Economy from TG

[Burkhardt]

the economy need more things like supplies ship that the captain can buy at cheap prices, vending the things to the bars, medbay (in that case the Head of the medbay can pay it at an higher price, vending it for a more higher price. this also work for bartender, cooks etc)  etc. and everyone make a little bit of profit from that. in that way the captain or who manage the money can pay the crew of the ship, so the crew spend money in things that they need and the circle restart. it's only a fact to find a balanche (maybe making a fixed quantity of money that can be reduced or augmented thanks to tourists and other non-crew members). but in this case we also need banks, that can administrate the funds of the richest people (if they're offline from like one day maybe) giving some money to people that request it and that can pay the debts. but this need a loot of work, coding etc. to build a solid economy system, because you can't make a thing like this based only on what the server actually has, you need to implement also more things, more areas in the map etc.

[Burkhardt]

and you also need a mood system, because lack of money can make you depressed etc. and a lot of money (and goods like good food, luxury etc) can make you really happy. and we also need a sort of american sanitary system for unnecessary surgery like face changing etc.

[Burkhardt]

and we need delivery system (with other tools like a sort of tablet for incoming orders and accomplished orders, that can be accomplished only with the signature of the player that has requested these things) with things like ambulances for delivery and all these thing. otherwise the thing can't work properly. and in that way we can have less players doing nothing except for running around the station

[Zciwomad]

I like how you all try to change Communist Space Station to Capitalist Space Station. Maybe finally somebody would bother to pay me for mercenary things. Too many times I've heard "Why do you need credits?"

[Burkhardt]

3 hours ago, Zciwomad said:

Too many times I've heard "Why do you need credits?"

That's because the rounds are too short and the character has too many credits. you can buy everithing you want without the risk of remaining with 0 credits

[Kryson]

1 hour ago, Burkhardt said:

That's because the rounds are too short and the character has too many credits. you can buy everithing you want without the risk of remaining with 0 credits

That is more of an ooc reason than an IC reason, presumably your character has a desire to obtain more credits. I will accept and offer credits as payment because it is better for RP, but it doesn't feel good because the credits are so damn useless. 

Some kind of overhaul is needed and if a persistent economy is too hard to manage, we should at least consider reworking the current round based system by adding more desirable items for purchase, rebalancing the slot machines and easing credit handling by letting you deposit or withdraw credits at the ATM with only a short 4-5 digit pin code.

[Eler00]

Sell insulated gloves for 6000 credits at cargo. BAM, money is now desired by the greytides.

[davidchan]

I don't even know if its worth justifying a response to 'Low RP system' in a game where the lore is about a mega corporation sabotaging their competition to secure a monopoly on plasma and development of such technologies for the sole purpose of making one hell of a profit... and the employees of said station operate in some socialist dystopia where they can afford just about anything they'd ever want and receive services for no work on their part?

Back on topic, one possible iteration for if/after economy gets ported would be accruing debt. Just showing up for a round and doing nothing shouldn't even break even, people who sit in the bar and drink all shift digging themselves into a whole, cloning and complex medical care charging a fair penny, and if a player ends a round dead they are deducted even more as NT pulls up an offsite back up, force clowns and sends them in on the next shift to make up for productivity, each death then carry round to round penalties where you need to take out loans just to be able to eat some rounds and failing to show up for work (not logging in to a character for 3+ days) could have a penalty tossed on as well, these of course would need to be capped.

And dare I suggest running the risk of putting yourself into debt and not being able to legally afford most services the station offers, the Syndicate or other nefarious organizations might prioritize such a candidate for work over mr money bags who always works the high paying jobs and never has less than 8 digits in their ATM balance (or, alternatively if the Syndicate made the loan to you in the first place a rival agent being tasked with harvesting your organs and shipping them out for sale to cover the debt)

[Calecute]

45 minutes ago, davidchan said:

Back on topic, one possible iteration for if/after economy gets ported would be accruing debt. Just showing up for a round and doing nothing shouldn't even break even, people who sit in the bar and drink all shift digging themselves into a whole, cloning and complex medical care charging a fair penny, and if a player ends a round dead they are deducted even more as NT pulls up an offsite back up, force clowns and sends them in on the next shift to make up for productivity, each death then carry round to round penalties where you need to take out loans just to be able to eat some rounds and failing to show up for work (not logging in to a character for 3+ days) could have a penalty tossed on as well, these of course would need to be capped.

 

This is a pretty bad idea. It's also ineffective, having a pretty easy work around: just create another char.

[davidchan]

 

12 hours ago, Calecute said:

This is a pretty bad idea. It's also ineffective, having a pretty easy work around: just create another char.

Lets see, players who care about their character(s) will have to make an effort to be productive and not fuck off with their clique and take up job slots, or they'll have to keep rolling rando names and faces and making it harder for the cliques to stay together and know who each other are without some more obvious metacomms going on.

I'm not seeing the downside.

[Calecute]

3 hours ago, davidchan said:

Lets see, players who care about their character(s) will have to make an effort to be productive and not fuck off with their clique and take up job slots, or they'll have to keep rolling rando names and faces and making it harder for the cliques to stay together and know who each other are without some more obvious metacomms going on.

You can just create another char exactly like the last. Being attached to a char is not really that relevant for this. 

[Allfd]

11 hours ago, Calecute said:

You can just create another char exactly like the last. Being attached to a char is not really that relevant for this. 

This would be pretty easy for us to deal with, we just need to have certain things cost something.  The easiest way to not have to deal with debt, is to not sell things to people without money.

[das bread]

I support saving your credits for 10 rounds then turning science into a golden masterpiece of inter species achievement.

I do not support pimping out genetics for quick bucks tho, money and economy should /try/ to be within standards. I really like black market players though and think they have a lot to add to this equation.

[Threeinone]

I thought each round is considered a re-iteration of the same day? wouldn't a persistency between days kind of mess with that idea?

[Regular Joe]

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 11:55 AM, davidchan said:

As long as most of the paychecks are coming form Department Accounts (with perhaps a stipend from CC to each account to support but not fully cover costs) I feel the system could work really well. SOP and Space Law would have to be updated to cover Embezzlement and Fraud, with the HoP and IAAs having to keep an eye on accounts to watch for suspicious activity and do audits if someone suddenly gets rich for no reason. Clever agents just finding a way to create or hijack multiple accounts and play the shell game with their money.

I guess for me the perfect system would be that all EFTPOS transactions go to the dept account with the seller (who ever configured the scanner) getting a commision of 5-20% of the sale (Dept Head can set this from their office) and 5% being taxed by Command and another 5% being taxed by CC. Command could alter this tax rate to suit their needs as could CC change their rate. Admins could run events where CC bumps the tax rate up to cover costs, or issues fines or the like upon Command that must be paid or face severe consequences (with the extreme example being the crew fucking up so bad they have 15 minutes or so to raise 100k or 1 million or else CC will send in a Deathsquad, and going off the lore as is they might just send the squad in anyways.)

This.

Another idea. Having money, you should always be in the danger of lose it all! The world is full of scum, thieves, robbers and punks, who all want to get the easy money out of you, so the space should be full of space robbers, too! It would, for example, be an antag objective to rob certain amount of money (a petty theft in terms of the small number of robbed personnel would still not be self-antagging). Either from the crew, either from some secure space gold vault located in the Brig. Robbing the crew would happen by skimming their ID cards with a PDA with a skimming cartridge. Or otherwise, the money we are talking about would be received and transacted as cash. The persistent money being spawned as cash to your life-gear box, or a wallet being spawned with the correct cash amount in the backpack.

Being able to unwillingly lose all your money would empty the pockets of the filthy-rich nerds at least sometimes, so balancing the fact some will have it more and some less.

Edited October 20, 2018 by Regular Joe

[necaladun]

We've discussed persistent economy many times, and there are some huge issues that are in the way of it ever occurring:

 

1: If money can give any form of in game advantage, than a persistent economy means that older players get more advantage, making things even harder on new players, in a game that's already hard on them

2: If it can't give any form of in game advantage, it becomes kinda useless and just there for looks

3: In the case of crashes, grief, etc, how people will be reimbursed etc for their money needs to be looked at. If the consequences of grief can now impact people over multiple rounds, it will hugely encourage said grief. Crashes and other bugs are annoying to deal with, but if they had repercussions for people over multiple rounds, it would be huge amounts more work for admins. People already get angry enough about crashes and grief - having long term repercussions would make this 10x worth.

4: Meta - both grudging and friends. If you're able to rob people, then targeting them over multiple shifts etc becomes a lot more of an issue with long term consequences, and friends giving each other money etc becomes an issue - especially because of how annoying that would be to track. 

5: Antags. If I'm an antag HoP, can I rob station accounts for myself, and then benefit from that the next round?  And a host of other problems involving antags...

6: Self-Antagging - is stealing $10 as a non antag ok? $20? $1,000,000?

 

These are just a few of the things that have come up. 

All in all, SS13 and Paradise haven't been written in such a way that anything is persistent beyond the library, and to make such a change would be huge amount of work, that would also increase the current workload for admins, and make any future PRs with an impact on the economy incredibly touchy subjects.

 

I'd much prefer if we look at making credits more useful and harder to get, before we look at any form of ability to take them from one round to the next. That would need to be done anyway, so should be done first. 

[Allfd]

On 10/13/2018 at 11:07 AM, Threeinone said:

I thought each round is considered a re-iteration of the same day? wouldn't a persistency between days kind of mess with that idea?

They are not reiterations but we don't really define what happens between shifts, or how everyone is back the next shift after the station was destroyed.

Relationships persist between rounds socially, which heavily implies that the rounds are not just repeats of the same day. This is the major point, and we kind of just hand wave the inconsistencies.

My general rule of thumb, is outside of everyone dying and if one person is an antag, it's remembered.

[JovanM]

It is 26th century. Technologies allowed everyone to have their basic income, but if a person wants to get something more, then it has to pick some place. Let's say, everyone comes with 1000cr to station. There may be some rates. For example, janitor's rate is 1.2; Librarian has rate of 1.2 as well; Clown and mime have rates of 1.0 . Engineering and Science have rates of 2.0, And so on... 

Then, over some time delays, everyone gets something more (except civilians, since they have no assigned duties): rate * some basic value.

Credits should be used only for getting items from some vending machines (like now) or obtaining vanity or rare items (like champagne bottles, green cheese, checkered bags, golden jewelry, musical instruments).

[Benjaminfallout]

How about we just use credits for bread tubes and roleplay like it is now? You are here to roleplay right?

[Allfd]

3 hours ago, Benjaminfallout said:

How about we just use credits for bread tubes and roleplay like it is now? You are here to roleplay right?

We are trying to make more mechanical incentives to roleplay.  Or at the very least, not have mechanics that act as a disincentive to roleplay.

[BryanR]

Rather than having a persistent economy where your bank account rolls over to each round, what about a simple economy where there are set prices that are unaltered for products that are charged to personnel outside of the department with the same randomly generated bank account system that is given at round start modified with a paycheck based on the job that is selected that is deposited into the accounts every half hour of the round.

All charges for products don't go to the individual's personal account but instead go to the department account which can be used for the benefit of the department or the employees within at the discretion of the head of that department. The request console can be used to order something from cargo and instead of using up Supply Points there can be a choice to pay for it from the Department's Account with the order being recorded in the Accounting System which can be reviewed by the Head of the Department.

In the sense of how it could be implemented through such departments like Botany, place fridges that can be loaded and would pre-set a price for the product itself that can then be obtained by whoever wants to pay for the product so long as they have the funds to do so, whereas intradepartmental acquisition of resources like between the chef and the botanist are completely waived since the resources acquired would be for that department's use.

That will prevent an unfair advantage that come from players that can sink more time into the game than players who can only spend perhaps a round every other day playing since the bank accounts are reset with each round.

It will curtail the problem of painting targets on the back of individuals who accumulate a great deal of wealth since the wealth accumulated would be based entirely upon the job that is being performed, those with the biggest targets on their back being members of command who shouldn't be in a position where they'd have their information/ID stolen to begin with.

It would resolve the meta/grudge problem since as before, there isn't a great deal of wealth centralized in any one place since the accounts themselves are still randomly generated.

The self-antagging is a simple resolution as a simple modification of Space Law to either include the stealing of a certain amount of money to fall beneath 'Petty Theft' 'Robbery' ' 'Theft' 'Grand Theft' or you could even create a new category specifically for the theft of funds from the station. In order not to allow the HoP to get away with the crime completely free, allow the Heads of Departments the ability to see and manage their department's accounts along with the Head of Personnel so there isn't just a single individual with control of the information.

In this way we can make credits more relevant in the game without completely breaking the current system. A slight modification to the slot machines either increasing the cost of the credits used or cap the maximum payout to 10,000 credits with the same percent chance as winning 100,000 or even 1 million credits so it still encourages the use of the slots without entirely breaking the balance.

I think focusing on a simple framework for an economy instead of trying to tape on a framework that would introduce more problems than solutions to the current issue would be the best course of action in this sense. Then later as it becomes solidified and the bugs are worked out of it we can introduce different aspects of the economy and make it a bit more in depth than what we started with.

[Allfd]

26 minutes ago, Sihsse Zsak said:

That will prevent an unfair advantage that come from players that can sink more time into the game than players who can only spend perhaps a round every other day playing since the bank accounts are reset with each round.

So the problem, is that as we appear to be defining it, an economy exists to allocate scarce resources.  A non-persistent economy, does not do that, effectively all it would do would be to limit how much of a resource someone could get in game.

30 minutes ago, Sihsse Zsak said:

It would resolve the meta/grudge problem since as before, there isn't a great deal of wealth centralized in any one place since the accounts themselves are still randomly generated.

Yes, it would.  But in doing so, its not so much a fairer distribution of resources, so much as it is a random distribution.

I think any efforts to make an economy without persistence are  a waste of time and effort.  Without persistence, resources are not scarce except for perhaps immediately scarce for that round.  Without any sort of actual (persistent) scarcity, we would have to significantly introduce scarcity by artificially reducing supply of key items for any of the changes to have a meaningful effect.  (Station gets two medkits)  

[BryanR]

3 minutes ago, Allfd said:

I think any efforts to make an economy without persistence are  a waste of time and effort.  Without persistence, resources are not scarce except for perhaps immediately scarce for that round.  Without any sort of actual (persistent) scarcity, we would have to significantly introduce scarcity by artificially reducing supply of key items for any of the changes to have a meaningful effect.  (Station gets two medkits)  

I can agree that without persistence there isn't a scarcity of resources however I'm not speaking about establishing an actual economy in which there is a definitive supply and demand where a scarcity would drive up prices of resources while a surplus would drive down those same prices. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the point you're trying to make but what I'm suggesting is a simple method for making credits more relevant than what they currently are. Introducing an artificial demand for key items (in this instance medkits) isn't necessary, its just slapping prices on items that individuals outside of those departments they can be found if they do not wish to go through the proper channels to obtain them.

Medkit on the bridge empty? Better go over to Medbay spend a few credits to restock the kit.

Want some unstable mutagen for Botany? Better pull out your wallet to pay for some from Medbay or SciChem.

Its just a fledgling purpose for the use of an item that at the moment really doesn't have much of a use outside of roleplay purposes and even then very rarely, or entertainment purposes in purchasing items from the cargo console, or playing the slots if you're really bored.

While the idea of having a bank account that rolls over from round to round would be wonderful it simply shifts the balance in favor of those who can regularly play as opposed to those who can't and would further the argument against giving the credits a purpose beyond what they already serve now since to slap a price tag on items would suddenly make it all the more unfair for those who can't save up credits in a timely fashion to get goodies and in the end turn them off from playing the game all together.

[Allfd]

47 minutes ago, Sihsse Zsak said:

Medkit on the bridge empty? Better go over to Medbay spend a few credits to restock the kit.

Want some unstable mutagen for Botany? Better pull out your wallet to pay for some from Medbay or SciChem.

I don't really know why a station owned by a single corporation would do this, its a bunch of extra work for the transfer of something that does not have value.

49 minutes ago, Sihsse Zsak said:

While the idea of having a bank account that rolls over from round to round would be wonderful it simply shifts the balance in favor of those who can regularly play as opposed to those who can't and would further the argument against giving the credits a purpose beyond what they already serve now since to slap a price tag on items would suddenly make it all the more unfair for those who can't save up credits in a timely fashion to get goodies and in the end turn them off from playing the game all together.

So I spent some time trying to think of a multiplayer RPG that did not have an economy.  I thought the Boulders Gate/Icewind Dale series from late 90s, but they had market places.  

TG is massively popular and we are talking about a port of their system.

Considering every multiplayer RPG I can think of has a persistent economy, and TG has a persistent economy.  I just don't see this as an issue.

[ZN23X]

Would this actually make things more interesting at all or would regular players just develop over inflated wallets with not enough to spend it all on? Or would it eventually lead to the overinflated market that all MMOs have where long term players have tons of money to afford things that seem insanely expensive to newer players? (i.e. chemists marking up the cost of common drugs to some insanely high price that only long term players with massive bank accounts csn afford)

I like the idea of money having a useful purpose in this game but cannot think of a fair and realistic way to make that happen. Its nice to say "it would be cool to have this extra feature" but...would it?

I feel like the method proposed would just turn money into a slightly different form of irrelevant fluff from what it already is. If that is all its gonna be, why bother.

...plus, as has been mentioned...money having actual value would add yet another version of greif and abuse we would have to monitor. If the players here have proven one thing, its that some of them will always try to game the system. I know...you can't help yourselves. This is why we can't have nice things.

Edited October 28, 2018 by ZN23X