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Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 12:01 pm
by Ivan2006
You all know the exchange-system we have on earth, right?
Now, how about we make a similar system the basis for interstellar trade?
For example: have NPC trade stations scattered throughout the galaxy, which are all connected.
You reach them with FTL-travell, but they are still running on the server you started from.
When there, you can sell or buy (limited ammounts of) goods with an ingame currency.
You can, of course, also use the currency (let´s call it credit) to trade with other players.
However, if you do go to an NPC trade station, you will notice that some prices change.
That´s because the exchange rate gets calculated by the central FC server.
If people sell things, the prices for this product will go down. If someone buys something, prices will go up, of course.
But it doesn´t end there: The trade stations only have limited stock, making trade even more money-effective when some resource is low in the entire galaxy.
If stocks go below a certain number, they will slowly refill themselves, but for larger ammounts of trade, this automated limit is too low (try building a proper spaceship with a stack of steel)

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 12:50 pm
by joykler
i really like this but i think you have to go further
making it possible to store your [credits] in a kind of bank
and the possibility for factions to loan

and i think it would be nice there would be a value call it gold
and all factions could make there own coin it would all be thesame item
but with a diffrent name [a faction could name it whatever they want] and this rises in value if your faction becomes stronger at markets you could trade with these coins as if they were an amount of gold

like you have the
ivan guild with the ivanos
and the joy guild with the cedrick

a ivanos coin has the same amount value as 0.2 grams of gold

and the cedrick has a value of 0.1 grams of gold

you could trade 2 ivanos for 1 cedrick

but players could refuse a kind of coin

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 1:14 pm
by Ivan2006
joykler wrote:i really like this but i think you have to go further
making it possible to store your [credits] in a kind of bank
and the possibility for factions to loan

and i think it would be nice there would be a value call it gold
and all factions could make there own coin it would all be thesame item
but with a diffrent name [a faction could name it whatever they want] and this rises in value if your faction becomes stronger at markets you could trade with these coins as if they were an amount of gold

like you have the
ivan guild with the ivanos
and the joy guild with the cedrick

a ivanos coin has the same amount value as 0.2 grams of gold

and the cedrick has a value of 0.1 grams of gold

you could trade 2 ivanos for 1 cedrick

but players could refuse a kind of coin
Ivanos? No way! Mobiums!

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 1:55 pm
by joykler
good idea ?
this makes it again a little bit more trade complex and fun

you should also make a way of stealing things

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:07 pm
by ACH0225
I know trading will be big, but we don't need a billion and a half currencies for each faction. Maybe 3 currencies with fixed exchange rates, each of which is made from gold or platinum in a server's printing press thing. They could be the Credit, the K'lii, and the Syl(random word there). The Credit could be 1 Credit for 1 gold and 5 credits for a platinum, the K'lii could be 5 for a gold and 25 for a platinum, and the Syl could be 1 for 5 gold and 1 for 1 platinum. This would give us some diversity in currency, allowing the appearance of free choice.

Also, currencies shouldn't be items, but instead like EXP, displayed in a bar or something, linked to your bank account. This way, no one's inventory gets cluttered, and when you die, you only drop 5% of your bank rounded down to nearest whole number.

With a terminal/handheld device and password, you could transfer money to other people, and could set up "credit cards" so you wouldn't have to transfer money to a vendor individually. Also, on traders. They should be able to hire military escorts with a contract that prevents them from firing on the merchants until the time expires. This way, mercs can't betray the ships they are escorting.

TL;DR- 3 currencies, bank accounts not money items, and transfers using computers.

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:25 pm
by Iv121
Playing with currency is making money out of air (just like in the real world) and this is something you should avoid at all costs. You make money with work - you transport good selling them where there is demand on them, create your own weapons and ships and sell them to the public, but if you sit all day in front of a monitor with jumping money, playing "Press button when profits" all day it's not good. There is no need to copy everything from the real world, especially not the bad things, and don't try to include everything in the game or one day we might wake up in futurecraft and go to clear our teeth with a tooth brush ...

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:31 pm
by Tunnelthunder
Iv121 wrote:Playing with currency is making money out of air (just like in the real world) and this is something you should avoid at all costs. You make money with work - you transport good selling them where there is demand on them, create your own weapons and ships and sell them to the public, but if you sit all day in front of a monitor with jumping money, playing "Press button when profits" all day it's not good. There is no need to copy everything from the real world, especially not the bad things, and don't try to include everything in the game or one day we might wake up in futurecraft and go to clear our teeth with a tooth brush ...
Yeah if we wanted to live the life of another we would go play UNIVERSE PROJECT.

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 2:44 pm
by Ivan2006
About the "making money out of air"-thing: noone would be able to just print money.
A faction could choose a favourite currency and money would only be given if you actually sell something to the market first.
To make sure there is enough money, let´s have every player start with a certain balance.
If you die, you don´t lose any money, because that money would be lost to the void and lack in the total economy.
Currencies would be interchangeable,

BTW: how about trade stations:
They would take away the "throw stuff on the ground"-trading and instead allow for a fair trade system where you actually know the other one is giving you stuff,too.
consider Pokemon-trade style system with Items and money.

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 3:28 pm
by Iv121
Trade is fine, but having multiple currencies when they have a constant worth is pointless, they are totally the same and just make matters more complicated and annoying. The reason we have diff currencies here is because their value changes relatively to each other, meaning you can buy dollars and then exchange them for another currency, getting money out of air. Because we don't want this we don't need diff currencies. BTW as a side note the same air trading is and will cause the global economical collapse ...

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 3:40 pm
by  ҉ 
I like the idea of currency having value proportional to the strength of the faction that issued it. Doing stuff like exchanging currency if you know a given faction is about to get mauled and have all their coins be worth half as much as before would be cool. It would also be interesting to watch currency exchange centers to see if you're going to be attacked--if several other factions switch lots of your money for other kinds of money at the same time, that would be a good sign that you need to be ready for something. That's stuff that happens in real life but rarely occurs in games.

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 5:10 pm
by joykler
yes and ivi this makes the game more layerd instead of simple war

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 10:55 pm
by Keon
I don't think we need more than 1 currency unless we want to let people invest in currency, and I would much rather have people invest in stocks and materials. Currency would be a pain to transfer, and it doesn't make sense because we would all be using Galactic Credit Card Implants.

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 11:36 pm
by Iv121
^ yea, also as I said you don't want to promote air trading, do you LJS ? If they have a constant value it becomes pointless to buy them - a golden coin is worth 20 credits lert's say, you exchange your golden creds for coins, you buy them, what's next ? You just bought a material just like any other - worth in credits, that you can do nothing useful with, maybe some shops accept only those golden coins but then it ill just be pain in the butt to exchange your currency all the time - a gun that is worth 2000 creds and costs 100 coins is still worth 2000 creds no matter how you look at it. The only case wh8en it matters is when a golden coin is not worth 20 all the time, when one day its 21 and the other 19. This means I will just wait for the day it is worth 19, buy loads of golden coins then sell them when they are 21 - that is how modern market works and this is what you want to avoid.

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sat Feb 16, 2013 11:39 pm
by ACH0225
I like the idea of a few different, set-priced currencies because it creates unity and demographics. One faction and it's allies will use one of the currencies, while their opposers will use another. It also makes people have to do their research, as showing up somewhere with useless currency and having to exchange it is an embarrassing failure.

Re: Exchange/financials

Posted: Sun Feb 17, 2013 2:00 am
by Iv121
Doing research while playing - I'm sure you liked to sit with a open minecraft wiki on your first run for all those recipes, maybe on the paper it adds challenge but in fact it's just huge pain in the butt, it doesn't work, doesn't contribute anything to the gameplay, if it has totally no effect on the gameplay there is no point in complicating things and make people suffer. Don't try to achieve realism - try to achieve fun. If the toothbrush example was not enough if we go for realism we won't need sound composer at all - space is empty so nobody will hear those fancy explosions and laser shots, you will fly as if your speakers were muted.