Thank you for giving me an insight into what kind of person you are. Yeah, that's what I was thinking about...
Update: Ovals work pretty good, until you turn. Then the differentials go to work, and you'll wish the car was stocked with a couple barf bags.
Have we considered using a Quest Based currency? Essentially we'd set it up to where there is a large amount of repeatable (once daily) quests that reward a currency of sorts (I'm in favor of using the coins from the NPC mod) in exchange for the completion of odd jobs. The harder the job, the more the reward. For example there could be a large number of NPC's that have straightforward item quests for you to complete. Bring me 5 pieces of Wool. -> 2 Wooden Coins Reward Bring me a Slime Head. -> 4 Iron Coins Reward Bring me a Diamond Sword. -> 3 Gold Coins Reward Bring me a (Insert Hard to-find Item) -> 1 Diamond Coin Reward These quests are repeatable once daily and the reward represents the time invested to gather the item (even if they just have all of the items already stockpiled at their base and are just handing them in every day) and the time spent logging on for the day to turn them in. There would also be other quests in the daily-repeatable area that are more like regular quests. Ex. "Take this basket of cookies to my grandmother." -> 2 Iron Coins Reward We could also do more challenging quest chains that are only repeatable once a week, that give a substantial reward. Then of course you also get this currency in larger amounts from the regular quests throughout the world that can only be done once. In my eyes at least, this would help to control the rate of inflation slightly. You can't just leave a quarry running and go away for a week, and come back to find 1 million of the item that is considered currency waiting for you in a chest. You have to actually log in and do the quests. The amount of currency scales with the amount of ACTIVE people that are online and actually turning in the daily quests. It also adds the benefit that if you want to earn the most currency possible per day, you need to spread yourself across more than just one specific mod. Perhaps there are some daily quests that require Thaumcraft items that are pretty far down the tree, or 6 Diamond combs from your bees. On the converse, it also allows people to earn currency for being skilled or far down the line in what they like to do, and lets them do what they want to do, so you aren't forced to mine all day for emeralds, when you can just earn your income from bees or thaumcraft or furniture making instead. We can make a Greenwell Bank that has NPC's that convert the coins for storage or spending purposes. Ex. 4 Wooden Coins = 1 Iron Coin 4 Iron Coins = 1 Golden Coin 4 Golden Coins = 1 Diamond Coin Perhaps one of our Computer Craft experts could even design a system that will store and allow you to accrue interest to make it seem more like a real bank and less of an exchange kiosk. If we do it this way I could see people actually creating shops in the Baazar selling some of the items that are used to complete the daily quests too. With the exception of the items that are used for the quests themselves, I don't think anything would have a set value to begin with, and the supply and demand of the various items people want to sell would determine how people price them in their shop. We could create a little "Stock Market" that has screens everywhere that lists the average current prices of common items, similar to how the IRC channels devoted to RuneScape did it for many years. Currently we have a barter system, and there's really nothing wrong with that.
Well, the thing is that a lot of people don't want to do quests. If they don't do quests, then they won't get a piece of the currency. However, if they don't own much of the currency, then they will still trade, but they will barter or make up their own currency. If a lot of people do this, then the "official currency" would be severely undermined. I have to say that possibly the best basis for a currency is energy, because nearly everyone -- regardless of how you play the game -- has to make and consume it. Unfortunately, people at the end of the game make a lot more of energy than people at the beginning, though at that point, they probably can make anything that they want anyway.
