I would first like to start off by saying that Alice has the potential to have a very free market, entrepreneur style atmosphere. But Alice lacks one key element. A physical currency. If Alice had a physical currency, trading would become much easier and things like companies would be possible. I will go over the details of how the currency could work in this thread. The “cash” Industrial Craft already has a potential currency item in it. The Industrial Credit. In order for the currency to work, the Industrial Credit would have to be uncraftable to regular players. Only staff (or “government” if you will) would be able to mint these coins. There would also have to be a set limit on how many could be made between certain amounts of time. Payment In order for the minted coins to be put into circulation, there would have to be a system of jobs that normal players could do for the “government.” This jobs system would have to be decided by the staff. Checks Checks could be written via books because it says who wrote and signed the book. Checks could look something like this (note: "Your name here" means "recipients name here" Banks The banking part would be the most complicated part of the currency system. People can set up accounts deposit or withdraw money from the bank. This would require either a plugin, or a real player actually standing there running the bank. EDIT: The bank can maybe be run by a player as a job for the government to be paid. ALSO, books could be used as receipts to prevent bank tellers from ripping you off. (fees can/will be changed/removed) If you have any idea on what I should change or improve upon, post your ideas. And someone tell Sk89q to check out this thread
"Govt." could have NPC's buy and sell currency, instead of the random stuff they currently buy and sell. Then players could set up shops when they make a little dough.
I like your idea. sk has already disabled crafting of the credit with this kind of thing in mind. I definitely like your ideas.
Especially since we have things like printable paper/books with ComputerCraft (also database possibilities for backend things), the checks and receipts concepts is a good idea.
This pretty much all looks like a good idea. I think that a fee for bank usage (especially since banks don't charge IRL) and there is really no 'cost' per se of maintaining these banks (besides extra SK-work). Perhaps having the bank only accessible at spawn is a better "cost" than an actual fee.
Right now the issue is... how to get this currency? Jobs is one way, but what exactly are the kind of jobs we would have? That is the hardest question, really.
Have you never heard of inflation? The government doesn't hand out free money because doing so would devalue that money. Money is a representation of value, so that money has to be valuable to be worthwhile. I could see the Dragon Point Market vendors buying and selling for coin instead of for honeyed bread. A general store of sorts could allow players to buy coin for misc items. Hopefully, players could set up their own shops, trusting that their coin could be spent at NPC shops. The administration would need to both provide ways to obtain currency, which should be as overvalued and pricey as possible, and a way for players to spend it, with NPC shops and the like. This would give the currency the value it needs.
I like the idea also. SK brings up a valid point. After about 2 days on alice everyone will be rich with ores. I suggest that we tie such a currency into the quests that we can make and keep updated.
Sounds like a good idea to me. Like Cranimesao said, quests could be a good way to obtain coins by having to help out the npcs but quests should be updated regularly because if everyone has finished his/her quests, there would be no way to obtain coins after all is spent in shops.
Jobs could be things like maybe helping to set up the spawn train station, or possible extending spawn, including building paths and buildings in spawn. Hell even Voxel Box has jobs maintaining it's transportation subway.
