Economy Rework Part 1: Wages and Vending Machines

[aft2001]

I *really* like Technature's idea, though with some minor tweaks:

Money added to the payroll should be the expected amount of money paid by shift time 60 minutes. If a staffie joins a minute after roundstart, and gets that same pay, the budget will still increase by 1200c. If they join at 30 minutes, it'll increase by 600. 45 minutes in and it'll increase by only 300. 60 minutes+ means no bonus.

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As a separate comment, sub-departments like Artsci, Toxins, and Pathology should all be able to produce money for the station. Here's a basic summary of what I've cumulatively brainstormed for a while now:

Each of the aforementioned departments should have a new console or machine or system integrated into existing machines that lets them fill out a form, very similar to how the Viscera Cleanup Detail post-cleanup form works - several fields that you can enter in pre-made responses to. The more correct fields you have, the better; the more incorrect fields you have, the more you are penalized; fields with no responses do not give or take anything.
When I say give or take anything, I mean earned credits. Each of these forms should be printed out and exported via Cargo with a bomb, an artifact, or a series of cures and vaccines. Here's how I think each could work:

Toxins - Simply make a bomb and export it. The form would have fields for you to fill in its gas tank info an estimate of its explosive power based on the VR tests you probably should have done.

Artsci - Export an *activated* artifact. You will be able to select the origin (what appearance it has basically), its activation method, and the sensor readings you get from doing experiments, as well as the type of artifact in the form - you would also fill in details based on the type of artifact. For example, while a lamp artifact wouldn't have any fields, an injector artifact would require you to list what reagents it injects, and a healing artifact would require you to list the types of damage it heals and how much.

Pathology - Take in disease samples from the CDC and create a randomly determined amount of cures and vaccines for it. The sample does not need to be exported, but the original crate or a piece of paper or w/e that came with the import needs to be exported with the final product. In the form you can list the type of pathogen, its appearance, its details such as mutation rate and spread rate and such, how many genes it has, its symptoms, and its suppressing agent.


Would give these departments genuine purpose to the station, and make actually doing these more fun - you'd have a reason to log all that data from experiments you do on an artifact, because each additional piece of data can earn you hundreds of more credits; you'd have a reason to actually use toxins; and pathology would actually see more popular use (once reworked and enabled).

[Flourish]

Payroll tiers sound good to me. Like you said, they'd provide targets for pricing things, and I also think it'd be fun to have an increased meta awareness of who gets paid how much and what they can afford. I also agree with Sundance about making the payroll harder to steal.

[vampirate]

I had the idea on the chat channel to allow people to open private accounts that are accessed via using a different pin. These ones could not be viewed by the HoP or budget computer. They would cost like 250 to open through the atm.

[TheRealFlapJackson]

add a tiny chance that the clown can get a "funny number" as their income. like a very rare chance that they get an income of 69, 420, ect. but a really, really, small chance.

[Wisecrack34]

I think Aft's idea is REALLY good, including his liking of Technature's idea

[UrsulaMejor]

I had an idea today:

What if direct transfers into bank accounts weren't possible, and that had to be done through the reallocation of wages?

In addition, I'd make the max wage 10000

There would still be ways to quickly embezzle the money from the payroll budget if you think it through a bit, but it wouldn't be quite so easy or instant.

[phyvo]

Some ideas for embezzlement:

Make bank transfers and wage changes take time, like 5-10 minutes to go through. For transfers the amount is deducted right away but is not transferred to the new account until the transfer is complete. This gives the other heads time to cancel the transfer before it completes if they are not apathetic, and the embezzling head can buy time for themselves by deconstructing the consoles. The exception might be transfers between budgets, e.g. research -> supply and such. Wage changes should maybe be just 3 minutes to update, or less if you implement a wage maximum.

Leave a record of every transfer and wage change a la Cargo so that the proper person can be lynched. I suppose the HoP/Captain might still be able to spoof this and blame someone else but that at least prevents the RD/MD/CE from doing it. Maybe have each record have an attached fingerprint for large changes to personal bank accounts. And/or maybe have a command alert go off for those changes. These limits should take into account if there is already a transfer going between the two accounts, so that two transfers of 30000 might set off an alarm just like one transfer of 60000 might.

This is all more complicated than just removing bank transfers but I think it makes things more interesting and realistic overall.

[Sundance]

I had an idea today:

What if direct transfers into bank accounts weren't possible, and that had to be done through the reallocation of wages?

In addition, I'd make the max wage 10000

There would still be ways to quickly embezzle the money from the payroll budget if you think it through a bit, but it wouldn't be quite so easy or instant.

That's a very good idea imo, simple and to the point. I'd support this, although here are my tweaks:

1. Max wage 10,000 -> 5,000. That's 3.33x the amount the wage of the Captain, which I think is plenty. 

2. Direct transfers into bank accounts are not possible, but bank transfers out of bank accounts are. This was probably your intention, but I thought i'd make that clear. This would mean if someone is embezzling, they'd want to withdraw their money in hard cash if their intent is actually keeping it, lest the HoP/Capn/HoS reverses their scheme.

3. The ability to force the automatic payroll early, which would be an option in the HoP's bank machine. This would have a cooldown in that it cannot be used again until the next payroll. 
This would make a stationwide announcement stating something along the following:
"CENTCOMM ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to increased station productivity, crew pay has been sanctioned early, etc etc".


This would actually have a dual use, as getting pay early basically means more money for the crew if the station is being productive. However, bearing in mind above, this option can be used as a means to speed up your embezzlement, with the massive caveat of the stationwide announcement.

[UrsulaMejor]

This is all more complicated than just removing bank transfers but I think it makes things more interesting and realistic overall.

There's a really fancy and cool way to embezzle money right now without bank transfers. I think it's super funny and clever, but it's totally outmoded by the existence of said bank transfers. I would like to see how the new meta goes for a bit after it goes in.

Spoiler!

You can steal people's identities, and therefore bank accounts, by making IDs with their name from the manifest and resetting their pin using the ID computer. You can then withdraw their cash using any ATM or credit transfer device and steal all their money every payday

[vampirate]

Lol. There should be a laundrymat in game. Players can pay for ownership of washer's and dryers to make money, said washers and dryers provide clothes with light buffs somehow, but the real point is to literally be able to be corrupt af and launder money.

[Frank_Stein]

Lol. There should be a laundrymat in game.   Players can pay for ownership of washer's and dryers to make money, said washers and dryers provide clothes with light buffs somehow, but the real point is to literally be able to be corrupt af and launder money.

I've always thought that things like blood should have a window if time to be cleaned before the stain sets in. Once that happens, it's permanently stained unless you wash it in the laundry machines.

[Wisecrack34]

I think you should be able to throw an ID into the washing machine to steal the money from it, because there needs to be a laundering money pun in there somewhere

[Frank_Stein]

I think you should be able to throw an ID into the washing machine to steal the money from it, because there needs to be a laundering money pun in there somewhere

Make counterfeit bills by bleaching money and then dye it a higher bill color

[Wisecrack34]

I think you should be able to throw an ID into the washing machine to steal the money from it, because there needs to be a laundering money pun in there somewhere

Make counterfeit bills by bleaching money and then dye it a higher bill color

This suggestion pleases me greatly

[TDHooligan]

Honestly, I think a big issue resides in that there aren't that many useful things in the vending machines outside of particular niche things like PDA carts & burrito chem. You could re-price things like the already expensive medicines to be even more expensive, but odds are they'll still get picked up just about as often, as they're usually used when they're the only way to get those things.

There's a lot of room to widen what the vending machines sell, which would partially fix uninteresting inter-departmental busywork like forcing Chem to nag doctors over and over for a bottle of Morphine/Insulin for the drugs they're used in. As a result, this could widen what folk are able to do if the departments aren't playing ball, at the cost of them having to find a source for money.