Goonhub
03-27-2013, 11:23 AM
Sometimes when I'm Electrician or Engineer (which is most of time), people will waltz up to the front desks and ask for insulated gloves. I keep thinking I should charge for them, but it would feel even worse to put the funds into my personal account than to hand them out for free as I usually do.
What I'm saying is, we have this weird fusion of economic system where everyone gets (shit) wages from Centcom, is supposed to pay for equipment out of that if the pre-allocated stuff isn't enough and also allowed to sell/give away existing equipment as they see fit.
Could the departments maybe get their own budgets for people to put money into? You can already kind of do this for the Shipping budget (using the confusingly named "Purchase Supply Points" option on the Supply Request Console), but even there there's no proof of purchase. Science has a non-existent budget, no way for crewmembers to pay straight to it, and enormous potential to run a more or less illegal business selling the produce from Toxins/Chemistry/Telelab/Artlab. As I understand it, Medbay has card swipers for just this reason, but you're still paying directly to an individual whitesuit. Botany has the same issue.
Short version:
Implement budgets for Medical, Engineering, Security, Botany and The Restaurant (maybe mash Botany and Restaurant together into Superbotany, keeps things simple).
Give each department a local Banking computer, with access only to that department's budget and the ability to send money to other budgets and crewmebers' accounts. The relevant Head would have access. (Access levels on Mushroom station imply that the Barman rules Superbotany.)
Make it relatively easy to charge money to the department budget at the front desk, and to send money between budgets at the banking computers.
What I'm saying is, we have this weird fusion of economic system where everyone gets (shit) wages from Centcom, is supposed to pay for equipment out of that if the pre-allocated stuff isn't enough and also allowed to sell/give away existing equipment as they see fit.
Could the departments maybe get their own budgets for people to put money into? You can already kind of do this for the Shipping budget (using the confusingly named "Purchase Supply Points" option on the Supply Request Console), but even there there's no proof of purchase. Science has a non-existent budget, no way for crewmembers to pay straight to it, and enormous potential to run a more or less illegal business selling the produce from Toxins/Chemistry/Telelab/Artlab. As I understand it, Medbay has card swipers for just this reason, but you're still paying directly to an individual whitesuit. Botany has the same issue.
Short version:
Implement budgets for Medical, Engineering, Security, Botany and The Restaurant (maybe mash Botany and Restaurant together into Superbotany, keeps things simple).
Give each department a local Banking computer, with access only to that department's budget and the ability to send money to other budgets and crewmebers' accounts. The relevant Head would have access. (Access levels on Mushroom station imply that the Barman rules Superbotany.)
Make it relatively easy to charge money to the department budget at the front desk, and to send money between budgets at the banking computers.