Economy from TG

[SkeletalElite]

We should port economy from TG

I know it's likely a lot of work, but having a persistent economy would be really cool. Like having actual motivation to do bad shit like give the clown space lube and stuff like that would be cool.

[Calecute]

How does TG economy work?

[SkeletalElite]

Your character's money is persistent and vending shit costs money even from places like medbay and the bar unless you work in that department. This means the chemist can put meds in the public fridge and set prices and shit on them and people can pay for shit unless they're medbay staff because they can dispense it for free.

Also it has paychecks which vary from job to job.

Edit: And by persistent I mean your money saves between rounds

Edited October 8, 2018 by SkeletalElite

[Calecute]

Seems interesting, but I imagine is kinda hard to balance. Like either people end up with virtually infinite money or with nothing, just spending their paychecks during shift. How does it goes in TG?

[bryanayalalugo]

There probably should be a adjustment or removal of the casino machines if that is the case with persistence.

Alternatively, if you add a certain high random amount of money into your account, lose all the money you gained after Nanotrasen's Accounting Department notices the irregularity with your money deposits and gets you audited.

[SkeletalElite]

5 hours ago, bryanayalalugo said:

There probably should be a adjustment or removal of the casino machines if that is the case with persistence.

Alternatively, if you add a certain high random amount of money into your account, lose all the money you gained after Nanotrasen's Accounting Department notices the irregularity with your money deposits and gets you audited.

Yeah slot machines would obviously be adjusted, no more fuck ton of money grand prize and make it so that the odds mean that youll lose more money than gain it on average.

[Kryson]

I would love it if this was implemented as it would make credits actually feel valuable and lead to better RP around work for hire, bribes, setting up your own shop and the fencing of stolen goods.

 

[Scrat]

Years ago a persistent economy was already tried. Too many problems arose with money being too easy to find (think of all the random credits lying around in space or maint) and players who couldn't spend as many rounds playing per day were greatly disadvantaged. As well, having to pay for medicine sounds good until you die from sickness or injury in an emergency and the chemist still set the medicine you need at a price you cannot afford. 

[davidchan]

17 minutes ago, Scrat said:

Years ago a persistent economy was already tried. Too many problems arose with money being too easy to find (think of all the random credits lying around in space or maint) and players who couldn't spend as many rounds playing per day were greatly disadvantaged. As well, having to pay for medicine sounds good until you die from sickness or injury in an emergency and the chemist still set the medicine you need at a price you cannot afford. 

While I do agree that money is generally too easy to find with perhaps a half a dozen garunteed spots for a few thalers to be laying about, I disagree with your example of dying because you can't afford the medicine. As already pointed out, departments can get their resources for free, you'd only die if no doctors or medical staff were willing to assist you. All it does is incentivise crew to go to department staff first rather than just bypass them and take what they want.

This system actually has some promise of working so long as department accounts came make direct orders through Cargo using their own funds, so if say medical was low on medkits, they could use their funds to buy more from Cargo without cargo needing to spend their points on it, and if medical chose they could sell those kits for a profit and just order even more medkits in the next batch.

By making it prohibitivly expensive to be the jack of all trades and do every job yourself and never rely on anyone else, the system at least passively encourages people to allow others to do their jobs and get a little bonus for it. I'm not 100% what /tg/ economy entails on its own, but the idea of being able to pay a fine instead of spending time in the brig for minor/moderate crimes certainly is something that appeals to me, particularly if the HoS/Warden could turn that income into more equipment around the brig for use by the officers.

I'm am doubtful that jobs like Janitor, Clown, Engineers or Chaplain have any reliable source of income though in rounds, as they'll get yelled at for trying to charge money to do their job (where as Bartender/Chemist/Cook get away with charging for their products), botanist too has me somewhat worried they might try charging the Chef for ingredients and thats just bad for everyone.

[Eler00]

So, join as head, go to account uplink terminal, drain your department's account into your own, repeat for a few rounds, get filthy, filthy rich with no consequences? Sounds like a plan.

[Kryson]

1 hour ago, davidchan said:

[...]I'm am doubtful that jobs like [...] Chaplain have any reliable source of income[...]

Chaplain will be the best job ever if this is implemented.

"God spoke to me today and told me to obtain a 50 million credit space pod, we need to spread the gospel to Mauna-b, hallelujah!"

Edited October 9, 2018 by Kryson

[Tayswift]

13 hours ago, Scrat said:

As well, having to pay for medicine sounds good until you die from sickness or injury in an emergency and the chemist still set the medicine you need at a price you cannot afford. 

Thought you were talking about the US for a second

But yeah, persistent economy doesn't add enough for the inconvenience and the massive effort it would take. This is an LRP system meant for an LRP server.

[SkeletalElite]

On TG jobs have paychecks too

So jobs like chaplain and clown still get money, just usually from their pay cheks.

I also so a screenshot of TG where the clown put a card swipe thing that charged you money in the bar that was the clown charity fund, dont know how it worked out but thought it was funny.

[Burkhardt]

8 minutes ago, SkeletalElite said:

TG

Sorry if i ask, but what's that TG?

[SkeletalElite]

20 minutes ago, Burkhardt said:

Sorry if i ask, but what's that TG?

Another SS13 server

[Allfd]

14 hours ago, Kryson said:

Spoiler

 

Chaplain will be the best job ever if this is implemented.

"God spoke to me today and told me to obtain a 50 million credit space pod, we need to spread the gospel to Mauna-b, hallelujah!"

Legit plane.  

So for perspective, Donald Trumps personal jet (the 757 with the big TRUMP written on it) is a 1991 757-200

Two are up for sale right now in California with 80,000 hour (its been more then two decades) both have an asking price of 9.5 Million USD.

Sure, you would need to fix up the interior, maybe new engines, but um.....  A G650 is a serious plane.

Spoiler

OK, text wall.

Aircraft costs are odd.  The reason the G650 is worth so much more is that its a modern high performance luxury aircraft that is both new, and is much smaller.

The cost of owning a 1991 757 in up front capitol is very low in comparison.  You get hit on the marginal cost the moment you start the engines.  The G650 is far more economical per hour flown.  While the G650 does not have the apron presence of a massive 757, it is far more likely to be used and far more realistic of a plane.

Massive airliners are not usually converted to private service, not because the rich don't have the money, they do.

A plane designed as an "executive jet" is just better for that role.  G650 is pressurized to 3000ft  (91 kpa)  a 757-200 is pressurized to 8000 feet (75 kpa).  So for many people this is a more comfortable air pressure as around 8000 feet many people start experiencing altitude sickness.  The G650  is also a much faster plane then the 757.

Another big thing, is that the 757 cannot land anywhere that is a 20 minute drive from your mansion.  (Or your mansion is build under a flight path.)  While the takeoff distance of a lightly loaded 757 and a G650 is about the same, the G650 has tail mounted engines, which limit the risk of debris injection at takeoff power settings.  The 757 requires you maintain a semi clean runaway or you risk engine damage.

Finally the last of the big things which is really part of the last one.  The 757 requires a truly massive support infrastructure at its home airport.  If its home airport is a large international airport, thats less of a problem.  If its a small executive airport with a long runway, thats a major issue.  Having an engine that a man can climb inside, is a problem when you need to remove that engine for inspection at a tiny executive airport.

So essentially a 757 is a great plane if your concern is how it looks when its parked.  If you have the money to actually fly around the world and use your private plane to avoid having to travel with the unwashed masses in first class on Emirates (Round trip DC to Cairo Egypt for the low low price of $24,000 USD) then you really want the G650.




 

 

[ZN23X]

Will I receive backpay for all the s̶o̶u̶l̶ ̶c̶r̶u̶s̶h̶i̶n̶g̶ hours I've spent protecting y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶t̶h̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶u̶n̶g̶r̶a̶t̶e̶f̶u̶l̶ ̶a̶s̶s̶e̶s̶ the station while playing Sec?

Cigs and coffee ain't cheap.

I like the idea of any feasible economic system that makes money in this game more meaningful.

[davidchan]

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.)

[Scrat]

They could watch for embezzlement, although considering how the rounds' baddie can tie things up, they probably won't..

[Burkhardt]

A thing like Altered Carbon (bank accounts associated with the DNA) would be really cool. In that way, associated with the ID card, we could have a strong security payments method and we also could prevent random stealing of ID cards, because it's useless with only DNA or ID cards, but you can go to the bank/police to block the stolen ID card and create one new autenticating you with your DNA. Also the police can block ID cards of crime involved crew members if they find the DNA on the crime scenes

[Burkhardt]

1 minute ago, Burkhardt said:

you can go to the bank/police to block the stolen ID card and create one

ps. in that way the thief can't open doors etc. associated with the stolen ID if you block it

[Kryson]

12 hours ago, Tayswift said:

[...]This is an LRP system meant for an LRP server.

I disagree, credits lacking any real value is a LRP system.

Most player do not care or even bother using credits, only a few dedicated RP'er accept credits as payment and when you do, it doesn't feel good or meaningful. 

The current credit system is broken, for example, the vault only has like 7000 credits when gamblers regularly win 100 000 or even 1000 000 000 credits. 

If rampant embezzlement of station funds by the heads and inflation could be kept in check this could be a great system. 

Warning, my dreams start here!

You could introduce new traveling salesman jobs tasked with selling a variety of goods to the station and sending credits back to HQ, thus removing credits from the economy and giving rich people or departments something to spend money on.

One round you could get a Donk Co salesman peddling boxes of the new spicy donk pockets to the crew, another you could have an antagonist salesman from a syndicate affiliated corporation trying to bribe the HoP with fine champagne and designer bags in order to embezzle the stations funds.

I think having an economy could create some great RP opportunities.

(Here is the champagne sprite is drew as an example of a credit sink or trader item.)

Edited October 10, 2018 by Kryson

[Calecute]

I'd really like to see credits become meaningful, but I'm afraid just persistent credits won't do it. It's not trivial to balance a in game economy. 

As Kryson said inflation can really become a problem. I'm also afraid, as I said, of extreme inequality developing, with some people having as much credit as they wanted, and some having none. 

Also in the end credits can only be as meaningful as the things you can buy with it. Right now that is food&drinks, computers and cigs. Computers and cigs are nice, but not essential. Cigs are also pretty cheap. Food&drinks are essential, but they're also cheap, and you have a free source of them if the cook works. 

So there are two ways of making credits more meaningful, we can either restrict free things, or we can allow credit to buy currently forbidden things. I'm not sure we're willing to do either. 

The suggestions were restricting bar and medbay public fridge. I'm afraid neither of those are meaningful enough. So what else can we restrict? I think the most meaningful item to restrict would be tools.

But even tools have problems, as people who spawn with them won't care, and lots of people have no use for them. 

We could restrict more meaningful things, but I don’t think we will. We could restrict jobs, cloning, food, antag. Anyway, unless we are willing to let people without money have a substantial disadvantage, money won't be meaningful.

The other way is allowing money to buy forbidden things, Like meth, weapons, armor, traitor shit. But this does not seem a very appealing option. 

[Calecute]

Now thinking I'm way off topic. About just persistent economy, i have an idea that would solve inequality and inflation:

Tax people. Put a progressive income tax that eats x% of peoples money every round end. 

[Kryson]

21 minutes ago, Calecute said:

[...]So there are two ways of making credits more meaningful, we can either restrict free things, or we can allow credit to buy currently forbidden things. I'm not sure we're willing to do either. . [...]

I suggest adding a whole new range of credit purchasable luxury foods, drinks, clothes and other assorted luxury items.

Have you become filthy rich under this system? Don't worry there are thing to spend your fortune on.

Want impress your fellow Tarajans by only eating the finest imported Chinese gold hamsters? only 15 000 credits per cage of 3.

You could even pay the chef extra to cook you a meal using the finest ingredients, perhaps you fancy a 9 000 credit wheel of blue cheese? No problem

As long the credits are useful to someone they will start flowing and soon you will be able to buy all kinds of goods and services(including stolen goods, for all you greytiders).

(Sprites are WIP)

Edited October 10, 2018 by Kryson