The Currency of RimWorld, Should there be "money?"

[rh]

On one hand I think there shouldn't be money but just trading for goods and those goods have wildly varying value depending on the sort of trade ship. Like, good luck buying high tech supplies with hydoponically grown tomatoes.

Without changing the sytem too much the various types of vessels could change their pricing scheme so that traders who offer high tier goods demand a price where you can't just throw 1k potatoes at them. Idle games like cookie clicker use arithmetics where it would take years or decades if you don't upgrade your shit to higher tiers, you know where I'm getting at?

On the other hand mankind has been using money for thousands of years and I don't think that will completely regress even in times of space travel.

[Thubin]

On the other hand mankind has been using money for thousands of years and I don't think that will completely regress even in times of space travel.

Yet many cultures even today use bartering either as their sole source of "currency" or as a significant portion of it. Even in the industiral/post-industrial world you find bartering a legitimate form of payment. Obviously not on as large a scale, but it's alive and well.

[warmwaffles]

like taking all your guns for a really really high price.

Oh this could be a fun idea. Trade all your guns and the person you traded them with raids you immediately, however if they know you didn't trade all of your weapons then they probably won't raid you.

So many possibilities with this.

[Thubin]

Oh this could be a fun idea. Trade all your guns and the person you traded them with raids you immediately, however if they know you didn't trade all of your weapons then they probably won't raid you.

So many possibilities with this.

Oh how devilishly evil! I really like that idea!! :-)

[Orch]

I think that a system similar to Dwarf Fortress would be cool, where you can use ores and resources to craft items which can then be traded on for anything important. Higher levels of crafting could mean better quality items to be traded for more items

[warmwaffles]

I think that a system similar to Dwarf Fortress would be cool, where you can use ores and resources to craft items which can then be traded on for anything important. Higher levels of crafting could mean better quality items to be traded for more items

Barter system is definitely a good currency in a place with no real authoritative government other than your own colony.

[Bedshaped]

In the setting of RimWorld there is no Faster Than Light (FTL) travel, so it can take decades to travel to even a "close" star system. In that time what guarantee would colonist have that their money would be worth anything when they get there, or that any traders would accept it as tender?

Within the principles of relativity, travelling to a distant star might take a few decades to the outside world but the person inside the spacecraft could only experience a few weeks passing if you travelled approaching the speed of light.

So travelling to a distant star isn't that big of a risk to someone if your ship can travel very close to c! That is, unless you don't want your friends and family back home being a few decades or hundred years older when you get back.

Since there is no strong central government, a fiat currency doesn't really make sense in this context. When stockpiles are working better I'm going to remove the arbitrary money currency and replace it with fungible, granular commodities like gold and silver (which may still have uses of their own).

How about something futuristic and fictional like Dilithium from Star Trek?

[Gabriel_Braun]

Superlurker finally comes out into the open 

Anyway, He3 would be a better bet than dilithium or anything arbitrary...   He3 is going to be a very precious resource to any space faring culture given its use in fusion drives (ala project Daedalus) and usefully mechanic-wise impossible to find on bioactive worlds.  It's never going to lose value to a non-FTL species and is essentially useless to anyone but starship crews.  Still, using it as a currency makes perfect sense and also adds inflation of its own depending on how far from any given source the trade takes place

[GC13]

A quibble: that's not "true" inflation, that's the effect of a dwindling supply versus a constant demand. Price goes up, it's true, but for a different reason.

Wouldn't any kind of fuel be a bit... Bulky for major transactions though? I mean, sure, you could siphon a bit off of a trader's supply to even out a transaction and have a very safe bet that the next trader would accept it as payment, but it's really more of a good than a currency.