what if: there were banks where you could ask for a loan

[Browser_ice]

What if there were banks to which you could ask for a loan and put up your ship or station as a garantee?

You would then have to repay them either by a an X-amount of credits per day or after an X-amount of days. There would be interest. Failing to pay your debts would result in being targeted by police and be shot on site.

Players could use this at the very begining of the game to get more money (instead of using money cheats).

After having successsfully paid your loan, you would get a reputation increase depending on how fast you paied it.

[Imperial Good]

Sounds like another stock market from X3 Albion Prelude. We all know how well that worked...

[mr.WHO]

Failing to pay your debts would result in being targeted by police and be shot on site.

Or even bounty hunter - SCA would be glad to chase you for some debt collection.

[CBJ]

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that this feature is pretty unlikely to be added to the game. There are various reasons, ranging from the fact that it pretty much destroys any reason for the player to accumulate wealth using other, more interesting, gameplay opportunities, to the significantly detrimental effect it would be likely to have on game balancing as alluded to by Imperial Good.

[radcapricorn]

How so? What Browser_ice suggests is the opposite of stock exchange. There you invested money that you already had on hand, and it was indeed a money generator. With the bank suggestion, well, a loan is a loan, so you would have to employ those other "more interesting" ways to repay it, with interest. And if you don't - become persona non grata.

That said, it's not like money is difficult to come by in the game. It's fairly possible to have a sizeable account, good reputation and some ships within one hour of gamestart, two if one's lazy. But, starting a new game for a hundredth time, things just get old.

Also, what balancing concerns? Don't NPC factions have infinite wallets anyway?

[Buzz2005]

start game, get a loan, build wharf, end game

[Imperial Good]

How so? What Browser_ice suggests is the opposite of stock exchange. There you invested money that you already had on hand, and it was indeed a money generator. With the bank suggestion, well, a loan is a loan, so you would have to employ those other "more interesting" ways to repay it, with interest. And if you don't - become persona non grata.

Because in the end there will be a way to exploit it which can be used to generate infinite free money.

Nothing stops the player borrowing 100 billion or more credits and then never caring to repay. They could use this money to instantly buy a doom fleet. Then when they cannot repay they just stream roll the universe with their doom fleet.

At the very minimum it is basically an instant entry to the late game since one could take a loan for 5 million, buy 20 or more mining ships right at the game start and then pay it off in under an hour. Then one could take a 500 million loan to buy an instant warf with blueprints and pay off the loan in 1 hour odd. Then repeat this with 1 billion odd for instant shipyards. In this case the loans are being paid back, but they are effectively giving the player infinite growth and bypassing most of the game content.

[Slashman]

Isn't the game laughably easy to get money in right now? It's even easier than X3 AP minus the stock market.

Why would you need another means of getting something that you can get really easily right now?

[radcapricorn]

Oh man, what bank would give a nobody from the street a 100 billion loan? Why do you have to go and speculate on some hypothetical nonsense scenario, trivializing this? Of course the details of how much, for how long, what interest, etc. would need to be worked out, tied in to reputation, etc. Stopgaps could be made (e.g. limited loans per day, or limited sum per week, whatever).

5 million in the first hour - you can do that without any loans. And that's before you go and sell that freebie Odysseus. That's pocket change. You can get 10-18M in an hour just building a station for some random mission, with like a 1-2M investment. And you're talking stock exchange...

Generate infinite free money? That's what station-building in this game already does.

Bypassing what content? There's still plenty to do in the days that it would take to build all that production.

Isn't the game laughably easy to get money in right now? It's even easier than X3 AP minus the stock market.
Why would you need another means of getting something that you can get really easily right now?

Yes it is. But because it's this easy, it's also boring It's literally mostly busy work to get the starting capital. You get everything too quickly anyway, so why not just have a way to get a starting capital? It's mostly convenience. But I agree, such loans would make more practical sense if the game was (much) more difficult than it is right now.

I mean, this is an actual valid reason to dismiss this idea. Handwaving it away with invalid comparisons is something else.

[Alan Phipps]

Such a loan opportunity if ever-present could unbalance the progression from rags to riches that the devs intended would underpin early gameplay.

What might be a better approach could be a new replay gamestart unlocked by financial achievements in earlier plays that would give a healthy opening credit balance to start off a fledgling empire based on trade and/or combat.

However, that start also applies regular interest payments on the capital loan whose size (and growth if interest payment is short or delayed) encourage the player to start making money quickly and repay increments of the borrowed capital as quickly as manageable. If the debt grows too far, player ship and station crew may renege and sell off unattended player assets.

In summary, a quickstart replay in which you best your competitors and best the debt while balancing progress in the two aspects.

[radcapricorn]

I would very much like to know what that mysterious intended progression actually is, what is there to unbalance.

As already stated in this thread, and discussed to death in multiple others, it's dirt easy to get rich in money and reputation. It only takes time. Depending on applied approach - more time, or less time. Most of which is spent on mundane tasks. But that's it. That you will get rich in money and reputation is virtually unavoidable - the only way to not get there is to literally not do anything. There are no obstacles beyond self-limitation.

But, what takes the most time is, of course, building your stations, especially if you desire fully self-sufficient economy. Right now the mere possibility of starting such project is artificially distanced from you by several hours - i.e. the time it takes to build up enough cash for blueprints and materials for first large production complex.
So, what is so unbalancing in giving you a way to go exploring, playing missions, etc. while your first stations are already being built?

[Buzz2005]

Oh man, what bank would give a nobody from the street a 100 billion loan? Why do you have to go and speculate on some hypothetical nonsense scenario, trivializing this? Of course the details of how much, for how long, what interest, etc. would need to be worked out, tied in to reputation, etc. Stopgaps could be made (e.g. limited loans per day, or limited sum per week, whatever).

you ask what kind of balancing loans need and then type this...

[radcapricorn]

Errr, no, I didn't ask what kind of balancing loans would need. Where'd you get that from?

[Buzz2005]

Also, what balancing concerns? Don't NPC factions have infinite wallets anyway?

well this, but its irrelevant, loans just accelerate your progress without any gameplay, you want faster start use mods

[radcapricorn]

Accelerate progress? Yes. Without gameplay? No. You'd still play the game:
- to put those loans to use
- to pay them off
- to fill the time it takes to build your stations

What I asked was how could they possibly unbalance the game as CBJ stated. Granted, he himself referred to IG who was talking about stock exchange which has nothing in common with this...

And honestly Buzz, I don't understand where that tone is coming from.

[Buzz2005]

didn't mean to sound offensive sorry

but still dont see the benefit or difference where I just get that money the old fashion way, getting a loan and doing the same thing to pay that loan sound the same as now? no?

you can get a smart chip station running in no time, well in however much it takes to build, even if you go buy the blueprints instead of EMP-ing them

[radcapricorn]

Yes, exactly. Right now from a fresh game start you spend one to three hours to just get to what you'd be doing anyway: start building your stations. The loan, however, would help you start some basic building right away, and while it's being done go focus on HQ plot, missions, setting up mining operations, whatever. I don't see it harming "balance" in any way, unless we consider ridiculous exploits brought up by IG, which of course should be prohibited by a sane implementation of such feature.

That's the thing. If the game was slower on a whole, if certain blueprints, ships, etc. were more difficult to obtain (reputation grew slower, extra requirements, whatever), if progressing to every "level" was an achievement (economically, strategically, not Steamily), this would've been a different story (and honestly, one I would rather prefer to what we have now). But it isn't. Given how freely the game fills your pockets anyway, I don't see how giving you an option to just get a couple dozen million right away could harm it or "unbalance" it. How can you make easier something that's already easy as easy gets?

[CBJ]

Your argument seems to boil down to "it's too easy, so make it even easier". Hopefully you can see why, given that we agree at least to some extent with the first part of that statement, we might not agree with the second part.

[radcapricorn]

Um, I literally just said what it boils down to: you can't make it easier Not like that, anyway. But you can make it more convenient, and create incidental gameplay opportunities. Player would have to, after all, repay with interest.

[Browser_ice]

The maximum amount of money for the loan is based on the reputation you have with this faction. So asking for 100 millions when you just barely started would not happened. Off course there would be players or MODs that would change your reputation right from the start. It is doable and I even know how. So why worry about this when this happens anyway even if this bank idea dies.

The amount of days to reimburse the loan and how much interest is accumulated would also be applied to the reputation you had when you asked for it, not on the current reputation you have when making a payment, unless you have all the money to pay it all off.

The % of interest would depend on your reputation when you asked for this loan.

Depending on how fast you payed it back and the loan total amount, you would get a reputation gain. The opposite is also true, saying you haven't payed your load in the agreed time, your reputation lost would be based on the initial reputation you had when asking for it + based on the total amount of the loan.

This whole idea is fully dependant on your reputation and uses it.