In games like this (or any game for that matter), it can be pretty difficult to iron out a solid economy. FO series games have a slightly bigger burden, being a post-apoc game, the idea of struggling in one's material existence is more prominent. Regardless, I've decided to take a crack at a re-balance and would like input from the community.

I'm already thinking of things I could do. First, I could put a limit and weight on caps. I think the largest cap expense would be the 12,000 for the regen implant. So, unless anyone else has spent more than that for a single item, that seems like a good limit. Of course, you don't need to liquidate everything. You can stash an infinite amount of stuff in a safehouse. So, this is only a partial solution. I'm thinking of also making no container safe (what? you're the only person in the wastes immune to burglary?) and possibly creating containers (in appropriate locations) where you can store stuff, but you're taxed on the value of what you are storing (probably making you pay your tab every time you want to access it). Though I might not have enough skill with the GECK for the latter.

Another thing I considered is tweaking item values. Ammo is absurdly cheap, for instance. And, oddly enough, a 9mm round is worth as much as a tin can. However, I don't think that would solve the problem. The PC finds tons of stuff around the wasteland. Just taking out a small pack of bandits yields an arsenal. If prices go up, it would also apply to the things the PC sells as well. I could tweak the barter variables, making the economy favor the merchants. However, it would probably be a little unfair, not to mention bizarre, to have a system where a PC with 100 barter can trade a merchant two stims for one in return.

Yet another possibility is to lower the amount of stuff generated in containers or on NPCs, have any gear they carry be in shoddy condition, and maybe tweaking item values on top of it. This may be at the core of the economic imbalance. The PC doesn't really need merchants, as there's tons of stuff everywhere to loot. If one lowers the salvage content, PCs are getting less for "free" and therefore have to struggle more economically.

But that's what I'm thinking so far. Any thoughts?

"Absurdly, ammo is cheap"
They raised the value for ammo and weapon mods in the last balance patch.
I actually spend much money for the 6 ammo types I buy at Gunrunners.
I have to balance it out by selling Combat Armor and other useless stuff. They shouldn't let me just pick up free Combat Armor worth 4600 caps at "Maintain" CND, but sure I don't mind getting free 4600 caps.

What about just lowering the selling value of most items, so instead of selling a 10mm SMG for a median price of, say, 2500 caps, it would only sell for maybe 500. It would take a lot longer to afford all your implants, and fully modding all of your weaps would be something you would have to plan and scrimp for, and likely not complete till well into your 20's. Gambling would have to be nerfed so you can't abuse high luck stats to rip off the casinos- I'd strip any affect the luck stat has completely out of the gambling engine. Make it so if you want to win enough to live life high on the hog, you gotta spend a lot of time and actually be GOOD at it. Otherwise, entertainment only. And make it so that you have to pay daily rent on any place you use to make your base at- Novac, the 38, or even a random shack. Priced accordingly, of course. The better the digs, the more caps a day. These can be deducted automatically from your wallet, so you don't have to remember. But if you neglect the rent for more than a week, you come back to find ALL your stuff scattered outside, on the ground... lol! And the remote hideouts, the shacks and caves out in the middle of nowhere... you could have a 'protection' fee you'd have to pay to the controlling faction of that area... NCR, Legion, raiders, whoever. If you didn't keep paid up, they'd come and loot all your stuff and you couldn't use it anymore.

There, how's that for a whole bunch of half-baked ideas?

I'd find items, get over 100k caps, and melt them all at New Vegas Steel and inflate the value of the Cap

Give caps weight, like 0.001lb.

You are suppose to get rich via casino.

If you don't farm for weapon traffic you wouldn't have a steady income of caps.

It's very funny seeing as I rely very little on farming, I just have a high barter skill.

weight on caps has nothing to do with economy

If caps have some weight then you wouldn't see people running around with 100k caps. Even though the total caps value are the same, you would be limited for how much you can spend/earn.

Here's the issue, if the protagonist of the video game struggles to get by, despite being one of the most powerful warriors in the wasteland. Then all the regular folk must be dead. Because the main character is a powerful and highly skilled in the end there going to become wealthy, unless your playing a communist video game.

Reducing income could be done as follows.
Broken equipment is broken forever it can at best be used for minor repairs on another piece of armor, and repairs require a workbench. Slain enemies might be found with there armor already broken. As repairs require a workbench you can't combine a dozen suits of armor into a few fully repairs sutis in the field.

Increasing the gap between selling salvage and buying, say like this.

Barter_Sell % Buy %
00____30 ____155
10____35 ____151
20____39 ____146
40____48 ____137
60____57 ____128
80____66 ____119
100___75 ____110


Agreed its just annoying to have to stash your money before going shopping. It actually make legion money the currency of choice because it worth so much. And if someone is trading in very expensive items there would be a high value currency for trading those items.
The game already provides one, legion money.



A single Aureus is worth 100 caps, so 30,000 caps can be reduced to a mere 300 Aureus. But how much would an Aureus weigh? Julius Caesar standardized the weight of the Aureus to 8 grams. We can probably assume the Caeser in New Vegas uses a similar standard. 300 Aureus would thus weigh only five pounds.

Not only do I not farm, I tend to avoid fights because I'm not putting any points into weapon skills. There's just stuff...everywhere.



This is a really good idea. I'm going to look into this. Though, I don't think there's a way to break their armor on death, which means they would be wearing broken armor for the fight, which means they would effectively be wearing no armor, making fights much easier.



Yeah, I've considered this, which is why I'm leaning towards making all containers unsafe (therefore, no reliable stash). Also, one could easily tweak the value of Legion currency so it is not so far out of proportion with its weight.

Field repair should still be possible, maybe 25~50% less than a workbench throughout repair?

Armour condition found on dead ain't good in NV, not to mention poor cap/lbs.


You see, regular saluaging ain't the bank breaker, weapon is. I say reduce the caps vendor holds if you really want to cap the maximum caps income.


I can agree with this, it provide more footing for "proper" currency.

I dont give a [censored] about that i would just going around shooting everybody LOL

Having all containers unsafe would just piss people off, Its also not very realistic either. So the container in my locked house shrounded by bottlecap mines gets robbed automatically? Or would you make relocking your house impossible despite possessing the key. (its not necessary in the normal game as people don't rob your house)) What about the storage locker in the cave full of Yao-gaui? why am I the only one being robbed and not vendors and every day folk. Why does that container have equipment in it for fifty years until I come along but after that it can't stay stocked for 3 days?

Even worse, should someone be allowed to rob my house containers despite me leaving a companion to guard the place?

If there are items that cost thousands of caps, and caps have encumbrance there would be a higher value currency. The Economy would demand it. Consider this. NCR money despite the lower value per dollar would be even lighter, a single $100 NCR bill would probably weigh about 1 gram 75,000 NCR dollars in ($100 dollar bills) would weigh a pound and a half and be worth 30,000caps. So would you devalue NCR money even more?

Probably the single biggest impact on the economy is respawning loot, since no matter how low you reduce its value or how hard you make it to obtain, the mere fact there is an infinite amount of it means the economy will break, period.

Set those NPCs that currently respawn to not do so, and you both remove a massive amount of loot from the system and actually get to see an area you have cleared stay that way. By making the amount of high-end loot strictly finite you cap the total amount of cash value that the player will pump into the economy, and can then use that total to determine the values of said high-end loot in order to stabilize the system.

That's only part of the problem, though. If one picks up literally everything not nailed down, even the stuff only worth 1-2 caps, and sells it, the sheer volume will result in it adding up to hundreds or thousands of caps. For example: my current character does exactly this, and he traded a huge amount of stuff with values from 1-5 caps for over 3000 caps' worth of ammo and crafting supplies. He does have 100 Barter, but even if he hadn't put any points into it he still would have been able to get at least half of what he actually got in trade value. Now, most people will not pick up anything worth less than 5 caps, since there's generally no reason to unless it's crafting supplies, but even with a 5-cap minimum, there's still a huge amount of stuff out there to collect and trade in. Reducing the amount of this stuff is a massive task, however, because some of it is pre-placed in the various interiors, some is in leveled lists tied to various containers, some is in vendor lists, and some is in death item lists, all of which would have to be edited in order to reduce quantities while still leaving the stuff for the crafting systems available. Of these, the easiest ones to edit are the vendors, and even then you have to do quite a bit of list inspection in order to make sure you're changing the right ones.

There would still be respawning plants and animals, however the items you can make from them rarely exceed 50 caps (the highest I know of is 250 for Tanned Green Gecko Hides) so you'd need an ungodly quantity of the stuff to really do any damage to the economy. Odds are you're going to be drinking or eating a fair amount of it anyway, thus reducing the supply.

You can also tinker with the Barter formula to some extent, as a form of global price control. There are four values in the GECK under Gameplay--->Settings that affect selling and buying prices, two for each; adjusting these set the percentage multipliers used in the formula for determining said prices. The default values for these are set such that the best you get is 90% of an item's value when selling; some vendors, though, offer a 'discount' that enables you to sell at full value instead. If you want to play around with these, be advised that even small changes can cause large overall shifts in value, especially if you change both sides at once (raising one side by 5% and lowering the other by the same amount is a net 10% shift, for example); proceed with caution.

Oh yes having a finite number of enemies would really improve the gaming experience.... are you crazy?

It's an interesting exercise, but when it comes down to it, the economic side of the game is the least interesting part, and merely a means of buying stuff along the way while you're going about the rest of your business. Most of the things you could do to try to tinker with the cap flow, would just mess up other (more important) aspects of the game and make them more annoying and difficult, as some of the previous posts have so accurately explained.

I see your point, but disagree with your argument against it. Just as the PC can disarm mines, pick locks, and sneak behind people's backs, so can other characters in the wastes. What's unrealistic is being able to store an entire arsenal in a nightstand. If there was a way to limit capacity on containers, then things might be a bit more reasonable. And, I don't think I would make all containers unsafe. I was just thinking out loud. I would be more likely to leave only the safehouse containers safe, and everything else is up for grabs, but even then, something would have to be done to limit storage space. However, this is only a secondary problem for me. That is, a post-apoc nomadic survivor shouldn't have this much bling to begin with.



Probably not. On second thought, tweaking values could cause more problems than it would solve. I think it would be more effective to establish a stack limit on all currency items, not just caps. And/Or, make higher denominations of currency much rarer than the lower denominations.



Agreed. I have to do something about the respawning of junk, though NPCs would have to respawn. Otherwise, the wastes would get real quiet, real fast.



I should mention that I'm designing this for hardcoe players. It might not be worth the handful of caps to make a trip somewhere just to clean out all the respawning empty whiskey bottles. On top of that, I'm tempted to lower to value of junk even further. I don't know if you can do decimal quantities for item values in the GECK, but if not, I could always go with a big fat zero.



Without a doubt. This alone has me almost tempted to not even bother. But, if that's what it takes to have a grittier economy in a FO game, then that's what it takes.



Yeah, I'm wary about doing anything with this. It's not the market that's breaking the economy, it's the material goods. I'd rather fix the problem itself than use another game feature as a band-aid for the problem.



Yeah, I see the problem there. I would definitely cut out respawning loot, but not respawning NPCs.



For most games, I agree. But this is a post-apoc game. Managing one's survival and material existence should be an element, and an interesting one at that. I could see how some gamers would think that economics are a waste of time (and vanilla is good for that kind of gamer). But, for others, we some some depth in that department.

Crazy? Not in the slightest.

Having an infinite number of enemies doesn't improve the gaming experience either; all it does is provide fodder to grind for XP and loot, neither of which are really needed with the amount of same that can be gotten from quests, many of which involve either only a little combat or none whatsoever. I don't ever expect them to actually implement my idea, but it's by far the most effective way to cap the endless flood of top-end gear.

EDIT:


The problem here is that the respawning NPCs are the majority source of said respawning loot, since it's their weapons and armor. Were it possible to separate the two that would be the best of both sides, but given the way spawning lists and NPC equipment lists work I'm not sure that's doable.

Go to a casino buy chips with caps, then turn around and exchange the caps for legion money or NCR dollars.

On the subject of storage space in a container, remember most of the stuff players keep for that collectors itch, even if I don't plan to use certain items I may keep them in a locker for the collector value.

but how can you fairly determine what occurs when the PC isn't around. How does the NPC get passed teh companion? If your using a non-standard house how did they even find it? A good example is the scavanger's platform its not only infested with lakelurks but out in Lake Mead.

Simple answer: grant less caps for selling items.

Why am i able to pay for a LMG with pre-war money anyway?

Have you checked the existing economy mods? Here's one I found; http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34890

Sniped from the description:

- Valuable items appear less often in common containers, more junk. Finding valuable and useful items should be less likely, since scavengers have likely searched through most areas.
- most containers have a 3% chance for medium value loot (ammo, cigs, caps, tools, chems, etc.)
- many containers have a 1% chance for rare loot (weapon, ammo, etc.)
- Trash containers are actually filled with worthless trash now (except for small chance for rare loot)
- new leveled lists for

- Changed item weights:
*bottled liquid 1.0 -> .25
*meds 0.0 -> 0.01+
*packaged food 1.0 -> 0.2 avg
*animal meat 1.0 -> 0.4 avg
*fruit 1.0 - 0.15 avg

I don't know about separating the two, but if NPCs are carrying shoddy gear and very little ammo, and the values are raised for ammo, it might balance itself out once you consider the ammo and potential stimpacks spent on the fight.



I was thinking that a bigger problem would be to buy chips, period. I can't find the actual item in the GECK. I think it's just some abstract stat. I'm also not aware if there is a chip maximum. So, NV could basically be a bank for the player. Just keep everything as chips, and withdraw what you need when you need it. This would need to be fixed as well.



Quite simply, you're not the only person wandering/exploring the wastelands. And NPCs can get past the companions the same way you get past NPCs.



Yeah, unfortunately it changes a ton of other gameplay aspects in ways that I wouldn't. Even split into the two files, they tweak a lot with healing.

I think having more enemies would require the need for ammo...Making you use more of it....therefore, not being able to sell as much.
I hate the idea about the Broken Armor being broke permanently.
It's a game, and unique armors are hard to come by and worn like a badge of honor. It'd svck to not be able to use them anymore once they broke.