Money/Economy/QM Thread

[ISaidNo]

yeah the metal/ore price thing is an oversight on my part and is thus an exploit, so it should be fixed
why would we just let you generate infinite money for petes sake

[Preid]

yeah the metal/ore price thing is an oversight on my part and is thus an exploit, so it should be fixed
why would we just let you generate infinite money for petes sake

So the QM can do his job and have some fun regardless of the botanist who only grow weed and lazy miners who just bum around in space? I find the ability to generate revenue is a good way to pass the time when looking for something to do as a QM, and does not pose to great a reward other than unlimited booze and costumes.

[Cogwerks]

It's not a reasonable source of revenue generation though, it's just a cheap game exploit that needs to be fixed.

[Preid]

It's not a reasonable source of revenue generation though, it's just a cheap game exploit that needs to be fixed.

Even if it is a minor exploit, think about how dull most QM rounds would be if you could not mess around with the markets. Do you see where I am coming from? It just does not strike me as a real problem and more of an unintended feature.

[Ronnyfire]

The real problem is the lack of other ways to get money and other things for QMs to do, this exploit just puts a shallow patch on them. I think the desire is to have both problems actually fixed and remove the exploit.

[mbc]

Money from personal bank accounts is never really used for anything other than small stuff like vending machines and traitor objectives. I think we should remove the pin number system and allow anyone to use any ID for purchasing things.

Secondly, I think that the money requirement for the 'steal _______ credits' objective could stand to be lowered a bit. Maybe stealing a bunch of IDs and pulling all of the money out of other people's bank accounts could become viable.

[Anticheese]

PINs are pretty much already out since you don't need them with the QM machines.

Either remove them, or give us a way to set our own, and to crack them in-game.

[atomic1fire]

Maybe logging into the ATM in HOP's office should give the option of showing pin numbers for all crewmen.

[enforcer9]

Maybe logging into the ATM in HOP's office should give the option of showing pin numbers for all crewmen.

this

[DoctorDoodler]

Maybe logging into the ATM in HOP's office should give the option of showing pin numbers for all crewmen.

If you can get into the HOP ATM then why not just use it to steal all of the money from the crew, instead of using the crew ATMs?

[bladex454]

Because its already in the game, silly space mens

[Conor12]

Maybe logging into the ATM in HOP's office should give the option of showing pin numbers for all crewmen.

If you can get into the HOP ATM then why not just use it to steal all of the money from the crew, instead of using the crew ATMs?

So the Head of Personnel can tell people their PIN when they get a new ID.

[kyle2143]

I think both of these are really good ideas. in conjunction it would make the "steal x credits" objective much better. You'd have a traitor running around mugging people for their IDs to get money. It makes that objective make a bit more sense. Right now that objective is synonymous with "Steal a head's ID" or "Trick/rewrite the AI into giving you all the money".

Plus, it would make all the transactions on the station much easier to complete.

[Splatpope]

give us a way to set our own, and to crack them in-game.

i can already see the joys of having to do a little math game like for the teleporter

come on implement this already

[mozi]

folks have been thinking up some cool ideas to make the whole money system more useful. Let's use this thread to discuss some!

Goals:
The goals of a good money system should be--

• Encourage more social interaction
  
• Be a mechanism for treason/mischief
  
• Be fun

I think the first one is a big point. We've got a lot of jobs that theoretically help one another but few people bother since there's no incentive. Why grow crops when I could spend that time trying to fart in the Captain's face? Why build electronics when I can just hack into EVA and disappear forever? A good money system would give incentives on both ends-- people should feel that it is worthwhile to give money for goods/services, and the recipients should feel that there's enough need for money to bother accepting it.

Cash:
here's some stuff to make cash a lot more useful:

• Make cash stackable. 7 $1 dollar bills currently take up an entire backpack of space. It should work like metal tiles, just clickdrag or click on pile one another, and the name of the combined entity updates to the total amount in the pile. So instead of a $1 bill or a $5 bill, you'd just have a lump of cash named "7 Dollars" or "30 dollars." You could then click that stack in your active hand and get a prompt of how much money you want to take out and split into a smaller stack, which goes into either your non-active hand (if empty) or else just drops on the floor. If you wanted to make the traitor's money theft objective a little more tricky you could cap money stacks at $5,000, so a thief would still have to carry a suitcase full of stacks or something.
  
• Put people's starting wages in their pocket as cash when they begin the round. No having to mess with ATMs or PINs to start spending your money right away. Or if you don't want to bother with it you can just toss it aside and let some grubby Staff Assistant pick it up and use it.
  
• Make money flammable and burning bills possible to light cigarettes with. ok this one is probably the most important.

E-Commerce:

• Remove PINs on everything except ATMs, at least. PINs are just an inconvenience, really.
  
• Let us set PINs in our character setup (though this has been suggested a lot already so idk)
  
• Make it easier to transfer money electronically. A commerce app on PDAs-- swipe your card in the PDA to let it transfer money to someone else's account. If you lose your PDA and ID and someone uses them to empty out your account into theirs, well, sucks for you?
  
• Keep a record of electronic transactions on the big central database-- perhaps the HoP and Detective could have read-only access to the records. This would make it a little harder to launder the entire station's budget without anyone noticing, unless you go ahead and bomb the database too. This would also be helpful for helping to police a bunch of white-collar crime opportunities that would emerge in the enhanced economy

um I think all the above are the sort of simplest stuff. here's some more theoretical crap:

Cargo Bay:
.. is kinda silly, you will rarely get any orders from the crew, and you mostly just sit around making money from magical space arbitrage.

Here's Clarks' suggestion on a altered QM model.
In general more STUFF to buy would be worthwhile. The QM has the one novelty crate but it's $15,000 for some reason.. Since gang mode has demonstrated there is a certain variety of silly outfits maybe more crates like this could be put in. More crates in generally, really, suggest some! Though I have no idea how hard it is to code this stuff so who knows how feasible it is.

A related suggestion is that money put in the vending machine should go into the Shipping budget. Clarks' suggestion would then bridge the gap between Shipping and Payroll and make a perfect economic cycle, or something like it. Ignoring the money that disappears forever into the cash economy.

Finance:
This idea might be a little.. out there, but what about the QM offering banking services? For instance, the QM could offer payday loans. The QM, recipient, and e-commerce database all get a receipt when the loan is issued, with interest % that the QM can specify and the recipient can agree to. Periods could be defined as each pay-day cycle (which is about.. 10 minutes I think?). If the recipient is a deadbeat the QM could then go out and try to repossess the deadbeat's belongings... forcibly. If the deadbeat whines to Security all the QM has to do is present the loan contract and Security will say, "Carry on." Or maybe sell the contract to someone who is bored and has nothing to do, and now that third party has the right to beat up and steal the belongings of the deadbeat. Hmmm maybe this is a little too dystopian but it would be nice for bored Staff Assistants who have a thirst for bloodshed.

Similarly the HoP could take out bonds, sorta SimCity like, the bond rate fluctuates randomly so if he thinks QM can clean up on a certain deal and the rate is good he can take out a bond against the station as a whole and add it to the shipping budget, then take the windfall profit after the deal to pay off the bond. This would also be a funny thing for traitor/shithead HoPs to do, take out bonds worth several times the station's total budget and then disappear forever. I'm not sure what should happen if the station has to default on a loan, maybe a Repo Man critter shows up and stalks the HoP to harvest their organs as recompense. The fact that someone with an all-access ID other than the HoP might have been the one to issue the bond would be irrelevant.

One more thing related to this-- a function built into the Captain/HoP's PDA to issue bonuses/demerits to crew members simply by plugging in their name and a reason. Rather than threaten a griefing grayshirt with brig time, just garnish their wages! If a heroic geneticist uses their TK Hulk powers to beat that changeling to death, give them a bonus! Bonuses/demerits could be capped at a %age of the target's salary, so a jerk Captain can't simply remotely fine everyone to zero-- they'd have to go through the trouble of using the banking computer for that. Similarly it'd also make the Captain/HoP's PDAs appealing targets for traitors & bored people alike. The e-commerce database might be a bit of a tipoff if it records the HoP's "missing" PDA granting Honk von Traitor a bunch of cash bonuses though..

Edibles
might have a use somepoint in the near future?? making them worth spending money on?? stay tuned....

okay enough silliness
post your ideas and feedback! remember the simpler stuff is to code the better. some stuff to consider:

• Stuff to buy/do with money that would make money worth having
  
• Stuff for traitors
  
• honk honk