Mod suggestion - alternative currencies

[Prologue]

In Rimworld you can find technologies ranging from very primitive all the way to super advanced. But for some reason no one invented paper currency or blockchains yet. I feel like this needs to change!

First of all I think there should be 3 different types of currency:
Physical:  gold / silver / diamonds
Paper / fiat: Dollars / Euro's / Rimbucks
Digital / crypto: Bitcoin / Rimcoin

The main difference in these different currency types will be the weight / value ratio. The thing about Physical currency's is that they are quite heavy to carry around. Paper currency is a lot lighter so you can carry more of it. And Digital currency's have no or close to no weight restrictions.

For example: you're sending out a small trade caravan, you could perhaps take 10k+ worth in silver and gold with you but not 100k+, you could perhaps take 100k+ in paper currency, but not 10M+ while you could take (almost) any amount in digital currency with you.

The way I see digital currency's being added is by adding 'cred sticks' or 'ledger' that can be used to store your Bitcoins / Rimcoins. These would be small and lightweight items that can hold any number of value. Having more than one of these items allows you to divide your digital currency among them. These items can be traded as physical item or you can make a transaction to another similar device with the balance that is stored on them.

Now you might think while reading this that Digital currency's would be OP compared to the other options, but that does not have to be that way. One way to counter this would be to make paper and digital currency's more fragile than the physical ones, for example paper might burn away quite fast wile gold and silver are not easily affected by fire. Other risk factors could be added in, for example scenario's where your 'cred sticks' or 'ledger' device might break / gets hacked / you lose your private key, just to name some options.

Also an interesting aspect that could be added to this system is that different factions might prefer some payment methods more than others. Technologically advanced factions might prefer digital currency's more and tribal factions might prefer physical currency's more.

[lunaticneko]

Regarding limitations, I think these would also work:

Physical: All factions honor gold and silver. Native to the main game, the price of gold should be permanent or be less fluctuating.

Paper: Scrips may be based on gold or silver currency. Like real-world equivalents, they can also be cashed at the issuer for the backed metal (except the Imperial money, which is fiat). Each faction honors their own and their allies' scrips at face value. Neutral factions are at their discretion ("sometimes"). Hostile factions never honor each other's scrips. All factions honor the Empire's scrips, regardless of stance. However, scrips are not honored or issued by any tribes. All non-tribal factions *tend to* pay you or offer tender in their own scrips (The Empire: almost always). If a faction is completely wiped out of the map, all of the faction's scrips become worthless.

Cryptocurrency: Only Industrial or above factions may honor crypto. Trade ships always honor crypto, and they do not require beacons to send. To access the full amount of cryptocurrency, at least one functioning comms terminal is required at one of your colonies to store and access the wallet. Use of crypto increases mechanoid attack risks due to extra "heat" generated from frequent transactions. If you kill someone and they drop hardware wallets, you must salvage/hack them using high-tech research bench to access the money inside. This is an expensive operation which may or may not succeed.

[Prologue]

the price of gold should be permanent or be less fluctuating.

In my proposal I assume fixed values for each currency, which are only changed by a modifier on for each faction, based on how willingly they are to trade for any currency.

[LWM]

Who is going to trust a blockchain that's based on servers that might not be there in 500 years when you come by next?

(Alternately, for a real-world example, how much are your soviet rubles worth now?)

[Canute]

And some tribes want to be paid in dead or living human meat ? :-)

[Prologue]

Who is going to trust a blockchain that's based on servers that might not be there in 500 years when you come by next?

I doubt you understand how blockchains work, please consider doing some research before posting such comment about the subject.

[Prologue]

And some tribes want to be paid in dead or living human meat ? :-)

Well, adding in any other form of payment is always an option. Shells might be an other option for tribes.

[LWM]

Who is going to trust a blockchain that's based on servers that might not be there in 500 years when you come by next?

I doubt you understand how blockchains work, please consider doing some research before posting such comment about the subject.

Or are you going to accept payment in blockchain data that you have to hold onto for 500 years in the hope they'll recognize YOUR chains when you come back?

[Prologue]

Who even said anything about 500 years bro? Do you expect human civilization to still be there if you leave earth for 500 years? Who knows? I think you are asking the wrong questions.

[Homez]

Will our RW colonies be minting their own cash and developing their own crypto-currencies, or will they be tying into existing, inter-planetary systems? LWM's point is a valid one if the RW colony is minting its own cash and developing its own crypto-currency, but it's not as valid if the colony would be tying into an existing system.

If my colony becomes a major economic power and reaches the point of developing crypto-currency, you'd expect allies and such to accept and trade in this currency, but to LWM's point, a passing starship almost certainly would not accept our currency. It took that ship 25 years to get to the RW, will take it 25 years to get back to Earth, then another 25 years to get back to the RW. Considering that the currency is backed by my colony's gold/political power/military power/whatever, it will become worthless when the colony vanishes. To the merchant in the starship, the only payment that makes sense is silver, gold, or physical merchandise, the value of which does not depend on the continued existence of the colony.

For a great case-study in the development of a questionable crypto-currency by a volatile political/economic entity, check out the Venezuelan Petro:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petro_(cryptocurrency)

[Prologue]

To be clear the Idea I proposed assumes these currency's already exist in the world and are not created by the colony. Which makes the statement "To the merchant in the starship, the only payment that makes sense is silver, gold, or physical merchandise, the value of which does not depend on the continued existence of the colony." Irrelevant. No the blockchain is not operated by the colony. And even if they did invent it, it could not be run by the colony alone since it needs a decentralized network by definition. (A blockchain operated by a singular entity is just a normal data base and can not be used as a trust less payment platform).

[LWM]

Who even said anything about 500 years bro? Do you expect human civilization to still be there if you leave earth for 500 years? Who knows? I think you are asking the wrong questions.

Ah.  I was thinking in terms of trade ships &c - you're thinking more of a planetary economy of the here and now?  Yeah, okay, in that sort of case, it does make a bit of sense!

Altho even in future worlds like firefly, they apparently use solid coins for money. So I'd want to play this on a world where I could check the weather satellites' data, too!

[Prologue]

As far as I'm aware most of the actual game play of Rimworld happens on the same planet, so yes I assumed a planetary economy.

I guess some mods may allow you to play with more than one planet? Even than you're making assumptions about the speed of interplanetary travel with technology that we currently have no understanding of.

[LWM]

The canonical "Lore" is that there is not FTL travel - all travel between systems is sub-light-speed with people in cryptosleep.  Travel between planets is also slow and probably also involves cryptosleep for many of them.

So a planetary economy seems like the biggest you could have?  But there are civil outlander unions who could easily support a currency, if they had a sufficiently robust communication system.  That's why satellites immediately jumped to my mind!

(My original objection has been happily satisfied, by the way)

[Prologue]

So a planetary economy seems like the biggest you could have?

A currency could be used on more than one planet, but if you assume long travel times between the planets the exchange rate would be different.

A blockchain currency would however not work between multiple planets unless you can find a way to send information back and forward without creating too much of a delay.