Use empty shell casings for currency

[alexlaird87]

Wasteland 2 should use empty shell casings for currency; different calibers are different denominations. They are intrinsically valuable as they can be reloaded and there would be plenty of them around.

You would actually be creating money by shooting and you would want to collecting your enemies empties after combat too.

You could even have banks/reloaders who will trade you cases for live ammo at different exchange rates depending on your barter skill!
http://goo.gl/mod/w4Js

[Archangel]

I'm up for this. In games I don't like reloading my ammo unless it's really rare. I probably wouldn't even do it myself in real-life.

[alexlaird87]

I'm up for this. In games I don't like reloading my ammo unless it's really rare. I probably wouldn't even do it myself in real-life.

It would definitely take the grind out of it, I don't know anyone who bothered with it in New Vegas

[shole]

i quite like the idea
makes more sense than any prewar currency, since that would be available in abundance from dead cities, and is of zero use beyond being currency
water wouldn't work out as towns with a working well would have monopoly and offset the whole economy

but this would also mean that bullets are currency
or rather, bullets are the primary currency, and empty casings secondary currency
like 10 shells = 1 bullet or something
carried bullets should be properly rare then too
economy around bullets would encourage people to conserve ammo and put focus on melee

[Madae]

I'm up for this. In games I don't like reloading my ammo unless it's really rare. I probably wouldn't even do it myself in real-life.

It would definitely take the grind out of it, I don't know anyone who bothered with it in New Vegas

I did it quite often. I would break down ammo of a particular type (like rifle rounds) that I didn't use that often to create a different type of rifle ammo that was more important. If I didn't need .308, I would chuck it to make something like .44, for example. 9MM and 10MM could also be broken down to make 12.7MM, as long as you had the casings.

economy around bullets would encourage people to conserve ammo and put focus on melee

I do like this idea. Having to focus on melee at least once in awhile would mix it up and create some unpredictability.

[Drool]

It would definitely take the grind out of it, I don't know anyone who bothered with it in New Vegas

My character with Hand Loader did it all the time. The advanced rounds were always worth converting to, and since the perk required a Repair of 70 anyway, the slightly increased wear wasn't an issue. And the .50 Match was amazing.

[cah]

Back on topic.

No, that would be a lousy currency: too much volume, doesn't stack, inherently inflated.

[Sxerks]

I actually brought this up a month ago in another thread.

You would have spent casings as well as empty clips, so you could "stack" your casings in empty clips, and maybe not use them directly as currency, but to lower the price of buying/bartering ammo/clips.

[BentSea]

Shell casings would actually make great currency because they can be reloaded... I mean, didn't anyone else start to collect ammo as currency in Fallout 1 and 2 and even 3 after everyone ran out of bottle caps? Trading ammo, which until hardcore mode in vegas was as weightless as bottle caps had a high trade value and could essentially be used just like money.

[Drool]

And in New Vegas you switched over to using Stimpacks as currency. Or other chems. Something weightless (or near weightless) but still valuable is fine as a supplemental currency. I just don't want to see it be the main currency.

[Nephilim]

Here's some quick reading:

http://dineshbakshi.com/as-a-level-econ ... good-money

http://evangrogers.hubpages.com/hub/Eva ... Good-Money

Taking it from a realistic point of view it weighs a lot and you'd probably need a truck load of ammo to buy something expensive which would be unwieldy to both transport and to count. That means it fails the portability / convenience tests.

Considering the ludicrous quantities of ammunition that could be found in armouries or previous military installations there would be a hell of a lot of it out there. This means it fails the scarcity test and is subject to inflation - whenever an old facility was scavenged there would be a huge spike in money supply. The extreme quantity also contributes to what I pointed out above, that it would take a lot of base ammunition to really buy anything useful at all.

It's also pretty easy to make by just about anyone with a few fairly simple tools and a bit of know how. I did a quick google search and found a hell of a lot about it. For reference he's a how-to-do guide:

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?t=346199

This would mean it fails the reproducibility test. If, with a few tools, just about anyone can go print their own money, it makes serious problems. Moving beyond this basic crippling flaw, is it harder to produce the higher valued ammunition than the lower valued ammunition (because surely you must have it divisible into $1, $10, $100, 10c, etc). Is that intrinsic value represented in the assumed/expected value? To me this is fatal to the case for using ammunition as currency.

As for gameplay mechanics, eh. I guess it could work, but it doesn't sound sensible form a realistic POV.

[Bungle]

Wasteland 2 should use empty shell casings for currency; different calibers are different denominations. They are intrinsically valuable as they can be reloaded and there would be plenty of them around.

You would actually be creating money by shooting and you would want to collecting your enemies empties after combat too.

You could even have banks/reloaders who will trade you cases for live ammo at different exchange rates depending on your barter skill!
http://goo.gl/mod/w4Js

I like the idea, makes a lot of sense. +1

[paultakeda]

Why is fiat money considered useless in a post-apocalypse? Casings are one of the many possible currencies examined in the thread on viable currency and the consensus is that it doesn't quite make it.

Something as actively used as a casing is not a good basis for standard currency. As fiat money it doesn't work as it is holds practical value when combined with a bullet and other materials to create a round. Who would want to waste a casing on making a new round when it holds more value as a casing?

It has no real material value, either, unlike gold, and so cannot be considered standard barter item of set worth; it has value to a gunsmith or someone who knows what to do with it to make bullets, but that makes it a good, not money.

Either an item has an intrinsic value (gold, silver, gems, cowrie shell) or it has no intrinsic value or material use (marked paper, iron dipped in vinegar) for it to be considered a barter item or currency (or both, as in a gold coin).

For the civilization that survives a nuclear holocaust in Wasteland, the concept of fiat money is intact. Wasteland 1 just left it as dollars. What those dollars looked like, whether or not they were paper or some other form, was left unsaid. It's really not important to know what a dollar consists of in the game, only that the dollar survives as a denomination and exists as a separate object distinct from materials and objects.

That's pretty much as far into the economy as I want to get.

[GodComplex]

I proposed the idea of a Ranger script backed by a cache of shell casings a few weeks back. We even debated live rounds being more viable with different values being assigned to steel vs brass cased. The biggest problems is that it's bulky and overly complex to use a dozen ought items as a currency.

[Marty Czosnyka]

This was already done in the metro game, and that game was a blast, so I wouldn't mind seeing something of the likes in this one.

[Mandemon]

I don't know. Currency, which also serves as a raw material for more valuable component doesn't seem good idea. I mean, that is essentially calling for people to reload their ammo whenever they can, to double their money.

Let's think it this way:

You get into firefight. After battle, you sweep all the shells.

Now, normally, you would get X amount of currency.

However, since you can reload these, you can suddenly go from non-game breaking X to game breaking 2X-4X amount of money suddenly.

I rather have something else, even rice in grams or heck, even bottle caps. Bottle caps at least make sense when you think about it. They have fixed value, were suitably rare, near impossible to manufacture and were backed by powerful organization with valuable material(water) to back it up.

What do the empty shell casings offer? They are often re-used to produce more valuable item, which once again loses it's value when used. Also, before anyone says "Who reloads their ammo" I do in F:NV. It saves money.

[alexlaird87]

Now, normally, you would get X amount of currency.

However, since you can reload these, you can suddenly go from non-game breaking X to game breaking 2X-4X amount of money suddenly.

There are plenty of ways to solve that; You could design the game so you only learn to reload for yourself later in the game once you are trying to save up for the more expensive items or you could make it a little time consuming (like mining gold in WoW) so that people can do it if they want but it is dull and not the best use of your time.

[Bungle]

Bottle caps at least make sense when you think about it. They have fixed value, were suitably rare, near impossible to manufacture and were backed by powerful organization with valuable material(water) to back it up.

What do the empty shell casings offer? They are often re-used to produce more valuable item, which once again loses it's value when used. Also, before anyone says "Who reloads their ammo" I do in F:NV. It saves money.

When people are walking around a nuclear wasteland they are only going to want to carry things with them which have a practical use. Bottle caps or any other currency without intrinsic value would just be dead weight for everyone...

[suz]

When people are walking around a nuclear wasteland they are only going to want to carry things with them which have a practical use. Bottle caps or any other currency without intrinsic value would just be dead weight for everyone...

'People' who are walking around wasteland would need the currency in use by places they visit. If bottlecaps are accepted in that place then bottlecaps are of practical use regardless of what's their perceived value.

[Bungle]

When people are walking around a nuclear wasteland they are only going to want to carry things with them which have a practical use. Bottle caps or any other currency without intrinsic value would just be dead weight for everyone...

'People' who are walking around wasteland would need the currency in use by places they visit. If bottlecaps are accepted in that place then bottlecaps are of practical use regardless of what's their perceived value.

your missing my point, which is that if survivors had to choose between a useless dead weight currency and one which also has a practical application, they would always choose the latter.

Ironically the wasteland does not allow for waste...