Blue print fragments and currency (my interpretation)

[jundle]

My current perception: Blue Print fragments are a way to introduce a form of “currency” into the game.

I think that blue print fragments were introduced not only as a new way to deal with how players gain blue prints, but as a first foray into trying to introduce currency.

Here is why I think BP frags don’t work as currency. What currency represents: time from a human being. Currency represents the most valuable finite commodity that a human being has, time. What currency is: a “liquid” variable paper/coinage or some type of hard commodity (gold) (there is more though). Seeing as a paper currency most likely won’t work in Rust, some type of valued commodity makes sense. The BP frag works on a level as a valued commodity, but like most online games, eventually the things that you get from converting you BP frags are no longer of value (I.E. you have enough blue prints) and also, BP frags continue to spawn. The value of BP frags go down, the number of BP frags in the world go up.

With that, I propose something different. A commodity whose intrinsic value is that of gained time.

Let’s call this new commodity EtherCrystal (any name will do). Like BP frags, EtherCrystal (or EC) drop from loot spawns. You hit a barrel and out drops woodenfloor spikes, 12 BP Frags, and 2 EC. EC can be used for the following:

Reduce Item Construction Time: have 100 wood and 1 EC. From the build menu you select the campfire for creation. You also select a check box that allows you to sacrifice (sack) 1 EC. Your build/construction time of that item gets reduced (amount of time for reduction is a percentage, and that percentage changes per tier [awesomeness] of that item [tunable]).

Use As A Universal Resource: you want to build a campfire, but only have 99 wood, but 100 EC. You go to the construction menu and choose campfire. Campfire says that you need 100 wood, and also that you can use 50 EC to replace 1 wood in this build scenario.

As for the amount of EC in the world, I would think having a max amount of EC pegged against the largest amount of players on the server over the past week would be viable. I.E. Over the past week, server “X” had the highest amount of players on during day two at 120 players at one time. The amount of EC per person is set to 50. So 50 times 120 is 6000. Once 6000 EC are in the world, than no more drop until the number of EC in the world drops below 6000. Then next week, if the max player count over a 1 week period drops lower, then the total EC max spawn drops as well. If the number of players increase, so does the EC spawning. Also, if the EC is not retrieved from its spawn point within 24 hours, it despawns from the loot container (and so also reduces the amount of EC in the server).

These numbers a malleable, to whatever the situation needs. The point is, the resource can be removed from the economy (sacrificed) by the players. The players gain a form of time (which is valued). The resource amount in the server is tunable.

All the above is totally just a theory, but I think the core concepts are solid. The idea: A commodity whose value is pegged against the real life player’s time consumption, and whose gross amount in the server is somewhat passively controllable, helping to deal with inflation.

[elix]

What's wrong with just trading wood, metal frags, or bp frags? Why introduce an entirely new sub-currency that exists only to act as a limited artificial fiat with a very inefficient material equivalency?

Now, on a modded server, go nuts. There have been economy mods since server mods became possible.

[jundle]

[QUOTE]What's wrong with just trading wood, metal frags, or bp frags? Why introduce an entirely new sub-currency that exists only to act as a limited artificial fiat with a very inefficient material equivalency?

Now, on a modded server, go nuts. There have been economy mods since server mods became possible.[/QUOTE]

To your last point of “Now, on a modded server, go nuts”: I think that is a reasonable retort. Doing the idea I presented above as a mod is a good idea. I brought this idea up, here, as a kind of off the cuff retort to my assumption that BP Frags was facepunch’s loose first foray into currency.

To your first question “What's wrong with just trading wood, metal frags, or bp frags?”:

Trading wood, metal frags, or BP frags are only valued by people who need wood, metal frags, or bp frags. A currency that is backed by the “time” commodity theoretically has a larger appeal. I think a commodity that is universally valued at almost any time is a boon to player enjoyment.

To your second question “Why introduce an entirely new sub-currency that exists only to act as a limited artificial fiat with a very inefficient material equivalency?” I will answer in three parts:

Why introduce an entirely new sub-currency: so as to have a relatively universally valued commodity for trading to make trading more robust. I think that could add another layer to the game and would be neat.

The currency would be a limited artificial fiat: My perception is that it would not wholly a fiat style currency, as the commodity it represents (and can be directly used and converted for) is time (as presented earlier by the idea that when you construct, you save real life time via sacrificing the EC). The currency being limited seems like a reasonable approach to dealing with inflation. The limit would be adjustable via server administrator.

Very inefficient material equivalency: Efficiency is perception based on what is desired.

[Claxbie]

yeah dude just trade mats I don't need bs currency