Features being added. #2: Its the Economy, Stupid.

One of the areas of greatest change will be the economic system that operates in 2238. Hopefully the days of near infinite wealth flowing in from exploiting Caravan encounters will be over. Here are some of the aspects that will be changing on the update.


The first difference will be in the Caps. The game world will contain only a finite number of Caps and these will cycle around between Players, NPCs and the Banks. This allows us to control things such as Brahmin and Slave trading, Bank Interest and other Caps based methods of making money to ensure there is no run-away wealth generation from these.


The next difference comes in the Traders. They will no long restock with items, they will begin with inventories partially made up of items and partially made of Caps and from then on no further items will be created by them. Overtime these traders will fill up with player created items and we will have an economy truly driven by the players.

In addition to this Traders will have preferences for items that they specialize in, both in terms of how much they are willing to pay for an item and in deciding what kind of things they will keep in their inventory. It is better to sell your high tech items to Traders specializing in these, rather than your local Bartender, for example. This should help ensure that there is a valid market for each type of item and that Traders have appropriate inventories. (no more Doctors full of Mausers and Radios)



The final area that I will talk about today is how Encounters will change. Essentially, there will be no noticable change to the Encounters except weapons gained from there will be in a bad condition, which has been the case before. In addition to this all Encounters will be "paid" for out of an "Encounter Pot" which has a finite value that is refilled periodically. Therefore if it has been particularly busy and some Caravan Encounters have given up lots of resources, if the "Encounter Pot" is so small that it can not afford to fund any more expensive Encounters, only the cheaper type of Encounter will be available, until these can not be paid for in turn, after which only Encounters which have no equipment to be paid for will be avaialble (Encounters vs Animals, generally).

While Crafting/Trading for Crafted items will be the primary way of arming oneself, Encounters will still be a viable way of making money. Although they should never become the get rich quick features of the past months.


Hopefully this has enlightened you all a little on the direction the economy will be heading in post wipe 2238 :)

-Solar