I would love if there were some additional financial instruments in the game for trading players. Obviously some of these could be used for scams but that is the same as existing contracts and market orders.
Player loan contracts
Issued by the requesting player and fulfilled by the player loaning the isk. Specifies interest rate and repayment frequency. Players could have a credit rating based on their performance on previous loans.
Obviously players could scam using this but it would be an interesting addition and I would for sure use it.
Commodity futures contracts
This would be a bit complex to implement with contract issuing and how the expiry would function but if it could be added at least on the minerals it would be great.
Ship/Asset loan contracts
This would be a contract that would allow players to give out their ships on loan for a specified duration. Both sides could issue these contracts and it would need to specify the exact ship fitting, duration, price, collateral and return location. The hiring player would need to return the ship at the specified location within the given date. Also a minimum cost could be specified. I would make use of this for JF use for example where I donāt need one permanently but every few months I need to move PI output from null.
But ya I would love to have these abilities and I think it would make for some interesting gameplay given the increased interest in financial markets in the last few years.
Edit
I noticed the suggestion for player loans has come up in the past a few times however it seems the discussion hit issues with how to strictly colateralize the loan. Now this is a consideration for risk reduction on the issuing party however imo it is actually fixation on a non-issue. This is because uncollatralised loans are actually effectively profited from in the real world so itās not actually required to have a perfect system for this. I would suggest an option to request assets inorder to complete a loan but this could be a later feature. If a loan system existed I would not be too pushed to use colatral on isk loans provided the value was low enough that it did not present a significant risk for me and if some information on the client was available such as a credit rating and cashflows that would be more than sufficient for me to issue maybe a 100m non colateralized loan no problems if things checked out. Since I could issue lots of these any losses would ācome out in the washā so to speakā¦
The same can be said for the ship loans however there past data might be a bit trickier to determine the risk.
Why would I give you collateral on a āloanerā ship with specific fittings and value when I could just go buy that same ship and fittings with my own ISK for the exact same price?
Not too smart if you make the collateral less than the value of the ship. At that point, Iāll just go buy the ship myselfā¦
Ya it could be issued without collateral within a corp etc but typically in real world cases the collateral is covered through insurance this is not possible ingame so collateral would be required. I have carried out the workflow specified in the past buying a ship and selling it after use but itās clunky and obviously does not work with rigs.
Maybe the term contract here was misused these would not necessarily need to be issued or interacted with through the existing contract UI. For example futures are typically traded on a market through buy and sell orders.
Anyone else interested in this sort of thing or ideas for other financial instruments that could be added? Iām not sure if CFDs or Options would also be a possibility but I would love this. I do think there could be some untapped gameplay that is seen in no other game in this area but possibly the interest just isnāt there to justify the cost of implementation.
I dont think anyones ever played the game and been like āI wish i could borrow some ISKā or āI wish i could borrow a shipā. But i could be wrong.
But the game already has Expert Systems where you can borrow/rent skill points and even Skins that expire after a certain amount of time so why the ā ā ā ā not. Peace
That is entirely fair, I was thinking that it is not the most exciting sort of feature for most players probably but ya I just think it would be sick to have some of these trading/market functions in gameā¦build some sort of dodgy ship rental empire with a side of loan sharking
A āloan contractā is unable to enforce payback, so unless thereās a collateral (like with hauling contracts) to be paid out after missing the payment, this is just going to be exploited for scams, scams and more scams to the point that āloan contractsā are spammed in local chat and are synonymous to āscamā.
Other contracts require zero trust. A loan contract requires trust.
I donāt see that as a good addition to the game. If you already trust the other person to pay back you could loan them without a contract.
Same issue as above.
Without trust thereās no guarantee the loan will be paid back.
With trust thereās no need for a contract, just ask them to give you the asset back.
Iāve loaned ships and have been loaned ships from people who I know and trust. Thereās really no need for a special contract in those cases.
And for the cases where I donāt trust someone to pay back there is no way Iām going to use a contract if this contract cannot be enforced.
Yes I did mention in the edit that collateral could be added as an additional feature but if there was a system like this in the game I would not be too pushed to require collateral provided the loan did not represent significant risk to me and I have some viability on the requesting parties financial situation and if they are in-arrears or have defaulted on previous loans. I would likely have no problem issuing loans up to 100m without collateral at all if I had that info since of course some loans would go bad but provided I issue enough and my due diligence on average was good enough I should make profit. The odd bad loan is just the price of doing business. Now if I was issuing closer to 1b or so I would probably require at lease 75% in collateral and very a solid history on the requesting party for repayment. It would effectively be how micro loans are handled these daysā¦possibly some groups would take up suicide ganking powered debt collection also
Just on the mechanics of how it would work, the repayments would be taken automatically from the players account provided they have enough liquid isk in the account if not the loan would enter in-arrears status in which case the issuer may reclaim the collateral or write off the loan as bad debt. The players failure to repay the loan would be permanently in place for any future players to see if they try to take out more.
As I mentioned in the post the same would apply for the ship loans, nothing special is required just a way for players to request/post collateral as part of managing the ācontractā. If players have full trust then issue a 0 fee/collateral contract and its just a simple way to manage the exchange nothing more. Also the ship loan history could be provided to the issuing party too to provide mechanisms to reduce collateral requirements and improve liquidity of the contracts.
