Thoughts on bottle caps as a currency?
Thoughts on bottle caps as a currency?
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retarded as fuck
This
They're not backed by anything, they're just standardized junk. Worse, they're metal so they're definitely irradiated. Barter would be the default until someone did promissory notes.
Video games??
Fallout dumbass
yes you fucking gay
Sharp.
They make no sense and only exist because the writer probably read Uncle Scrooge.
Crown caps are flimsy, sharp, and despite being lighter they take up more volume than most coins which makes storage an issue with their irregular shape as they are unlikely to just naturally nest together on their own.
Especially without machining tools you probably couldn't do much useful with them and each one has such a small amount of metal and it's typically just cheap aluminum... you would get way more from a drink can so why not use those as currency? The intrinsic value and utility is very low.
Something like metro where they use ammunition as currency just makes far more sense. Even in a silly manga like Dr. Stone where they just draw new money the money is at least backed by the value of oil they found.
There's just no place for fiat currency without any backing in a post apocalyptic world which is why we see things like NCR cash and Legion Denars in the games, but besides those no other currencies really show up. bottle caps use as currency is decentralized and the use of it in fallout games is pretty much just people grasping for something familiar, I guess you can say people doing thst gives it value but I think there should be something much better to barter with. Bottle caps are backed by... idk the aluminum thst got pressed? Someone can just cut aluminum and press it too the crown cap isn't that complex of a shape so there is severe risk of debasement for caps as a currency.
yeah and there are people in the games who are manufacturing "counterfeit" caps too
What even is a counterfeit cap? it's a shitty ass pressed disc of cheap metal the presumably don't discriminate between different drink brands so why does it matter?
It’s a cap not made by an “official” body
But the salvaged ones aren't either there's no "official" bodies left and the bottling company was hardly concerned with finance when they made them.
Aluminium would be pretty expensive in an apocalypse, it's light, durable, corrosion resistant and almost impossible to extract from bauxite without dicktonnes of power.
So isn't it a waste to use it for this?
There aren't many uses for aluminum in a society without electricity anyways. Not much of a waste.
Aluminium is the most common metal on the planet and has been used for over 2000 years.
>only >2000 years
That's a bit of a low threshold. Clay is only the way it is because of its aluminum content.
They're backed by water in 1, a story entirely about water. They're just one of the many superficial elements copied in 3, and carried across to New Vegas because 18 months.
>There's just no place for fiat currency without any backing
It's backed by water. You're supposed to be able to trade in a cap for a bottle of water. The cap being easier to carry around than the bottle (but still not very easy to carry around over all, like you said).
But what about everyone who doesn't even live near the hub?
They still trade in caps while relying on the idea that someone, somewhere will give them a bottle of water for a cap. I think the flaw, though, is that caps are an item that already exist. Each cap is supposed to correspond to one clean bottle of water but there are caps in the world that correspond to Nuka-Cola, beer, etc. and not just that but drinks that people already consumed hundreds of years ago. So there is no actual bottle of water corresponding to that cap. There's no mechanism that ensures there are exactly as many caps in circulation as there are available bottles of water.
They are originally used in fallout 1 because they were backed by water the same way paper currency used to be backed by gold.
Later in the franchise it just became this weird fiat money backed by nothing and not being a commodity by itself that people in the wasteland just seemed to all have agreed to use. which is stupid.
Fiat money "works" because the government says it does.
>Fiat money "works" because the government says it does.
And the government controls a lot of people and other resources, to say nothing of military power. Whatever they say it's worth, everyone who doesn't agree will probably go to war about it or else consneed and cooperate with the declaration.
>And the government controls a lot of people and other resources, to say nothing of military power. Whatever they say it's worth, everyone who doesn't agree will probably go to war about it or else consneed and cooperate with the declaration.
Uh, yeah.... that's the entire point. People accept its value entirely on global trust and authority.
If you have like just one or two city states using one fiat currency with no backing there is nothing forcing the rest of the wasteland to accept it unless these states have some sort of supremacy in arms or trade.
Only faith. They can have a monopoly on arms but people can and have done revolutions against such odds, and against similiar context (facing economic turmoil, famines etc)
is a joke about how americans are obsessed with carbonated drinks
the value of a cap is far too low you have to carry way too many around so it just gets silly. I do like the idea that no matter who tries to introduce currency into the wasteland everyone just keeps using bottlecaps even if they aren't backed by the water merchants
In the first game it made sense. It makes no sense that other places would also use, particularly more than 200 years later when civilization has re-established itself.
But who's actually surprised Bethesda is full of lazy fucks?
You are told why in Vegas (not really because all in loading screens, and non-canon deluxe edition manuals): NCR fiat backed currency that a great many merchants didn't want to use to the point they conspired to reintroduce Caps again - there is at least a specific quest talking about its counterfeiting.
Doesn't seem practical. Imagine hauling 24 000 bottle caps to buy some high end weapon. How would you even count that?
that's my biggest issue, when bottlecaps take up more weight and volume than the thing you are trading them for what's the point? I might as well just hold on to my neatly packed ammo and drugs to trade elsewhere. Caps on their own should be extremely high value for the system to make sense imo
Bottle caps are a good currency because its
-plentiful but not common
fallout takes place in a jingoistic america so loads of cola bottles everywhere makes sense
-easy to distinguish
bright red and white bottlecaps stick out
-hard to duplicate
Yes getting a rare metal like aluminum and machine pressing it into a bottle cap THEN painting CHERRY RED and SNOW WHITE nuka cola font and writing to machine perfection AND making it faded enough to look real is hard to do in the wasteland. if you bought this shit you'd be in the red by several thousands of caps and take hours to make like 10 minus all the fucks ups and retries to nail them at all.
-Why use caps?
Because the hub is using them if you give the hub caps they give you water that universal resource valued above all in a desert. Caps were nicknamed as hubbucks in fallout 1 surrounding settlements around hub adopted caps as well because in the end caps are backed by the fact they are tradable for drinking water in the hub.
Now caps are phased out because like said its not practical to carry that shit around and trading 40 for a weeks worth of water is fine but when you want to make more money there is a physical limit imposed by the fact that 1 cap is the size of 1 quarter and people arent going to carry thousands everywhere. In fallout 2 its replaced with gold coins by the NCR with an exchange rate printed coins have the advantage of being distinguishable from one another. Instead of hauling around 100 pennies for a buck you can pay 20 nickles 10 dimes 4 quarters or 1 dollar coin. This is why bottlecaps are good not great unless there was some kind of worth based on the rareity of bottlecaps but i guess everyone agreed cap is cap fr fr.
Now story shit happens ncr switches to bucks BoS nuke ncr gold EVERYONE WITHDRAWS AT THE SAME TIME faith in ncr bucks in lost and in NV bottlecaps return because its backed by water from lake mead mashing with ncr bucks and legion coin
TLDR read moron
also forgot to point out that bottlecaps being used in fallout 3 4 and beyond is just retardation by bethesda and should be ignored when discussing general feasibility of bottlecaps in a post apocolypse. fallout 1 2 and nv had thought put into its world bethesda copied the homework but didnt know what it was writing
The concept of caps being used all over the wastes is perfect for the setting . No matter who tries to change it the people just keep using caps
>How would you even count that?
you sift through em real quick to sift out any slag and then you weigh em
Retarded and makes no sense but I love the sound they make.
garbage, paying with ammunition in metro made more sense.
I really liked that idea of currency.
>A vender is selling scrap for 2 for a cap
>You only take 1 and give the vender a cap
>How does the vender make change?
>Do you just round up to the next cap?
>Or do you cut a cap in half?
Not reflected in the UI but the game already answers this, things can be worth less than 1 cap and it's just rounded. I'm not sure I can clearly remember which direction it goes, but I think it's always against the player's advantage.
Just use actual copper or silver coins.
ez 2 fake
>drink cola bottle
>receive bottle cap
>do not receive empty cola bottle
???
They only make sense on the first game due to the water merchants and the value of water in the wasteland.
>fiat currency wouldn't work without a central government
some of you retards should've never been able to graduate out of high school
>backing = central government
get a load of this retard
shady sands is a settlement far north of the hub they dont deal in caps mostly only the doctor who will also take a radscorpion tale. they also have thier own water source so caps are only good for trading with junktown if they want to. Caps out reach only goes so far till people say "id rather you give me something else instead of a token i have to travel a week to exchange"
>fiat currency wouldn't work without a central government
It wouldn't work without a central power that monopolizes its creation and destruction and ensures its value is backed by something tangible, like military force or stores of valuable resources.
Crypto isn't real, anon. It's a gnomish scam in case you haven't noticed the volatility.
I never said it needed to be a central government but it needs to be centralized on something real. I can admit I never really played much of FO1 so I was unaware that it was backed by water at the hub. So how does that add value to caps for people who would expend more water traveling to the hub to exchange than they would get? Or why would people travel that far to accept their caps since they would be at a loss?
The only reason something like the USD can work being only backed by the promises of the fed is because the US is, for whatever reasons, big and trusted enough to somehow ensure they would be able to provide what they are worth. For a single fiat currency circulated by just one or two city states it would need to be something more tangible than hopes and promises.
Wouldn’t it have been cool if different brands of bottle caps had different values?
Like Nuka Cola = 50
Sunset Sarsaparilla = 100
Would depend entirely on the region but with such a high number of caps it's just pointless. I like the gameplay logic of different colors being worth more but when you have 10,000+ caps you will hardly care
better as ammunition
Someone post a hi res pic of the NCR notes. I would imagine they're backed by caps, or used as a cap alternative because people realized paper is easier to carry than literal bottle caps.
Legion money is actual precious metal isn't it?
>meanwhile in Fallout Tactics
Cute, but they don't really make much sense as a currency even in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The only value they'd really have is as a resource to be melted down and made into something more useful.
ITT: caplets
>caps were used only by water traders in hub
>fallout 2 introduces gold
>todd the fraud reverts to caps because everything has to be a gimmick
only 2d and new vegas are real fallout games
>NV
>isn't using gold
?????????
Really, really dumb and restrictive. One of the reasons I avoid the Fallout series.
Instead of implementing a full, vibrant economy they used this lazy "one size fits all" placeholder token.
I hate it.
*Maybe there could be some mad bottle-cap collector out there, and he asks you to find all the rare caps, or a certain number for rewards. That would have been cool, but basing an entire economy around them is retarded.
Metro did it better and is even accurate to recent human history. Ammo is immediately useful, and in situations where society breaks down, you use ammo, weapons, drugs, and survival gear to barter. It makes sense that ammo, the "smallest unit of survivability", would be used as currency because it's backed by its utility in the absence of a central security force.
Bottle caps are just common and vaguely coin-shaped. It's like that's all the thought that went into it.
ammo is terrible at being a currency
So you say, but then ammo and cigarette lighters actually were used like currency in a recent european economic collapse.
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