Loans

• Consider also the ability to ask for a loan in diplomacy screen, like any other agreement.
• Consider two types of loan into the market:
  • Public: you put an offer and all players can take it, knowing it comes from you. The borrower can cancel payments either by diplomacy (in exchange of something) or by declaring war and exterminating the lender empire. In the case of war, you don't pay the loan during the war. If there's a truce each part can renegotiate the interest (be careful if war goes badly for you, you can end with higher interests) or the cancelation of the payment.
  • Anonymous: when you pick the offer you don't know who the lender is, and lender don't know who is the borrower, only market owner knows this details. Also market owner gets 1% comission to act as 3rd party granting anonimate. It can be only cancelled if the lender empire is eliminated, and also you don't know who it is, except if you own the market.

It would also be interesting if someone cancelling a loan that you are a lender for was a good reason to go to war. You would have a reason to "repossess your assets". Basically what you were saying, but the other way around. 

The anonymous loans idea is also cool because it makes it even more important to be the owner of the system that contains the marketplace.

dragons111888 wrote:

It would also be interesting if someone cancelling a loan that you are a lender for was a good reason to go to war. You would have a reason to "repossess your assets". Basically what you were saying, but the other way around. 

The anonymous loans idea is also cool because it makes it even more important to be the owner of the system that contains the marketplace.

Glad to see it liked.

I think your idea of loans has a lot of potential that actually is misused, as 4X players are not used to it. I remember it was in one 4X in late 1990s, but not very good working, and even didn't remember the game.

lo_fabre wrote:  Glad to see it liked. I think your idea of loans has a lot of potential that actually is misused, as 4X players are not used to it. I remember it was in one 4X in late 1990s, but not very good working, and even didn't remember the game.

I feel like a lot of the focus for 4x games has been on the eXterminate side of things. I mean look at the new Civ game. Diplomatic victory isn't in the game yet, Cultural victory happens even when a player isn't really trying for it. Even the new religious victory boils down to eXterminating the other religions. I'm happy that Amplitude is open to taking things in a new direction, like they did when they added an economic victory to ES1, so that players who prefer other playstyles can have a more meaningful experience

Do you remember how loans worked in that 1990's game?

lo_fabre wrote:
I stated in forums, I always found this was a good idea. Let me add two cents.

• Consider also the ability to ask for a loan in diplomacy screen, like any other agreement.
• Consider two types of loan into the market:
  • Public: you put an offer and all players can take it, knowing it comes from you. The borrower can cancel payments either by diplomacy (in exchange of something) or by declaring war and exterminating the lender empire. In the case of war, you don't pay the loan during the war. If there's a truce each part can renegotiate the interest (be careful if war goes badly for you, you can end with higher interests) or the cancelation of the payment.
  • Anonymous: when you pick the offer you don't know who the lender is, and lender don't know who is the borrower, only market owner knows this details. Also market owner gets 1% comission to act as 3rd party granting anonimate. It can be only cancelled if the lender empire is eliminated, and also you don't know who it is, except if you own the market.

Hi! Can't you negotiate 1000 vs 110*10turns now? Just a question; I have not tested it yet.

I believe you can, but there are two problems with that. The first is that all of the above ideas have interactions with both the Marketplace and the diplomacy system, which isn't the case with straight up negotiating in the trade screen. That's really the part of the Loan system that would make it work; having it affect other areas of the game besides economics. The second is that 1000 Dust isn't a ton of money, and to get the amounts you would need for it to be impactful, the interest payments would have to be pretty ridiculous. Say you wanted 4000 Dust at the interest rate you mentioned, that would be 440 Dust a turn. If you're already looking to borrow Dust, you probably won't have that high of a income. The solution is the be able to negotiate the length of the term of the loan and the interest rate, so that the per turn interest payment is more reasonable. Instead of 11% for 10 turns, it could be 4% for 30 turns. Then the interest payments would be $40 per $1000 instead of $110. You could also back-load the payments, so the interest payment is low, but you have to pay a large chuck back when the term of the loan is up. I'm pretty sure all of those things are beyond the current abilities of the "loan system" implicit in the trade screen, so my suggestion would be a more explicit system that interacts with other parts of the game and allows for more flexibility when borrowing and lending. 

Great, now I have to worry about more than a car payment!!