Persistent Bank - Suggestions + Feedback

[mbc]

This is a thread about the Persistent Bank - it's a new thing that some COOL PEOPLE on the admin team have brainstormed and I will try to go about implementing it sometime soon.
This thread is for suggestions, feedback, and questions. Feel free to voice any concerns you have or just suggest trinkets for this system to use!

Here's a rough outline of how things should go, in my head: 

Getting Cash

Each job on the station has a base wage. This is the default amt of credits that they receive every payday (before the HoP goes and messes with the bank records)
At the end of a round, the station is usually awarded a letter grade between F- and A+ on the scoring sheet. Imagine the range of F- to A+ as a range of 0 to 100.

In order to handle cash payouts, the system could check all players that survived the round and award them a percentage of their wage based on the station grade. For example : You are a staff assistant with a wage of 100 credits per payday. You manage to escape alive, and the station is given a grade of B- so 80 credits are added to your persistent bank. 
I think a reduced payout would be good for crewmembers who survive the round but do not escape.

Cash will be tied to your username, not your character.

Spending Cash

An important thing : Any item that you can purchase with persistent cash should be cosmetic, or at best marginally useful.

I feel that players should not have access to their persistent bank in-game. Instead, they will have the option to purchase a single item from a master list each time they ready up for a round on the lobby screen. The item they purchase will spawn on their character as a trinket. 
My reasoning for this is those 'marginally useful' items - I don't want a player to be able to join up, take a look at what's going on in the round and say "Hey, i could really use some tools right now!" and then go purchase a golden wrench with their bank. Purchasing an item in reaction to something happening ingame would feel kind of unfair.

Also, you will never need to buy anything if you don't want to. The system is supposed to be an entirely opt-in, flavor/just-for-fun thing.

Things to buy 

Just throwing out some examples off the top of my head (costs not included):
- Funny Hats
- Moon Shoes
- Crate of paint
- Stickers
- Camera viewer
- Golden Wrench
- Fake Moustache
- Banana Grenades

[CameronWoof]

I think this would be a really cool opportunity to let you start the round with nice little things that aren't game-affecting, but could help define a character or role. In general, I think things like:

- Clipboard (Comes with a pen and five sheets of paper)
- Winter Coat (Based on department you spawn as)
- Suitcase
- Lizard Injector? Ehhh? Ehhhhhh?

... would be neat additions. Things like usable tools, toolbelts, or things that circumvent the need for a specific department (imo, camera viewer and crate o' paint fit into this category) are less fun or reduce crew interaction which I don't think is a win for anyone.

EDIT: As an addendum, this DOES add a certain amount of "I want to survive the round" which might end up with some tears over admin gimmicks or shuttle-nanigans.

[Gannets]

I think this is a rad idea, an incentive to stay alive and do well as well as a fun little way to personalize yr spaceman. If any new silly cosmetic bank rewards need spriting, I'd be down to take a shot a them.

[NateTheSquid]

yussssssssssssssssssssss

edit: butts should be purchasable, for hats. toy swords! maybe some of those fake guns from telesci locations, with the bang flag, for pranks

[Schwicky_Schwag]

It would be pretty neat if some of the clothes from the Sew-O-Matic be available for purchase. Things like the dresses and the t-shirt/yoga pants, since they are more casual clothing. Maybe also the gold ring, since nerds on #1 that married their characters might want to spawn one so they can wear their rings. (Probably not the wedding dress / tuxedo though, they're kinda expensive)

[Arborinus]

I don't think the only reward should come from surviving the round. Even if they aren't killed by antagonists, I know not everyone likes to sit through the usual full 60+ minutes with suicide being a major pastime among the crew. And what about the people that join as the shuttle is docking?
A lot of this could just be added to the trinket or trait system as well.

[poland spring]

i like this except where it's tied into the job at all.  some jobs don't make ANY money!!!


if we are seriously gonna tie it to the actual job then we need to pay sec officers way more so people actually play as them

[Sundance]

What's stopping someone turbo-raking it in like:
1. Becoming a black market seller (drugs, organs, etc)
2. Winning the slots (quite easy)
3. Crate hunting or general telesci/debris field hunting
4. PTL burning
5. Making an honest earning of QM (but still raking it in)
6. Making a completely dishonest earning and stealing money from the HoP credit machine
??
Like you could leave a round with a gorillion dollars if you tried. Whats stopping you from doing that, getting an A (or an F, it wouldn't matter after a certain point) and literally unlocking everything from the start?

Or am I reading this wrong?

[CameronWoof]

i like this except where it's tied into the job at all.  some jobs don't make ANY money!!!


if we are seriously gonna tie it to the actual job then we need to pay sec officers way more so people actually play as them

This is actually a really good point. Why not tie it to objective completion instead?

[misto]

dont moon shoes make you move slightly faster, making them advantageous to buy. and banana peels can save or end lives if used correctly.

seing the thread title sparked my own small ideas would u like me to put them here (althought my own ideas are not really linked to this because i do not really dig this. this kind of cross-round reward thing is already handled in the medal rewards and antag token style systems) or in maybe the quetionableideas thread

[Superlagg]

You had me at "persistent".

For those who join late or just can't make it through a round without offing themselves, maybe part of the payout would be a bonus for those who arrive at centcom, like a begrudging, completely-out-of-character-for-NT hazard pay.

People who are on the shuttle, but happen to be dead at the time, should still get part of that bonus, since they can just clone your dead ass. At least your brain needs to make it to centcom, though a crate full of your bodyparts or just a liver or something should net you a small consolation prize. You only have to make it to the shuttle's destination, you can blow each other to bits after that with no (monetary) penalty.

People who started with the round, survived that round, but didn't make it to the shuttle should get whatever their base pay was.

People who started with the round, but died and didn't make it to the shuttle should get at least a fraction of their pay, scaling up with how long they stayed alive. They would also get a big check from their life insurance delivered to their (corporate) family.

People who started late into the round would be paid for the amount of time they actually spent on the station, capping out at their base pay if they're there for more than a third of the round. The timer would start from the time they arrive in the round to the moment the shuttle arrives at centcom or they stop being alive.

People who arrive while the shuttle is docked at the station would be billed for the round trip joyride, which is to say you'd only get a tiny fraction of the bonus in addition to the nothing you'd earn from your pay.

And people who kill themselves get however much they'd've made for the time they were alive, minus a clean up fee if your body is still on the station when the round ends, effectively negating your pay if you axe yourself within a few minutes of the round. You still get the centcom-arrival bonus if you somehow make it on the shuttle, minus a corporate mandated ennui management course fee.

Simple enough, working out the basics for payment. The idea is to reward people for surviving a round (in some form) while not punishing (too harshly) those who get axed along the way. After all, dying is kind of a big part of this game.

But, this could also be a good incentive for the crew to do their damn jobs for once! Each crewmember would have the opportunity to get a bonus (or penalty?) for certain actions they or their departments do during the round.

For example, Research could bring various bits of telesci garbage onto the shuttle for centcom to put up on the fridge, for which they're paid. Roboticists would be paid extra for making a bunch of borgs or robots (by hand!). Engineers (and anyone else, really) would get paid for building walls and floors in places that used to have walls and/or floors. Things like that.

Jobs and actions that NT wouldn't reasonably want to pay for would be handwaved by some third-party high-fiving them with cash. Assistants would get a check from Grayshirt Union #455 for doing whatever it is they're supposed to do, and clowns would get royalties from the network for their standup routine.

Taking this a bit further, what if the Syndicate also had their own persistent badguy bucks, paid to traitors or other evil-doers for doing evil, traitorous deeds? Basically, getting paid for completing objectives, as well as other nasty things.

Things such as hotwiring the engine and zapping people with APCs, or opening tanks of toxic gas outside of the toxic gas zone, generic badguy things that only badguys should be doing.

These super-secret Syndiebux could be used by antags to buy reskinned equipment, badass villain costumes, maybe some fancy tool mods that make your toys do something slightly different. Basically stuff to show off your dedication to being a general nuisance without actually giving you any (more) of an advantage over the crew.

And no, you can't use any of this money to buy antag tokens. Maybe a money sink cash vote that rich bastards could dump their cash pay into before the round to think that they have a bonus chance to be an antag that round.

Or something like that.

[awfulworldkid]

Research should also get a payout for not wasting their budget, and in terms of how many artifacts they positively identify / useful mutations they find / telesci locations they find. QM should also get a bonus based on how much money they make and put back into the shipping budget.

[mbc]

if we are seriously gonna tie it to the actual job then we need to pay sec officers way more so people actually play as them

def. part of the plan! Pay will have to be adjusted for some other jobs too, I expect.

Like you could leave a round with a gorillion dollars if you tried. Whats stopping you from doing that, getting an A (or an F, it wouldn't matter after a certain point) and literally unlocking everything from the start?

Or am I reading this wrong?

Yeah you read it wrong, the money you earn at the end of round is based on the amount of money your job gets per payday (by default, with no bank system tampering). It has nothing to do with how much credits you earned during a round. So if you're an officer that gets 500 per payday at round start, and the station gets a perfect score, you would earn 500.

This is actually a really good point. Why not tie it to objective completion instead?

I thought about this a bit earlier, here's my reasoning. I think that station grade is a good performance metric to use because objectives are pretty inconsistent. Some jobs don't have job-specific crew objectives, some are much easier to complete than others, and many of them are solitary tasks that many players would rather ignore. I think that basing payout on station grade encourages some form of cooperation between departments, and everyone can benefit from security/medical/engineering's hard work so there's like, camaraderie, and stuff!

---

Each crewmember would have the opportunity to get a bonus (or penalty?) for certain actions they or their departments do during the round.

Research should also get a payout for not wasting their budget, and in terms of how many artifacts they positively identify / useful mutations they find / telesci locations they find. QM should also get a bonus based on how much money they make and put back into the shipping budget.

The end-of-round scoring system does have some holes currently where it doesn't account for certain dept. performance (like research, and maybe some civilian bits). I think QM factors in because station profits are graded in with the overall score. Some of the dept. functions that are missing could be put into the calculations later on though!

[Vitatroll]

Since this is mostly an effort to bolster retention and participation, one that works well in other games, I have no problem with it as is. Only skimmed the posts so far:

Arborinus - "And what about the people that join as the shuttle is docking?"
Good point. It would probably be best if the system tracked what time you joined. It could then do something like: (roundlength - jointime)*(pay/roundlength)

I don't mind it not going to those that didn't survive, and I kill myself off tons. If partial pay was worked in, I'd like it to apply only to the time you were alive, and I'd like it to have a pretty stiff penalty for not making it out.

Poland Spring - "i like this except where it's tied into the job at all.  some jobs don't make ANY money!!!", "if we are seriously gonna tie it to the actual job then we need to pay sec officers way more so people actually play as them"

Agreed. Because of points like these, I'm deffo with certain jobs getting 'OOC-Importance' boosts - with sec getting the biggest bump. It'll be a good way to bolster the ranks of some unpopular jobs like secoff and mdoc.

Individual job performance: I think is too complex a metric to be used. Hard to balance, easily 'game-able', will result in headaches. Just look at credits. If you want credits, roll engineer or botanist - end of story. Further, some departments (like sec) have no real measuring stick. Amount of people arrested? Yeah nooooooo.

End of round score: I agree with MBC that the EORS has too many holes; it can't be relied upon atm.

Objective completion: Same with above; too many holes. Even harder to balance.

I guess the system might want to be introduced with placeholders that allow for expansion into those ideas, but in the beginning I think it's best to move forward with as simple a system as possible.

[medsal15]

- Funny Hats