the currency system needs a revamp... here's how

[jakdaryper]

somebody needs to revamp the currency system. how does one carry around 300000 gold pieces? how is a loaf of bread worth 10 gold coins? i could buy a decent car for ten gold coins in real life. somebody please rip off the dragon age currency system. 100 copper coins make a silver coin. 100 silver coins make a gold coin. suddenly, 346712 gold becomes 34 gold coins, 67 silver coins, and 12 copper coins. that wouldn't break anybody's back if they had to carry it. or balance it a bit better. if 50 coppers make a silver, and 20 silvers make a gold piece, then 346712 gold under the vanilla system, or coppers under the new system becomes 138 gold, 13 silvers, and 12 coppers, rendered as 138.13.12... you could rip off a money bag, model it after a silver coin, and make it worth 100 coppers. model another after a gold coin, and make it worth 10000 coppers. then create a new script, where all sums under 1.00 are labeled coppers, all sums under 1.00.00 are named silvers, eg. 12.34 silvers, and all sums over 99.99 are named septims, eg. 123.23.56 septims, which is a freaking huge amount of money. gold bars and gold ore would have to be rethought, as they might break the game as a cheat. i'm sure you can figure something out. make gold bars and gold mines extremely rare. make gemstones more valuable and more rare. a single flawless emerald would set you up for a very long time in real life, but in Skyrim, it buys you half a new sword. make finding rare gems awesome again.

[EnaiSiaion]

This is not Earth economy though. Maybe gold really is that common and lightweight. :whistling:

[VileTouch]

here's the funny part. you can mine gold, smelt it into gold ingots, but you can't make gold coins.. how about just retexturing/renaming those gold coins into much lighter umm... gold dollars? septim bills?

[Jakisthe]

Ah, made up economies...so much to be done with them! If I was going to do it, I'd take it right from my super-stealable-ideas topic...let's see...

 

 

 

Economics: A particular area of interest to me, since I feel it makes the world incredibly believable...to say nothing of the fact that I do economics/finance work....BUT I'll try to keep it from getting stupid. So no MBSs . Mostly, I looked to the bank system of Daggerfall.

 

Each major city has it's own bank, and gold has weight. That's right. Makes sense, since gold is in fact incredibly heavy, but I was planning along the lines of having 500g=1 lb. So not too ridiculous...but you won't be carrying around 20k all the time .

Right. Back to the banks. Each cities bank exists as a separate entity, so any gold you store there isn't kept in the bank of another city. Keeping money in a bank allows you to

1) store it and

2) get interest. I'll keep interest consistent in favor of not getting that aforementioned stupidity, but there would be benchmarks. So at, like, 5k in the bank, you get 1% more a week, 10k 2%, etc. Waiting would have no effect on the time, which means it would have to be tied to real time.

 

You can invest in stores to actually have it do things for you. For every 2k(varies per store) you invest in Bits n Pieces, you get 5% better prices and each week an additional 0.1% to bank interest.

 

You can transfer funds between banks by having them write a credit note for you, which signifies a player defined amount of money to be put in another bank. Is weightless, but can only be used at banks.

 

You can get loans from banks. These loans need to be paid back within a certain amount of time, or else the bank sends bounty hunters after you. The size and level of these hunter parties depends on the loan withstanding.

 

What to do with all that money?A few things...

-Houses are 3x more expensive

-Can buy individual furnishings like mannequins/racks/display cases

-Can hire more than 1 follower, and they each have a price. The formula for this is (average base price of followers)^[1+(0.1*number followers)-0.1]. So you can have an army! But it'll cost you...so if the average cost of your followers is 500g, but you have 6 of them...the cost of the next one will be 11180+their price. This extra cost isn't counted into the average equation. Spouses/housekarls are free, but they don't factor into the average as a 0; they're independent entities.

-Bribes are MUCH more universal, and cost 2x as much. But they can do a lot of things, like advancing to the next stage of a quest (for a ton of money and only if it make sense), getting better prices for anything, having someone turn a blind eye, buying keys/drugs off people...

-Can buy [incredibly expensive] ships, but only own one at a time. For this service (which only exists on coastal cities, obviously), you can load up all your useless items to be sold elsewhere for their full value...but it takes time to make the trip. Some places might even trade for other goods, but this system would be basic (think the atronach forge where one thing gets another, but this time it shows you what gets what). Costlier ships are faster and have more carrying capacity.

-Ships susceptible to wreckage? Obviously you wouldn't see it happen, but you'd get the message "Your ship has sunk!" and a map icon showing where. You'd be able to dive down to salvage gold/goods from a standard sunken ship model.

 

-Can buy ship insurance.

 

[bben46]

if you are going to go that far with an economy :thumbsup: Then there should also be a daily cost of living tacked on. X number of Gold/day plus or minus some factor subtracted from your cash on hand for daily living expenses. Then as you become wealthier and acquire followers and property, that amount should increase - an amount for upkeep on each horse. A value for upkeep on each house (variable based on quality of each house) a daily amount for upkeep of followers. Possibly a percentage of the masters daily upkeep.

 

Then taxes (possibly included as part of daily living expenses) - each city will have taxes - some more onerous than others - a head tax - levied every so often (monthly? Quarterly? Yearly?) on a citizen (homeowner) and for each of his followers/servants. A gate tax? Common in certain regions on non citizens entering a city - normally very low. Only levied once per day on PCs who are not yet a thane or homeowner in hat city.

 

Bribes - What we consider bribery was a way of doing business without being constantly being hassled by the authorities.

 

Tips - pay the stable boy a coin for taking care of your horse, the maid at the inn for services, A stranger for information, A city guard or bystander for helping out in a altercation.

 

Alms, pay the priest for a blessing, a beggar (you do get a temp stats boost for this already)

 

Others that may be included under daily expenses - bathhouse, barber, bootblack, torch bearer, washerwoman, outhouse fee (sombody has to take care of the public outhouse in a city, and they would expect some compensation from the users)

 

Of course, if you don't spend the entire day in a city the fees would not be as much. While in a smaller town many of the costs would not even be there. (How many bootblacks do you suppose there are in Rorikstead?)

 

It just depends on how complicated you want to make it. All of this could be included in the daily living, or parts could be broken out and paid separately. :biggrin:

[BeastlyBeast]

It'd take forever. Think about this for a second: Every quest that gives you money in the end will need to be revamped to accomodate the new currency... Do you know how many quests give you money??? Probably most of them. I think Bethesda said somewhere around 300 quests in Skyrim. So, let's say 270 give you money. You would need to edit the scripting of 270 quests, to give you g/s/c instead of gold coins... Yeah, no. :P

[tetradite]

It'd take forever. Think about this for a second: Every quest that gives you money in the end will need to be revamped to accomodate the new currency... Do you know how many quests give you money??? Probably most of them. I think Bethesda said somewhere around 300 quests in Skyrim. So, let's say 270 give you money. You would need to edit the scripting of 270 quests, to give you g/s/c instead of gold coins... Yeah, no. :P

 

To someone with experience in high volume data input, even with little modding experience, if they were given the right info (what phrase in scripts trggers the gifting of gold etc, specific instructions as to what to replace it with based on a consistent exchange i.e no rebalancing of the quest rewards) it wouldn't take that long. It would be boring, but not as time consuming as you might expect.

[fg109]

To someone with experience in high volume data input, even with little modding experience, if they were given the right info (what phrase in scripts trggers the gifting of gold etc, specific instructions as to what to replace it with based on a consistent exchange i.e no rebalancing of the quest rewards) it wouldn't take that long. It would be boring, but not as time consuming as you might expect.

 

You could do that... but there are lot a of instances where gold is given, and doing it that way won't account for quests from mods. I'd just rename gold to "copper", and put a script on the player to keep track of how much "copper" he/she has. For every 100 "copper" the player has, I'd automatically replace it with one "silver", and for every 100 "silver", replace it with one "gold".

[tetradite]

To someone with experience in high volume data input, even with little modding experience, if they were given the right info (what phrase in scripts trggers the gifting of gold etc, specific instructions as to what to replace it with based on a consistent exchange i.e no rebalancing of the quest rewards) it wouldn't take that long. It would be boring, but not as time consuming as you might expect.

 

You could do that... but there are lot a of instances where gold is given, and doing it that way won't account for quests from mods. I'd just rename gold to "copper", and put a script on the player to keep track of how much "copper" he/she has. For every 100 "copper" the player has, I'd automatically replace it with one "silver", and for every 100 "silver", replace it with one "gold".

 

I suspected this, but I don't know enough about scripting to have said whether it was doable or not. Bashing keys fast and accurately (this'll be full of typos now I've said that!), now that I know pretty well ;)

 

Doing it globally as you suggest even opens the way for alternate systems to be implemented very easily - e.g pirate economy mod where gold is split into pieces of eight etc...

[jedoud]

The economy of Skyrim has bothered me from day one. The first bit of gold I had seemed like a lot of gold for a prisoner to have on their person. It would seem you would have none, or at the most one or two pieces you have tucked away somewhere not so pleasant. Furthermore, everything is based on gold, and each hold uses the same gold. What civil war? Apparently it is purely a third grade turf war, my sandbox thing, although they hint at more. Each hold is dependent on the Empire for their economy, their gold. This is ridiculous on the surface. Keeping things lore friendly, I have to reject the bank idea, that wouldn't have been possible, as banks weren't really a concept then, but goldsmiths were. Goldsmiths would have held your gold, provided you with a letter of credit, all the things you have mentioned a bank might do, but they would be hold specific, except those that were loyal to the Empire. Each hold would have to have their own economy, their own coins, made from metals they could obtain. In certain holds it might be that there are no gold coins, or the few that do exist would be so prized that only the Jarl would have them, or a rare collector. The base metal is copper, however it would have be based on the gold standard, as gold is the standard. Tied to the Empire gold, it would be some value of that standard, depending on proximity to Solitude, and the base of the Empire.

 

I really think a lot about this, and try to think through how economics would work in this world. More things would be traded, not sold. You would not find many merchants in out laying areas that had gold, or very little at any rate. They would trade goods. You are a boon to a town, and a threat to a city to some degree, as you come in with a boat load of trade goods, and need food and shelter for the night. You are a target for thieves, and may want to pay a little extra to your housekarl for added protection. If you are traveling with your housekarl, why are you asking the inn keeper for food and a bed, shouldn't the housekarl attend to such details.

 

Well anyway, I keep watching for more, something that I can help with. I like some of the mods I see, UFO, EOS, TOS, and others, but some of them break lore quite baddly, but alas so didn't Bethesda, so why bother with it at all.