Merchant Archive

Definitely a cool idea - adding "companies" to the game could get pretty complicated though. Imagine having to balance the books, report earnings, etc. And the whole idea of a company is that the enterprise itself has value apart froman individual - building "company" ownership into basically everything in the game would be extremely difficult.

A commodities market definitely sounds like it would be more doable. Some mechanism to put out buy requests that can be filled by sellers.

The lack of a finance infrastructure is actually a noticable problem in the game that could be cured with little new code. I agree that stock markets for player companies are far too advanced, but some simple and reliable loan collection system could easily be based on the code for tax collection in player cities.

Right now any Artisan based player's advancement is gated by their ability to raise working capital. This is probably the most important for Architects, who have to make massive investments in materials before they have a saleable product. But it really applies to all professions, even a combatant who needs travel money to run well paid missions.

I don't think it hard to implement a loan system that pulled money automatically out of a player's bank. A merchant could create a "Loan Document" that any player could use. When filled out by the player it would make regularly scheduled withdrawals from the players bank and credit the account of the holder. Like the city taxes, it would be an involuntary payment. Unlike the taxes, it would have a fixed limit on the total collected over time. A player could miss payments by not having enoughmoney, but eventually the debt would be paid if the character continued to be played.

The Loan Document could then be traded by the player for goods or services they couldn't afford otherwise. Since it is an item, the holder might choose to sell it for cash at a discount to a third party. This could create a whole new role for merchants who wanted to act as bankers by loaning money and buying Loan Documents obtained by others.

Of course, you might not want to make a large loan to a new character for fear it would be deleted without paying off the loan. But ifI could make a sale at a good price of a hard to move item, I would be happy to take a Loan Document instead of cash. Lots of judgement calls involved in this whole new mini-game.

I think the skill to create Loan Documents would be a great one to fill out the rather empty Merchant tree!

This might be too highly advanced but it'd be interesting to see a stock market in place for the galaxy. Like seinar fleet systems(the company that makes tie fighters and star destoryers)or different imperial companies that can be invested in and depending on business their stock goes up or down. I think this idea can be greatly expanded upon with companies doing well/poor based on business and/orthe state of the gcw.

also this could give rise to merchants getting actual companies with president vice president etc. with a whole structured set of titlesand positions for people to hold. something like this would be obviously post space expansion but this forum is for ideas too so i just though i'd post.

thanks

It would never work,the tech in this game is not there for that. but... That being said, I do think it would be COOL to see a market for resources. Where you do notset the price on a resource, but the market does. More of them, price goes down, less of them, goes up.