Banks have been floating around PrUn functionally for a long time now. Lowstrife has offered his loans since before I joined the game. Then there was Shrewdbank. And before Insula vanished, he also ran a sort of bank like organization. Now you have organizations like ADI or BEST that offer new members grants. And you still have Schaitr’s cheap WCB upgrades for new players. All of these separate features the community has implemented into the game could be supported structurally in the game by implementing banks. Banks could have their own CTXS. Here is how I could imagine this happening:
-Any individual can create a bank. They invest some of their own cash as seed capital. The new owner of said bank would control all shares of the bank. Total number of shares could be like 10,000 or something. The bank could bring on new shareholders via a vote to issue new shares, thereby increasing the capital available to the bank but also diluting the total pool of existing shares. This could work exactly like government program contracts do already, with the shares just being a digital commodity that shows up alongside the list of one’s currency reserves for instance. Any existing shareholder can further invest money into the bank if they wish, increasing the value of everyone’s shares. Individuals can also sell their shares like any other commodity. The bank would have a share-price proportional to the total assets of the bank and the number of shares.
-The bank would have rules and bylaws, much like how the LR works for planets. Things like minimum % of total assets that must be kept liquid, or the payout program to shareholders → % of profit? Or fixed amount based on the total value of the bank as a function of the number of shares one owns? Just to name a couple options.
-The bank would have a list of offers and/or services. For instance, there could be an offer for a loan at 3% only for players with an account older than 60d with an A rating up to a total amount of x based on the number of bases they have. Anyone who qualified would automatically be able to take the loan and the bank would autofill its part. The bank would have a separate list for governments. If a government wanted to upgrade its planetary infrastructure but didn’t have the cash on hand, it could potentially take out a loan. In stead of standard loans, perhaps there could be an application system where the governor would have to send in an application voted on by parliament for a specific loan which the bank could accept, reject, or counter-offer.
-Furthermore, banks could hypothetically hire “employees”. These employees would get a bank account that the bank itself could deposit its own money or commodities into for the employee to use for an agreed upon task. For example, the bank could hire traders. The bank, like individuals, could take out WARs on various CXs. And perhaps in stead of a unit being 500t/m, it could be 5000t/m and cost 10x as much. Traders could use the banks money placed in their employee account to buy and sell commodities. The commodities would be going in and out of the bank’s storage, but only the board and the member making the trade would be able to see it. This way if you had 2 traders lets say, they would only see the commodities that they themselves have bought or sold. Any director can at any time remove money or commodities from an employee’s account. The employee could be on a salary based either on their performance trading or a flat fee, or both. There could be various privileges afforded different employees. Like one may only be allowed to place orders on the CX with the bank’s commodities or cash, while another employee given more privileges may be able to buy and sell commodities in private contracts to individuals. A third may be allowed to put up ads on various LMs using the bank’s funds, or shipping contracts.
-What banks CANNOT do: Banks cannot build or own bases. So no foreclosures.
-Upkeep: Banks would need to be upkept. For every loan handed out, some OFF is automatically consumed for instance. Depending on the number of employees, a certain amount of upkeep goods are consumed every few days. These could be new commodities or existing popi upkeep materials like HD & COF or something. More privileges = more upkeep needed.
-Upgrades: The bank does not start out with the capacity to hire 40 employees and list 300 different offers. Every bank might start out being able to hire a single employee and list 3 different loans or services. Upgrades would cost various materials much like popi infrastructure does now, each level increasing the bank’s caps. There could be separate buildings to upgrade each aspect each with their own upkeep materials relevant to their function.
-Ship leasing: This is something I had thought of separately. But banks could act as a third party to connect people looking to lease their ships with people looking to lease a ship temporarily. Let’s say you have a new base going up and you need to send out 5 ships with inputs and consumables to get the base up and running. But once it is, demand for shipping decreases again. You could just lookup a bank, see what ships are available for lease and for how much. Take one out, do your thing and deliver it back to the CX with a full tank of gas and you’re done. Payment could look something like this: You get charged every day for the ship at the end of each day based on the number of hours you had it (24h except for the first and last day). If you don’t have enough $$ in your account, a 3d countdown timer begins where you either have to pay the amount or the ship gets REPOd along with whatever is on board the ship.
So much of what makes PrUn great in my opinion happens in discord servers. It’s the entrepreneurial spirit people bring to the table that sprouts the coolest ideas and stories. Like DUST, where Insula had private deals with dozens of players for various commodities. He hired a team to manage his empire from shipping the materials to selling them. He even had someone handling payroll for him. But there was so much bookkeeping involved it made it difficult to really scale the operation past a certain point. I want to see the game encourage that kind of entrepreneurism among its players, and I think an update like the one I outlined above could significantly help move us in that direction.
-SilentReaper [FIOC]