I really want things to spend lots of cash on.

Invest in stores. -- Think oblivion. Idea would be if you have barter of 70+ you can invest in a store. This would give them more cash to buy your goods. If possible, perhaps increase the amount of ammo and etc they have for sale.

Bank your cash! Gain a flat percentage rate on your stored cash. It'd be a neat place for others to stage bad things to happen to your cash. (market crash? Bank robbers?)

Hire mercs. -- mercs, loyal to you patrol trading routes. Caravans can pay a "tax" for protection. Chance at mercs dying randomly every day or if your around and see them die you will have to hire more, Could extend this to protecting towns and etc. Perhaps lower their mortality rate by buying them various weapon/armor packages. (Think text dialog, 10k spawns a single merc with combat armor, etc etc.)

I think what the game needs is a Real Time Pit Boss or something like that - renovate the Lucky 38 and turn it into a working casino.

That'd be neat. You could convince House to open the casino floor with a Speech check, or kill him and get Yes Man to do it.

It'd make a good DLC, I think, especially if it was wrapped up with some sort of Broken Steel style extension of the main quest line.

I am curious about how difficult it'd be to actually make. Wouldnt it be a copy paste of gaming tables that already exist? Create a new vendor to purchase chips (assuming not hard coded). I am guessing the real difficulty would come with how to balance it.

Obscene starting costs, variable winnings with potential losses (Other casinos sending in people to bust your bank). Setting your winning limits and casino rewards. Higher limit, more potential income, more potential for catastrophic loss.

Better rewards(for people with a winning streak) - reduced earnings, potential for mitigating losses (Idea being persons get drunk or spend the night at the casino and they "re-invest" their winnings.

Hiring of guards -- Heavy fire power -- low chance at burglary, lower earnings from scared off customers -- Or concealed/hidden weaponry -- no negative earning impact, low-medium chance at getting robbed. No guards - Highly increased chance at robbery, chance at getting mugged when visiting your own casino.

All of the above options have a starting cost as well. And some may not be available depending on your faction level. NCR fame low? No hiring off duty marines as bounchers. Legion fame low? No roman casino motif.


On another note, how about an orphanage? After all the people my character has killed I am sure one is needed

The balance or challenge would have to come from subtracting your upkeep costs from your income. The mod would have to have some way of determining how popular the casino is based on what you've invested in and maybe some random assumptions about how popular the other casinos on the strip are, and base your income on that. Things like staff would have costs associated with them - using robots for everything would have a high startup cost, low maintenance cost, but be relatively unpopular, versus regular waiters/dealers/bartenders/etc or even an entire casino staffed like Hooters. There'd also have to be some penalties for not spending money on things unrelated to popularity, like security. And the option to take some things into your own hands, like tracking down the big winners/possible cheats and dealing with them yourself, or even cooking if you have a high survival skill. It could get really sophisticated, which is sort of why I'd like to see it as a DLC (though it would be a pretty fun project to work on).

One thing to consider: Your suggestions for "things to spend money on" seem to primarily involve investments that--one presumes--will simply provide you with even more caps Even hiring mercenaries to protect merchants implies the merchants will be paying for the service ^^;; They're not bad ideas by any means, but they don't really seem to address the issue of having too much money

Too much caps? Give em all to the tip-giving ghoul in freeside, or the really ugly ghoul struggling in debt...takes a while to press "sure another hint" 20 000 times though.

Yeah, I feel ya there.

Enough so that many of the mod ideas I've been tossing around, all include one form of a "money sink" or another... The mod I'm working on right now will provide things to spend about 40,000 caps on (possibly more like 60,000 caps with a later version)... with any luck I'll have a beta of it available next weekend.