Harsher, more realistic Economy.

[Ghost23]

I'd love to see a revamp of the NV economy, and I can't seem to find anything close to what I'd like.. I don't enjoy being Mister Money bags who can buy anything. I even have PMT-Tougher Economy and I still find myself racking up thousands of caps on an average scavenge.

 

Is anyone currently up for, or making one of these, much more could go into it, I have some ideas.

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Water should definitely be the be all of end all. The NCR backs their currency with it, and in the desert it is rare to begin with, so finding pure water is a godsend.

Food is definitely undervalued, and medicine should be rarer and a lot more expensive. The whole idea of the Survival skill/Hardcore mode is that you need to find food to survive, and that it is much more common to heal yourself with food or water than with medicine... perhaps making Doctor's Bags and stims rarer (and making stims weigh something), forcing the player to rely on alternative methods of healing (or crafting their own medicine). Chems should be cheap and ubiquitous- if raiders can get hooked up on them, you can too. I do think that addiction rates could be higher, so that the player has tougher decisions- use rare medicine, heal using large quantities of food (which are slow and weight inefficient) or risk a significant chance of addiction by using chems to boost combat skills. As it is, I can go through Very Hard very easily thanks to huge quantities of stims, and find chems completely unnecessary.

Scrap stuff (conductors, sensors modules, SE, SM, etc.) should receive a boost to value as well- scrap is probably the next most common merchandise after water, food and medicine, but they're also quite common, so they aren't as critical.

I Personally think ammo is fine as it is, though it could be made more valuable. It weighs a little bit, but that adds up real fast if you're carrying any significant quantity, so it isn't as practical to just take all the ammo you find and sell it later for huge profits. A final modification would be making caps weigh a little bit, while keeping other currency weightless.

I could modify the values in the GECK, but it won't be balanced without serious playtesting.

[Ghost23]

Water should definitely be the be all of end all. The NCR backs their currency with it, and in the desert it is rare to begin with, so finding pure water is a godsend.

Food is definitely undervalued, and medicine should be rarer and a lot more expensive. The whole idea of the Survival skill/Hardcore mode is that you need to find food to survive, and that it is much more common to heal yourself with food or water than with medicine... perhaps making Doctor's Bags and stims rarer (and making stims weigh something), forcing the player to rely on alternative methods of healing (or crafting their own medicine). Chems should be cheap and ubiquitous- if raiders can get hooked up on them, you can too. I do think that addiction rates could be higher, so that the player has tougher decisions- use rare medicine, heal using large quantities of food (which are slow and weight inefficient) or risk a significant chance of addiction by using chems to boost combat skills. As it is, I can go through Very Hard very easily thanks to huge quantities of stims, and find chems completely unnecessary.

Scrap stuff (conductors, sensors modules, SE, SM, etc.) should receive a boost to value as well- scrap is probably the next most common merchandise after water, food and medicine, but they're also quite common, so they aren't as critical.

I Personally think ammo is fine as it is, though it could be made more valuable. It weighs a little bit, but that adds up real fast if you're carrying any significant quantity, so it isn't as practical to just take all the ammo you find and sell it later for huge profits. A final modification would be making caps weigh a little bit, while keeping other currency weightless.

I could modify the values in the GECK, but it won't be balanced without serious playtesting.

 

This is pretty much what I had in mind, scrap stuff defiantly should receive a value boost; and I believe making caps have weight would be a great addition, I get frustrated enough carrying a pocket of change, 3,000 bottle caps? Ha!

 

As far as ammo, the .50 Caliber rounds should be VERY expensive, it's already $10 to fire a .50 Caliber rifle in todays world, finding that ammunition in a post apocalyptic world would be an extreme treat.

 

If you'd be willing to make an economy overhaul, I have over 350 hours in NV, and my mod project is currently on hold, I can help in playtesting.

[TrooperScooperMKII]

OK, I've got the time, though I'm working on two other rather large projects ,in addition to several others on the backburner. Still, this shouldn't take long....

I'll be back in ~1 hour with an update.

EDIT:

Is there a universal, simple way of changing how often loot appears? I'm assuming that it would involve the containers, but I want to verify that.

Edited January 12, 2011 by TrooperScooperMKII

[Ghost23]

OK, I've got the time, though I'm working on two other rather large projects ,in addition to several others on the backburner. Still, this shouldn't take long....

I'll be back in ~1 hour with an update.

EDIT:

Is there a universal, simple way of changing how often loot appears? I'm assuming that it would involve the containers, but I want to verify that.

 

 

Truth be told I wouldn't know, I don't do anything but landscape editing and the likes.. I haven't touched anything other than that because I haven't had the time, hopefully a lurker reading this could answer?

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Now I'm confused. THere is a value in the GECK for consumables called "Potion Value" which I assumed meant the cap value for the item, as it matched the base value in game. Sunset Sarsaparrila, and other non-med/food items, however, don't have that value. In addition to that, the items category does not have consumables- they are only listed under Effects....

[Ghost23]

:3 Did you figure out anything? I wish I could help more on this subject.

[Greymane]

Just to toss a couple of thoughts in.

 

Certain junk-items in the game as it stands are overvalued and others undervalued. For example, pre-War Money and cigarettes of all forms (individuals, packs, and cartons). As it stands, pre-War Money sells for more than a pack of cigarettes. As it has no weight, it becomes even more valuable compared to packs or cartons.

 

This makes very little sense, as the only uses pre-War Money would have in the Wasteland would be as toilet paper or pulp. In either case, we see so much paper merely left scattered on the ground that it's clearly not in so short a supply that people should be desperately shelling out money for a stack of aged bills.

 

Cigarettes, by contrast, should be far more highly valued. They're coveted objects and odds are good that no one is making more of them just yet, meaning that they're in very limited and constantly shrinking supply. Cigarettes could almost for a sub-economy of their own, with wealthy elite stockpiling cases of them and goods and services being traded for a single smoke among poor citizens.

 

Of course, the real problem to me seems to be equipment. Guns in particular, but also armor. They're too easily available and sell for too much. All you need to do to make a fortune in New Vegas is to walk through Fiend territory killing everyone in sight and looting the bodies. On even a poor trip, you'll still come out the other side with hundreds of caps worth of equipment to sell and more often it's in the thousands range. With the NCR apparently making it's own firearms and a local mass-producer like the Gun Runners right there in New Vegas, there is no reason for firearms to be worth as much as they are. It should only be the rare, hard to find relics of the pre-War world that fetch a great price and such items should be SO rare that almost no one who owns one is willing to part company with theirs. Most forms of armor, too, have no excuse for their cost. Most are just made of leather, which is something even small Wasteland communities are capable of producing for themselves. The only value on it should be it's craftsmanship which, once more, outstanding examples should be rare, The glut of cheap leather goods being tooled out in every town and village in the Wasteland should keep the market prices low.

[TrooperScooperMKII]

I'll keep this in mind. I too felt that cigarettes and such should be far more valuable for the reasons you detailed. As for the weapons, I'm incorporating a micromod that will make energy weapons far rarer and more valuable, as it seems to fit perfectly with the theme of the modifications. Also, fiend armor should be less valuable- they're the bandits of Fallout using scraps of pieced-together armor, so even smaller settlements are obviously going to be hunting them...

EDIT: Pre war money should be easier to carry around and harder to counterfeit than bottle caps, so people might still use it as secondary currency, i.e. for large amounts of money.

Edited January 15, 2011 by TrooperScooperMKII

[TrooperScooperMKII]

Just tested the mod twice- and the second time I started from scratch. The launcher crashed both times. I must be doing something wrong...

EDIT: I just started a thrid attempt- as I suspected, it was the changes to the vendor lists causing the crash.

Edited January 15, 2011 by TrooperScooperMKII