I decided to make the separate thread as its kinda long to be discussed as a reply to existing.
Currency system
A. Brief
This system allows every guild to mint common or own coins from copper, silver and gold.
It leaves some space for the forgery, embargo and ore-refining mechanics to be implemented later or can work as-is.
System bases on many craft-branches to be involved and makes the input threshold high intentionally.
*no changes in skill tree to introduce this ideas
B. Coins
Stackable up to 100 for easy calculations.
1. Copper penny / pennies - from copper ore. Barely worth the ore itself, no fixed exchange ratio. For common usage by plebs.
Disadvantages:
- heavy to carry in bulk.
- poor monument feed value,
Advantages:
- low value for flexible pricing and easy everyday operations in early game
- no precious prospecting needed
- no guild-brand available for those coins as peasants don't have to know politics and would not recognize any uncommon marks
2. Silver coin / coins - from silver ore. Basic traders currency. No fixed exchange ratio. Recyclable to silver lumps (10 coins per lump ?).
Disadvantages:
- involves precious prospecting
- uses silver ore you might want to use for v-steel / jewelry
Advantages:
- good monument value (~= silver ring made from same ore amount)
- can be guild-branded
3. Gold ducat / ducats - from gold ore. Currency for investment / savings purposes and guild/late-game trades. No fixed exchange ratio. Recyclable.
Disadvantages:
- Rather useless for low-mid-class
Advantages:
- can be guild-branded
- high monument feed value ( > gold jewelry made from the same ammount of ore)
- good value to weight ratio
Idea 1: Gold coins may be required for the top monument
C. Branding
Silver and gold coins can be branded by the guild in the minting process.
Pros:
- branded coins arent fake/counterfeit (to do: coin forgery / counterfeit mechanism)
- guild reputation
Cons:
- branded coins may become unacceptable when some guild/alliance declare embargo on the other one. Its still up to the players if they will be using the "banned" currency or not.
Idea 2: coin-collection decorative item made from 5-10 branded coins from different guilds
D. Law, crime, legal stuff
Idea 3: final coin minting without the "certificate" causes (100% - luck factor per action) the alignment loss same to other crimes. "Certificte" (inventory item, to be bought for GF ingame currency, require top monument? to be discussed)
Idea 4: fake coins. Silver/gold coins can be counterfeit by using less ore. Fake coin got chance to be discovered when put in barter window (ANY trading window other than "barrel-trade"). Once discovered ... described later in section X
E. Preprocessed items for coin making
Copper/silver/gold Planchet - metal disc made from proper amount of adequate ore/lump
Reduced silver/gold planchet - for fake coins, see section X
Skill: smelting
Tool: coin matrix/coffin - not reusable to make the process less profitable without full load (no sense to craft single coins)
May require separate tool for silver/copper/gold discs just to make life harder.
Coffin/matrix should involve some bones/mortar/alchemy stuff ... to make life harder
F. The final coinmaking:
F1. Coin dies (separate for copper, silver and gold coins)
Skill: jewelry
Tool: jewelry toolkit
Ingredients:
- iron, steel, v-steel (determines quality -> durability of dies)
- handles
- glass?
#this item shoul wear out pretty fast to make the quality matter here
F2. Guild branded coin dies (separate for copper, silver and gold coins)
Skill: jewelry + authority
Tool: jewelry toolkit
Ingredients:
- iron, steel, v-steel (determines quality -> durability of dies)
- handles
- diamond (reusable?)
F3. Cold hammering
Building: mint, requires architecture
Skill: forging
Tool: blacksmith hammer, coin dies/Guild branded coin dies
Ingredients:
Copper/silver/gold Planchet or
Reduced silver/gold planchet (unsuitable for guild branded coins)
X. Counterfeiting mechanics + effects
X1. Production and usage
Fake coins are made of reduced silver/gold planchettes and u cannot make guild branded fake coins.
Fake coin is only recognizable for 30 seconds after crafting or being discovered. After this time it becomes same item as any other coin but the fake state doesnt dissapear in DB.
U can always keep fake coins in separate container but they look like legit ones.
X2. Discovering forgery
Fun part begins here:
After stacking with other coins the coin stack internally holds info "there are X fake coins inside" without ANY visual effects. This state randomly follows the stacks when u separate it. So no easy way to find fake coin in the stack
U can ALWAYS discover the fake state of the coin or the coin-stack with Jewelry skill (level?) -> context menu -> investigate.
If u put fake coin or coinstack with any fake coins inside to the barter window (any trading window) there is a chance it will be discovered. This chance could base on int+luck+authority of both trading partners.
Jewelry skill should greatly increase the ability to discover fake coins while trading.
After being discovered:
a) SINGLE coin changes decription to "fake coin" for 30 seconds
b) random number (int + luck + jewelry) of fake coins separate from the COINSTACK and become "fake coins" stack ... for 30 seconds
X3. Crime
Discovering the counterfeit coins should unlock new action in barter window + in context menu/authority on the player to allow the public accusation with some nice shout and other effects maybe (slow down the criminal? highlight for a time?).
The accusation action is not mandatory. We may forgive and take accept some extra valuables for our silence.
Proper accusation action should reduce alignment of the perpetrator as with any other crime.
Y. To be tuned before
IMHO some jewelry effects should be tuned to make gold more valuable for rings/etc
Z. Coin quality
There is no good usage of coin quality so far. To let the coins be stackable we got to lose the information of the ore quality it was made of. So far only unstackable tools remember the ore Q and its good for the database.
So far there is no way to raise ore quality by recycling so it should be the same with coins. Let the coin quality be determined ONLY by the ore Q. So the ore quality follows to the planchet and to the coin. This way we keep the global degradation rule
TIP: we need quality coin dies to prevent it from fast destruction
Idea 5: tricky one - high quality fake-coins harder to discover/recognize?