Hello! Please keep in mind that as you read this post and possibly respond to it, that I am not bringing this up on behalf of the staff; while it may be used as a resource, I am only asking this out of my own curiosity. This server has been migrating to a more in-depth economic environment, with players keeping records of funds, factions doing so as well, and so on. My question is, how do you feel about Economy and Industry, where it's going, what you want out of it, and why? Many people on the server desire a more realistic approach, with companies requiring funds to start up, investors, and resources to make their product, but many people would like to see economy remain almost nonexistent, in order to focus on other roleplay. While neither is good or bad for this kind of server, they tend to mix and cause a very wishy-washy standard, which often leaves players confused or frustrated, from my experience here.
I don't think a real economy (I.E. one totally supported by in-game materials) is necessary. Tracking funds and such is great, and isn't too dependent on what people do in game, but I would like to see factions and such trading. Instead of everyone supporting themselves, having factions that farm and sell harvest, or factions dedicated to mining or actual artisans. It woudl mean that factions would be interdependent, and through interdependence, we could keep factions alive longer, and provide consequences for the rest of the galaxy when their primary source of metals, lumber or food is destroyed. I like the idea in a sense that I'd like to see the economy taken more seriously, but not necessarily backed by in-game items or real-world nitty-gritty. I'd like to see people work in mines, fuel refineries and farms. Perhaps not ALL DAY, perhaps not even when their online (you know, during that time of day when they're at work or school.) Just that they'll be doing a job, somewhere, rather than asspulling the everything, hat's what I'd like, anyway. As I said. I wouldn't mind playing a weaver, or farmer or miner. I even had plans to put together a deep-space mining organization that goes about mining asteroids.
As someone who roleplay's my faction and characters within the faction getting every single gun, armour, ship, medical supply etc from actual roleplay, I'd definitely support people being clear exactly where they got their stuff.
I want economy and stuff but the issue is that people will complain that their edgelord characters arn't on equal footing with the factions and to be honest (because this needs to be said) a group should be better than the individual. A group has more hands and more of a chance to earn money. I'm tired of seeing oocly bickering because of the edgeness. Back on topic, yeah just keep a paper trail like I have been doing.
I want an economy for what it can add to the roleplay, I don't want an economy based roleplay. That doesn't require something in depth really, but book keeping and the like add a great deal of flavor. I don't like a 100% player to player economy, only because it shrinks the vastness of space down and honestly makes things very dull. That said, I am full for colony to colony trade and people with salvage and cargo businesses that actually do these things. No need to get totally bogged down. The issue comes when people abuse NPC interaction and trade for power in roleplay generally, and even then it is likely is a player issue more then anything.
A full economy is simply not sustainable. We do not have the player count to have a supply chain of materials flowing to one another. And then comes the issue of mods. People just spawn materials and stuff out of the gate using ILikeCheating or similar mods, ruining any sense of progression. I am alright when, say, your Standard-USCM-Trope/Stereotype joins the server, wants to spawn a pulse rifle because that fits his character, or a character planning on building a themed colony spawning decorative blocks to scan into the 3D Printer. However there will be those who give themselves Impervium armour and then get into a gunfight, then when somebody shoots them the RP themselves as being invincible. There is currently no way to restrict cheating, even if you banned those who came onto the server with mods, they could go into singleplayer, spawn items, then remove the mod and hop onto multiplayer. Or they could just use StarCheat. I am all for people trading even when there is no point and RPing getting investments from out-of-sector, if only because there is no other option.
What makes sense to me is that rare metals have only one IC faction responsible for the production and refining of higher end metals -- Impervium and the like, which is extremely expensive and catalogued in all purchases. This would allow the ability to track claims for all higher-end armor/materials. If we were to hypothetically go a step further and have this combined with the proposed character whitelist app process (which I understand is a nebulous idea) then it would make for complete moderation of top-end materials.
An in-depth economy is impossible. But some people have played the pseudo-economy side of things well. Christy (yes, the hippy one) did good. No food, no money, so she would volunteer to get sandwiches. Herx went and lived in an unregistered tent at the edge of the city. Glauen had his own bout with poverty before getting a job with the Asani Security Force. People DO play pixels decently, sometimes. God knows I tried to keep track of them for a while on one of my characters before ultimately giving up. So I don't think a TRUE, HARDENED economy is necessary. Just something that makes colony dependence existent, that means people actually have to have jobs, rather than bottomless pockets of just-enough-to-buy-whiskey-today.
I hope to do something like this. I want to start a kind of farming colony and actually sell food to factions and colonies, so that way there's some kind of source for the food people have instead of just "we had it shipped in" or somesuch. And hopefully that'll kind of stir the pot a little bit to get other resource production going. Of course other people, like Raideck with his mining business, started this idea. I'm just hopping on the bandwagon.
While a 100% realistic simulation of the world economy nowadays would be impossible, it's in my experience that a group this size could easily handle the supply and demand to create some dumbed-down version of an economy, with groups harvesting basic materials, and selling said materials to another group who makes items out of them. Something as specific as components would more or less be impossible, yes, but some more specific things, such as making engineers and weaponsmiths a different class of employees, is not difficult at all. Not sure how other people feel about it, but it really bothers me when I see an engineer who is also an expert ship mechanic as well as a gunsmith and an electrician. While they can sort of be lumped together into a similar skillset, they are all different things with different requirements.
'An Engineer' means they're good at all the moving machinerobizbobbles. Dontcha know? That's why you can be a weapon designing, fashionista, doctor, ship building geneticist. All you need is like... a vague associates in one of those fields, right? That makes you a professional, right? Joking aside, I agree. Someone should be something. Not everything. And while a BIT of lumping might be necessary, such as a doctor also serving as a pharmacist, or a scrapper might have the skills to make sure their ship doesn't fall apart. But at least keep it in the same field.
