[Suggestion] Currency

Aaaand everything will crumble and leave a cloud of dust when a certain someone will have done a casino-like addicting gamble game with CC ...

 

These credits are made from iron though, and we agreed that that is not going to work. So unless there will be some way to convert something else into credits, I don't think we will use them.

 

Sk basically said that a system with amber bearing stone and digital money would be best, if i understood it right.
Inflation and deflation, if necessary, could be regulated by the amber : credit ratio.

 

But it would be quicker with a currency.

 

I suggest using UUM and IC2 credits to create the currency.

Scrap and Scrapbox can be traded at a specific location for a set amount of credits.
My basic ratios are based on default IC2 amplifier rates for scrap when making UUM
16 Scrap = 1 credit
9 Scrapbox = 16 credit
7 credit = 1 UUM Cell
7 silver credit = 8 UUM Cell

Exchange rates should change depending on current Alice config. And should definitely be discussed before being implemented.

This system allows currency to be generated easily by all players that have built a Recycler. It also allows earlier access to UUM. With the new changes to IC2 this doesn’t seem like a terrible idea…

1. The chosen currency should not deflate over time.
The credit supply will also be limited similar to Bitcoin. What I mean by this is that initially there will only be so many credits available until a specific event occurs. The event triggers an increase in the credit supply thus meeting the first criteria.

2. The chosen currency should not be subject to high inflation.
The second criteria is already taken care of by the limited supply of money. The money supply is limited until the event is triggered.

3. A small level of inflation should be present in the currency.
Now, that the event has be triggered more credits become available to players. Although this time the supply is bigger than the initial amount. Say the first was 1000 credits, and after the event an additional 2000 credits are available. This meets number three.

4. The currency should be highly divisible.
IC2 credits can be craft into larger or smaller denominations, this meets criteria number four.

5. People stop playing, which will reduce the money supply.
I hadn’t really considered people leaving as a way to reliably reduce the money supply. I had already built that in with the direct trade to UUM Cells. Since UUM is, well, Universally Usable it seems like a good money sink for players to spend credits on. Which reduces the money in circulation.

6. We can enforce certain conditions with code.
In this case, only the exchange rates need to be adjusted, which is super easy.

Now for the explanation of the “event.”

Bitcoins rewards players that solve a puzzle and pays out newly minted bitcoins. In a similar fashion I suggest a lottery/slot machine of sorts. Players input an item and have a chance of receiving a tidy sum of credits. If the player is successful they receive their credits and at the same time trigger a new supply of credits to the rest of the server. The chance of this happening will be extremely low and continue to get lower on each successive “event.” But the prize and the new credit pool will be bigger than the last. This gives incentive for players to spend resources to win the prize thus increasing the credit supply for everyone else.

To carry on with the UUM theme, I think the items that are spent in the lottery/slot machine should be non-renewable energy items like coal, Charged re-batteries, Oil cells/buckets, fuel, Charged Lapotron Crystals, plasma cells, etc. There could also be a chance that higher tier items give a slightly better chance at winning.

Last thing. This was actually part of my original idea but I’m not sure how popular it will be.
Disable the Matter/Mass Fabricator so that the only source of UUM on the server is through the currency system. After I proposed this to several people, I came up with the limited credit supply idea and I figured that it might not matter if players generate their own UUM since the credit supply would be limited anyway.

I look forward to all criticism!

TLR: UUM and IC2 Credits with an exchange rate. Disable the Matter/Mass Fabricator. If no one likes this, I like the Amber Bearing Stone idea.

 

When I first talked to you on TS about my idea, I had this requirement. But with a limited credit supply, UUM generated by players would not equal unlimited credits in exchange. The credit supply would be emptied and until a new event was triggered no more credits could be created.

I was also thinking that the when players exchanged credits for UUM, they would go back to the main credit supply for re-issuing. This would improve the longevity of the credit pool if/when credits run out and the event is not triggered. Credits will still be recirculated when people exchange them for UUM.

 

Aha! That makes it a much simpler. Instead of inputting massive amounts of resources for a small chance at triggering the event. Add a special item(CustomerNPC's coin/token) to scrapboxes that must be turned in for the event to be triggered. Maybe 10 of these item have to be turned in the first time, then 25, 55, 110... Each one gives a reward and helps increase the credit supply. No need to build an elaborate slot machine. Although I am unsure of the difficulty in adding items with custom drop rates to the scrapbox code.

Scrap doesn't need to be the exchange item. I suggested it because it fits the theme of creating UUM. But it could be any item, even ABS.

The credit supply is fairly simple to build using AE and level emitters. Inputting the required number of tokens trigger the next chest to be connected to the system.

 

Not credits. Tokens to trade for a reward. But the chance of actually getting a token will be incredibly rare.

What if you needed several tokens to get a reward. Then when enough tokens are turned in and the event happens. The number of tokens required for a reward goes up. So we get diminishing returns, similar to bitcoin mining.

Also, the tokens are not the primary way of getting credits. Players would still be able to exchange scrap or ABS for credits until the supply runs out. Tokens are just a way to increase the money supply.


Example:
Begin with 1000 credits
Bob exchanges 1600 scrap/ABS for 100 credits
900 credits are left in the pool.
9 more players each exchange 1600 scrap/ABS for 100 credits each.
George wants credits but will be unable to exchange for them as the supply has run out.
George saw the exchange at spawn that offered a reward of 256 credits for 10 tokens gained through scrapboxing.
It takes George a while to generate the 10 tokens but eventually he succeeds. He turns in the 10 tokens for the 250 credit reward. Yay for George! Mary and Susan also turned in 10 tokens each and got a reward of 250 credits each.
30 tokens have been turned in. This triggers the event. At the credit exchange kiosk the AE display that showed the current pool of available credits that was at zero now shows 2000 credits available for exchange.
The turn in requirements for tokens also changes. Now, 25 tokens are required to get the 250 credit reward. And 100 tokens are required to trigger the next event that increases the money supply.

All these numbers are examples and are not meant to be representative of a complete idea.

 

scrap is a bad idea because it will be automated, means just more lag for the server. it'd be better to just use the amber thingy.

 

I don't disagree with you, madness. But I'd like to point out that players will still build massive scrap automation to make UUM.

 

I'm just going to throw this idea in and see what the criticism is but what about a truly player-driven economy/currency where the admins don't need to intervene (implementing a plugin or regulating it). That's just taking an easier, less fun way out IMO. We, the players, are perfectly capable of making our own currency system.

 

It's might be impossible to implement a currency that isn't backed or trusted.

Any material that can be automated is worthless as a currency because it's value will be quickly deflated. This is why non-craftable and silk touch items make good items to be used as currency, they cannot be "counterfeited."

So what would we use for the currency that has value to everyone? ABS is only valuable to Thaumcraft players. I don't play Thaumcraft so ABS has no value for me, except maybe to trade with other players that need it for Thaumcraft stuff, but it is worthless in trade to players that also do not need it. The reason it works for other ideas is that it can be exchanged for guaranteed wealth. ABS is backed by a system that guarantees that everyone can trade equally. To make the guarantee work, the system that backs the currency needs to have the trust of everyone using it. Would you trust other players to hold your wealth? Or would you trust the moderators and admins?

Bitcoin seems to be a good system to take ideas from because it backs itself(through cryptography/math). It doesn't rely on individuals or organizations to guarantee it. In our case, the best equivalent of a bitcoin is non-craftable items. They cannot be counterfeited. If the system is open sourced then all the moderators need to do is supply a set number of non-craftable items. The players can then build and protect the system themselves or the mods can bedrock and WorldGuard it.

Or we find someone to trust. Or stick with bartering.

 

I was hoping you'd ask this! One eproblem would be trust but put simply, we just need to build it! We can't let that get in the way of the big plans. If we built a currency system without any help from the admins, trust (admin backing) would surely follow along with the trust of everyone using it. We are the framer's for Alice's economy, just like there were framers of the American economy. I'm sure the framers face the problem of trust and we'll conquer it aswell. If I don't know what you're talking about when you say counterfeit thou, advancements in the development of OpenPeripheral makes counterfeiting an item non-existant . If you're talking about the electronic side, we can make our own version of Bitcoins (how about an actual electronic one instead of a physical item?) If enough work is done on the system, there won't be any counterfeit. This is especially easy to do in CC with the rednet system being absolute with identifying computers and with chunk protection, the attacker wouldn't have physical access. We can also make the currency system (just like Bitcoin) open-sourced. Heck, maybe even down the road, we'll even see some altcoins lol

Yeah, I remember. We all gave it thought then just sorta quit. I realize that it'd be a massive undertaking but are you really turning down a challenge? I mean we never really had one in all our time here. It's just been a endless cycle of reset --> get rich --> sing rich as f**k by lil wayne. There was no challenge or big project anywhere since we know what to do every reset. Doing and maintaining a project like a currency system can give us that feeling you get whenever you're just like "Challenge Accepted" and do it and heck, maybe even teach us some things along the way . What do you learn when someone spoon feeds you? How to sit on your a*s!

Here's an idea for a currency exchange. Ideally, anyone would be able to profit off this by opening an exchange and having people trade in x item for y currency. The exchanger or broker would set their own price on what to charge people for currency and a 'base fee' (say the base fee, set by the framers was 1 amber block for 1 currency) would be sent to the 'network' before the money is transferred to the vendor. This way the vendors can compete with eachother like one vendor's price is baseFee*0.05 and the other is baseFee*0.1, etc. Maybe the brokers can think of and implement benefits to using each one so it's not so clearcut on which broker to go to just like real life!

Here is a proof-of-concept (meaning subject to big changes) video for how the backend of a currency exchange would work:
(Processing at the time of writing)


If someone knows the best setup for fraps, how to compress a fraps video, and get it ready for youtube, feel free to share!