Note on economy

[oranges]

Bottom post of the previous page:

you'll have to wait now

[CDranzer]

For what it's worth the only practical uses for economy I've seen are as a trivial rarity gate and for minor roleplaying purposes. The only sadness I'd feel would be from having gotten used to it, and I imagine that would pass quickly. It's probably a miserable system to balance so I imagine from a developer perspective purging it would be a net positive and I doubt players will care much anyway once it's done.

[ATHATH]

Where's the poll? Will it be in this thread or on the servers? Will it be announced?

I'd like to thank oranges for giving us an explanation post (the one made at 11:31 PM); those are greatly appreciated.

The economy obviously failed but there is one idea worth keeping.

Giving players a small budget to buy items at the start of the game is good. It allows vending machines to have actually interesting items without ruining the balance of the game. Before the economy PR, people would eat vending food rather than going to the kitchen, people would abuse soda as ghetto stims, people would drain the tool vend even if they didn't need tools, and there would be a mad rush at the start of the round to grab coins for insuls. Giving players budgets allows designers to have better control in shaping the game and keep power-gaming in check.

My proposal would be to gut everything but vending machines. Start each player with $100 regardless of their job (maybe the captain gets $200). Don't have pay checks or allow money to be deposited, withdrawn, or bartered. Don't have money in the vault. Don't have player dollars relate in any way to cargo. Instead just give players a small budget to buy stuff at the start of the round.

This. I was a very vocal anti-economy-er when the system was first implemented, but it's grown on me over time. In particular, vending machines are perhaps the best part of the economy system. They really help smooth along the process of switching jobs, as you usually have enough cash to buy about one job's worth of job equipment, but not SO much cash that vending machines become basically glorified counters or chem fridges.

Spoiler:

The economy system made it so that vending machines usually aren't sold out of every possible item that could give you a slight advantage (in particular, putting the insuls in tool storage in a vending machine with a high price tag caused them to sometimes NOT be snatched up 5 minutes into the round!), and having a limited amount of money meant that you had to decide whether you really NEED that industrial welding tool, or if you can get by with just a normal one. I feel like removing vending machine price tags would remove some design space for items that are slight upgrades to existing items (or just handy things to have) that you can't just grab all of near roundstart (which leads to some choices about what to buy vs. not buy).

Also, removing vending machine prices would make tipping vending machines to try to get free stuff kind of pointless to do unless you WANT to hurt yourself, and that'd be sad. I was actually planning to make a PR at some point that'd add premium and contraband items to the pool of things that can fall out of vending machines when you tip them, to encourage people to go for the risk of tipping them more often.

[Learner]

Right. So I'm going to toss in my thoughts on this idea... After having observed many of the headmin posts about MRP, along with Manuel's average player base, it's become very clear that an environment with additional roleplay is desired, and will likely begin to have a larger place in the future of /tg/.

The economy, in it's current state is flawed as you said, but ultimately fixing it falls down to a few things... there aren't many options that people can do to impact the flow of it, which gets toppled with people swimming with cash after enough time. Secondly, an economy is ultimately user driven. If the money isn't used, then it never had value. However, if a bartender were to suddenly start charging for their drinks, well... that might no go so well in a low RP scenario, because tider be damned if he can't kill himself with booze (which is a different issue sure), but in a more RP filled scenario... well, suddenly, the bartender has changed his entirely optional environment! Now, if you want that Nuka Cola, you either have to pay him, perhaps do him a favor, or both... but it ultimately falls down to the bartender themselves to do these things, which some don't, because they may have settled into doing what was the norm before. Basically, it's not just a functional problem, it's also a community one too.

For starters, how about allowing heads the ability to dock pay from workers (or issue bonuses), which could easily be done at their own departmental ID management computer? (Head sticks card in, brings up manifest, options for dock pay appear along with a number of how many times.) Now that immediately gives people a reason to do their jobs well, because if they don't, they might start losing money on their lazy workmanship.

What about enhancing citations? If someone causes issues, write out tickets that they'd have to spend money on to settle (which if unsettled could cause various inconveniences for the person like pay docks, automatic account payment, or even ID access restrictions then prison/gulag), or alternatively, said tickets could be countered against in court, which goes woefully underused. (Hell, combine the automatic pay thing, and then give the lawyer the ability to extend the time before it gets automatically payed. Boom, now lawyer is relevant again too.) Basically, anything that helps enhance or restrict the flow of money, will help see to it getting used and valued more in ways other then "buy from vendor, buy from cargo".

Has anyone ever looked at the Chaplain in regards to donations? Churches often ask for donations and charity and well, giving a small blessing/moodlet/minor gameplay modifying effect in game for doing that could make that a small money sink, much like Bepis effectively is for science.

I'd also like to point out that the old cargo points system was horribly flawed in that it visually and literally gave all the power of equipment supply to Cargo alone. They didn't have any handy screens that told them if a specific person needed something and the best anyone else could do was stand outside their department for minutes, and hope some cargo tech hears your cry for supplies... assuming that is, they hadn't taken all of the plasma and other materials, and sold them as well as their starting points to acquire guns and toys and nullcrates contraband exclusively for cargo.

The potential removal also ruins quite a few hilarious and rather interesting scenarios that could come out... such as people trying to tip over vendors just to acquire that one item they needed... only for a vendor falling incident to occur. Or people who open the commissary and start selling goods to people, which leads to events like selling the Captain back his own hardsuit and jetpack, and buying the CE's hardsuit for 150 creds, some insuls, and a bonus toolset?

What about gambling fight rings? I've never ran one, but I think I'd like to try that, and this definitely requires an economy. Can we stick the nuke disk into a custom vendor? Well now it's on sale for 5000 credits! I'd love to see some nukies going around trying to stealth that much money to acquire it.

These are examples of things that could only happen because there was an economy around to flesh them out. The economy can work, and it's only making strides in better directions thanks to the tireless work of coders like Arcane, Mickyan, and ATHATH.

[cacogen]

However, if a bartender were to suddenly start charging for their drinks, well... that might no go so well in a low RP scenario, because tider be damned if he can't kill himself with booze (which is a different issue sure), but in a more RP filled scenario... well, suddenly, the bartender has changed his entirely optional environment! Now, if you want that Nuka Cola, you either have to pay him, perhaps do him a favor, or both... but it ultimately falls down to the bartender themselves to do these things, which some don't, because they may have settled into doing what was the norm before. Basically, it's not just a functional problem, it's also a community one too.

Why would the bartender ask for money for his drinks other than for roleplay purposes? He doesn't need it. So it doesn't have value. The game wasn't built with an economy system in mind so there's very little scarcity. Without scarcity, there's no demand. Without demand there's no economy. The bartender's supply of drinks is supposed to last him the entire round. And it does. Extend this to probably every job. Everything is either renewable (e.g. drinks/chem dispensers, power sources) comes in a large enough supply at the beginning (e.g. drinks in bartender's vendor, supplies in botany's vendor, gases in atmospherics) that it'd be a rare round when you ran out, or isn't scarce enough to matter beyond a certain point in the round (e.g. minerals from Lavaland).

The bartender has no overhead to cover, and he doesn't have to work to survive either. All that leaves is optional, 'luxury' items, and those don't seem to soak up all the excess money to the point money is scarce enough to be valued by players.

[carshalash]

Why would the bartender ask for money for his drinks other than for roleplay purposes? He doesn't need it. So it doesn't have value. The game wasn't built with an economy system in mind so there's very little scarcity. Without scarcity, there's no demand. Without demand there's no economy. The bartender's supply of drinks is supposed to last him the entire round. And it does. Extend this to probably every job. Everything is either renewable (e.g. drinks/chem dispensers, power sources) comes in a large enough supply at the beginning (e.g. drinks in bartender's vendor, supplies in botany's vendor, gases in atmospherics) that it'd be a rare round when you ran out, or isn't scarce enough to matter beyond a certain point in the round (e.g. minerals from Lavaland).

Champagne, cheat ethanol, happy chappy ale

[cacogen]

Wow you're right there are some exceptions guess there's enough demand for Booze-O-Mat restocking units to drive the whole economy. Pedantic shithead. Before oranges puts me on post approval I just want to say I'm not arguing for the removal of the economy. I'm trying to understand why it doesn't work with the hopes it'll be fixed.

[Learner]

Maybe Cargo is charging the bartender for ammo refills because bullets cost metal, and metal just became scarce with no miners to replenish. Maybe the bartender does want something from cargo but doesn't have enough to afford it, (which again, does point out that cargo being the source of new or interesting items is quite troubling). Maybe the bartender just wants to charge for drinks because it's his prerogative to do so.

Once as as a Lavaland Bartender, for every drink that didn't go to a beach bum, I put a relatively cheap price on it. 10, 15, even 25 credits, with extra price tags on spiking the drink with extra fancy things like Mindbreaker (that came from the booze dispenser too mind you). I even put a price on the nearby bedrooms at 50 a 'night'. My only customers were Shaft Miners mind you, but they always payed. I found it hilarious when one of them threw me like 10 'days' worth of room rent because the station's shenanigans got too shitty for him to deal with. I got off well money wise and enjoyed myself doing so, and I didn't even have an ID account as that specific ghost role. Money literally had no use to me.

[Arcanemusic]

This was in response to the question of "What direction would you take economy". It was asked as an open-ended question, and this is my thoughts:

Economy is in a state where, due to the legacy code of economy being built upon the cargo export-datum system, If you wanted to sell something on station you basically needed a cargo export scanner, simply due to the fact that SO MUCH of the items on station have no value. There were multiple ways to go about blanket changing the system, like making any item without a manual export datum check their datum materials in order to calculate an export value, but this felt very, VERY cheapened by the fact that, similarly, almost everything still doesn't have datum materials. So, I was starting to do large passes on existing station content(1)(2) in order to find items that would make "sense" in the context of the round as exportable items.

Over the course of these PRS (Mostly to get familiar and comfortable with how exports, cargo datums, etc. all work out in the current system), I boiled down the main issues with economy as this:

1. You will always make the most money on-station by selling plasma sheets. Breaking up the regular gameplay loop with mining plasma for money is incredibly unfun, and an alternative should be looked for. I can name 6 kinds of items that have substantial value for cargo to acquire, and that's bounty items, Plasma sheets, Crates, Fuel Tanks, any Tendril Loot, and Bananium Sheets. You'll struggle to find players who can name more than 4, but this is really all there is.

2. Items that are worth money have seemingly random applications of their value, with vending machines being completely inconsistent with cargo exports. An example of this is Wrenches, worth 150 credits in a vending machine. In cargo exports, they're worth 2 credits. In terms of mineral wealth, it's 150 units of iron ore (Un-upgraded autolathe), and being that iron sheets are worth 5 credits each, that makes a single wrench worth 0.15 credits if made from an autolathe. And this is before getting into mechanics like elasticity. The original implementation several months ago had tools sitting at an average value of around 30-15 credits from vending machines, which was designed around export datums for their base values. (Goof feel free to fact check me on this).

3. Passive generation of income is un-intuitive and leads to people dismissing economy. Assuming you're playing the gameplay loop on-station, and are in a position that has a dedicated station role, you would almost never run into situations where the economy would handicap your core gameplay after 10 minutes, which goes against your stated design expectations for economy. That said, once the shift hits 20 minutes in the post budget cards environment we have in-game, you will never find yourself limited by economy as a valid reason to stop a decision. The only exceptions to this were cargo, but cargo never used economy in the same way the rest of the station does. Cargo's job was just making money, but since their gameplay loop is literally the same as when it was just "cargo points", that's a moot point.
I'll hop back on this point later.


These three issues felt like the biggest issue to the economy as it stands. The sparknotes of what I felt was the best feeling system for economy in its several iterations, was one with no passive generation of any sort, a reliance on cargo to help divvy up profits across station (While still being the main place to get products en-masse), and each department having something they can provide for a cost, without shoving economy down everyone's necks.

Here is how I tried to get to that goal.

A. Pricetags. Regardless of it you kept or re-balanced export values, or even if you created an all new commodity dependence for the crew to work off of, crew members should always have a way to make some kind of money. Price tags was a framework so that if you had something worth selling, you could take a cut of the profits and theoretically get a payday. The implementation worked very well but the issue swiftly became that for most crew members, there is NOTHING worth selling, outside of stolen plasma sheets. This was where I last left off before today's decisions.

B. Vend-A-Trays. Admittedly, I can accept this idea backfired to an extent. They were basically a way to sell food outside of custom vendors, in a way that allowed you to see and show off high effort pieces of food. It was originally going to go hand in hand with this PR, but it was placed on the backburner in favor of Qust's eventual cooking rework. Still, without it, I've noticed that the number of players who went out of their way to use them, relatively low. ...But conversely, the number of players who went out of their way to build custom vendors to sell their food has been much, MUCH higher since their addition. At least I got the service department in the mood to ask for money as opposed to doing it all for free.

C. Departmental features that would allow for each department to have a different interaction with economy. This is admittedly an incomplete list. I only got around to making 2 features that would address these issues. The first one was medical kiosks, so that medbay could have a way to profit off crew members through casual gameplay. I swear this isn't off topic, but have you played Roller Coaster Tycoon? When it rains in RCT, guests will drop everything they're doing, and try to purchase an umbrella for the rain, regardless of cost. When a deadly virus is released on station, Medical Kiosks would serve to help meet medical halfway and help find a cure or help see exactly how screwed you were. Medical can profit off crew members.

Science has the BEPIS, as counter intuitive to the science design you have now. Science should never be the ones making gross amounts of money, they should be the ones trying to make money to help open gates to gameplay for the station. They serve as the station's demand and need to work out a supply from the rest of the station, if it means cargo, medbay, service, whatever.

Now I didn't work on this specifically, but security also had the warrant system, which I felt like really meshed well with the dynamic I was working towards with these other departments. With service starting to really get into the RP of individually asking for money as well, that only really left Assistants and engineering in an odd place. Being that solution A was still in need of a lot of exports, assistants didn't have a lot of incentive to add economy into their powergaming routes, and I simply hadn't come up with an idea for engineering that hadn't been closed on 5 prior occasions.

Because I know this is a forum and people don't like to read, tl; dr.

Kill passive generation, as active generation feels more satisfying when working for a goal and being rewarded through effort. This is balanced by the fact that plasma MUST have it’s value adjusted to not be the driving force behind all cargo profit.
Give each department a unique interaction with economy, either as a supply, demand, or both.
Find a way to give cargo something to sell that is dynamic but isn't dependent on mining. Mineral dependence is science's burden, not the rest of the station. Could work well as an expansion of bounties.

[carshalash]

Wow you're right there are some exceptions guess there's enough demand for Booze-O-Mat restocking units to drive the whole economy. Pedantic shithead. Before oranges puts me on post approval I just want to say I'm not arguing for the removal of the economy. I'm trying to understand why it doesn't work with the hopes it'll be fixed.

Youre the one calling me a shithead for pointing out reasons bartenders need money from others.

[Kryson]

you would almost never run into situations where the economy would handicap your core gameplay after 10 minutes, which goes against your stated design expectations for economy. That said, once the shift hits 20 minutes in the post budget cards environment we have in-game, you will never find yourself limited by economy as a valid reason to stop a decision.

That is not true for doctors.

Amputation shears takes nearly 30(25?)) min to be able to afford, and after that you can buy advanced medkits or extra epipens.

I usually try to buy monkey cubes from botany, and robot heads from robotics(if i am on MRP) as well which delays the shears.

I would like to see more premium items, the coin press being nuked, and a move away from mineral exports towards more bounties.

[cacogen]

Wow you're right there are some exceptions guess there's enough demand for Booze-O-Mat restocking units to drive the whole economy. Pedantic shithead. Before oranges puts me on post approval I just want to say I'm not arguing for the removal of the economy. I'm trying to understand why it doesn't work with the hopes it'll be fixed.

Youre the one calling me a shithead for pointing out reasons bartenders need money from others.

yeah i dunno why i got heated over that. and i misunderstood your point

Maybe Cargo is charging the bartender for ammo refills because bullets cost metal, and metal just became scarce with no miners to replenish.

That assumes cargo values x credits more than that amount of metal. I don't think they would.

Maybe the bartender does want something from cargo but doesn't have enough to afford it, (which again, does point out that cargo being the source of new or interesting items is quite troubling).

I don't think that's troubling. That's a good stimulus for economy. But as I see it not many people take advantage of it. And I haven't tried it myself but apparently public mining combined with the mint is a great way to exploit cargo.

Maybe the bartender just wants to charge for drinks because it's his prerogative to do so.

Once as as a Lavaland Bartender, for every drink that didn't go to a beach bum, I put a relatively cheap price on it. 10, 15, even 25 credits, with extra price tags on spiking the drink with extra fancy things like Mindbreaker (that came from the booze dispenser too mind you). I even put a price on the nearby bedrooms at 50 a 'night'. My only customers were Shaft Miners mind you, but they always payed. I found it hilarious when one of them threw me like 10 'days' worth of room rent because the station's shenanigans got too shitty for him to deal with. I got off well money wise and enjoyed myself doing so, and I didn't even have an ID account as that specific ghost role. Money literally had no use to me.

Yeah, but that doesn't represent a functional economy. That's roleplay with monopoly money. So if economy was removed it wouldn't make a difference provided the money stayed.

[ATHATH]

you would almost never run into situations where the economy would handicap your core gameplay after 10 minutes, which goes against your stated design expectations for economy. That said, once the shift hits 20 minutes in the post budget cards environment we have in-game, you will never find yourself limited by economy as a valid reason to stop a decision.

That is not true for doctors.

Amputation shears takes nearly 30(25?)) min to be able to afford, and after that you can buy advanced medkits or extra epipens.

I usually try to buy monkey cubes from botany, and robot heads from robotics(if i am on MRP) as well which delays the shears.

I would like to see more premium items, the coin press being nuked, and a move away from mineral exports towards more bounties.

You can add insuls and strange seeds to that list of items as well, along with (to a lesser extent) the multitools, toolbelts, welding helmets, and industrial welders available from YouTools.

[Mickyan]

The original implementation several months ago had tools sitting at an average value of around 30-15 credits from vending machines, which was designed around export datums for their base values. (Goof feel free to fact check me on this).

This is not true, there's never been a link between vending machine prices and exports, if some of the prices seemed to fit they're coincidental and outliers. None of the items even had custom prices initially.

I was very upfront about the fact that my last re-balance of paychecks and prices was mainly focused on allowing the average crewmember to allow buying crates through cargo and act as a time gate, and buying from vending machines had to be a relevant set back to make sense, which I consider a success given how often I see people using private orders from cargo nowadays.
I don't consider cargo and export prices to be particularly well balanced either, but it was easier to make a new system such as the economy paychecks fit the established prices of cargo rather than the opposite.

I think removing passive generation is a good idea if the active ways of money generation are properly integrated in the round and you've done a great job so far, it just wasn't something that was going to happen overnight and it was better to have a system that sort of works rather than one that doesn't

[PKPenguin321]

One thing i liked about the cash system was it did drive some rp, and people often handed credits over to tip service workers.

This this this, paying the botanist for his plants with some credits or throwing some credits to the mime after a performance or paying someone to buy the gloves off of their hands instead of stealing them were all things I've done with credits, and it all felt very meaningful to me even if it's just fluff-roleplaying

[donutstation]

make insulated gloves a currency

[Blurbo]

I remember economy not being in the game,economy was a very small amount of fun and lore friendly-ness but now its returning to how it used to be,besides it just pissed people off when they had to steal other people's cash to buy shit instead of vending it for free,the main problem with this is catgirls,clowns and other spastics can just vend all the food and clothes out of vendors and leave them empty,especially the tool vendor

[bandit]

the primary problem with the economy was the paycheck was job/department-based, not individual-based, which cut out the whole potential of it (including potentially giving the HoP an actual job in adjusting pay)

[cacogen]

I was surprised heads of staff didn't get a console that allowed them to adjust wages to reward diligent workers, punish people who aren't contributing and avoid wasting money on braindeads.

[Cobby]

I'd trust economy balance over say material balance which we'd be falling back on if econ was remove, if only for the fact there are dedicated individuals looking to maintain it both feature-wise and balance-wise.

Nice thing about adding econ features is that there's a balance by design component since if you add cool new toys to buy it means that money can't go to their other cool not-so-new toys.

[oranges]

The problem is the only major outcome is the Bepis, which is just a second techweb but it has a different points

[oranges]

[Cobby]

There have also been luxury items in the vending machines people like to get.

This is not (or maybe it is?) considering a major point of it is that you now have to also buy everything outside of your normal job tools which add up, particularly if you're buying a set of items like tools (although this might not be an issue on some maps if they've been spammed with resources).

Then again I guess economy balance is by definition worse if we consider the fact you can bypass it with... surprise surprise... mineral selling (or just coin-making). reeee

[oranges]

the poll is pretty conclusive already so expect an uno reverse on this one when it ends.

[Shadowflame909]

I like the coin making part of economy

Steals power away from gun cargo.

Yeah sorry i'm proactively trying to get some more coinage that's not through your monopoly!

Lastly. We all know in reality, effort doesn't reflect the amount of cash you make. Otherwise anyone plowing crops all day would be a billionaire.

A game allows us to reflect this thought though.

[oranges]

no

[BeeSting12]

It's one of those ideas that sounds really cool in theory until you put it into practice and it doesn't work out as expected. I will say some cool stuff has been spawned from it even if the overall system was a failure.

[Shadowflame909]

It's one of those ideas that sounds really cool in theory until you put it into practice and it doesn't work out as expected. I will say some cool stuff has been spawned from it even if the overall system was a failure.

Someone give them the memo

[Anonmare]

Economy ought to be more finite, value only comes from scarcity. I have some thoughts based upon my experience on other servers with an economy system.

Go back to station budget, but only leave one mega-budget.
The budget has a signfiicant amount of money (Actual value to be determined, it should last a high-population station ~ 30 minutes without major expenses) to start off with but it does not increase by itself.
Everyone's paycheck comes from this budget, cargo does not have access to this budget - it's a point-based system, however private buying still exists and uses credits.
Nobody can access this budget directly, it can only be influenced by select personnel in the form of percentage-based payrises.
Payrises cannot be increased past a cap (hypothetically, 100%).
The money CAN run out if not replenished.
Exports are the only way to get any significant cash injections into the station budget.
A percent of cargo's exports have their value added to the station budget, via tariff, this can be altered by the relevant personnel - default being HoP.
Money can be directly inserted to the budget via the banking machine, in the case of philanthropists wishing to donate their wealth (Ha!).


The idea behind this is to:
A) Enforce scarcity and give value to currency.
B) Prevent cargo from dominating the economy whilst still being a major part of it.
C) Prevent the same catastrophe we had with budget cards.
D) Prevent the entire budget being emptied out in one go.
E) Keep credits relevant but not make cargo beholden to them.
F) Encourage departments to make and export things, like a research station would be expected to do.

[deedubya]

F) Encourage departments to make and export things, like a research station would be expected to do.

This is already partly achieved through the bounty system, and cargo is supposed to show favor to people/departments that satisfy bounties. Of course, this never happens anymore, so people almost never do bounties and cargo just buys more guns and insuls even if bounties are being done.

Perhaps a new redemption machine should be added specifically to process small bounty items, much like the ORM currently does. Then you slap your ID in the machine and redeem the commission from the items. Give people incentive to fulfil bounties.



Also, the price and variability of premium items should vary more. The concept of having to pay heavily for items that are leaned heavily on but not required for job progress is a good way to both give currency value, as well as time/effort gate certain items without relying on techwebs. Could you imagine the freedom R&D would have in tech options if you could buy plasma cutters from a cargo vendor after your first or second pay period?

[Capsandi]

On the subject of plasma sheets, the reason everyone is on the station is for plasma research, and so it makes sense this is valuable stuff, but Nanotrasen has a monopoly on it and you are using the company currency, the company which is drowning in the stuff likely values it less than most. Having already been shown to be a shitty employer, we could justify selling plasma for whatever price we want while staying consistent. If plasma exporting is the issue then lower the price, drastically if needed, why not?

[Shadowflame909]

On the subject of plasma sheets, the reason everyone is on the station is for plasma research, and so it makes sense this is valuable stuff, but Nanotrasen has a monopoly on it and you are using the company currency, the company which is drowning in the stuff likely values it less than most. Having already been shown to be a shitty employer, we could justify selling plasma for whatever price we want while staying consistent. If plasma exporting is the issue then lower the price, drastically if needed, why not?

Because there's nothing else to sell

And it'd make reaching 1m go from at least 2 hours of effort to impossible