Building the better bank

[Fastidius]

So with the advent of non cappable military ships and people basically having ranks given to them (xp nerd) Ausez have had to adapt their current economic system to include a bank (pool resources to get ships out faster).  This role has been taken up by myself for now and i figured that since i was actually living the life of a clan bank i should explain what i call the "The near perfect bank" tot he devs and community to see if we can get the banking system implemented inwhat would call a great way.

 

I have some additional ideas on how things i do could be implemented but i will explain each feature and say where i think the mechnic already exists using %where_I_think_the _mechanic_Exists% so the devs can have a think about it.  Having lived this life this is what i would hope would be the general gist if not the functional spec for the bank in NA.

 

Now to the system we use is.....

 

 

 

Building the bank.

 

Fundamentally the only thing you need to start a bank is capitol.  I started with approximately 5 million and have poured another 5 Million into it over the last 2 weeks and I feel that that is about the right number for a Santi Building clan of about 100 people.  Ausez is above that but we also have crafters whom are still using internal stock so i am contemplating this in my thoughts.

 

Location of the clan bank has to be at 1 location only. This allows clans to have a Sail from port as well as allow nations to build an areas of responsibility system on the map with actual logical anchors to a port.Also you could have the clan bank holdings tied to raid/PB stuff if you want.  Maybe only build clan banks at regional capitols if you want to control the map/player density.

 

I suggest you allow multiple levels of banking at a cost to open up warehouse space as well as feature unlocks.  There are 2 aspects really Capacity & Manufacturing. 

 

 

Capacity

This should be something like the current Port Shop system however adjust it so that you unlock the groups for a cost rather than some slot/weight restricting system.   Every item group has a tab you can buy to unlock at say 5 million to unlock each one as a realistic price.   Resources Materials upgrades ships etc etc. This way you are not reinventing the wheel. %the clans can have an ID exactly like the portIDs in the current api just in a different range so you can restrict you current economy mechanics to only dealing with Port ID ranges and you can make new mechanics relating to another set of ranges on the PortID table%

 

 

Now you have;

your location %create a custom portid in a clan range in table as above%

your identification %Clan ID & Port id can be linked as primary/foreign keys%

your structure %Port shop system%

 

Access the capacity

 

Clearly there is a need for some control over the banking system so here is my suggestion re ranks and capabilities & more on manufacture shortly

 

level 1 - no access

level 2 - deposit and manufacture

level 3 - deposit manufacture & withdraw with limit

level 4 - deposit manufacture & withdraw without cost

level 5 - deposit manufacture & withdraw without cost or cap

level 6 - READ ONLY BANKER - Can Set prices but no withdraw capability so they can't cook the books

Level 7 - Everything - clan leader - if you can't trust the boss well what can you do?

 

 

Using the capacity

 

Every clan member has a rank %add some other than officer like scrub,crew,mates,XO and use the existing clan list to adjust %

This rank allows the capabilities above.

 

 

BANKER and Higher Rank

 

These people can set the prices and limitations of how much things cost and a cap the clan wants to set as it's limit for how many each item it wants to buy/sell at a time .  %every item has a set rate in each port%  These ranks can set a rate which the bank will supply gold for if it can when a clanny inserts items into the bank %same as shop interface just add clan bank to the port UI in the clan bank port% %use contract system and add auditing for logging%

 

This gives you control of;

Price in and out %current port pricing mechanics with adjustment for player adjustment%

Quantity Control %current contract system%

Maximum withdrawl - I dont think there is a limit to what the port can sell due to the euro trading system however i expect that there would be a way to do it simply by having currency pool you can use for the bank float instead.

 

Now that you have ins and pricing controlled you can look at removals from bank.

 

Withdrawls  & depositing with the bank

 

Anyone with rank 3 can remove items from the bank with a limit for currency. This rank is designed for clan crafters. who basically pay the bank for goods that the clan has gathered and then sell the ships to clannies to cover those costs.  Crafter only needs enough money to cover the mats/materials they require for the current ship/item they build and they have an easy way of calculating the amount they pay for materials/resources to oncharge.
 you could even change shipyards to be tied to the bank somhow if you are inclined making craft a button on ships tab.....see manufacturing later

 

Now that is all fairly self-explainatory in my view butask questions and we canbeat around solutions or explainations to make this more detailed.

 

 

 

Bypassing the bank shop

 

So lets just say there are special cases in the form of clans who dont want to charge in/out or maybe you need to helpout a financial clannie - level 4 officers can withdraw without cost.  These are the guys that can steal but only a little at a time. This is likely new code.

 

Level 5 and above can just do whatever they like with zero cost....these are the special ranks for special people only that are super trusted.

 

 

 

 

 

TLDR synopsys

clan has a shop, shop has prices clan sets. people buy and sell from shop with caps on items set by bank. money is transfered no freebies unless facilitated by a top ranked person.

 

 

 

MANUFACTURING

 

i expect this is all new code

 

Everyone with the manufacturing capability gets an option to craft items for the clan by having a craft button on the materials tab of the shop.  You set a rate for how much you pay to have each item per crafting. it uses the bank materials to create this item so for instance you have large carrages as a item with a cap of 10 the crafter can build 10 of these if there are enough mats in the bank to create them and the crafter gets payed X amount for their crating hours. which is set by the banker.

 

This way the clan can have a mnufacturing process which does not require the clannie to withdraw anything but can deposit crafting hours for a cost.

 

The current process is that i give my mats to a person and ask them how many hours they have, they build what i ask and then give the materials back for an x amount of currency for doing the job.  the bank merely does the math and pays the crafter for their hours.  The sell price for the item should have a base amount which warns the people setting the prices what the base cost it (mat buy prices from the clanshop + labour hours cost for each item)

 

This way any timezone can commit hours to the clan and get payed as long as there is money in thebanktofacilitate this process.

 

 

Auditing

 

create a new table in mongo for the clan transactions so you can log what went in/out and was manufactured by each player whichcan be accessed via the api files.  a log of thelast 24 hours should be viewable in game by everyone who can access the bank at rank 3 or 4 maybe so the crafters know who took what and can intrade if they are desperate or som such thing.

 

 

 

OTHER THINGS

 

in the same way as you unlock tabs for the bank you could add ships to the clan bank also. The idea that a clan is a custom port really makes it feasible to do this quickly.

 

%move the current ships button in the UI to be a tab in the shop......it probably should be anyway since its buying and selling from the port.  add clan bank to where the ships button is in the UI now if there is one existing in the port.%

 

selling less than 100% and unmodded duro ships as a limitation might be a bad limitation, discuss

 

I don't really see anything else being a clan function at the moment as upgrades,resources,materials & ships are handled...you probably dont want cannons in there unless you want to add custom cannons.

 

 

 

As far as i can tell without seeing code/DB structure beyond whats in the api this should all be reasonably easy to create beyont the manufacturing capabilities and even that leverages off existing code you would just need to change the source for ingredients to be from the clanshop rather than crafter warehouse with a check for player rank to allow it.

 

again some work but not really anything ground breaking in my view.

 

 

This will be revised with peoples additions/comments on issue if it gets enough interest as i think clan shop is a better way to deal with things than clan warehouse as a concept.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Lytse Pier]

Are you sure you want a bank, or do you want a clan commodity market where the clanmembers can trade between them against set prices, creating a decentralized warehouse for members to access, without the huge risks of scamming and access problems for your members?

 

Creating (clan-, nation-, European-) commodity markets instead of elaborate clanwarehousing/clanbanking is a much more viable option for this sandbox game i.m.o.

 

http://forum.game-labs.net/index.php?/topic/13491-trading-banking-and-the-european-markets-an-18th-century-look-at-it/?hl=bank

[Jean Ribault]

I would think you need a check for a Level 5 banker.  One instance of turning pirate could hamper the clan for weeks.  Two-party approval or something more than open access.

 

Does each clan member have an associated percentage interest in the total bank assets?  If the bank or clan is dissolved, or if a clan member leaves, then maybe there should be a method of reversal.

 

 

Great ideas by the way.

Edited May 3, 2016 by Jean Ribault