An idea

In EV Nova all governments are willing to trade in credits.

Q: Does it make sense that different governments are willing to trade in the same currency?

A: Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

I was mulling over a method to include various different currencies into the game and have come up with a plug-in idea that may or may not work. I am not a plug-in developer myself yet so unless this is clearly impossible - someone else will have to test it.

My idea is to have alternate currencies as a purchasable outfit that is weightless, has no function to the ship’s performance, and is (effectively) unlimited.

When landing on a planet belonging to a government that does not trade in standard credits, all of a players credits would be confiscated. Ships and outfits available on that planet would still have a cost in standard credits so, in order to buy them, the player would have to go to the outfitting area, sell their currency outfits, and use the credits from that sale to buy the desired outfit/ship.

The only problem I see with this idea right off the bat is that you would be unable to capture foreign currency from disabled ships.

Allow me to paint a few examples of what this might look like in practice.

Example #1 : Polaris Isolation

~The Polaris government does not deal in standard credits. (All credits are confiscated upon landing at a Polaris planet.)
~The outfit “Polaris Credits” is available for purchase on Earth. This outfit costs 5 credits each and is (effectively) unlimited. This outfit is available for at all Polaris outfitting areas at the same price.
~The player has 5,000,004 standard credits.
~The player lands on Earth and purchases 1,000,000 Polaris Credits from the outfitter. The player now has 4 standard credits.
~The player lands on a Polaris planet, his 4 credits are confiscated.
~The player goes to the Polaris outfitting area and sells his 1,000,000 Polaris credits. The player now has 5,000,000 credits.
~The player purchases whatever he wants (within his price range) from the Polaris outfitter/shipyard.

Example #2 : Three way Trade

~Neither the Polaris government, nor the Auroran government deal in ( will confiscate) standard credits.
~All outfitters in the Auroran Empire will trade Auroran Credits at a price of 2 credits.
~All outfitters in Polaris space will trade Polaris Credits at a price of 5 credits.
~The outfitter on Earth trades Auroran Credits at a price of 2.
~The outfitter on Aurora trades Polaris Credits at a price of 5.
~The player has 5,000,000 standard credits.
~The player purchases 2,500,000 Auroran Credits on Earth. (Now has 0 standard credits.)
~The player lands on Aurora and sells his 2,500,000 Auroran Credits for 5,000,000 standard credits. Before leaving the planet he purchases 1,000,000 Polaris Credits. (Again has 0 standard Credits.)
~Player lands on a Polaris planet and repeats actions from example #1

Example #3 : Differing or Fluctuating Currency Values (the most complicated)

~Auroran, Polaris, and Pirate systems do not trade in (will confiscate) standard credits. (Probably don’t want to overdo this feature but it will come in useful when there are many governments.)
~Earth trades Auroran Credits at a price of 2 and International Credits at a price of 30.
~Aurora trades Auroran Credits at a price of 2, and International Credits at a price of 20.
~Harbour trades Internation Credits at a price of 40, and Polaris Credits at a price of 8.
~Polaris systems will trade Polaris Credits at a price of 5, and will buy (NOT sell) International Credits at a price of 10.
~The player has 5,000,000 standard credits and wishes to turn that into the maximum amount of Polaris credits.
~On Earth, the player buys 2,500,000 Auroran credits.
~On Aurora, the player sell his Auroran credits for 5,000,000 standard credits and buys 250,000 International Credits.
~On Harbour, the player sells his International Credits for 10,000,000 standard credits and buys 1,250,000 Polaris Credits.
~The player lands on a Polaris planet and sells his Polaris Credits for 6,250,000 standard credits and uses that to buy whatever he desires.

The numbers I used for these calculation will clearly have to be adjusted as it would be ridiculous for a player to double their credits at one location (Harbour) unless the system was hostile by default and very difficult to dominate/bribe/get a better legal status.

Does this idea have a possibility of working?

Will anybody try to implement something like this in a plug-in?

Overall, what do you think?

The only logical and practical way to do this that I can think of would be to create an outfit that's a Currency Converter and you have to get one for each government you want to buy stuff from.

Sounds cool, but its more of something you'd add into a (quasi-)TC than the stock scenario. Reminds me of the stock /timeshare system in CTC (yet to be released)

It's the confiscation thing that gets to me.

Say you have a first time player who doesn't know about the differing currencies, exploring around the galaxy.

The very first time he lands on a foreign planet, he gets all of his money confiscated. Then what?

@eugene-chin, on Oct 15 2007, 04:49 PM, said in Different Government - Different Currency:

It's the confiscation thing that gets to me.

Say you have a first time player who doesn't know about the differing currencies, exploring around the galaxy.

The very first time he lands on a foreign planet, he gets all of his money confiscated. Then what?

I'd say that they get all of the money confiscated, then returned when they take off. Hence, you would still have the same amount of money, just not all usable. And they should be something more like credit vouchers, because you have to trade them in for money.

I don't get why confiscation is even necessary. In Polaris space, all outfits would be "free" (require no credits) but would not be available for purchase unless you had a certain quantity of the Polaris Credit outfit. On purchase, the quantity of Polaris Credits you have would be decremented, and the list updated. This is the same way the Old Shipyard works. Your credits are still available; they just don't get you anything.

Edit: also, to be realistic, you shouldn't get a perfect exchange rate when converting currencies. This is how money changers make a living, after all. But then, you ask yourself, why not just make Polaris outfits more expensive, to represent the increased exchange rate? Well, that's what the game does. "Credits" are a fungible unit of purchasing power, and abstract away elements of the game that could be there, and would be more realistic, but don't necessarily add anything to the gameplay. Consider what you'd gain by adding this currency restriction, and decide if it's actually worth having at all.

This post has been edited by Derakon : 15 October 2007 - 08:09 PM

@derakon, on Oct 15 2007, 06:07 PM, said in Different Government - Different Currency:

I don't get why confiscation is even necessary. In Polaris space, all outfits would be "free" (require no credits) but would not be available for purchase unless you had a certain quantity of the Polaris Credit outfit. On purchase, the quantity of Polaris Credits you have would be decremented, and the list updated. This is the same way the Old Shipyard works. Your credits are still available; they just don't get you anything.

Edit: also, to be realistic, you shouldn't get a perfect exchange rate when converting currencies. This is how money changers make a living, after all. But then, you ask yourself, why not just make Polaris outfits more expensive, to represent the increased exchange rate? Well, that's what the game does. "Credits" are a fungible unit of purchasing power, and abstract away elements of the game that could be there, and would be more realistic, but don't necessarily add anything to the gameplay. Consider what you'd gain by adding this currency restriction, and decide if it's actually worth having at all.

I do agree that it would be an interesting gimik, but is not necessary to the game. That being said, it would be pretty darn cool if it worked. Now something I don't understand is how you would get the game to count the number of outfits. You can have it do it if you have one, you can have it take one away, but you would have to repeat the command as many times as the credits required. It would require a huge amount of time for say, a Raven, which costs about 20M credits. That's a lot of commands. I would also say that you would want maybe three places where you could exchange the various types. You probobly wouldn't want to have it so you can in essence spend credits in the middle of polaris space.

You would have to work out a way to figure out how to get how many 'Polaris Credits' the player has. There is a bit (g?) that checks if the player has one or more, but it doesn't really tell you how many. You could use a cron to check, if they have one, remove one, add credits, then repeat, but that would be cumbersome, If I remember correctly, the player would have to lift and land for it to reiterate.

Why not just say the shipyard and outfitters use the same currency, but different exchange rates?

You could have differant denominations. So for each outfit, there is a specific credit value that you can use for it. So, a 20M for the Raven from my example. Too bad you'd have to know how much the outfit would cost before exchanging. Also, nothing in this would really work against energy.