Thank you Girsanov (and all others who have posted so far). You point out a very challenging problem in terms of asking whether the added complexity is worth it.

The value I think would highly depend on how it was implemented. Personally, I don't want to have to learn fairly involved economics to be effective at a game. OTOH, I'm beyond disgusted with how mediocre trading is done in most space trading games (really, they should be called "space 'boring hunt for the right market and drag goods back and forth until you have enough money to get to the combat you really want to play' games")

One point in favor of currencies might be atmosphere, which is tenuous at best in most of these games and will be thin at best in the low budget way I'm forced to use. It helps to shoot down the annoying sci-fi trope of English speaking aliens who are carbon copies of the human race (save for one or two exaggerated characteristics). If there's an economy based around psionic slaves or a rare power source (antimatter?) it may cause the player to stop and wonder about the people and places they've encountered. (This would be obviously have to be reinforced by narrative and missions).

Another point would be one of many (admittedly grossly abstracted) ways to affect the universe at large. This is vital in sandbox games, and I think it's important to give players some other means than the purely nihilistic methods most sandbox games offer.

One thing you've shown me is that something like this should probably be a fairly deterministic set of options rather than a fluid process-- at the most basic level, for instance, there probably should be a series of missions where you get to manipulate the currency, and it will change in a roughly predictable way. That would be easier to test, explain and implement.

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Original post by Wavinator One thing you've shown me is that something like this should probably be a fairly deterministic set of options rather than a fluid process-- at the most basic level, for instance, there probably should be a series of missions where you get to manipulate the currency, and it will change in a roughly predictable way. That would be easier to test, explain and implement.

And it would also be no difference if you didn't implement currencies in the first place.

For example :

A mission to weaken alien currency to make alien goods cheaper.

<=> (is equivalent to)

A mission to make alien goods cheaper.


But I agree that it would be much more flavorful that alien races have their own currency. (unless they belong to a common currency zone with humans) But probably not commodity money as human history seems to imply that as a civilization gets more advanced, they tend to abandon commodity money in favor of fiat money. (while slaves and energy are very interesting as currencies, why would advanced space faring races not prefer the much simpler paper/digital money instead of carting slaves or energy around?)

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Original post by Girsanov For example : A mission to weaken alien currency to make alien goods cheaper. <=> (is equivalent to) A mission to make alien goods cheaper.

Agreed, although a mission to create a "fire sale" that crashes an economy might better be explained via currencies.

Quote:

(while slaves and energy are very interesting as currencies, why would advanced space faring races not prefer the much simpler paper/digital money instead of carting slaves or energy around?)

Hahahaha! [smile] You have asked the question that shall not be asked in the creation of science fiction. Interstellar civilizations probably have zero incentive to trade given the fact that the energy hill in reaching another star system let alone another civilization is (forgive the pun) astronomical. If they can master enough power to travel to another star, they probably have a good command of creating or at least assembling matter itself. So they probably wouldn't even bother with much more than trading knowledge, stories or experience.

While it pisses me off to no end to see trading of "beer" or "pink flamingos" in space trading games, trading anything is almost as silly.

So the short answer would be because it's probably far more playable than what is realistic.

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Original post by Wavinator Agreed, although a mission to create a "fire sale" that crashes an economy might better be explained via currencies.

I thought it would be harder to explain it via currencies because I assumed most people have never taken/read enough economics to understand the effect of currency changes. While everyone knows that in the case of a virus outbreak, terror attack, war, large scale financial fraud, political turmoil etc, the economic is going to crash and prices are going to fall.

In my humble opinion most people just assumes economic fact based on intuition and quite often gets it wrong. An example is the Transitivity assumption : If you like Beef to Chicken and Chicken to Fish, you would like Beef to Fish. But there are on going research in economics that suggests that this assumption might not be valid. (read Dan Ariely's "Predictably Irrational" for applications of this in real life by major companies)

Furthermore, we have assumed that :

1) It is possible for small scale operations to devalue a currency and that the effect is prominent enough.
2) Devaluation of a currency will crash the economy.
3) Lower currency => lower prices.

Are any of our assumptions valid?

Take for example Japan. One yen is very roughly 100 US dollars for the last 6 years. (http://www.google.com/finance?q=USDJPY , go to max on the graph) so the yen is "really weak" compared to the dollar. Yet Japan is really prosperous and stuff in Tokyo are extremely expensive compared to stuff in parts of the United States.

Also, if a criminal operation prints fake currency, why not outright buy goods with fake currencies? Instead of going the round about and uncertain route of trying to crash the economy by devaluation?

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Original post by Wavinator Hahahaha! [smile] You have asked the question that shall not be asked in the creation of science fiction. Interstellar civilizations probably have zero incentive to trade given the fact that the energy hill in reaching another star system let alone another civilization is (forgive the pun) astronomical. If they can master enough power to travel to another star, they probably have a good command of creating or at least assembling matter itself. So they probably wouldn't even bother with much more than trading knowledge, stories or experience. While it pisses me off to no end to see trading of "beer" or "pink flamingos" in space trading games, trading anything is almost as silly. So the short answer would be because it's probably far more playable than what is realistic.

I would say that we don't really know anything about what the future will look like. For all we know, wormhole technology with some future energy source could make space travel very cheap and very fast.

Regarding the incentive to trade : Trade could then be possible if comparative advantage still exists. If it is cheaper to transport a ship full of mineral X across the galaxy than try to synthesize it ourselves then trade should occur.