/tg/Station 13

Some further thoughts on the idea about using money as a nonantag motivation based on the discussion that came up in OOC on Sybil last night.

There are ATM consoles on the station. These are used with your ID to access your own account. Money is paid into your account at a rate of one spacebuck per minute the station is operational. Nonantags want to escape (either on the shuttle or on a pod) with at least a certain amount of cash on their person (maybe dependent on server size). Department heads have a higher money quota than lower-level employees. Antags probably shouldn't usually care about money.

Some advantages to this idea:

• People who don't have enough money yet won't want the shuttle called.
• Heads of staff will have even more motivation than most to keep the station operational.
• However, once enough heads of staff reach their money quota, they have incentive to take the money and run - should help keep rounds from dragging on absurdly long.
• Nonantags have motivation beyond roleplaying to want to escape the station.
• Interaction between nonantags gains more depth beyond "help stop antags from greentexting."
• Antags have another interesting tool for dealing with nonantags besides just killing them.

Disadvantages I've been able to identify:

• Nonantags have more motivation to act against the station's best interest.
• More clutter and complexity.
• Not sure whether adding more gamey aspects to win/loss conditions is a good idea.

Some possible interesting permutations of the idea:

• Departments that commonly serve the public like cargo and chemistry might have a machine to handle exchanges of money for items. If this option is taken, money goals should probably be different between departments.
• Rather than having higher money goals, heads of staff might just want to see a certain number of crewmembers meet their money goals.
• Antags might get new objectives to leave the station with high amounts of money.

What do you all think? Any other ideas?

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.

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.

Last issue I can think of is inflation. I would hope you are not suggesting enforcement of pricing on certain goods and services. However, the lack of doing so means the value of the currency in question is purely based on it's scarcity. As time ticks by, more and more money is being introduced into the system and causes inflation. We probably want to avoid a situation where money at round start is more valuable than money at round end. I can think of two broad solutions to this: remove the constant flow of money into the station, or have some system of money sinks that will help take some currency out of circulation.
The first option doesn't necessarily mean that NO money is entering the station's market, but it wouldn't be the constant payroll from nowhere as you suggest. Rather you might have it where the department budgets have to set a certain allotment for paychecks along with other expenses. Alternatively, you could task someone like the HoP or captain to handle a central account which would start with an amount probably 1.5 - 2 times the size of a department budget that is only used for payroll or emergency command expenses. This account either does not replenish at all, does so only after an extended amount of time, after some non-antag objective is completed, or a mixture of those last two. Maybe have this account accessible for payroll changes from a secure console in bridge, and for direct withdrawls in vault (thus making it a priorty to protect vault instead of letting it get hacked in every round).
The second option for deflation is money sinks. Cargo is an example of this, maybe instead of using points, using money which then zips back to centcomm and helps balance input and output.

I know goon has had a financial system for a long time now. If we are seriously considering such features, studying up on how they have handled it this long might be valuable. Overall adding a feature like this would go a long way to make player interactions far more dynamic (bribery, black markets, bread riots, etc). I like the idea of leaving with a certain amount of cash in pocket giving non-antags something to strive for, and allows goals to be set for individual jobs to hopefully encourage productive behavior (that or server rule-abiding skulduggery, which can also be interesting if done right). I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks though.

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.

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.

Well, I guess having money as crew objective is all right. We could have other crew objectives as well, that's been a popular topic.

Seems to be breaking off from the greater good...

I do want money in and your suggestions here are good and a lot of people do want it in even coders but it would be a huge overhaul to put in at once I think that it may be better to put it in incrementally just so the population gets used to it.

Balance could get fucked a bit especially how coins are currently used for special stuff in machines.

It wouldn't work on Sybil.

Jalleo wrote:I do want money in and your suggestions here are good and a lot of people do want it in even coders but it would be a huge overhaul to put in at once I think that it may be better to put it in incrementally just so the population gets used to it.

Balance could get fucked a bit especially how coins are currently used for special stuff in machines.

If it's going in incrementally, it seems like the most vital facet of the system is the shuttle-call-regulating part. Something to standardize round length seems much more needed right now than other economy stuff, and I think it'll be easier to get used to. I guess the other big thing that the population would need to get used to is what's considered an acceptable measure for getting money. Space Law might need to get modified a bit.

At the end of the round, show 3 non-antags with most money.

This is going to be highly criticized, but what if being among the richest at the end of the round very slighty increases your antag chance for the next round only? Of course, this would mean these people wouldn't be revealed end round, but I think it would accurately reflect how greed can influence people even if they're not an antag.

pls be gentle it was just a random thought

I think it's a terrible idea and will detract people from playing their role.

That sounds extremely boring.

Why not add job specific objectives like some other servers have? Chef must have 6 copypastas in his backpack at the end of the round, Botanist must make 5 people smoke weed throughout the round, Janitor must keep the Bar clean, Roboticist must make 5 medibots, Quartermaster must have X number of supply points left etc.

QM will turn into a real quarterjew and we'd never get hat crates ;(

Glory to cargonia.

Lumbermancer wrote:Quartermaster must have X number of supply points left etc.

Don't make them discourage people from doing their jobs, eh?

I would not mind the addition of a currency system to the game, placing ATM machines and giving people a income based on their job. In addition to adding Card Swipers in the Bar/Kitchen as well as NPC's that can trade items (Such as a merchant ship that comes in arrivals at random intervals and sells random items.

It can also go onto giving all departments a "departmental budget" that is controlled by the department head, as well as a central banking roll only the HoP, Captain and AI can access which is where all of the crew's payroll comes from.

This would support the addition of a antag objective to steal a large sum of money, usually requiring them to break in and steal from the central banking computer. As well as the addition of empty market stalls on the station for players to get creative.

Last issue I can think of is inflation. I would hope you are not suggesting enforcement of pricing on certain goods and services. However, the lack of doing so means the value of the currency in question is purely based on it's scarcity. As time ticks by, more and more money is being introduced into the system and causes inflation. We probably want to avoid a situation where money at round start is more valuable than money at round end. I can think of two broad solutions to this: remove the constant flow of money into the station, or have some system of money sinks that will help take some currency out of circulation.

Next time i'm a wizard, i'm gonna name myself Ben Bernanke and spawn money everywhere: Economy destroyed, assistants rioting, chaos created, mission accomplished.

Areas that act as a sink for the stations money

- NPC Traders: We can have multiple form of traders, some can be on station and sell minor items like clothing or special food/drugs. Other traders can be more exotic and spawn in randomly at arrivals.
- Dispersers: Certain machines, like the Public YouTool, could force you to buy the tools. Or food or whatever.
- Civilian Services: The Bar and Kitchen, as well as the Chapel and whatever, can have a EFTPOS machine setup to allow for transactions. It might be interesting to allow people to set up a tab.
- Cargo: Cargo can buy and sell items on the open market.

Keep in mind that if escaping with a certain amount of money is the nonantag goal, there's no intrinsic need for money sinks.

Steelpoint wrote: - Dispersers: Certain machines, like the Public YouTool, could force you to buy the tools. Or food or whatever.

I like this one especially. Too many people that shouldn't have tools have tools anyway because of all the free dispensers everywhere.

I really think the one way one should be able to get tools for free is to go digging in maint or steal them from someone else.

Steelpoint wrote: - Dispersers: Certain machines, like the Public YouTool, could force you to buy the tools. Or food or whatever.

Where would you earn any tho?

Steelpoint wrote: - Cargo: Cargo can buy and sell items on the open market.

There is no such thing as an open market if cargo is the only place that can order things.

Please... do we REALLY have to have money in this game? with all the problems it brings? wouldn't it be better to find more ways to focus players on running the station rather than seeking personal gain?

This is a half baked idea.

Kyrah Abattoir wrote:Where would you earn any tho?

Get a job, you slob. Assistants would of course earn nothing.

Lo6a4evskiy wrote:

Kyrah Abattoir wrote:Where would you earn any tho?

Get a job, you slob. Assistants would of course earn nothing.

The more you think about it, the less sense that makes. Assistants would turn into homeless people fairly quickly, and that improves literally nothing involving assistants. If anything it encourages crime.

It was a joke.

Lo6a4evskiy wrote:

Lumbermancer wrote:Quartermaster must have X number of supply points left etc.

Don't make them discourage people from doing their jobs, eh?

More like encourage collecting crates and doing paperwork.

Delete food and drink machines 2014

Cipher3 wrote:The more you think about it, the less sense that makes. Assistants would turn into homeless people fairly quickly, and that improves literally nothing involving assistants. If anything it encourages crime.

There is nothing you can do that will rid the station of grey tide, pure and simply. Most people who roll assistant are ones who are doing so for the express purpose of fucking shit up and getting away with it OOC.
What introducing money COULD do for those assistants who still WANT to do something productive is create an environment of trust and assured reward on both sides. Assistants are rarely to be trusted, but if there is an understanding that they are not to be paid until whatever menial task they have been assigned to is done, they may be less inclined to use that trust to loot and grief in order to obtain rewards. Dangling a carrot on a stick to distract the ass from the field of cabbage it's crossing.
That's one of the central advantages to adding money: it can be used to incentivize certain behaviors which can easily be manipulated and tweeked by coders. Just look at mining for example. Already there you have a pseudo-monitization of labor for point and subsequent gear rewards. Overall I would say that addition has been rather successful in getting players to bring back ore to the station, even if it's only so they can save enough to get a jetpack and stimulant pills and go hunt monsters. At least under such a system, they have a way of earning such privileges and gear that doesn't simultaneously drain resources from the station.

I haven't read this thread but:

The station has a "budget". Every X minutes, this budget is distributed across crewmembers so they get their moneys.
Every coin added to the vault increases the budget, every coin removed decreases the budget, the QM could send certain items to CentComm to get budget increases, damage to the station could decrease it, etc etc. Admins would, obviously, have full control over the budget.

Individual department budgets could also exist to give more money to one department. Fines would half goo to centcomm and the other half would be added to the sec budget, things like that.

Ofc there'd have to be plenty of money sinks that don't go back into the budget to stop people from being too rich.

Also, no currency can be a true sci-fi space currency unless it is massively inflated. One unit of the currency should be worth one dollarcent at most.
Therefore, I say we adopt the ₩ as our currency.

Could always have supply point generation be based on the station's total budget as well. The richer the station, the more supply points come. This would help with the late game lack of crates and create some fun numbers for near empty rounds.

Personally, I'd be happy with supply points being based around the budget after a while if this is implemented. That way departments would have to send an invoice to supply to get their metal to fix the station instead of writing it off as 'station damage decreases the station budget.' It's kind of abstract. You could claim that every space that's exposed to a vaccuum is damage, but what if you've got other types of damage like plasma fires or gas leaks?

I also forgot to mention that there would be a computer that allows you to set how much money people get, and a way to eavesdrop on people's transactions.

And emagging said computer in order to give the clown the entire station's budget!