real world-ish kind of setting, but more fantastic or historically interesting settings are possible, and could include skills such as:
Alchemy - Anyone can improve through hard work, but weird potions do it faster and with more explosions.
Folk Magic - From charms to keep the weather nice, to herbs that encourage safe birth, to the right ettiquette for dealing with milk fairies, folk magic is a way of making superstition into a gameplay mechanic.
Herbalism - Alchemy's less academic and more homely cousin is nearly as effective, cheaper, but includes fewer explosions.
Nanotechnology - Why breed cowgirls when you can restructure the physiology of passing travellers on a nanoscopic scale? Well, because the ethics of it are highly questionable, and not everyone likes the idea.