Douk wrote:I'm sure I'm not alone in the fact that I've wanted a monetary system for our server for a very long time now and am shocked it still hasn't been implemented to some meaningful capacity. I agree with most of what you have proposed, but I will tell you some of the concerns I have thought of.
For one, there are likely to be plenty other positions aboard the station that are likely to begin charging for their services in order to make their end-round goal. Different jobs however may not be able to capitalize properly. For example, it's well established at this point that the bartender and chef are pretty much RP jobs (minus nutriment which can easily be replaced by vending machine food). This non-essential nature puts them at a disadvantage financially because if they try and charge for their services, they will end up more ignored than they already are. If they rely solely on their standard pay then, that puts them significantly behind other crewmembers whose endgame goals may have been set with transactions in mind. Hell, even cargo runs this risk, as already they are often ignored for supplies even when the station as a whole or individual crewmembers need what they have. Throw in the fact that they now have to put money forward that brings them a step or two further from their greentext, and you risk the department becoming unused all together.
In my experience, both when playing and when observing, it's fairly common for cargo techs, chemists, and other service-oriented jobs to either leave their posts or just never get around to fulfilling their requests. I believe that a lot of this can be attributed to the fact that they don't get much of a reward for doing their job, and it creates a feedback loop where people don't even bother to request things because they feel like it'd be a waste of time. I think that if these jobs are rewarded and acknowledged when they fill their requests, then the rest of the station in turn will start relying on them more.
In any case, the money goals can certainly be different from department to department.
Some of these problems might be partially solved with a department budget. This might be either a sort of collective pool of non-refilling or slowly-refilling cash that is at the disposal of individual departments. Either have it so that only heads may withdraw from this fund (requiring that crewmembers keep in good graces with their boss if they want to continue their work to the fullest capacity), or make it available for anyone in the department to access but with logs as to transactions.
You somewhat touched on this in your list of disadvantages, but I will expand upon it. As I see it, there are two main ways in which currency may be represented: physical items (space cash, coins, etc) or credits (accessed through ID or some other debitcard-like object). If we go the physical route, you run into the issue of storage. Wallets are not something that are easily accessible right now to the whole crew, and keeping money otherwise takes up valuable bag space. The card option does not have this storage problem (might be able to put it in the PDA like your ID and pen), but it does run into the problem of processing various transactions on location. You would have to fit most departments with some sort of terminal which could read the card in question and allow the card owner to specify how much they are paying or the terminal operator how much a card swipe transfers. Both of these systems risk becoming cumbersome either to the individual player, or to anyone maintaining the map.
I'm tentatively in favor of having most transactions take place using PDAs, but I think that fulfilling the money goal should absolutely require that it be in the form of hard cash. This makes it so that you have to protect your money, and it also adds the tactical concern of when and where you'll make the withdrawal.
Last issue I can think of is inflation. I would hope you are not suggesting enforcement of pricing on certain goods and services.
Actually, I think I'd prefer something like that. Attaching a "suggested price" to each item could be an effective balancing mechanism, and it could lead to more powerful gear being present late in the round. Vendors could optionally charge a different price or even give items away for free, but it would set a baseline for what's considered "reasonable" to demand. Dangerous items could even be decriminalized but given a high price so that it's legal to carry them around, but you have to pay for it first. That way, you can play with grenade casings or polytrinic acid or whatever even as a nonantag. You'd probably want there to be a commerce console for the heads of staff to check what purchases have been made.
Lo6a4evskiy wrote:I don't think that having money for the sake of money is a good idea. Can I ask you something right off the bat? Why do you want money?
Money need to serve some purpose, otherwise money costs nothing. Unless we tie mechanics into money as well, it will not work. And I have no idea how to make money matter, to be honest, I'm totally fine as it is.
Let me put my list of advantages into terms of problems I think this idea would solve.
- People consistently call for the shuttle at the slightest sign of trouble.
- Heads of staff have no reason not to go along with that.
- When there's no trouble, rounds tend to drag on to the point of boredom.
- Nonantags don't really have any reason to get on the shuttle or an escape pod.
- Nonantags don't have much motivation beyond robbing antags of their greentext, which makes play very passive.
- Antags don't really have any tools for interacting with nonantags aside from killing them, which isn't very fun for the nonantags.
