It's The Economy, Stupid

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I've been working out how to implement a server-side economy. One that is important to the station itself, while hinting at a broader universe that our characters and station exist in. It would be done by:

An additional preference in character-creation that allows you set the personal wealth of your character, poverty, poor, middle class, wealthy, we can have a set amount of credits with an included random variable to give people consistent amount of credits tied to their backstory. Problems of everyone potentially starting off obscenely wealthy is an rp-issue and not a problem of this mechanic itself, which Skull has told me would be rather easy to implement. This gives people a base amount of credits. If you're living on poverty, your account would start with 50 credits. The rich fat cats running around would have 10,000 credits or something.

Of course, without incentive to spend money, we end up with everyone having infinite money within a month. So we have to ways to try to balance this: Wages, and expenses. Wages would be a lump sum of credits granted to your character at the end of the round, which would rely on your job title times the length of the round. After this, there would be a subtraction based on your wealth level/job. The rich Tajarans running around only purchase the finest catnip in the galaxy, and have plush silk beds and litter boxes where every grain of sand is individually selected and vetted and embedded with flecks of gold. This costs more than the average shaft miner, who eats the rocks he mines.

So we would have a situation where your character starts with 100 credits from his creation. He earns 200 credits this shift, and spends 50 credits in 'life expenses'. This gives him 150 credits of profit to spend on the station. There is potential to have these 'life expenses' included on a balance sheet, with random flavor purchases.

If we combine this with cash registers, which are given to the departments and automatically tied to their station accounts, we can allow purchases of things from the chef and bartender, with people affording as much as their character should realistically afford. If we also turn Cargo into a commissary, where the crew can purchase items and the funds going into Supply's account. If we then give the HoP the additional job of overseeing the accounts and trying to get a profit from the departments, we have the foundation of a server-side economy. In addition to this, information on the character's finances can be kept saved and consistent. That means, if you spawn with 4,000 credits and spend 1,000, in the next round you only have 3,000 credits. Oh, and the department accounts would be consistent, with a random variable to increase or decrease the amount of cash in them. This would allow dynamic situations, such as security not being able to afford anything because SOMEONE SPENT ALL THE MONEY LAST SHIFT AND TODAY'S BUDGET IS ONLY 1,500 CREDITS?!?

Budgets would be a way to try to combat someone syphoning literally all the money from the account and getting away with it. By itself, there are enough IC incentives to monitor and catch such blatant embezzlement that you can put the money back. But if someone just up and spaces all 75,000 credits in the account during an antag round, it can either be explained as an obscene purchase or deduction, or just become an admin issue. (Admins would have the power to inject money back into the accounts, which would only be used to counter chuckle-fucking.) But having x amount of credits injected into the station accounts every round should help prevent all the accounts being broke every round. Whether or not they need money taken out would be determined by how obscenely broke or rich the departments consistently are over the duration of playtesting.

If the system works well, cargo purchases could be tied into the money from department accounts. The cargo request console would have you put in your name, and the department you're requesting the item for. For example, if a LWAP crate would cost 1,000 credits. So security could theoretically afford 75 of them. Pricing, for obvious reasons, would have to be balanced.

The end result is that cargo is a port, warehouse, and store. The responsibility (and/or fun!) of keeping the department supplied would fall to the Head of Staff in question. The HoS would have to decide what to spend security's money on. And given that credits are now mechanically necessary, there is incentive to decide if they want to place fines on people, rather than brig them, in order to either afford needed supplies, or to invest in case they need them later. Medbay might start charging for some operations they can get away with, and in total we have the attitude of penny-pinching and exploitation that serves our setting well.

With this foundation, the expansions of the mechanics are endless.

All of these systems are said to be feasible by Skull. A lot of it is simply saving the information in the SQL and server save files. The specifics of this, however, would have to be worked out after lots and lots of playtesting.

Synopsis of benefits

2. Creates persistent economy.
4. Reinforces atmosphere of a dynamic, breathing universe outside/around the station.
   
6. Encourages roleplay on-station in the form of making money matter.
   
8. Makes cargo a very important department, and gives them a lot to do that isn't more paperwork.
   
10. Encourages HRP 'bureaucracy' in a way that isn't just more paperwork.
    
12. Allows dynamic character development in new ways that ties them to the station and other characters instead of usual self-enclosed stories.
    
14. Reinforces atmosphere of bourgeois oppression and obsession with money suitable to a game based around a mega-corporation.
    
16. Allows mechanical racism by adding a buff or nerf to your wage by species as well as job and wealth.
    
18. Street cred from being first server to have dynamic economy, finally allowing us to have an upper-hand in HRP street fights.

 

The big setbacks:

• How to handle antagonist rounds where a lot of money is spent at once. Or stolen by the damn cats.
  
  The specifics. Who makes how much? How much is taken out for life expenses? How much do jobs make?
  
  Methods of combating powergaming into infinite money.
  
  Persistent, or semi-persistent?

Edited October 27, 2015 by Marlon Phoenix

[jackfractal]

It's a cool idea, but I think you might be better off creating limited persistence over permanent persistence. If you keep your credits always forever, then anyone who plays for any length of time is going to end up very wealthy. Wealthy people will have the ability to purchase items through cargo that poor people can't, which means long-term players will have an objective advantage.

I'd recommend a full reset of the economy every month or so.

[Guest]

It'll take some finagling, and need a system much more elegant than eftpos. But I like it.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

It's a cool idea, but I think you might be better off creating limited persistence over permanent persistence. If you keep your credits always forever, then anyone who plays for any length of time is going to end up very wealthy. Wealthy people will have the ability to purchase items through cargo that poor people can't, which means long-term players will have an objective advantage.

I'd recommend a full reset of the economy every month or so.

 

The automatic budgeting is meant to balance this out. You can be wealthy and start with 10,000 credits but if you just sat around not spending a dime outside your wage, you'd always hover around 10,000 credits. There is also the possibility of having a random (or not) chance of taking much larger chunks out of someone's financing, so over 2 rounds the life expenses of Sir Moneybags' account, plus the 'tax' of the citizenship he gave his character (say, the Sol Alliance which has a tax rate of 10% of your wealth) all combines to plummet his wealth to 4,000 credits. Which is still a lot of dosh to the average shaft miner, but that's over half of Moneybag's wealth! Cue the tears of the bourgeois.

I never liked total resets. It doesn't encourage investment or long-term planning. The goal is to balance it in such a way that auto-piloting keeps you stagnant, and that becoming obscenely wealthy is a reward from investment. Is it discouraging to roleplay to have people running around obscenely wealthy, while you're barely starting out and can barely afford anything? Someone walking into the commissary and buying all the fancy suits and wines while you're staring at your account balance wondering how you're going to afford anything with just 20 credits, is an exponentially more entertaining and dynamic situation than just resetting every month.

Of course, if tweaking can't balance the system properly, a reset would be a good thing. The biggest problem there would be how to explain it. Galactic tax?

Edit:

"The government" is actually a great way to explain away a lot of money going missing, or being reset.

[Killerhurtz]

There's only one thing that irks me.

It brings interaction from antag action into normal play (which, IIRC, was supposed non-canon unless it's declared canon - and even then, most antag rounds are supposed to be a first-contact type of deal, right? It doesn't bode well if, one round, someone gets huge amount of money, and the only explanation they can give is "A wizard helped me get this money")

So it'd either have to be disabled for antag rounds (so 90% of the time), give another explanation as to why the money is added/gone (government could be a solution) or completely rework the antag lore so that they become canon, in a sense (maybe memory resets or something for the especially severe stuff) AND rework other parts of the lore so that characters killed during such an antag round get an option of not-having-died.

So while on paper it's an amazing idea, it doesn't mesh well with our antag lore and gameplay. If this was a 24/7 extended RP server? Fuck yes, bring it on. But I say we still need to tackle the whole interaction with antags.

[LordFowl]

Long term employees may see greater benefits.

My one suggestion is that, while Extended rounds surely could have full effect on permanent departmental record, I think its a bit unfair that non-canon antagonist rounds should affect the budget of the next round. Perhaps there should be a reduction for certain antagonist rounds and complete annulment for other antagonist rounds, or completely ignore antagonist rounds when determining the department budget.

So for example, Extended Round 1 would affect the budget for Nuke Op Round 2, but Nuke Op Round 2 would not affect the budget for Changeling Round 3.

This means that security and medical (and I suppose engineering and any department) are not crippled because they had to 'deal' (because they didn't actually deal with it canonically) with some mass destruction antagonist.

[jackfractal]

Yeah, but your example isn't "He makes 100 and spends 100", it's "He makes 200 and spends 50."

This means that if you play a lot of rounds and don't spend any money on station, then your character gets super wealthy creating the problem I mentioned, hence the need for resets. If someone joins and then immediately cryo's they also get paid and so there's more dysfunctional behavior you have to take into account.

If you do the opposite, as you seem to be suggesting, where the default is stagnation, that means that nobody can buy things from cargo or the chef because it means every purchase comes out of your finite savings.

In your first post you have nothing mentioning investments, and no way to 'plan' for anything because your lifestyle and pay-grade are outside your control. You seem to be implying, in your reply, that you want to create some kind of simulated banking system with simulated capital investments. If that's the case, this suggestion is way more complex then your making it out to be, and even MORE likely to lead to runaway wealth for long-time players, as they'll know how to game the system.

Edited October 27, 2015 by Guest

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

There's only one thing that irks me.

It brings interaction from antag action into normal play (which, IIRC, was supposed non-canon unless it's declared canon - and even then, most antag rounds are supposed to be a first-contact type of deal, right? It doesn't bode well if, one round, someone gets huge amount of money, and the only explanation they can give is "A wizard helped me get this money")

So it'd either have to be disabled for antag rounds (so 90% of the time), give another explanation as to why the money is added/gone (government could be a solution) or completely rework the antag lore so that they become canon, in a sense (maybe memory resets or something for the especially severe stuff) AND rework other parts of the lore so that characters killed during such an antag round get an option of not-having-died.

So while on paper it's an amazing idea, it doesn't mesh well with our antag lore and gameplay. If this was a 24/7 extended RP server? Fuck yes, bring it on. But I say we still need to tackle the whole interaction with antags.

 

All antags are canon in the lore and exist. Antagonist action of the vanilla variety is also very common - as the Antag Spy Contest showed before it was put on hold.

"A security incident" is a handwave to explain antagonist action that, for some reason, has to be kept canon some way or another. It's not expanded on, because for obvious reasons Nanotrasen has classified the information.

But yes, it opens up an entire can of worms. One method of handling this would to have semi-consistency, because money still needs to have weight and matter deeply to people even during antagonist rounds, or else we have people suddenly spending lavishly once a wizard or changling shows up. So, if someone kidnaps you and you pay all 5,000 of your account for a self-ransom, at round end for antag-rounds you have the option to either save your finances from that round, accepting that you're now broke and have no money for awhile, or "standardize", giving you only the profit and expenses as if it were a standard extended round.

Department accounts would always be kept saved. The budget at round-start would be a form of a 'reset', but a soft, lore-friendly one.

So nuke op round where security and medical spend all their 75,000 credits, can be kept canon as "Wow those assholes spent a lot of money", but the budgets for that round are 10,000 credits for each department, so they still have cash.

So in essence, keep it persistent, but in a way that antagonist round expenses or profits can be explained next round as if it were simply extended, or an actual 'security incident' that isn't elaborated on.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Yeah, but your example isn't "He makes 100 and spends 100", it's "He makes 200 and spends 50."

This means that if you play a lot of rounds and don't spend any money on station, then your character gets super wealthy creating the problem I mentioned, hence the need for resets. If someone joins and then immediately cryo's they also get paid and so there's more dysfunctional behavior you have to take into account.

If you do the opposite, as you seem to be suggesting, where the default is stagnation, that means that nobody can buy things from cargo or the chef because it means every purchase comes out of your finite savings.

In your first post you have nothing mentioning investments, and no way to 'plan' for anything because your lifestyle and pay-grade are outside your control. You seem to be implying, in your reply, that you want to create some kind of simulated banking system with simulated capital investments. If that's the case, this suggestion is way more complex then your making it out to be, and even MORE likely to lead to runaway wealth for long-time players, as they'll know how to game the system.

 

In this system, joining 60 round (averaged at 3 hours) is 180 hours of grinding. That's a lot of time to sit around SSD, or not spending anything at all. And since assistants would be paid garbage wages, the only way to do it would be to join then SSD as some important role. Which tends to be noticed.

People that joined then cryo'd would have the payment of however long they joined (10 minutes = 10 credits) and have the same amount of expenses as if they were there the entire time (50 credits) so they'd have a net loss of 40 credits.

And the idea of someone not spending anything on the station is kind of ridiculous. Yeah you made 150 credits of your 200 credit wage, but you aren't just going to save literally all your credits every round.

The system of stagnation was an attempt to justify your system. You can't have a system like this then just reset it every month with no explanation. And is that not, in itself, just a long-winded form of stagnation?

I repeat that becoming obscenely wealthy isn't a problem unless it becomes powergaming or a widespread problem of the mechanics itself. The wealthy afford things that the poor can't. In our setting, there is a big wealth gap. This would reinforce that.

[jackfractal]

Why is 60 rounds important? Does something happen at sixty rounds? I'm confused. Yes, grinding for 60 rounds sounds dumb. Why would you do it?

You're planning on having pay occur based on time served? That sucks for people who join mid-round AND for people who die or have to go SSD half way through a round. It sucks a lot.

How do you explain resetting the economy every round from an in character perspective. You don't. It's an out of character thing we do to stop things from getting silly. We have tons of those.

Extreme wealth for long-time players is going to give them a direct material advantage over newer players. If I have a million credits and I can go into cargo and buy something that helps me when I need it, while a new player can't, they are materially disadvantaged. This will alienate new players.

Another thing that ludicrous levels of wealth will do is make the entire purchasing economy irrelevant for wealthy players, as they will have effectively infinite cash allowing them to buy whatever they want.

The last obvious flaw in having no resets will be the rampant inflation. At the start of having this system in place, you might be able to bribe someone with, say, 300 credits. 300 credits is a nice amount, but in six months, when the average long-term player has sixty million credits, your 300 credit bribe will look incredibly silly! This will further alienate new characters as they won't be able to take part in ad-hoc financial interactions as they will all happen at a scale that dwarfs their meager earnings.

These are real problems. Being rich is fun, but being rich in a game is usually a sign of a problem with the economic design.

[Killerhurtz]

With the given explanations by Jackboot, I fully approve of this concept. It would bring some VERY interesting things for gamemodes like RP Rev and such, where players would be able to not only divide by how high in the hierarchy they are, but how much money they got stashed away.

I like this.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Why is 60 rounds important? Does something happen at sixty rounds? I'm confused. Yes, grinding for 60 rounds sounds dumb. Why would you do it?

You're planning on having pay occur based on time served? That sucks for people who join mid-round AND for people who die or have to go SSD half way through a round. It sucks a lot.

How do you explain resetting the economy every round from an in character perspective. You don't. It's an out of character thing we do to stop things from getting silly. We have tons of those.

Extreme wealth for long-time players is going to give them a direct material advantage over newer players. If I have a million credits and I can go into cargo and buy something that helps me when I need it, while a new player can't, they are materially disadvantaged. This will alienate new players.

Another thing that ludicrous levels of wealth will do is make the entire purchasing economy irrelevant for wealthy players, as they will have effectively infinite cash allowing them to buy whatever they want.

The last obvious flaw in having no resets will be the rampant inflation. At the start of having this system in place, you might be able to bribe someone with, say, 300 credits. 300 credits is a nice amount, but in six months, when the average long-term player has sixty million credits, your 300 credit bribe will look incredibly silly! This will further alienate new characters as they won't be able to take part in ad-hoc financial interactions as they will all happen at a scale that dwarfs their meager earnings.

These are real problems. Being rich is fun, but being rich in a game is usually a sign of a problem with the economic design.

 

These are very real problems, and that in which we'd have a difficulty combating without adding more and more and more mechanics.

A weekly/monthly reset would then be the best option. It can still be IC'ly explained as entering a new quarter. It's where Nanotrasen decides who gets paid more or less, what costs more or less, and generally lets us get away with sweeping changes.

The reset would put you back to relative-square 1. A "Poor" "Surgeon" would revert back to his ~1,500 credit account, where a "poor" "janitor" would start back with his ~50.

The 'wealth' stat might have to be set once every quarter when you select that character, then once you 'lock it in' it turns into just an infobox where you can see their bank account balance before logging in, until it unlocks after the next quarter reset?

Since this is a HRP server, this system trusts that at least 60% of those who get involved in it actually have a rhyme or reason to why their character has finances that way.

Edit:

I also strongly believe that if we incorporated this, it adds enough depth and stuff to do for players even during extended that extended will be picked more often. Often antagonists are the only time you get to do anything except sit around. But if there's a shop to go to, a bank account to balance, a department's finances to look over, security fines to pay. . . That's a lot of fun possibilities when you're not being eaten by a changling. This is reinforced by my HoP-rounds turning desolate eatery areas into bustling, active places by virtue of giving the chef and bartender financial goals, and announcing 'specials' like "Buy a beer get a free taco!"

Am I saying being a penny pinching capitalist is the only way to save extended?

Yes.

[Lady_of_Ravens]

This is a neat idea, and in some ways I really like it, but I don't think it would be very practical on this server. Embezzling would go from not being a big deal to being exactly a big deal which would only be caught if anyone was actually looking (so, probably not at all during dead-hour).

It would also make for a variety of new metagame/powergame behaviors in regards to money, and make the already somewhat-immersion-breaking antag-rounds-that-did-and-didn't-happen even harder to reason about. Plus, anything you buy is going to cost persistent money for items that vanish at the end of the round, which sucks for anything other than consumables. Being able to set your starting/resting wealth level will also make for a significant change in the socioeconomic spectrum seen on Aurora. The number of independently wealthy cargo techs will skyrocket.

Attempting to minimize the sort of advantage-seeking behavior this might cause (such as joining a round and then going AFK or cryoing just to get more money) would end up punishing a lot of normal behavior patterns (things like playing for a bit and either having to go or getting bored 'cause it's sextended and you have no one to ERP with). Plus, the artificial living expenses take away some of the player's control over how their character behaves, which noone likes.

Oh, and if you think everyone would be spending money, think again. My new IPC character, LiLITH, goes to work to make money (also, some ulterior motives, but those aren't really relevant here), and has no interest in food or drink or cigarettes or clothing or really much of anything not involved in her job. So unless she couldn't do her job without buying stuff (!!!), I don't see her having more than the very rare actual expense. Even being kidnapped and held for ransom wouldn't be a good motivator unless the cost of the ransom was less than the value of her shell/posibrain and the knowledge she hasn't synced with her other shells (after adjustment to account for the probability she wouldn't actually be released). There are no doubt other IPCs (and Dionae) who would behave similarly (except maybe the ransom part... maybe). Now, this wouldn't be a problem as such in LiLITH's case (being super rich and living like a robot monk actually match her character well), but it would happen.

[Erik Tiber]

Seems like an idea with huge potential, and great to hear that it's probably possible to implement on the code side. Expand the service sector and give it a larger role to accommodate if you need to. There's obvious challenges associated with rolling out something of such complexity and a number of quite important problems you'd need to address to ensure that money actually stays valuable. Maybe some-such about medical care or augment maintenance/software upgrades or whatever. You can figure it out yourself. Personal advice, do some research on what people spend money on IRL, try to see why people on Aurora might behave differently or similarly and how the incentives and environment they face are different. Would seriously advise including some IRL costs alongside sci-fi costs. Try to make it a bit exciting or whatever rather than boring and mundane.

Point is, this has the potential to be big. I'm interested to see how it goes down. If it falls flat, you can revise it, or attempt to partially salvage it at the least. I'd say it's definitely worth a try. I've heard the idea floated around before, and it'd be nice to finally see a serious attempt at putting it into action to get some idea of whether or not this is really possible.

[Xelnagahunter]

A few personal concerns, with the first one already somewhat glossed over:

What do we do if Urist McNukeop gets a ransom and transfers the funds to their account. Does that mean the character they chose to try joining as gets the money by default, because Whooo "10k credits!" Lets say naming of the character for Nuke Ops and Wizard rounds prevents that and you are expected not to put your character's real or whole name, What If I make a character named Houssam Jawdat and I get Jawdat's money and spend it all before anyone can notice that I'm not Jawdat's player. Or what if I play a randomly named character each round, does this effect my money to always be the default value unless another person has had this exact same randomized name before?

It's just a few concerns, but something I'm hoping to see a solid answer for. I really want to support this as my captain would be very wealthy, while my career criminal would be struggling to make ends meet.

[SoapyCup]

This idea is great. Albeit great, there are a ton of problems.

Sure, you can RP being poor and complain how you can't afford a good TV back in your apartment. But, it means nothing, and has no game mechanics. You still start with the same(ish) amount of credits as everyone else and they're basically never used. Having it mean something would open up so many new opportunities.

I have a problem with the persistence part of it though. Being able to start at a rich/middle/poor level is good, but it pretty much forces everything to be canon, especially if the player can't edit the amount of money his/her character has for the next round. The biggest problem I can see lies in what happens when you're not on station. The suggest random expense thingie would be a start, but what if John Smith went to space Vegas and blew all his money, or won the lottery and came into a bunch of money. The way it's currently suggested forces the player to keep their character basically the same level of wealth, and I suggest the player can change how much money their character has in between rounds.

Of course, powergaming. All the baldies would be billionaires, which would be a problem, and we can't really have a 'don't make all your characters rich' rule. It would probably end up in the same way that 90% of characters are fit and robust, which probably isn't the average. Although that is that, it's not really an issue, and the everyone is a bit wealthy problem would probably settle into the same way. People who want to be different than the rest and RP something different, have that opportunity, so it would be an improvement.

Summed up, I think this would be best implemented with no, or at least minimal persistence,

[EvilBrage]

I have ideas about this, some of which may not relate to each other at all. Okay? Go:

#1: Create an account number at character creation automatically, allow players to define a PIN (or allow them to get a random PIN.)

#2: During rounds with antagonists, your max credit gain is what you'd normally make in that shift. There is no max credit loss. Extended rounds are 100% canon in terms of credit gain and loss. Significant losses/gains in station accounts will generate logs (unless the black box is destroyed) that duty officers will investigate.

#3: Allow a character to arrive on the station with more custom loadout items than normally possible - for a small fee, of course.

#4: Alternatively, make characters purchase their loadout items. If you don't have it with you at the shift's conclusion, you have to buy it again to take it with you next shift. If you have someone else's custom loadout item on your person at the shift's conclusion, it is now yours.

#5: Allow characters in non-command/security roles to purchase small amounts of contraband to bring onto the station with them (I'm thinking controlled substances, not weapons, here.)

#6: Allow players to define custom purchases that only show up on a personal inventory screen. For example, I want Jaylor to buy a sketchkin pistol for home defense - so in an item field, I type "sketchkin pistol" and for a credit cost (I'd recommend a sticky post with guidelines pertaining to item costs) I enter whatever seems appropriate. The credits are deducted from my account, and the item pops up in my inventory tab. This won't have any effect in-game; it's just a vanity-based credit sink.

#7: Allow players to define their character's address and lifestyle. Higher classes of living impose a higher cost per shift to keep your accommodations habitable, but they're also shown next to your character's address in their employment records. Another vanity item.

#8: Security officers can suggest fines in lieu of brig time; Duty officers can impose them. Any individual with an account in arrears is unable to have a custom loadout and must suffer similarly arbitrary penalties until they pay off their debts.

[SilverTalismen]

Im all for this new system, It will make rp rev rounds more severe and could offer new shop-like jobs for Cargo and the Civilian Department

[Zundy]

I'm new but from what I've played of the server, this sounds good to me!

Worse case scenario, it's trailed for a month (or so), doesn't work and gets removed. No biggie.

[Carver]

One issue I see is how antagonists would mess with the 'persistent' aspect. For example, let's say Nuke Ops are going to blow up the station. Let's say I decide to withdraw a large sum of money, 5,000 credits, to pay these nuke ops for safe transit and they blow up the station. Why would I still be missing that five grand next round?

Another good example is bribing Security as an antag, I pay Urist McCorrupt two grand to ignore my theft that he walked in on. Does he keep this two grand and I lose this two grand despite the fact my antaggery isn't canon whatsoever?

Overall, yeah, different starting sums is great but you just can't make persistent purchases work out unless you literally ahelp every single time you use your money for something big and round-specific, and that's just another pointless layer of workload for staff.

[EvilBrage]

One issue I see is how antagonists would mess with the 'persistent' aspect. For example, let's say Nuke Ops are going to blow up the station. Let's say I decide to withdraw a large sum of money, 5,000 credits, to pay these nuke ops for safe transit and they blow up the station. Why would I still be missing that five grand next round?

Another good example is bribing Security as an antag, I pay Urist McCorrupt two grand to ignore my theft that he walked in on. Does he keep this two grand and I lose this two grand despite the fact my antaggery isn't canon whatsoever?

Overall, yeah, different starting sums is great but you just can't make persistent purchases work out unless you literally ahelp every single time you use your money for something big and round-specific, and that's just another pointless layer of workload for staff.

A good point - and in this wonderful world of automation, we should hopefully be able to find a solution. After some thought, I'm of the opinion that regulating department/station accounts in this way would be nigh on impossible, so perhaps any payoff of antagonists should come from those accounts instead? Far as antagonists go, I think we can allow them to safely spend as much as they want without any impact (positive or negative) to their accounts; if they run off with fifteen thousand credits as an antag, it shouldn't show up on a normal worker's account the next day.