what whould do I want to do whit so much mony?

i don't think it's a simple "don't allow the player to have more than X money" issue, but it's probably limited by the size of the variable they used when programming. if the programm only allocates X ammount of memory for the money, there's nothing you can do about it.

Ut,

that "paper money" idea is great. The specifics are up to the imagination of the modder, but here are two of my ideas:

Make pirates scan for said "Money" so rich players will constantly get mugged!
Would make having money more difficult: MO money -> MO problems
Any rich player would be constantly harrassed, just like someone with a hold full of diamonds

Make paper money ILLEGAL (got banned / only used by criminals / anybody read Neuromancer?)

The possibilities would make for more gameplay


i prplx

Artic: Beats me. Usually by the time I get two or three million, I screw up my ini's and can't figure out how. Reinstall! But people have been asking about increasing the amount of money they can carry around. This will do it. People have also been asking for a stiffer death penalty. This will also do it.

RubberEagle: Hrmmm... You bring up a good point. The game simply can't handle any more than nine digits to be stored in the cash variable. I know jack squat (and Jacques Squwatt, but that's another post) about programming, especially something longer than 1200 lines in something other than Java, so as far as I know that means that particular value is unchangable. I suppose a work-around to this is to increase the value of everything by a certain constant (say 100), thus vastly reducing the avaliable funds a player has.

prplx: I'm glad you're so enthused. I was wondering to myself, when Xerx came up with the idea a while back, why anyone in their right mind would buy "Credits", simply to carry them around and lure pirates. It just didn't make any sense. But if you make it so people HAVE to use them, or spend their liquid assets before losing them, then it works. The game seems to do this for us, so we're in luck. Boom, two birds with one stone.

Making money illegal's a neat idea. You could even do it by region. Say the Kusari and Rheinlanders dislike each other. If you're found with Kusari money on board, they know you've been dealing with them and demand you drop it. You could have an elaborate system of money trading, so if you want to go from Kusari to Rheinland, you have to top in Liberty and get the money converted. This would keep legit traders out of the Sigma systems, because they'd get busted if they didn't stop in Liberty to change money. Perhaps that would help justify the $1,000,000 they're making on the way there. It really does make for flexible modding.

I'd better shut up now, before I start getting into more self-praise and my head explodes.

...what next, fluctuating exchange rates? New trader subdivision: currency speculator! lmao

This is a great idea. Only thing is, there's still the "real" money as the game expects us to see it, and which is still useable everywhere. Perhaps we could limit this. Kinda like a petty cashbox. Say, 10k tops. For those "omg I died" emergencies. The thing is... what happens when you hit the limit? E.g. a player finishes a diamond run and makes more than 10k profit -- how'd we tell the game to "convert" the excess cash?

...unless we check every time you leave dock, if you have more than $10k on hand instead of 'paper money' (lol I like that term) you'd get a "oh no you don't" from the base and not allow you to take off. This way you can make a lot of profit without having to mod the credits limit, yet not allow you to fly around with the money.



" In Defeat, Malice; In Victory, Revenge[! "

UT,

Good idea. I have been trying to make the economy suffer in my mod, and this is perfect! Do you mind if I "remember" it.

Ceylon

Well, I don't understand why ppl going backwards sometimes. In the game they have credits instead of "paper money" we carry in the pocket. It is more advanced, it is the electronical banking system. Why bother having "paper money" again? If you like to be mugged on you can carry cargos which others want. I only wish there is a mod allow player threating or hijacking trains instead of picking cargos over the dust.

"Paper money", as it were, was in quotes for the purposes of it being an otherwise unnamed form of currency. Why go that route? Well, see, digital or not, a currency has to be based on something, and traditionally that thing is something less abstract than "credit". Be it silver, gold, or whatever. But why an advanced civilization would use a tangible currency is beside the point.

The reason behind this is:

A) Some people, who have found wealth beyond my wildest dreams, have determined that $1 billion simply is not enough cash for them. The game doesn't seem to let you alter this amount directly, so adding in a "Money" commodity that takes up no room in the cargo hold tip-toes around this.

Others have complained about a weak death penalty. Well, if you have several billion dollars on board, the death penalty is no longer weak. In fact, it makes the death penalty rather proportional to the amount of money you're carrying.

C) It adds a new dimention to pirating. Now, not only can you see how many credits someone has (more or less), but if they don't give them to you, you can take them anyway.

Does it make a little more sense now?

I think it makes perfect sense to have "hard" currency. One of the reasons cash is watched so closely is because it is untraceable. Criminal elements deal in cash. If you wanted to go buy a machinegun from a guy in the ghetto, he aint gonna take your MasterCard. So cash exists partially for the element of society that does not wish to be traced.

It would make complete sense to make someone carry cash. Do you ever pay taxes in the freelancer universe? Why not? You should, if you are making all this money. Presuming that most people deal in cash makes sense.

I think it's a good idea, it doesn't have to be "paper money", cash is any sort of untraceable good with relatively high value to volume. Diamonds for example are an excellent form of "cash". they should actually be a lot more valuable in game. Assuming your cargo is in tons, cubic feet, or any other consistent unit of measurement, diamonds should be worth a lot more that 500 times scrap metal. A pound of diamonds is worth FAR more than 500 pounds of scrap metal. So the valuta in the game are already a little bit screwed up. Making some sort of small, portable valuta makes complete sense.

Ceylon

Great minds- has anyone gone further with this, and can counsel me on how to make it happen? I'm doing a singleplayer mod, so there's no risk of losing the notes due to a death.
I'm not certain if you can require the credits to be converted back to the bank note commodity before you leave the station though, or automatically convert them. Or if there's a way you can autosell the notes when you make purchases and autopurchase the notes when you sell things, so that you never have any actual credits in the bank. Any ideas?

i can't see a way to make autoselling feesible, but...

this is a great idea with the money. and it wouldn't be too hard to implement - add the money commodity (bank note, whatever) to just certain planets (major banking centers, whatnot..), and make it buyable for a set price everywhere.

here's the kicker - if you didn't do it on a 1cred/1cash basis, but on a 5cred/1cash basis, then you could make an entirely new crime type - counterfitting. just like cardamine runs - buy counterfit cash at malta for 2creds per, sell at manhatten for 5creds.... and have police forces all over it.

or, a different type of money for each house, with different exchange rates - the possiblities for adding a new and interesting dynamic to trading AND crime...

ohh there is this also....
1 credit
5 credit
10 credit
20 credit
50 credit
100 credit
500 credit
1000 credit
5000 credit
10000 credit
50000 credit
100000 credit
500000 credit
1000000 credit
5000000 credit
10000000 credit

have a type of comoditie with more and more value.... also you could have
Rienland credits that aren't worth as much in liberty etc....

some heavy threadomancy goin on these days


---------------------------------
Excelcia forever
www.excelcia.org/forum

Yeah! And then we could make a commodity called "bubble gum" and have traid routes for that and buy it cheaper at malta and "whatnot"! ( I think this is a dumb idea)

I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.
-----------------------------------------
According to radiometric dating I am a lot older than you think