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PaoloEmilio

Ingame money

77 posts in this topic

I had some general thoughts about how currency would apply to TFC, and it seemed more appropriate to post them here than to start a new thread. Some of this is going to be repeating points that have already been made in this thread, but it's necessary to do so to make this coherent.The first point to establish is that any in-game money should not be designed to force an economic model onto all servers; an economy is effectively a set of social interactions, and how those interactions are carried out will vary depending on the players on a particular server. However, there may be ways in which game mechanics can help facilititate making these interactions easier to carry out in a variety of circumstances. The goal should be to add new forms of gameplay, not arbitrarily add something because it exists in the real world.First, it is important to decouple your real-world perceptions of money from TFC; many specfic details of money in the real world, both historical and modern, will differ from anything in TFC, for a variety of reasons. Just to cite the simplest case, gold is very unlikely to have a high intrinisc value in TFC. Historically, gold was valued mainly due to it's scarcity, and it didn't have many practical uses until the modern era. While the lack of utility applies to TFC (while it does have uses, it hardly the most useful metal), the scarcity does not apply- between gold panning and full-blown deposits, it's not the most uncommon find, and is typically less useful than other metals, making its value comparatively low.Before going on, it's important to distinguish the KINDS of economies that could arise on a server, since ideally, the economic mechanics would facilitiate multiple styles simultaneously.-----------------------------------------------Isolationist/Communal Economies: Obviously, it is possible to have a server with no trade, or communal resource sharing. While these represent opposite extremes, in both cases, currency simply doesn't apply.Barter Economies: This form of economy is likely the most pervasive, and likely will exist alongside any other forms. Simply put, a transaction in a barter economy will occur when two players give one set of goods in exchange for another. The type of goods are irrelevant, and the value is based entirely on how much each of the two players involved want the other's goods. This could be food for metel ingots, ore for some (almost certainly lesser) amount of processed metal, or even a complex combination of five or six kinds of good on each side. With the current animal taming system, living livestock are even tradeable goods.This system relies on the value of goods themselves, with the serious caveat that unless there is a known third party who will make an additional trade, the value of the good is only what is perceived by the players involved.The main advantage of this is simplicity- if two player both happen to have something the other wants in such quantity that they can agree on a trade of roughly equal value, the good can just be exchanged. The main problem with this kind of economy is FINDING a trade of equal value- if someone wants something but can't offer anything valuable to the other party, the trade cannot occur. Another issue is division of value- if you want to buy something of low value (say, food once farming and ranching are established), but all you have to trade are high-value goods (say, steel), it may be impossible to make a remotely fair trade unless the person selling food has something else to balance out the value of an ingot. This kind of scenario is arguably one of the reasons why currency was developed in the real world.Barter is already supported by the game, although it might be simplified if there were a way to sub-divide the more valuable resources.Backed currency: In this kind of system, someone with wealth (not necesarily any kind of authority- it could just be the player who's stumbled on the only kaonlinite deposit known on the server, or someone with a decent stock of metals) has the ability to issue currency. In this case, the value of the currency is NOT only based on its intrisic worth (e.g. the metal that went into making a coin), but rather is based on the promise that it can be redeemed for some amount of resources if it were taken back to the issuer. This DOES require that people trust the issuer, or at least can reliably buy thing from someone who does trust them. The amount of resources that are associated with a unit of money are largely arbitrary; if the backer wants 64 coins to be worth one red steel ingot, this valuation is as valid as one coin for one red steel ingot, or even one coin for 64 ingots; what's important is that the issuer either will provide the resources if asked, or people at least beleive the issuer to be both willing and able to do so.This model relies not on the value of the currency itself, but on the value of the goods backing the currency and the perceived likelihood of being able to exchange the currency for those goods. Another key factor, as with all currencies, is how widely it is accepted, which is likely tied directly to how trustworthy the issuer is perceived.This system is not currently supported, becasue it requires a way for the issuer to produce a unique currency, and control the amount produced. If the currency can be reproduced under other circumstances (a.k.a. counterfeiting), trust in the issuer's ability to make good on the currency is rapidly eroded, and people are unlikely to use it in further trade.It should also be noted that in this system, a single issuer could provide several denominations of currency, or different currencies for different resources. Likewise, nothing would prevent multiple players from issuing their own currencies.The benefit of this system is that it provide a compact means of representing value in trade. It is also easier to understand and establish than a fiat currency. It also has the benefit of (hopefully) giving market forces a head start, since prices in the currency are easier to initially set if the currency corresponds to a useful resource. The potential downside in a server is complexity, since there's nothing to stop every player on the server from issuing a few doxen denominations of currency each.Fiat Currency: This model requires some form of widely accepted authority to work, whether it be some form of server governance, general player consensus, admins, or a group of players who rushed red/blue steel and now run the continent through strength of arms. This system resembles backed currency in that the issuer (the authority) controls the amount released, whether this is through control of the only source of the currency (more or less impossible in a procedural world unless an admin cheats in unobtainable items), or the ability to create a unique currency (like what is needed for the backed currency). The key difference is that the currency's real value comes from scarcity and how broadly it is accepted alone; it exists as a resource that can be traded for without a gaurantee of being able to exchange it for useful goods. As such, it is very important for its success that some group of people generaly accept it in trade, since every player who will buy or sell using the currency adds to its usefulness.The real value of such a currency is dependent of how many people use it, how much is issued, and how stable the supply is. The supply is very important here, since if the authority issues too much currency, the value of exisitng money drops, but if too little is issued, the value may become impractically high.This system is mostly unsupported at the moment. It would require admin administration of the currency through the spawning of a limited number of otherwise unobtainable items to create a currency, and admin intervention to control the supply.The benefit of this model is that, if it works, there is one currency shared by many players, hopefully fostering trade, and making exchanges simpler. The downside is that the model is more complex (since the value of the currency cannot be immediately fixed), and there is likely to be a startup period where the value fluxuates wildly while people figure out its worth.-----------------------------------------------So, the main issue at the moment is that both backed and fiat currencies cannot naturally arise on a server, since there is no way to issue a unique currency. Any standard in-game resource that is easy to acquire in quantities useful for trade is extremely vulnerable to hyperinflation if it is ever actually used as currency. This creates a void where bartering can become difficult if there is a large mismatch in the value of goods, and makes trade much more difficult. The moment any number of players adopt a currency, it becomes possible to sell something to someone who is producing nothing of value to you, since they can trade for currency first.The minimum requirements to support a currency is the ability to make the currency (likely coins), the ability to produce any number of units of a particular currency, the ability to uniquely identify a currency, and the ability to add some form of text to the currency. The need to produce more units is required in case the initial minting of the currency is not enough for the long run; this is important for both backed and fiat currencies. The need to make it uniquely identifiable is important to stop trivial counterfeiting, which would undermine any currency. Finally, the text is less necessary, but it would be helpful to be able to print "This coin has a value of 1/4 of a Steel Ingot, redeemable at the Cornfield Foundry", or something to that effect.Although specific implementation is largely irrelevant for the purposes of adding gameplay, something based on real-world coin manufacture is obviously preferable. The two main methods used by the ancient world were casting, and hammered coinage ( see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammered_coinage for an overview).The method I see as being most in line with the mod as it exists is to use a sort of hammered coinage, with the blanks of copper and the various bronzes being castable, while the blanks of the higher-tier metals being smithed from a sheet. A unique stamp could then be made, which would contain the player's chosen text, and a unique ID (maybe based on the name of the player who crafted it; maybe the name of the player who created it; maybe something random- the point is to keep someone from counterfeiting a coin by just using the same text and metal, which is trivial and would utterly break any economy). The stamp could then be crafted with the blanks using a hammer, and would result in coins imprinted with the text and ID, which could then serve as currency. For the sake of sanity when making large runs of a coin, while the hammer should take damage, the stamp should not, unless there is a means of making an exact duplicate of the stamp.A lower-priority feature would be the option to melt down coins and blanks back to their base metals, so that their intrinsic value as a metal exists, although this is not crucial; its main use would be if an issuer wanted to recall a currency, or was stuck with a large stockpile of coins after a lot of people exchanged a backed currency for resources. Also, it is worth noting that unstamped blanks would represent a way to sub-divide metals without the need to establish actual currency, which might help with barter.Finally, in case there's any confusion, there is no real difference within the coins of a backed currency versus a fiat currency- the difference is entirely within how the players choose to make use of the currency. This will also require no tedious process of setting prices for all the goods in the game- the prices should arise naturally through market forces as players seek trades they feel benefit them, and would likely vary greatly between servers. All currency would do is provide the tool to let the players make these kinds of trades.

 

Also, to address the complaint that nothing is scarce enough to warrant trade, I would like to point out that if there were an easier means of trade than just barter, it would be more feasible for an admin to reduce the ore frequency in a server's configs to create a different style of gameplay in order to encourage more trade, if that was the kind of game they were aiming for.

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Well, it is true, everyone could mint their own coins, but as metal is also needed for tools and coins can only be minted with clay molds, eventually you will have to stop using it to make potteries and other tools. And its true it would max out your inventory slots, but gems come in many kinds, so that, for example, 10 gems of any kind and of any quality (chipped, normal, flawless...) would take up more inventory slots than 64 coins. And about turning the ingot into smaller slots, I won't trade a full copper ingot for 5 wheat grains. That's why I would reduce it unto smaller pieces.

I agree with your logic behind this, but maybe not 64 coins per ingot, I'd say since an ingot is 100 of any metal, might make sense to have 10 coins. Which could actually serve a real function in the game too, by allowing coins to also act as a measurement method for making new alloys.In an economy sense, it is nice, but the concept could easily become too complicated. Then again, I wouldn't trade a full spare ingot for 5 wheat grains either, and the person I'm trading with might not want a lesser item. So breaking it into measurably valued fragments, that -do- serve a practical purpose of being recycled into ingots by value, and also into new metal alloys which gives those seeking particular coins a suitable reward for their effort.

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