Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

Yes, include as Req.

1 (10%)

Yes, include as Bloat.

2 (20%)

Yes, but other things are more important; they should be done first.

0 (0%)

No.

2 (20%)

Don't care.

2 (20%)

Something simmilar should be done, but not this.

3 (30%)

Total Members Voted: 10

[Arkenstone]

[EXCLAIMER]
This thread is for ideas on fixing the economy in terms of playability ONLY.  That means NOo talking about supply and demand, want vs. need, opportunity costs, or other complex economic reactions.  The point of this thread is just to deal with the problem of coins being strewed everywhere unless forbidden in a vault.
[/EXCLAIMER]

The idea I have I've posted before, but everyone ignored it in favor of talking about the fine detail of stuff 10 years down the line (hence the exclaimer above).
The idea's that all transactions happen instantaneously.

The coins just teleport from one container to another, no matter the distance!
No more hauling issues, no more worrying about stacks of 1, all that's really broken about the economy's fixed (although new issues are sure to follow).
Everything else can be built after that: all the bells & whistles of supply & demand, noble demands for a bigger hoard, dwarves that like to count their money (and stack those that go together), etc.
The Trade Depot can even be linked to the inter-hoard system, so that coins become useful for trading (whatever you bought still has to be hauled, though).
However, any coins outside the system, whether newly-minted or stolen, have to manually be hauled back to where they belong.

I want to know what you think about this, and if there's any ideas you'd like to add.

[teloft]

I like this idea,  I also think that the stockpiles that are begin teleported to and from sould be in small coin bags that are carried by the dwarfes at all times. (thay could use a sock, a glove, a vater skin.. anything to keep the coins on there body, so no fetching owned coins ever again)

1. teleport from one stockpile to the other

2. carry the coin stockpile on the dwarf that owns them using almost any clothing item. (I also like the stings of coin like thay used in China)

[Pilsu]

I don't much care for this. Improved hauling has to be done sooner or later anyway. Economy should just be disabled by default until it's halfway usable.

[shadowclasper]

Why not have coins capable of being carried in a "Coin Purse"? Like dwarves can equip back backs and water skins to carry around THAT stuff, what if they had a coin purse that carried all their coins with them. They can also store them in their coffers and such back in their room, but mostly they just carry them around on their persons.

[Silverionmox]

Whatever the setting, at some point you're going to want people to barter stuff without the involvement of coins. The economy must be based on how persons perceive their needs and wants, and what they want to do to sate them.

[NW_Kohaku]

Screw coins, coins are unimportant bloat, anyway.  They only exist because people think they're "Dwarfy" somehow, even though there is no actual use for them yet, and they break the game.  Just remove them entirely, and work on debit accounts until the economy can actually be coded in.

[Grendus]

Coins are a nice way to record your forts history. They really should be in the game, but they're so buggy due to stacking issues that nobody can use them.

Fixing stacking would solve the entire problem imo.

[NW_Kohaku]

Coins are a nice way to record your forts history. They really should be in the game, but they're so buggy due to stacking issues that nobody can use them.

Fixing stacking would solve the entire problem imo.

No stacking would not solve the problem - the problem is that they are individually tracked objects in the first place, which add jobs to pick up coins to a dwarf's queue of things to do instead of more important things, like eating or completing projects.  Stacking simply reduces the amount of jobs for uselessly hording coins, but there is no reason for that uselessly hording of coins in the first place.

"Recording the history of the Fortress" is a common goal of players, but this would be much better accomplished with a Library, which is also a common request.

[Atanamis]

NW_Kohaku, maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but isn't the coin problem EXCLUSIVELY a stacking and hauling flaw? If dwarves could carry a stack of coins on them at all times that "restacked" automatically whenever they received coins (say as part of their yearly pay), they would only ever collect coins once a year. They would then place the coins in their room, and only retrieve them when there was something they wanted to buy. It adds a trip back to their room before buying something, but they would then get only the coins needed and then come back to their room with the purchased item. The only reason for the current problems is that a dwarf can't have a stack of coins in their pocket while they haul materials back to their workshop or eat a meal. In most cases, they could just buy things on credit and get the coins next time they slept in their room. With hauling working properly, wouldn't the coin problem disappear?

[NW_Kohaku]

NW_Kohaku, maybe I'm misunderstanding something, but isn't the coin problem EXCLUSIVELY a stacking and hauling flaw? If dwarves could carry a stack of coins on them at all times that "restacked" automatically whenever they received coins (say as part of their yearly pay), they would only ever collect coins once a year. They would then place the coins in their room, and only retrieve them when there was something they wanted to buy. It adds a trip back to their room before buying something, but they would then get only the coins needed and then come back to their room with the purchased item. The only reason for the current problems is that a dwarf can't have a stack of coins in their pocket while they haul materials back to their workshop or eat a meal. In most cases, they could just buy things on credit and get the coins next time they slept in their room. With hauling working properly, wouldn't the coin problem disappear?

No, coins shouldn't exist at all, at least, not without a serious overhaul of the economy.  They don't need to be hauled or stacked or anything, they don't add anything to the game as it stands.  It just adds one more thing that has to be pushed around by haulers who are already hauling way too many things in a game where it can take literal days to move from one side of a fort to another.  This is why we have dwarves who eat less than a dozen times a year.  Taking a week off of work to go get your paycheck and take it home in the name of "realism" or just so that we have one more bundle of items that will be scattered all over the floor of our forts's rooms like the toys and threadbare clothes that they drop now is unnecessary.

Debit cards and the accounts dwarves collect for performing are sufficient for the sort of economy we have.  In fact, even that is problematic with the way that dwarves are evicted from their homes based on paying rent. 

[Atanamis]

No, coins shouldn't exist at all, at least, not without a serious overhaul of the economy.  They don't need to be hauled or stacked or anything, they don't add anything to the game as it stands. It just adds one more thing that has to be pushed around by haulers who are already hauling way too many things in a game where it can take literal days to move from one side of a fort to another.

But isn't that still all just about hauling defects? I guess by that criteria, eating is also adding nothing to the game as it now stands. Think about how much more efficiently your fort would run if dwarves never ate. Why do you think it would take a week to pick up one item (stack of coins) and take it to one location (bedroom)? Why would that end up as bundles of items scattered on the floor? Not one of these is an economic problem, they are all exclusively hauling problems.

Other than the hauling problems, I guess I don't see how trading coins significantly differs from trading debt. This seems to be something you feel very strongly about, but I don't understand why. Nobody in this thread is arguing "realism", so that's just a straw man. Why do you feel that efficiently hauled coins would be such a bad thing to have in the game? It isn't even currently a requirement. Its only there for people who want to use it. Right now its badly broken, but wouldn't the hauling fixes described unbreak it?

[NW_Kohaku]

No, coins shouldn't exist at all, at least, not without a serious overhaul of the economy.  They don't need to be hauled or stacked or anything, they don't add anything to the game as it stands. It just adds one more thing that has to be pushed around by haulers who are already hauling way too many things in a game where it can take literal days to move from one side of a fort to another.

But isn't that still all just about hauling defects? I guess by that criteria, eating is also adding nothing to the game as it now stands. Think about how much more efficiently your fort would run if dwarves never ate. Why do you think it would take a week to pick up one item (stack of coins) and take it to one location (bedroom)? Why would that end up as bundles of items scattered on the floor? Not one of these is an economic problem, they are all exclusively hauling problems.

Other than the hauling problems, I guess I don't see how trading coins significantly differs from trading debt. This seems to be something you feel very strongly about, but I don't understand why. Nobody in this thread is arguing "realism", so that's just a straw man. Why do you feel that efficiently hauled coins would be such a bad thing to have in the game? It isn't even currently a requirement. Its only there for people who want to use it. Right now its badly broken, but wouldn't the hauling fixes described unbreak it?

Food adds something to the game - food and drink are currently the only truly mandatory upkeep your dwarves require (unless you count defense from natural predators and hostile civs, although that "upkeep" can be solved permanently through walling yourself completely underground), and the act of actually going to the food stockpile and then to wherever they will dine is a matter of hauling.

Coins, however, are simply superfluous items to perform a function already performed by the debit account dwarves get in the current implimentation of the economy (and this thread is about a stopgap measure for this current economy).  That they would have less hauling associated with them does not excuse the fact that there still is any hauling associated with them to begin with.  In fact, there's a reason why Toady just plain lets you turn the entire economy off - it doesn't do anything but let dwarves horde objects that they then simply drop on the floor and forget about. 

The current economy is just a scaffold for future systems, at best.  Coins are the most obviously broken aspect of this, but if you can remove this entire system of the game with very little notable impact on play, then the entire system is just a hollow shell.  As unbalanced or incomplete as farming or seiges or the like are, can you say that their being missing would not significantly impact your play?

So I say again - this goes beyond a "stacking problem".  It is a problem of not having any kind of system to involve the coins in.  They are just one more item that does nothing that has to be tracked and micromanaged so that you can have enough gold to have enough coins to fill the arbitrary requirements for gold coins to keep all your workers paid, and tie up more memory, even if they are from then on not something that your dwarves spend more than a small percentage of their time on managing themselves.

[Atanamis]

The customization of the game is not a workaround for broken systems, but a design philosophy. I would imagine that even in the final version things like temperature, invasions, and economy will be capable of being disabled if desired by the player. Obviously coins are currently not needed, but to prefer an invisible debt system seems odd. It seems that basically your position is that you are opposed to this regardless of whether it can be made to work efficiently or not because you hate the idea of coins?

Coins that were re-stackable and could be carried in a pouch with no hindrance to other labors wouldn't be a problem. A dwarf might never need to put them down at all, further reducing the "hauling" jobs. The point of adding them is to begin to allow systems to be developed that would use them. It would also add another "mandatory upkeep" to the fortress. Not only would you need to produce enough food to keep your dwarves alive, but also enough money to keep them working.

For most practical purposes, it would be little different than a credit system, except with enough trappings to allow more complicated systems to be innovated in the future. I would hope the hauling improvements are coming soon, and they would seem to remove most reasonable need for teleporting coins or magic debit systems.

[blizzerd]

what about banker dwarfs, and a vault

basically, every dwarf uses the debit system (without coins)

a vault is constructed, where all the coins in the fortress are stacked, and depending on the amount of coins in this vault vs your total fortress export things rise and fall in price, and dwarfs can buy things "on debit" depending how much is in the bank

basically, the coins change owner, but don't change location, just as in a real bank

and banker dwarfs haul the coins to the bank

also it would be nice if traders brought some coin from distant lands and you can exchange your coins for ther's, or for there stuff

this way, you can inspect the alien coins and see things about the leader in power of that civ the traders got it from

depending on your political power, other forts will be using your coins, make too much of them and they lower in price, have too few and people will complain about not being able to borrow enough money to buy nice stuff and the economy will halt

[Norseman]

The problem with the dwarven economy is that it adds nothing to the game. To make a game better you need to A) prevent monotony, boredom, and tedium, and B) offer new and interesting challenges and opportunities for the player to acquire, create or personalize something they like.

For the dwarven economy to add something to the game, it would need to introduce a tedium-reducing mechanic. For example, the dwarven economy could activate standing production orders. Workers could buy or rent workshops, hire workers, produce goods, stock them in stockpiles, and sell them to merchants, who would resell the goods to the public from their stores. When the quantity gets too low, they automatically produce more. When the quantity gets too high, they automatically stop production. When raw materials are unavailable, they stop production and inform the player of their needs. When raw materials become available again, they automatically resume production.

When trade caravans tell you the goods they'd like next year, the merchants keep that in mind and produce/stockpile surplus goods to sell to the caravan next year. If another caravan offers those goods at a lower price, the merchants automatically purchase the goods from it to resell those goods to the caravan that needed them.

When construction jobs are issued, foremen manage the dwarves and make sure they don't accidentally cause cave-ins, or trap themselves, or block the construction of a wall section or something.

This way, the player is freed to think about designing a fortress, rather than trivial details like what order walls need to be built in to build all the requested walls, or how much underwear and socks the dwarves need.