Money Money Money and machines

[Otaku]

IIRC we already have money, crazy right? Yeah, it is sorta that small insignificant number on the trade screen. But yeah it is underpowered.

I am sorta OK with the idea of faction money, I mean, what is keeping order there? What federal reserves do they have? Is their money gold backed?
I find bullet currency sorta like bartering. You want this knife? I will trade it for 30 bullets. How is that not bartering?

[Rivet]

It is bartering, but it’s more readily quantifiable than some other options. Plus it really drives home the desperation of the situation if your most common form of currency is a tool of destruction.

[ClaytonRISING]

Bullets as currency? Already played enough Metro, no thanks ;D

[Kazymir]

Bottlecaps. That is all.

[Hyena_Grin]

No bullets or bottlecaps as currency. =(

Bullets would kinda make sense (just about anyone can make use of bullets) but it’s obviously straight out of Metro.

Bottlecaps makes no sense whatsoever. Fallout had two hundred-or-so years for the economy to crumble and be replaced by bottlecaps. Which is still silly. If there’s any reason to use bottlecaps as an exchange currency then there’s equal reason to use the existing metal or paper currency which is more varied and better suited to being carried.

Frankly the idea of a new, non-barter economy developing within a week of the death of 99% of the population is just absurd.

People are going to be asking themselves ‘what do I need, what am I ill-suited to get myself.’

I’d really like to see ‘archetypes’ set up for NPCs that have their own trade-interests. NPCs are always willing to trade but have High, Normal, and Low value for items based on their own personal needs (based on their skill-sets and faction), as well as many (most) items they just aren’t interested in. A character with a lot of food may be willing to trade their food for less than someone who has very little, but as you trade for more of their food the value of the food goes up. They aren’t going to trade their last can of spam to you for a handful of .22 rounds, but they might sell one of their stack of twenty cans of spam for a handful of .22 rounds. And skills can play a part also. A character with a lot of Survival may be willing to trade food for cheaper than someone who can only get their food by trading (they have no combat or survival skills).

Once in a while you’d find dedicated ‘merchants’ who operate with larger stocks and a more capitalist look at goods; they aren’t just interested in goods for themselves, they are interested in goods they know they can trade with others. As a result they will rarely trade top-dollar for any item but have a wider selection of items they will trade away and for. These people have probably occupied and barricaded a store front, they might have guards, and if you try to steal their stuff they will go hostile. (Warning on pickup?)

I imagine the devs have all kinds of ideas on what to do with NPCs so there’s probably some overlap there.

[kevin.granade]

1. Ammunition wouldn’t be currency but rather barter, for one very important reason, if you’re trading with a NPC, and they have a gun that accepts a certain type of ammo, that ammo will be FAR more valuable to them, making it a currency with some fixed value relative to other items is unnecessarally limiting. Similarly, if they SEE that you have a certain gun, they should demand a premium on its ammo. This would tend to even out if you’re dealing with a trader of some kind, as they’re playing a numbers game of how good the ammo is versus how common it is, but even then it could vary widely if they were e.g. attached to a faction that values certain things, like pistols over rifles for some reason.

2. Bottlecaps are one of the dumbest things about fallout, they have a 90% barter system, but wussed out and stuck in a bizarre fiat currency to smooth things out. As they were aiming for semi-mainstream I can’t really fault them on it, and they dressed it up nicely with humor, but it’s definitely a departure from the otherwise nice and gritty representation of an apocalyptic scenario.

As usual, Hyena Grin read my freaking mind

[ted]

Similarly, if they SEE that you have a certain gun, they should demand a premium on its ammo.

This is a bad idea. It will probably be difficult to write a gun-finding algorithm that the player can’t easily trick. It would be better to assume the player has an appropriate gun and charge a uniform price, because the player just won’t buy the ammo if it’s not usable.

Price gouging for medicines could work, since the player can’t hide low HP or illnesses like a physical item.

[drake1storm]

[quote=“Otaku, post:11, topic:2573”]IIRC we already have money, crazy right? Yeah, it is sorta that small insignificant number on the trade screen. But yeah it is underpowered.

I am sorta OK with the idea of faction money, I mean, what is keeping order there? What federal reserves do they have? Is their money gold backed?
I find bullet currency sorta like bartering. You want this knife? I will trade it for 30 bullets. How is that not bartering?[/quote]

The same can be said for paper currency. It is all bartering.

Also, ted, that wouldn’t be very hard at all. You would just need a function that would be called when the barter screen opens that will get the id of the target npc, search through both it and the players inventory for anything flagged as a ‘gun’ while adding any gun types found to a separate array for each. It would then run, for each array, checking if that ammo type is in the others inventory, and adjust prices accordingly.

That is likely not the most efficient way (hard to be efficient when using text), but it should be effective while running too quickly to tell, so long as we don’t go gun nuts and add in 50 bagillian of them.

[kevin.granade]

But I want the player to work around it, that’s the whole point.
Of course that means you have to have your favorite gun stashed somewhere the NPC can’t see it at all times you’re in sight range of the NPC, which means you don’t have easy access to it if there’s trouble… decisions, decisions…

[Zarthull]

I like the suggestions for bartening with npc’s for items.

I think there should be traveling npc caravans (possibly a car full of 4 or so traveling npcs) all armed with guns and good loot (food, guns & ammo, bionics)
These NPC’s would tell the player to put away there weapon or they will open fire on him/her, this allows the player to have the opportunity to try and kill them for loot or just trade normally.
Also same thing goes for future NPC’s towns.

[Zarthull]

Also for being able to break open vending machines, they would be hard to crack open without time + tools

ones with common loot like water, soda, lighter, cigarettes would play an alarm when damaged and turn off for a short time.

Big machines like an ATM or ammo dispenser would be very hard to open without high mechanic & electronic skills + proper tools, and damaging them would automatically send police bots at the player

[ClaytonRISING]

I don’t think you guys seem to grasp the concept that the game is set 5 days after the apocalypse.

This isn’t Fallout or Metro where people have been living in the aftermath of the apocalypse and have set up trade routes, towns, and systems of monetary bartering.

5 days after an apocalypse, people aren’t going to be thinking “Oh, well lets get in a car and go around seeing if we can trade for shit.” They’re going to be looking for ways to escape the apocalypse, let alone survive.

[FunsizeNinja123]

2 diffrent modes/time settings would be cool. The first one would be cata now, few days after everything and houses are still intact and not looted. And 2nd setting/time would be about a few years after everything. Settlements would be there and you would spawn in one. Trades for food and weapons would be there, but the downside is that the zombies are mutated in some way that I don’t really feel like explaining but they would be harder to kill and have a faster revive rate. Towns/citys would be mostly looted but you can still find food and a few guns out there, sitting on rotting bodies of explorers.

[woflsipder]

Everything about vending machines makes me sad. ;(

Y do u ppl want to abandon realism for being balanced? come on , you could easily smash through the vending machine windows and just grab everything (if i hasn’t already been grabbed.
5 days in apocalypse yo.).
And don’t go with the “vending machines will call police bots and tanks and airstrike by drones” because they don’t have no power and there’s no damn future i want to live in where you can’t just grab and go.
People is busy curing cancer and ending world hunger , not making powerless vending machine with tank bots dedicated to fall down the roof whenever some clumsy guy happens to crack his skull against the vending machine window/riot shield/super alloy plating. And where are the copbots when zombies smash my windows? Did the military and cops forget they have bots and drones ready for any situation , but stationed them so they only wake up when they hear vending machine glass crack?

[drake1storm]

[quote=“Clayton, post:22, topic:2573”]I don’t think you guys seem to grasp the concept that the game is set 5 days after the apocalypse.

This isn’t Fallout or Metro where people have been living in the aftermath of the apocalypse and have set up trade routes, towns, and systems of monetary bartering.

5 days after an apocalypse, people aren’t going to be thinking “Oh, well lets get in a car and go around seeing if we can trade for shit.” They’re going to be looking for ways to escape the apocalypse, let alone survive.[/quote]

5 days after the apocalypse, you are going to hurting for supplies something fierce. Trade has always existed, even in the most volatile and disastrous situations, as a means of gaining what you need in exchange for what you don’t.

[ClaytonRISING]

Considering most people are/will be dead 5 days after an apocalypse, I don’t think you’re going to be hurting for supplies. Fun fact: the game starts 5 days after an apocalypse. There are still supplies…an abundance of them, actually. Just sitting there for the taking.

Having trade caravans or NPC towns after 5 days after the apocalypse started wouldn’t make sense.

[ted]

[quote=“drake1storm, post:18, topic:2573”]Also, ted, that wouldn’t be very hard at all. You would just need a function that would be called when the barter screen opens that will get the id of the target npc, search through both it and the players inventory for anything flagged as a ‘gun’ while adding any gun types found to a separate array for each. It would then run, for each array, checking if that ammo type is in the others inventory, and adjust prices accordingly.

That is likely not the most efficient way (hard to be efficient when using text), but it should be effective while running too quickly to tell, so long as we don’t go gun nuts and add in 50 bagillian of them.[/quote]

As a player, I could drop the gun before bartering. Then I would get cheaper prices, and immediately pick up the gun afterwards. If the game starts checking for guns lying around, I leave the gun slightly further away. Repeat until the developers get sick of it and forfeit the arms race, or they stop trying to gouge me selectively and start gouging me all the time.

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:19, topic:2573”]But I want the player to work around it, that’s the whole point.
Of course that means you have to have your favorite gun stashed somewhere the NPC can’t see it at all times you’re in sight range of the NPC, which means you don’t have easy access to it if there’s trouble… decisions, decisions… :D[/quote]

In that case, I just get two guns, and buy ammo for one while defending myself the other. Little or no extra risk, and the NPC gives me the better price. I don’t see a way to prevent this without scrapping the gouging idea, or removing most of the guns in the game.

It’s still very silly in the end result - I jump through an awkward hoop to trick the NPC into thinking I’m not using the things I’m buying. Why wouldn’t the NPC just start with the assumption that I’m buying things because I need them? To the extent that posturing over how badly the player needs stuff exists, it should just be abstracted into part of the Barter skill.

Also, if every trade encounter has a real risk of the player getting shot at, even with known trading partners, then trade probably won’t be very viable, so how it works wouldn’t matter.

[drake1storm]

[quote=“Clayton, post:26, topic:2573”]Considering most people are/will be dead 5 days after an apocalypse, I don’t think you’re going to be hurting for supplies. Fun fact: the game starts 5 days after an apocalypse. There are still supplies…an abundance of them, actually. Just sitting there for the taking.

Having trade caravans or NPC towns after 5 days after the apocalypse started wouldn’t make sense.[/quote]

You might be surprised. In times of crisis, obvious resources are quickly wasted (yes, people do fight over cans, only to leave with no can at all) as people stockpile random crap. There is also the issue that food has a set shelf life unless preserved, water is precious regardless, and you are going to need a means of defense against both zombies and your fellow humans. We can just look at katrina for how this went: tons of supplies SHOULD have been available, yet, regardless, there was still starvation and countless medical issues.

Humanity has just evolved to be not very good at sharing, unless they think they profit more in the end. But, you are right, trade caravans would definitely not be out at day 5. Honestly, the npc’s "FUCK YOU"s are probably more appropriate for this time period after a major disaster.

[Zarthull]

[quote=“Clayton, post:26, topic:2573”]Considering most people are/will be dead 5 days after an apocalypse, I don’t think you’re going to be hurting for supplies. Fun fact: the game starts 5 days after an apocalypse. There are still supplies…an abundance of them, actually. Just sitting there for the taking.

Having trade caravans or NPC towns after 5 days after the apocalypse started wouldn’t make sense.[/quote]
Speaking of that, if npc get a [size=36pt]huge[/size] advancement in their AI then we could possibly see things advance over time, at first lots of surivors making their homes into bases where they wait for [tt]their impending doom[/tt], the apocalypse to end. Over time some towns might become lawless zones controlled by gangs, or wild west like with everyone and their grandma packing heat.

Or just start the game a month or so after the apocalypse with the survivor in their borded up home and out of food.

[ClaytonRISING]

Why I don’t think pre-existing NPC towns/merchants should be in the game…developing ones would be awesome! Like, helping/coordinating the creation of a town.