I thought her cash level would go back to default levels after a while, probably when her inventory would reset. I never really paid attention to this. I would notice that if I just bought a bunch of stuff she would have lots of cash, but that only makes sense. I would also notice that she would have the default amount of money if I did not visit her for a while. But that could have been a different character too. As I said, I never paid too much attention to this.

What I didn't like though was that if you spent a lot at a shop.. Like at Moira's.. buying all the houseware stuff and themes.. If you didn't have something to immediately trade her for the caps back the money will in a few days just disappear yet her inventory won't get any better.

It was a hypothetical situation, not a real one. I used her as an example because she was the first one I thought of.

I think this all might have just been a misconception :mellow:

an easy way around this if buying/selling really does affect total cap reserves, would be to use your items for direct bartering. Selling a gun you just looted? Buy ammo to balance its price. Want that new set of armor? Go to your stockpile of loot and trade enough stuff to get it. Find an expensive set of armor you don't need, and also want a new weapon mod? Sell the armor, and at the same time buy the mod as well as stims, chems, and ammo to balance out the price.

If you're playing hardcoe you can stockpile your surplus stuff nearby so when you need it instead of purchasing it you can just grab it from your stash.

So basically treating every item like its own currency will stop the inflation of local economies, since no money will change hands, and their stock will remain of equal value without depleting their cap reserves.

That's exactly what I did with Energy Weapon ammo in Fallout 1, 2, and 3. Worked well too. I'd always trade all my worthless stuff first, it was always cool when I could turn forks and plates and other such trash into a stimpak or something.

I always just used caps for what i couldnt cover with the loot i was selling for more tools to get more loot i mean whats the problem?

So, let me get this straight...a realistic economy is game breaking? Really? I don't know if you follow the mod scene for FO3 but the demand for realism mods is huge, gigantic! I'm not a realism fanatic myself, I prefer fun over realism in a game any day, but I fail to see how an economy that makes sense is gamebreaking.

Besides, if you're getting the PC version, this would take maybe ten minutes to alter through a mod, and I'm sure that mod will come out very quickly if this turns out to be true, I may even make it myself if I'm not busy with other stuff.

It shouldn't recharge, IMO. All I ever did in FO3 was get my items repaired, buy themes/house items and buy recon armor to repair my stealth suit. So I'd come back with a ton of swag, repair and buy what I needed then sell off all my swag. So I pretty much turned my loot into money that I used for up keep.

Oblivion had a wierd way with Merchants, they didn't have a cash pool they had a cash maximum on a single sale. For example they could have 50,800,1200 etc and what that essentialy meant is that whatever you sold them they would never be willing to pay more then that per sale....but you could sell as many items as you wanted individualy for that price.

Fallout 3 worked better but I actually liked Fallout 1 & 2 bartering because it felt more wasteland, less people valued currency but everyone valued item traidng.

When it comes to Vendors running out of cash temporarily it makes sense. Just imagine when you walk away for a bit some other wanderer turns up and buys some stuff and the next time you visit they have that money. It works for me because it makes me believe the trader dosn't just buy and sell to me.

So the economy is similar to Fo3? So in about a few hours play you would be rich beyond wonders?

I was never that rich after a few hours. Maybe after 20+ hours but I wouldn't call that a few.....

Hopefully. If you want to be rich then you can be. If you don't want to be, you can loot less or just never sell your items. I barely sold a thing in FO3, but still ended up rich beyond wonders. Still, this is coming from a guy who'd loot anything of 5 value or more, often taking multiple trips in a dungeon to loot everything. Hell, sometimes I'd walk all the way back into the deepest depths of a dungeon just to get 3 Fission Batteries and a packet of Sugar Bombs. :shrug:

Any system is better than Oblivion's "sell everything to one person, but only one item at a time" crap. Mind you, that would kill the barter system in Fallout games. I'm actually quite happy with the traders not having huge amounts of money, because in Fallout you could always buy ammo from them to negate the difference.

Definitely. Especially with the whole 'You can't sell me an item for over 1000 gold, but you can sell me an infinite amount of items for 999 gold' thing.

Morrowind's/Fallout 3's system is the way to go. If they don't want the player character to become very rich quickly, they should make the merchants pay you less for items and sell items for more, making the barter skill more important. Not by using an Oblivion style gold limit, or having merchants with limited caps that never regenerate.

This IS what I was talking about, and what I don't want. Im only bringing this topic back to life just to point this out. since most people did not read my op carefully enough to understand that I DO realize that merchant cash in previous fallout games comes back to their normal amount after a couple of days.

What I DONT want is a dynamic merchant economy, because it would mean that eventually they would have lower and lower total cash (even after it regenerates ie. merchant had 1000 caps, sell bunch of crap till its 0, come back a few days later when its regenerated and its only 200 caps)

I don't care if its realistic, since when does reality have any thing to do with Rpgs. Either way, this topic was dead but I had to bring it back just once so that I could make this point. sorry.