PC A suggestion to fix the economy: NO MORE DUKES

Well that at least makes sense. If this design/bug is changed/fixed, that goes a nice step toward fixing the problem.
I still wonder though, why the abstraction? What is the actual gameplay purpose of having a separate item that is used as currency that is only considered valuable because you can make ammo with it? If ammo is the source of the value, it seems silly introducing this "middle man" item.
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It has been hinted at that Dukes, Dukes Casino, and The Duke himself will be part of the storyline.

 
It has been hinted at that Dukes, Dukes Casino, and The Duke himself will be part of the storyline.
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You can have a Duke and a casino without an accompanying fiat currency...my question is specifically about GAMEPLAY value.

 
You can have a Duke and a casino without an accompanying fiat currency...my question is specifically about GAMEPLAY value.
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Would it be sufficient to you if TFP said, "because that is what we want"?

 
The coins are supposed to be made of brass, the most valuable commodity in the apocalypse because you can make ammo from brass. Why it can't be smelted is a bug or a design I wasn't in on.
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I think you need to get Gazz in a room and sit him down and have nice friendly conversation with him. Shirtless. Directly after gym time.

:D

I think he has gone rogue on you.

Those Dukes are 100 percent useless to people like me who choose not to use traders. I toss em on the floor.

 
The coins are supposed to be made of brass, the most valuable commodity in the apocalypse because you can make ammo from brass. Why it can't be smelted is a bug or a design I wasn't in on.
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Interesting, so we may be able to smelt Dukes for brass in the future?
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If Madmole allows us to get that nice change in Barter (in order to sell more of the same item) and smelting dukes = brass, that would be awesome because I could stop save so much ammo for horde nights and looting POI's would be doable at a high gamestage (for me, at least).

 
The coins are supposed to be made of brass, the most valuable commodity in the apocalypse because you can make ammo from brass. Why it can't be smelted is a bug or a design I wasn't in on.
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That's why I'm thinking we should get back the bullet cases when using the magnum gun. It's a revolver which does not spit out the casing when fired.

 
Even if firing semi-auto, if you stay in the area were you fired them, you should still be able to 75% of your spent brass.

 
If making ammo is harder than what is the point v dukes? You are just fudging another number. Big deal.

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Talk about an actual dynamic system then maybe it will be original. Right now you may as well throw out everything and just use paper. LMFAO

 
This post might get a lot of hate, but I think it's really the only way to fix this constant back and forth of economy imbalance. TFP can tweak values all they want, but they'll never satisfy everyone because traders have such a major impact on the game.
The way out might be considered radical by some, but it's actually very simple: get rid of Dukes entirely.

1) A fiat currency in a post-apocalyptic setting is ridiculous in the first place. The old cash is worthless, but casino tokens have real value?! C'mon, that can't make any kind of sense to anybody. Caps make no sense in Fallout and Dukes make no sense here. At least the old cash can be burned to keep warm...

2) Sinks for Dukes are completely arbitrary/artificial. It's impossible to balance an economy that's entirely based on RNG. There are very few things in the game that a player can't perk up to supply for themselves through crafting and of the remaining things, players need to either depend on RNG or perk up just to have some way to spend all this useless money. There is literally no other way of taking money out of the economy.

3) Dukes make economy balancing for single vs. multiplayer impossible. If Dukes and traders are balanced to make a trade-centric playstyle viable for single players, they become dramatically overpowered in multiplayer and the opposite problem as well.

So what do we use as currency instead of Dukes? Easy answer...what has real value among post-apocalypitc traders? What are all the players clamoring for more of? AMMO!

We set up a hierarchy of ammo value that directly correlates to the resources/difficulty involved in crafting each ammo type. For example: 1 shell of 7.62 = 5 bullets .44 magnum = 10 bullets 9mm = 25 shotgun shells. Again, these numbers are only examples off the top of my head. Some real thought would have to go into the recipes and crafting stations needed for each ammo type and their corresponding value. We could also get the more valuable archery arrows/bolts in there somewhere, too.

The traders would offer items for sale in ammo prices and would also offer ammo exchanges at rates favorable to themselves. Traders would buy items in exchange for the ammo of the player's choice, but the best value would be in the "worst" ammunition. The same goes for quest rewards.

This would also be a balancing mechanism for the relative strengths of the various guns...sure the sniper rifle and AK are great, but 7.62 is the most valuable ammo, so it might incentivize more players to use the SMG or Magnum. A player might even choose to use the Blunderbuss so they can use all of their ammo for purchasing. It would also be important to give traders some price variance to incentivize a real trader playstyle, i.e. buying an item cheaply at one trader and selling it for a profit at another.

Gone would be the problem of players sitting on mountains of currency with nothing to use it for. Gone would be the complaints about not having a reason to explore POIs at high level. Even if the loot you find is useless to you, it sells for ammo!

Maybe TFP have some future plans to make Dukes advantageous, but I can't imagine what it would be and I certainly haven't heard anything about it. What is clear to me is that Dukes do not work very well as currently implemented. I think using ammo as currency is superior in every way.
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What exactly stops players from simply making ammo? I mean the second people start doing that the whole economy would fall apart. Ammo would lose it’s value because of a serious influx of people making it to gain money. Inflation throws a wrench in your currency plan, and I really don’t see a way around it. This game does have more, and in the real world a currency based around something that can be EASILY made and mass produced is bound to fail. The reason why currencies like bottle caps and Duke’s Casino Tokens are used in these kinds of settings is because there is no risk of inflation. There is no way anyone is going to be able to mass produce a bunch of old casino tokens, and there is enough of them to effectively make a currency out of them. There’s also the fact tokens as a currency will never devalue, there is no new money coming in meaning a casino token will always be worth what it currently is. This also allows individual items to maintain a common price tag. Your proposed currency doesn’t allow for that. Let’s say, for example, a couple hundred survivors head over to their local Trader Joe’s and purchase a rocket launcher for 500 7.62 bullets a piece (For the record, they crafted this ammo, they didn’t find or trade for it). More and more of these survivors keep purchasing these rocket launchers, causing Joe to jack up the price to 3000 7.62 bullets. While a price increase initially looks promising for would be traders, in actuality your currency system is devaluing. Of course, the survivors keep purchasing these rocket launchers, even at the new price, this cycle continues until soon Joe and everyone else is swimming in bullets. Once again your currency would fail due to inflation. Let’s look at this scenario again with Duke’s Casino tokens, 100 survivors buy rocket launchers from Joe for 500 Duke’s a piece and that’s it. Joe now has a large amount of casino tokens which still have value, the survivors can’t go home and make more tokens meaning they can’t purchase more rocket launchers. Thus Joe has no need to raise the price and there isn’t an influx of a form of currency (Joe also becomes filthy rich in the process).

Anyways, to make a long story short your currency wouldn’t hold up in the real world and I highly doubt the devs would actually use it due to that fact. Also if you implemented this as a currency form then you would most likely have to remove the option to craft ammo, which is something I doubt many people would be happy about.

 
I think you need to get Gazz in a room and sit him down and have nice friendly conversation with him. Shirtless. Directly after gym time.
:D

I think he has gone rogue on you.
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It does seem that Gazz has a different vision of the game. :)

"Dukes", named after the leader of the bad(?) faction, underlines how badass The Duke really is. Is he a behemoth? There's a plot for you.

But Dukes back to brass would be amazing! Lower the price and cost of items considerably though so you're not floating in ammo. I like the constant tactical choices you have to make with ammo.

For late game (Gamesstage 500+), ammo determines what a player can do, unless he went "all in" melee.

 
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