MOD ANNOUNCEMENT -- THE HOUR APPROACHES, FYI, AND CREDITS

[singularitymods]

Hello, Singularity. In a few short hours (midnight US Eastern--because we've kept you waiting long enough) gameplay will open on DW. At this point, the LJ communities will switch to moderated posting, and all Singularity posts should be to DW only. The LJ comms will remain as archives, but the vast majority of content has been imported to DW already, including comments. You may continue backtagging on LJ through the end of February, at which point we'll do one last comment import. (You can keep tagging after that, but we don't guarantee we'll import your comments after February 29th.)

If you want to switch a thread from LJ to DW, your best bet is to find the imported post via the tags page for the comm, linked in the sidebar, and start tagging with your DW account. Unless your partner has verified their OpenID, they won't get email for it, so you'll likely have to let them know OOC.

Before gameplay on DW opens, we're going to take the opportunity to remind people of a few details about the game, in-universe and out:

1. Sacrosanct is freakin' huge. A residential zone, on average, can support 17.5 million people, for a total carrying capacity in excess of 250 million. And this is comfortably, with plenty of green space and mixed-use districts, not "Manhattan living in each other's pockets"-style. Unless you know where they are, you get phenomenally lucky, or you have something like telepathy going for you, finding someone who doesn't want to be found is nearly impossible. "Meet me in R09" is like saying "meet me in Rhode Island."
   
   
2. Zones are self-contained, and the only way to move between them is via teleporter.
   
   
3. Teleporter respawn acts like a saved game--everything between stepping out of the teleporter and your respawn is lost. A respawned character will have no memory of their own death or any sensation of lost time, and will have to be filled in on what happened.
   
   
4. Speaking of deaths, the Deaths page is now for keeping track of mutations caused by teleporter respawn. Die all you want (within reason), but if you're giving someone a teleporter mutation, then you need to report it there. Easing up the requirements on that is part of our ongoing "make things simpler, or at least easier to understand" plan.
   
   
5. We have an AIM chat, thegravitywell. There have been tumbleweeds blowing through lately, but we'd like to try to get it in use again, since we direct people to it in our acceptance notices. It's certainly not mandatory, but some people prefer AIM to Plurk (and vice versa), so having a bunch of possible channels for OOC communication is a Good Thing.
   
   
6. The long-overdueawaited changes to the in-game economy (and thus the Job Board) are live! More detail below, but we've tried to add some flexibility to the system to account for various people's play styles and various characters' financial desires, from ranging "don't bother me" to "micromanager." This may require tweaking once we see it in action, because as any GM knows, no plan survives contact with the players. (We love you guys. ♥)

The New Economy

In-character, Hypatia has noticed that distinct communities have formed among the inhabitants of Sacrosanct, and that few if any visitors seem to be from cultures that do not use a monetary system, so to make things easier on her guests (or to throw a golden apple in their midst--or a little of both; it's hard to tell with her) she is introducing a currency system, called chits.

Out-of-character, adding money to the mix makes smaller transactions possible. In the old system, a single credit was worth a lot in terms of "buying power," and if you're trying to pay someone for watching your idiot friendshypothetical children for a couple hours, giving them a whole credit is a bit much. With money in the mix, it's considerably less all-or-nothing.

How it works is this: Work credits are now a measure of your character's housing and monthly allowance. Housing is as the old system, and allowance is work credits x 100 chits, so someone with 1 credit gets 100 chits a month, someone with 10 credits gets 1000, someone with 47 gets 4700, and so on. Anything but housing is paid for out of a character's allowance.

There is no out-of-character listing of prices, because that sounds an awful lot like work, but a rule of thumb for determining what something might cost is that the allowance will permit a character to afford the same things they would have had access to under the old, credits-only system. Someone at the low end of the range will be just able to cover those expenses, and someone at the high end will have chits left over at the end of the month. This means characters can economize in one area to live "above their means" in another, depending what's important to them. Characters will always have housing as part of their allowance, because keeping track of who didn't make rent this month also seems to strongly resemble work, and worrying about getting evicted for falling short is a bit too uncomfortably slice-of-life for our pretendy fun times, especially given the state of the real world economy.

We don't plan to scrutinize people's bank accounts, and we're trusting you to keep a character's expenditures realistic. Characters are free to set prices for their services, whether that's gun-for-hire (someone is probably going to undercut you--seriously, take a look around), bartender (you will never want for customers), therapist (a largely untapped and almost certainly lucrative market), or anything else people might be willing to pay for.

Working Hard or Hardly Working?

We're also taking much of the specificity out of the jobs system. On an IC basis, the job listings are still available on the network, and are as detailed as ever, but from here on out, OOC information about jobs will be limited to whether it's general, skilled, dangerous, or skilled + dangerous. General jobs pay the lowest, and skilled and dangerous ones pay the most. There will only be a certain number available per month, and one they're signed up for, they're gone. There is a limit of one job per player per month, and please let everyone get a crack at the board. These jobs do not require approval or have to be logged. [This is probably the part of the system that's going to require the most tweaking, so bear with us.]

However! We will allow players to suggest additional jobs if they would generate CR when performed. This means something like hosting a mixer on Hypatia's behalf, or a chemist and an engineer teaming up to repair a piece of drug-making equipment in a hospital. While we don't strictly require this always be new CR, if people are only ever doing jobs with canonmates/existing CR, that is Not Cool and defeating the spirit of the law, so branch out! CR jobs must be logged.

For people who don't much care about the in-game economy, we've created a list of one-time jobs that anyone should be able to perform, assuming they're not completely paranoid and prefer to live in a cabin lined with tinfoil in the woods. Taking these jobs will give characters a handful of credits and a steady allowance, allowing the player to ignore the economy, assuming they don't suddenly want gourmet food all the time. These specific jobs can only be performed once apiece, and don't need approval or logging.

Quid Pro Quo

As part of her new interest in matters economic, Hypatia is taking a closer look at the sources of people's wealth. Not that she didn't know who was robbing her blind before, but now she's displaying an interest. Characters with hacked credits are going to start getting visits, whether from Hypatia or one of the other NPCs, with "requests" that the character ignores at their own peril. The unspoken offer is this: do the job, and Hypatia will legitimize a handful of the counterfeit credits, while continuing to "overlook" the rest. Refuse the job, and characters may be looking at finding new housing arrangements. In the future, all credit hacking requests come with this risk attached, though smaller amounts of theft are less likely to draw Hypatia's attention than large ones.

In Conclusion

1. There's money now.
2. You get money and housing based on your work credits.
3. Jobs are less specific and divided into three categories, each with its own requirements.
4. Hypatia appears to have been watching Mafia movies.

One Last Thing, Placed Outside the Cut Where You Can't Miss It

Fill out the Taken form. This means you. [insert threatening emote here]

Comments

[relict]

lol "meet me in rhode island" I ENJOY THIS REFERENCE.

[theuserabides]

Rhode Island: tiny, but still hard to find people in if you don't at least specify a town. /grew up in NH

[scorpiowned]

the chits system looks like greek to me. idgi... i thought the majority of the votes were for not changing the credit system anyway, back when we had it?

[namesnotprowl]

It's really not all that strange, actually. If I get this wrong someone let me know, but from what I can tell the chits are basically functioning like normal paper money and coinage. They're to buy tangible items and/or services like paying the bartender or getting your roof fixed.

The credits always kind of had a really high value in the first place; if gave the handyman a credit for the second scenario, you could basically be giving him a house for fixing your roof (if it was the first credit he got).

So now with this system, you can pay the handyman without getting him a whole house for fixing the leak in your roof. If that makes sense.

[intercept]

yeah i remember that too...

i don't get this either weh.

[portaling]

So people who have credits right now...keep the credits but this renders them unusable? Or their credits are gone, to be replaced with this new money?

Also will the characters have this explained to them ICly, because Jade would probably freak out if she woke up and her virtual money was gone.

[portaling]

tl;dr I'm really confused and does this mean that people will be able to afford the insanely expensive stuff that Sacrosanct offers now? By only working a job a month?

[justamobster]

So chits basically work like a paid salary and credit number determines pay-grade? Am I making current sense of this?

[theuserabides]

Yep, that's the sum of it. Characters also get housing commensurate with credit level.

[lithp]

Oh I like this new system! I kind of want Sollux to get in trouble oops. 0u0

[arisen]

noooooooo whyyyy.................

[parasomnist]

so... if all my characters had at least one work credit, they now basically get 100 chits a month?
(I'm p sure they all did, they've been here long enough)


tl;dr -- Dave Strider (Fish) remains the richest person on Sacrosanct.

[heygotaminute]

Okay, so, this makes sense...mostly...I'm still confused but uh...anyway!

Uhm, is there a basic idea for how expensive living on the station actually is? If a person has one credit, are all their chits going to food or they'll starve? How about clothing? Furniture?

Most people seem to have a few credits. Is that enough to live comfortably, or will there be an actual need to get more now?

[slenderbot]

phone response ffff

Cost of living is still the same as it was before. The addition of chits just makes it easier to acquire wealth/items outside your credit bracket by say, gaining more currency by means of payment by other chars and such

[mcfussyfangs]

I like this! Are you getting a list of characters who've hacked shit? Also, what if a character hasn't hacked shit, but got credits from someone who did hack them?

/can't edit anymore ;-;

[cloverdaleboy]

Thank you. /guilty of forgetting zone self-containment

Additionally, can small player plots also be used as small jobs for credits/chits? If I want Scott to have a tiny player plot, but it is in the realm of doing something useful for the ship, can it gain him some sweet, sweet monies?

[scratchback]

I VOTE WE BREAK IN THE NEW MONEY SYSTEM WITH A SINGLES AUCTION.

[hammerhanded]

I WOULD LIKE TO PUT IN A VOTE THAT VIC DOESN'T GET TO SUGGEST ANYTHING ANYMORE

[doctoring]

I see the new Credit + Chit system as almost like a stock with monthly dividend yield. The amount you have determines how much you'll receive each month, and it makes small transactions easier. (I was actually wondering how people went shopping/barhopping...)

my only question is: are characters still allowed to trade credits? For instance if Watson the job of having someone nanny Holmes 24/7 was worth a full credit and all future cash flows from it, would he be able to pawn it off?

and lol tony

[scratchback]

Yep! Credits are still transferable between characters.

[hedgehogengine]

I am fond of this new system. I just need a couple things clarified right quick, and I hope I'm not makin' an ass of myself here.

1) As of this writing, jobs DON'T have to be approved and logged unless you're trying to go for more than one a month and you're doing one to foster new CR with another character?
2) Is playing out jobs optional in all cases, is it required if you're doing one that builds new CR?

[supernova1006]

So actually I like this new system, and I'm pretty excited for the new jobs board features. I have a couple of questions though, that are mostly unrelated to the new system and more to do with the Sacrosanct economy in general.

I was never really clear on what happens to characters who don't work at all. For instance, Camille. She has never taken a job for the station and basically just lives in her cafe, which she lol kind of stole in the first place. If you are in the 0 credit bracket, do you get any chits at all? Is there going to be new pressure to actually go out and get station related jobs? Can you use chits even if you have absolutely 0 credits?

Also, I know that it worked for Camille mostly because I formally requested it, but are characters allowed, in general, to essentially take over buildings? For example, Jin is thinking of getting himself a warehouse. Not that he would, but could he theoretically just break down the door of an abandoned warehouse and set up shop? If that is indeed illegal, what are the consequences?

What about theft? Is it possible to steal things from the Sacrosanct shops? If you can, is there some kind of escalating punishment system? Like, if you steal a loaf of bread, you get a drone shaking its robotic fist at you, but if you steal a particle accelerator you get Semley on your ass? (That last part could be really neat actually).

I ask mostly because, to my knowledge, a fair few people have essentially been handwaving how their characters have acquired items. I know I've been guilty of the same as well--which is part of the reason I'm excited for the new economy system, because if Camille can no longer just sort of...will ingredients into existence or whatever, she'll have to get credits in order to get them. Wow that was a stupidly long run-on sentence. What I mean is, this economy system provides new, interesting ways for people to explain how their characters acquire items, which is awesome. I'm just still wondering about what happens to 0 credit characters, and whether theft is possible and/or taken seriously.

[cloverdaleboy]

Nuh uh, my guy found stuff at the Junkyard...... >______>;;;

[twotailmechanic]

I like this new system. It's much easier to understand now.

[brbvirmire]

The new system makes sense to me.

Like Pen brought up though- are items from the Junkyard still up for grabs, or does Hypatia care about that now?

[arisen]

i like this!!! this is exciting.

[articletwelve]

Thank you guys for all of your hard work in getting us all set up over here ♥ Especially the new economy, I know that's all been a headache. /drapes on you all

[hybridharvester]

I still don't know how to get in to the AIM chat. The "new" AIM seems to make all chats invitation only.

[cloverdaleboy]

Right click your own name in AIM, choose "Buddy Chat" or "Invite to Chat", whichever for your version. At the bottom where is says Room: room1749729878389728712 or some generic number, delete that and replace with thegravitywell, and voila.

If you're not on your own list, go to File > New Buddy Chat, put your name in the big box, and thegravitywell in the room box and voila.

Re: Currency

[fuckinghubble]

Raimi is going to be thrilled.