The Best Way to Get and Use Casino Credit

I love New Vegas, its my favorite game of all time. And it is for a lot of other people too. This unfortunately means that its almost impossible to say anything negative about the game on Reddit without getting massively shat on. The only point you seem to be allowed to criticize is the bugs, which gets rebutted by "but they only had 18 months to make it" or "Bethesda was in charge of QA", as if any of these things excuse it for you as a customer.
So now that the game is 10 years old and most of us have played it tons of times, I thought it would be a good time to make a thread where we can actually criticize this lovely game. I'll start, now bear in mind this is of course all degrees of subjective so don't throw "uR nOT obJEvTiVE" at me just yet:

The bugs has to be meantioned first. The game ran horribly at release and still did for a long time after. Its first many years later with patches and mods that we reached something that can be called mostly stable. I'm playing it right now only with stability mods on and it still crashes about once every 1-2 hours, and its still very buggy and janky.
Caravan, this game's made up card game, is horrible. Firstly its very buggy somehow. I am surprised they couldn't even bug fix a solitaire-like card game, but here we are. Secondly even when it works its not very fun. It takes minimum 3 cards to make a caravan and only one king or jack to ruin it. It means it heavily favors just fucking up your opponent and hope you win the war of card attrition. The game used to be stupidly easy but was then patched so now the AI will spam kings and jacks constantly. After I got the 30 games achievement I dropped it. Lastly the game doesn't do anything with Caravan. There is no quest to become the Mojave champion or such. I get this isn't needed but it would have helped make it interesting. The only other games in the game are casino games which all depends on your luck stat. I would love being able to play high stakes Caravan.
Cut content. Roleplaying is best when you actually have good reason to join both sides. In Fallout New Vegas the NCR gets the majority of the content. If you side with the Legion you can finish all the faction quests in a few hours, meanwhile the NCR has so many quests I always have to check the wiki to remember them all. Its such a shame. It doesn't help that for 3 of the endings you can work with the NCR but only 1 for the Legion. I don't get this when in 2 of those endings you end up double crossing the NCR anyways, why not allow the player to double cross the Legion? The difference being that the NCR will stand down and the Legion will then try to fight you and your army.
Caesar's Legion is weird. I love most of the faction. I love the ideological conflict between a faction trying to redo democracy but running into the same problems with corruption vs a brutal but safe dictatorship. I like talking to everyone and its cool to see how different peoples' options are of the factions. Some just hate the Legion outright because of their massacre. Some see the value of having a safe society, Cass mentions how she considered running her caravan in the Legion instead of the NCR because its safer. Its cool. However I can't get over the fact that this faction is a big ancient Rome LARP. They run around in football gear. Why not just make them look normal, or similar to Romans but not literally Romans. Its such a well crafted faction that gets ruined by this pretty silly design.
Independent is basically the House route but with you instead. You don't get to choose what your plans are other than your interactions with the small factions, which also doesn't feel special. You don't ever get to use your securitrons. It would have been extremely cool to be able to send your army with you to wipe out or subjugate factions instead of just doing the same quest you do if you side with House. Again, you are also forced into a choice between an uneasy alliance with the NCR where you double cross them, or killing both major factions. You can't make it clear to them beforehand that you don't want to be annexed.
The economy is poorly balanced. In Fallout 3 you barely made any money and vendors were just as poor, so it took a long time to accumulate wealth. Most players would just use gear they found instead of paying for it at a store. In Fallout New Vegas you can easily have 5000 caps by the time you reach The Strip. I had twice that when I reached it 2 days ago. Stores have tons of money and are more than willing to buy all your junk. The economy just breaks when vendors are willing to buy all the crap you pick up at such high prices as NV has. I think you can get them to buy for 90% of their value, that's fucking insane. I try to not level up barter too quickly as it just makes the game too easy but I also hate crippling myself like this. The game's vendors need to be selective about what they buy and how much they pay for it. You need 2000 caps to inter the strip, that's pretty much nothing. The game even gives you tons of ways around the credit check so clearly they meant for it to be a hurdle.
The map. I'm not saying its bad, but going from Fallout 3 to NV makes you miss the feeling of being able to go in any direction and always find something. New Vegas is very railroaded. It has a ton of mountains and invisible walls to make the player go specific places (Edit: a lot of people are citing this one setence and using it to rebut me, guys read the whole damn thing). I can still let myself get lost in Fallout 3, in NV I always know exactly which way I'm supposed to go. The game has no counterpart to F3's Andale or Oasis. There are no small outskirts places for you to discover in some random spot. All the towns are along the main roads, with a handful of cool places that are off the beaten path. I love following the road through Primm->Nipton->Novac->Boulder City->Vegas, its an excellent experience for following the main story and finding a ton of side content, and I love they gave returning players the option to head straight north and try their luck. But when I just want to do some side content I always feel like I have to follow a track. I AM NOT SAYING THE MAP IS BAD. Just that it follows a certain design that some don't like. I like it when I just want to do the main story, its a really nice experience that way. But if you want to just go in any direction like in a Bethesda RPG you will get disappointed. There are tons of invisible walls and mountains in the way. Imagine if you started in Freeside instead and just had to get the cash to get into the strip (more than 2k). Then you can choose to follow the I-88, go towards Jacobstown, Bitter Springs, do stuff in Freeside or the other communities around Vegas. Would be a great alternative start for returning players.

Edit: some extra

Combat is ass to say it bluntly. For some reason people always excuse the poor combat in RPG's because its not the games' focus or because its almost tradition at this point. I don't see why I as a player and paying customer should make excuses for a product I paid for. Its embarrasing how poor the AI is in the game, how poorly combat works and how unbalanced the game is. I can go through a ton of the game with my Couriers Stash 10mm and Vault armor and just blast entire legion or NCR camps, and then suddenly difficulty can turn on a dime and an enemy can kill me in 3-4 hits. Difficulty in RPGs is such an important thing as it directly influences your decisions. In Fallout 1 and 2 I did my best to not bite off more than I could chew. In NV can do pretty much anything other than go to Sloan at the start, which is a part that most have noticed too.
The selection of guns is fine, but not armors. Without ultimate edition you don't get any good early game armor in the game. The only option is leather armor. Mid game you fight to get either power armor or combat armor mk2, and late game is all about Riot Gear from Lonesome Road. They could have made armor interesting by giving it stronger buffs and debuffs. PA and metal armor has a -1 to agility but often +1 to strength. Why not give such traits to all armors and maybe even make it stronger? Too much of the armor is also faction armor which you don't want to be wearing unless you are infiltrating somewhere.
Speech is too much like Fallout 3 and not enough like 1 and 2. In 3 and NV dialogue either ends in a skill check (too often speech) or you having to do a task if you can't pass the check. What's being said is largely unimportant unless it leads to a different outcome. In Fallout 1 and 2 dialogue was much more about reading each option and thinking about how the character you were talking too would react. You often couldn't just [speech] 50 do what I want. NV has a few moments where you actually does have to argue and its some of its strongest parts.
Crafting could have been more. This is more of a "what could have been" argument, but personally I don't see why you shouldn't be able to craft a lot more guns or armors. I don't want Fallout 4's style of somehow being able to craft tons of pre war objects you clearly don't have the tools to make, but just having a good selection of makeshift guns and armors would have made crafting and also survival much better.

These are my thoughts. Please feel free to share yours!

(23M)Gambling no more and finally getting it together.

Galactic Economics 2: Trustworthy

RoyalRoad
First
Next
Jen and Sarah spent the next week doing research. The Internet was filled with contradictory information about monetary theory and economics, and neither of them really had the background to evaluate the arguments that everyone was having.
However, Sarah reminded them both, they didn't need to look at a perfect system, just one that worked. So, they started digging through Wikipedia articles and online textbooks on the history of money and how they came to be.
"Hey, did you know they used to use salt as currency?" Sarah asked as she skimmed through a particularly fascinating documentary about Middle Age East African economies.
"Is this some kind of joke about mining salt?"
"No, it's real, look. And apparently the word salary is from the Latin word salarium for money used to buy salt," Sarah continued fascinated.
Of course, they couldn't use something as simple as salt to represent money. In fact, they couldn't use any commodity either.
Over the last week, one of the alien traders caught wind that gold was extremely valuable on Earth, so they'd brought them in by the ton load. Gold was still useful for electronics and some dentistry, but the price of gold, mostly propped up by its value in rarity, crashed hard.
The problem with currency in galactic trading, as Sarah discovered, was that there wasn't a single commodity that was equally rare in every system.
No, whatever alternative they come up to the laughably outdated barter system had to be built on something far more rare and valuable than gold.
Something that even the most powerful human empires in history have struggled to collect.
It had to be built on trust.
"That's the system most modern currencies are based on," Sarah claimed, "you only accept dollars for work because you trust that you're going to be able to wake up tomorrow and spend it on… everything you need."
"Hmm well, we can't just ask them to take US dollars," Jen giggled. This would be so much easier if that weren't true.
"Why not?" Sarah asked, playing the devil's advocate.
"Well… well, like you said, they won't trust it! I certainly wouldn't if I were a trader! Furthermore, who knows? Maybe they have a printer in their ship that can duplicate money! Maybe we should ask them for that next time we bring Zarko some pears," Jen said, thinking out loud.
"I doubt it. The government keeps a lot of secrets about how they make Dollars , and I don't want the Secret Service knocking on my door," Sarah said. Until this week, she hadn't known that this was one of the lesser known duties of the USSS. Now that she knew it, it made the thought of attracting their attention even less palatable, "you're right. What about digital casino tokens? We can produce something that translates to Dollars and have our own system that tracks it all."
"Sure, that's not too hard to make. We would have a centralized money supply, where we don't trust each end point…" Jen continued on the brainstorm, thinking in terms of the technical system, "ok, so say we make SarahBucks, and peg its value to the US Dollar. One pound of pears would be worth 1.5 SarahBucks, one pound of sirloin steak is 6.99 SarahBucks at Safeway. That still doesn't explain how we'll get people to use it."
"I'm not sure. I need to think about this more," Sarah yawned, tired. "And I hate that name."
They agreed that they were stuck, and that SarahBucks was absolutely a terrible name.
Livermore Spaceport, Earth
A month after the spaceport opening, Sarah noticed that it had become less of a tourist attraction. There were far fewer people standing around gawking at the aliens, and a lot more companies trucking their best-selling products into the spaceport for trade.
After their abuse of Jen's cousin's employee pass got discovered by the spaceport authorities, Sarah and Jen had started placing their own bids on getting into the spaceport through the official channels. Thanks to their existing connections with the managers at the spaceport and a growing bank account of value, they could still get in to continue their lucrative trade for magical alien goods.
A bit of a rich-get-richer type of situation.
The flavor of the month were these Bohor magical air filter machines that aggressively scrubbed the air of… anything you want them to.
The Bohor planet is basically the planetary equivalent of a toxic dump.
Sure, it had biomes; it wasn't a Star Wars sci-fi planet where the entire planet is either a desert or an ice-cold tundra or a forest. But the entire planet had been polluted so heavily by its occupants that it lowered the life expectancy by half before the Bohors found a solution:
They simply filtered their entire atmosphere through air filter machines and then buried the toxins and garbage they got out of it in a very deep landfill, somewhere where very few people lived. Pretty much the kind of solution you'd expect out of a species that created the original problem in the first place.
Zikzik, the alien that was the same species as Zarko, overheard a human asking about their rocket fuel and climate change, and brought in a cargo hold of them.
It was a massive hit.
Earth's climate change problem wasn't nearly as bad as Bohor, but it was relatively simple to program these machines to suck carbon out of its atmosphere and… bury them in a landfill.
At first, few of the human traders bought them, thinking that it was going to be at least a while before the problem became big enough that big governments were going to come to them to try to address the issue, but they had it all wrong.
Soon as word got out this was an option, big companies and philanthropists started lining up at their doors. As it turned out, literally sucking the carbon dioxide out of the air was easier and cheaper than modifying many of their industrial practices to actually be environmentally green. They didn't need to run more efficient factories to claim to be carbon-neutral; just pump as much carbon into the air in exchange for undoing that by sucking it out of the atmosphere after!
Some bean counters at a think tank in DC predicted that a few more shipments of these air filters will fix Earth's climate problems by themselves in about a decade, so every trader had a waiting list of corporations with PR problems willing to buy them.
Sarah and Jen had a couple vehicle manufacturing companies on their list who were trying to get Bohor air filters to use in lobbying for looser emission standards for their dirty gasoline cars.
Today, there were traders on all the landing pads, and they were all carrying air filters. Zarko's ship was there, and he was loading fruits into his spaceship with an alien looking forklift. Sarah and Jen approached his ship and noticed the truck driver standing there.
"Hey Benny, tempting the poor aliens with cherries this time?" Sarah waved good, grinning and looking at his cargo.
Technically, Benny is a competitor, or at least he drives for a competitor. The massive fruit conglomeration he worked for, Chuckita, had not neglected to notice the massive business opportunity sitting right here as many others have, and are now delivering straight to the aliens in exchange for massive profit margins.
But Benny was a good guy. One time Jen and Sarah were having some trouble finding a buyer for a bunch of legally dubious alien psychedelics. Benny was in his late 50s, not that great with the Internet either, so he'd introduced them to whom he referred to as "my money launderer". Aka, his 22-year-old son, Benny Jr, who had a habit of buying weed and other less than legal items off the deep web. Benny Jr had found a buyer for them within minutes and even generously offered to handle the deal for them to spare them the risk of meeting some psycho hopped up on an alien high in a dark alley somewhere.
"Heh! One of the bat aliens loves sweets but has a low tolerance for sour, so they treat cherries as some kind of an odd challenge fad. They eat a random cherry, and it's either so incredibly sweet they start drooling out of the mouths, or it's a sour one, and they freak out," Benny replied, in a low voice as if he were trying to keep it a big secret. "Zarko showed me a video, and it's the most hilarious thing I've ever seen".
"I think I've seen that one, have you seen the one where they drink wine?" Sarah chuckled at the memory. Alien videos have been a big hit on YouTube. Some human merchants were trading fruit for aliens to take videos of the galaxy. Which they monetized, of course.
"No," Benny's ears perked up. Chuckita doesn't make wine, but if selling wine to aliens was going to be a thing, they were a big supplier of grapes… "Is it gonna be a thing?"
"Well guess what we brought today?" Jen also grinning from ear to ear, and holding up a big carton of low-quality box wine.
"Awww seems like I'm always one step behind you guys," Benny moaned in exaggeration, "I tried to get my money launderer to tell me what aliens would want but all he does is play video games on the Internet, kids these days."
Luckily, Zarko chose this moment to step out to spare them from more good-humored ribbing from the boomer. "Ah Sarah and Jen, you brought the grape wine this time!"
"Yup," Sarah beamed, "and I see you've run out of air filters to trade again!"
"Sadly yes," Zarko tilted his head in shame, "my ship is overdue for a cargo space upgrade, but I haven't found a port that would do it for fruit yet. Next time?"
"Alright! Alright! We'll leave our special wine with you, but you better get us some extra good filters next time!" Jen scolded mockingly. Zarko has gotten a lot more comfortable doling out IOUs since the first time.
"Of course. Only the best for you two," Zarko said with a greasy human smile imitation that almost made Sarah laugh out loud. It reminded her of a ridiculous cartoon sloth.
"By the way," Sarah asked casually, "how much is a spaceship worth on your planet?"
Zarko sobered up his expression and looked at her curiously. It was a question that other humans had asked before. To him, it was a good sign. This meant that they all dreamt of the stars. But he didn't expect such a question from someone as seemingly practical as Sarah. She had a lot of fruit, sure, but fruit doesn't build spaceships.
After thinking for a while, he replied honestly, "ships aren't traded for one single item. My family traded for the parts to build mine for generations."
He pointed at his spaceship.
Zarko proudly explained, "this is the work of eighteen generations of trading. My family was one of the richest on Zeep-zep. For thirteen generations, they traded for each of the parts on this beauty. Then, for the last five, my ancestors traded excess food from the tenant farmers on their land to expert craftsbeings that could put it together."
"Wait, eighteen generations?" Jen gasped. Eighteen generations ago, her family were probably peasants on a farm in Korea or something…
"Yes," Zarko said, looking at them with a little of pity. "After getting the spaceship, my family has traded in it for twelve generations, through civil wars and disasters."
He did some math on his hands, and said, "that's about four hundred of your years. That's why it's very unlikely that you will never go to space."
Looking at the stunned expression on their faces, he tried to lighten the mood. Zarko said mischievously, "unless you're willing to part with some more of your fruit, in which case I'll let you sit in the back seat for a whole route!"
"Hold on, back up, I'm still stuck on the multiple generations part," Sarah said seriously. "You're saying you're flying on a spaceship that started to be built thirty generations ago? That's… about a millennia for us."
"Yes," Zarko answered, "and that's why only thirteen families on my planet have had the privilege of owning one in our long history. No offense, but that's why I think no human will ever own their own spacecraft for at least fifteen more generations."
Something is wrong here, Sarah thought. The budget for NASA's FTL spacecraft was in the hundreds of millions. Yes, for a fruit farmer, that would be many generations of work if all their descendants worked in the same industry. But there were over three thousand billionaires on Earth, not including the tens of thousands of corporations that had assets or market value over a billion. And the prices for the spacecraft would surely go down as time went on…
For a planet like Zarko's to only have thirteen spaceships over generations of their development…
As they were walking away, Benny asked, "have you guys noticed something weird about the way these aliens do business?"
"Yes." "God yes." They said in unison.
"We've been thinking about it for a while, but these guys not having money is a major problemo," Sarah said, looking around surreptitiously, "Zarko and Zikzik keep talking about not being able to find someone who can upgrade their hulls for fruit. And sometimes they come with nothing good, and we're supposed to just drive our fruits all the way back!"
"And if you think about it, if they were human ships, think about truckers who don't own their trucks. We'd have loans or something to deal with the cargo space problems, and they'd be paid for by profits in a few trips," Jen added.
"The numbers he gave us for spacecraft ownership seem insane," Sarah agreed. "Your company could probably afford to order one right now, not to mention hundreds of others. They must all be dirt poor!"
Benny seemed relieved that he wasn't the only one who was thinking this, "exactly! I'm thinking we just introduce them to the concept of Benjamins and solve all their problems and ours. Would certainly make the return trip a lot easier for me if I didn't have to drive all the way to Berkeley for junior to launder all this crap!"
"We thought of that too," Sarah said as Benny pretended to groan again, "but we couldn't figure out how to get them to take money with no intrinsic value."
"Oh that shouldn't be too hard," Benny said, who's clearly already thought through this problem in his head, "we play a little game called good cop, bad cop."
"Good cop bad cop?"
"Sure, it's a mind game the cops play, where they put you in a room-"
"Yeah we know what it is, but how does that help us?" Sarah said impatiently, an idea tugging on her subconscious.
"Well you see," Benny clearly smugly enjoying this moment where he's thought of something that the duo did not, "you two come with an empty truck next time, and you tell Zarko that you'll give him a wad of clean crisp cash, fresh from the bank, for some of his air filters. And when he asks you why he'd take the cash, you just tell him that he can give it to me in exchange for some of my fruits."
"What does that have anything to do with good cop bad cop?!" Jen asked.
"That has nothing to do with good cop bad cop," Sarah chimed in, but the idea was beginning to form in her head, "but it's a good start. We don't want to deal in cash. It's too risky. It could get the feds onto us and there's a bunch of laws around it that I'm not sure about."
"But what we can do is have an internal money system for traders pegged to the US Dollar!" Jen completed.
"Yup, so when Zarko comes back next time, we tell him he has an account with the Bank of Benny, we give him a fancy looking card that has his bank account number and give him a pin code, and we deposit a certain amount of BennyBucks into his account for giving us air filters. Then when you come around, Zarko gives you his card and pin, and gives you BennyBucks for your fruit," Sarah finished.
"Aha. And then I come to you two, say, I would like to convert BennyBucks in my Bank of Benny account to good old American dollars," Benny extrapolated, completing that final step.
"Yeah! We'll just wire you the money and everyone gets theirs," Sarah exclaimed, happy they've finally thought through the loop and gotten someone on board.
"BennyBucks is a terrible name though," Jen said, calming everyone down a little, "and why are we getting so excited over the basic concept of currency? And why haven't aliens figured this out? Maybe it's against some kind of space trading code."
"Who knows? Maybe we just try it on Zarko and see if it works out," Benny said, a glint in his eyes, "and then we expand, galaxy-tically."
"Galactic credits!" Sarah exclaimed, "that's what we'll call it."
They agreed that it was the least worst name that they'd come up with so far. It was boring, but when it came to finances, maybe boring and cliché was a good choice after all.
"Explain again. I am trying to understand," Zarko said two days later as he offloads the air filters he'd promised.
"C'mon dude, for the fifth time," Sarah exasperated, "it's not that hard. We give you a bank account card and have you set up a secret number…"
Jen had spent the last two days coding up a storm. Technically, a simple debit system wasn't that hard, but she had to make a website interface that Benny could go up to and enter his account, Zarko's card information and amount, then let Zarko type in his code…etc. She'd mused that it would have been easier to just do this all in a cloud-based spreadsheet, but that wouldn't scale up if they had more customers.
Sarah had the account cards laminated and designed a logo: the letters GC, for Galactic Credit, and a stylized version of a Milky Way in the background. Part of the value in a trustworthy system is to look official, and you can't get much more official than laminated cards.
"Yes, I understand that part," Zarko said, clearly displaying his frustration on his facial expression as well, "but I don't understand why Benny would give me his fruit for just entering a number."
"Because we have an agreement with him that he'll take it in exchange for fruit!" Sarah was sure this was the umpteenth time she had to explain this, but clearly Zarko was not getting it.
"Is it similar to a debt?" Zarko said suspiciously, as if debt was this dark magic that the humans were performing on him, "I have never heard of this kind of debt before."
"Yes, it's a debt, of sorts," Jen cut in. The last time he had asked this exact question, they'd said no, and that led to fifty other questions and explanations that went nowhere, so nothing could go worse if they said yes-
"Ok. I don't understand," Zarko did his sloth version of a sigh, it was cute, but at the same time frustrating for Sarah and Jen, "But I can try it. I know you two are not trying to trick me. Do I get my fruits before I take off?"
"Yes! You go to Benny-" Sarah started.
"Yes! And that's it. Benny gives you his fruit," Jen cut her off, knowing that this was about to launch into yet another long, long line of questions they just can't deal with right now.
Sarah set up a new account for Zarko, asked him for a 6 digit base ten pin code (thank god Zarko was a ten digit species) which he promptly memorized, and hoping that Jen's prototype website wouldn't fail, showed him how they were "giving" Zarko 40,000 Galactic Credits for 8 Bohor air filter machines into his account ("No, you can't have my iPad. It's on your account card now. Show this to Benny later.")
"Well that worked out great," Benny said as he watched them wire him the $25,000 for his truck shipment of fruit. Though his costs were in the low thousands, he could have easily fleeced Zarko for his full 40k. But they all agreed that wasn't the point, which was to get Zarko to see the benefits of using a currency system abstracted from goods and services.
"Dude, you weren't there," Sarah complained, "I don't understand why he had such a hard time understanding money. Money equals goods. Bing bang boom. It's like these guys don't have the capability for abstract thinking."
"No they definitely do. You can't build spaceships without abstract math and science," Jen said, "but he clearly had a deathly aversion to using money. I think it's tied to some taboo to debt somehow. All the other species must have it because none of the aliens we've met have even mentioned anything close to a real economy."
"Whatever it is," Benny sighed happily, "I'm just happy I didn't have to go home with my truck full of weird alien toys."
"Yup. The next step is to get all the human traders to take credits. At least they'll have no problems understanding the benefits."
Sarah made some calls to the trader licensing office at the spaceport. There she found a manager willing to part with phone numbers and contact information for the other human traders, for an "information fee" of course, and started making calls to the other human traders.
It wasn't easy. Some traders were representatives of bigger food companies, and didn't have all the flexibility to make these kinds of decisions. And others no doubt were thinking of copying their system for their own profit. But they all saw the benefits of a unified network of currency debiting because they've been suffering the same problems that Sarah, Jen, and Benny had been.
Over the next few days, all the human traders agreed to take galactic credit from the aliens, which they knew they could exchange for cash with Sarah and Jen.
"We are officially in business."
In economics, there's a distinction made between different kinds of money. There's commodity money, usually gold or silver. There's representative money, which is currency backed by commodities like gold or silver. And then there's fiat money, which is not backed by any intrinsic value, but rather by government decree, hence fiat.
Galactic Credits fall into some kind of weird hybrid category between representative and fiat money. They're backed by the Dollar, which is fiat money, but also which makes them representative money. This means that the people issuing them, in this case Jen and Sarah, are not supposed to create them without also having a corresponding US Dollar in their bank account.
Of course, Sarah and Jen hadn't signed an ironclad contract with the other human traders that they're always guaranteed to take their galactic credits and exchange for money, so technically that meant that one day Sarah could simply "deposit" a large number of credits in her account and buy all the goods she wanted from Zarko, or potentially the other traders.
That would, however, be slaughtering the golden goose for the meat.
After all, they didn't want to sell fruit or Bohor air filters.
They wanted to sell the concept of money.
"Why would I take this over fruit?" Zikzik sniffed. He was known as a sharp one by all the human traders. If there's any new alien fad coming down the pipeline, chances are Zikzik is the first one to touchdown with a cargo hold full of it.
Unlike many of the other traders, he was fairly consistent in his dealings. This much fruit is for this much air filters. He knows his price, and he lets you know it too. Everyone suspected he kept careful records of all his selling and buying somewhere in his ship, but he's never brought them out. Maybe he just had a sharp memory.
"It's very consistent," Sarah insisted, trying to appeal to his affinity for a stable and predictable exchange, "one pound of fruit today is the same as one pound of fruit tomorrow, and you can deal in fractions."
Completely ignoring that most fruits are seasonal, and price changes, and inflation, she thought, let's start here.
"Fractions, you say?" Zikzik seemed thoughtful, or maybe he's just scratching an itch on his snout, Sarah could never tell with these aliens.
"Yes, fractions," said Jen detecting the slightest bit of opening, "you can trade your air filters for credit. Then you can trade maybe three quarters of your credits to fill your cargo with fruit. The next time you come down here to Earth, you would only need to bring half the amount of air filters as the first trip, combined with the credits you have left, you can leave with a full cargo load anyway!"
Is that how that math goes, Sarah thought, but didn't cut in, as Zikzik seems to be nodding, an oddly universal gesture for affirmation.
"Five eighths of the credits," Zikzik argued, "The air filters are harder to get now because the Bohor are running low, and they need time to make more."
Bargaining! There we go! That's what we're talking about! Sarah almost pumped her fists in the air and gave him a high five, not a great idea given how sharp his claws are as she found out when trying to shake his hands a couple of weeks ago.
"Ok, you would still have to negotiate that amount with each human trader," Sarah replied adding, "but they all deal in Galactic Credits."
They signed him up for an account, gave him a card, and set up his pin code. It had only taken half an hour to get Zikzik on board, which was significantly faster than the hours they'd taken to explain this to Zarko, despite them being the same species. Was it xenocist that she'd assume it was going to take just as long, Sarah wondered.
Looking at the line of traders, she sighed. This was going to be a long day.
Luckily, Zikzik accepting the credits made for great advertising. He was known for being a sharp trader, so if he doesn't think it's a scam, it must not be, right?
Sarah and Jen managed to get two other traders that day onto credits, and one more who was dipping his proverbial toes into the water.
It was a good day.
Jen had been working hard. The Galactic Credits website was now on its 16th major iteration. She'd beefed up the security on it, to make sure none of the other human traders got any funny ideas. Backups became more automatic and frequent, and there was now a rollback and dispute mechanism, not that it was being used yet.
Sarah had also been working hard. She'd been sitting in meetings all day with legal, finances, and now they had a small army of people who were ready to help out if they got into trouble there. Galactic Credits is now officially a tax paying LLC incorporated in the great state of Delaware.
Benny Jr, who had just finished college, had come in as well. He was no good at talking to clients, but he's what the duo would refer to as "street smart". Occasionally, the alien traders would bring in some exotic or ahem, dubiously sourced items, and he would know exactly where to convert that into cold hard cash. On the spreadsheets, his dealings were adding up to a nice fat padding on the margins for Galactic Credits, which to this point, hasn't been making any money other than in the fruit and air filters exchange business.
They were now working out of a rented office in downtown Livermore, with a very nice view of a brick-lined pub that offers numerous craft beers and the old railroad that runs through the heart of town.
Ironically, there's a Bank of America branch across the street, not far from the office itself, the company that had invented the BankAmericard and started the credit card revolution, seemingly oblivious to this new competitor moving into town, literally and figuratively.
They had many brilliant finance experts who were working on something, surely, but established financial institutions are not always great at moving fast and adapting to changing technology. There were many regulations to worry about, and the stakes were a lot higher.
There's something very quaint about the town itself. Some people didn't consider it part of the Bay Area metro area itself, but with the latest BART expansion station they recently built, that's been less and less true.
Now, it was literally the town where the train tracks ended. And where the final frontier began.
For the people in the office, it's also where they dreamt about a new financial revolution in the galaxy.
Some people have critiqued this chapter on the grounds that established financial institutions would have thought of this idea on day one. I appreciate the feedback, but that is a rosy view of the velocity at corporations in my opinion. I've personally worked in some of these companies, and if someone brought up this idea, it would probably have taken at least a month to get the idea through various risk audits and legal reviews.
In terms of technology, much of banking still operates on software that predates the modern Internet. This is one of the reasons why fin-tech startups have been able to beat them on time-to-market, despite massive institutional or financial disadvantages. It's why companies like PayPal, Square, Stripe, Venmo… etc could compete with the incumbents with the development of the Internet.
Sure, an intern in engineering or tools would have a semi-working prototype by week three, but the first line of code would be pushed to production by… month three. A much more likely scenario: some startup beats them to the punch, exactly as it happens here, and the large company offers their founders or investors an obscene amount of money to buy them out.
RoyalRoad
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Before you spend money on this game, consider this.

$700,000 Bet on Fintech - BFT

OBLIGATORY FILLER MATERIAL – Giving thanks edition: Kickin’ around Caracas, Pt. 5

Continuing… (It's Part 6 in the saga, I fucked up. Sorry.)
So, after a few re-fueling and impromptu cigar-purchasing stops in South and Central America, we wheel up to the deserted jetway at LAX.
“Thought we were going to Elmendorf?” I asked.
“This isn’t it?” the pilot replied, feigning worry.
“No.”, I replied, “Looks like California. Fruits and nuts. All around. What’s going on? One minute we’re off to Texas, then Cali, then Texas again, now we end up here at the California airport of the iconic tower.”
“Yeah, it’s confusing enough haulin’ civilians around. But when we get a call from Virginia, we tend to comply without any questions,” the pilot explains.
“Aw, shit!”, I sort of exclaim, “Rack and Ruin called?”
“Yeah”, the pilot replies, “Figures you’d know these guys. They said they were closer to LAX rather than Texas and had us divert here. In fact, you look over there, see that dark blue Chevy? That’s them; and evidently, your ride.”
I tipped the airman from earlier a couple of cigars as he helped me with my gear off the plane and into the trunk of Rack and Ruin’s plain-Jane blue late modeled Chevy. Had to move the Sidewinder Missiles off to one side, though.
“Most honorable Agents Lack and Luin!” I quipped in my faux-racist greeting. “What the hell, guys? I’ve got to get to Japan and get some newly rigidified digits.”
“Let’s see your hand”, Agent Rack asks. “Nasty.”
“Yeah”, I sigh “And with the medicos in South America and their penchant for plaster, I don’t so much have a left hand as more of an ankylosaur tail.”
“Or Thagomizer”, Agent Ruin tittered. “Anyone gives you grief, and one upside the head should set them right. Or dead.”
“You’re a riot, Ruin.” I replied, “But not entirely incorrect.”
We all agreed that I really didn’t need any extra accouterments to make myself look more dangerous. I mean with my severe haircut, stern beard clip, and perpetual ‘Go fuck yourself’ scowl.
“Yeah”, I replied, stroking the aforementioned beard, “I just can’t get that. I’m such a people person.”
After Agents Rack and Ruin finished drying their eyes from laughing what I thought was en extremis, we finally got down to business.
“So, what’s the skinny, guys”, I asked. “New marching orders?”
“No. Not as such”, Agent Ruin said, still sniggering over my ‘people person’ comment.
I see we’re moving. Agent Rack is just driving casually, like Chewbacca when they were waiting to see if the Empire went for that expensive Bothan code.
“Then, what?” I asked, getting a slight bit piqued.
“Well”, Agent Ruin noted, “When you went to South America, you took some of your artillery collection with, correct?”
“You know I did. You even made some snide comments about my personal choice of sidearms and their ‘excessive’ calibers, if memory serves”, I reiterated.
“And if you are proceeding normally, as you always do, they’re all nestled in the trunk of this very car. All cleaned, quiet, unloaded, and smelling sweetly of Hoppe’s Number 9 and WD 40, correct?” Rack inquired.
“Yes?” I cautiously venture.
“Well, ya’ big dummy, do you think they’re going to let you saunter into Tokyo armed like the Third Fleet?” Agent Ruin chuckled.
“Um…well…I do have a Diplomatic Passport.” I ventured.
“That’s not going to work this time.”, Agent Ruin said, shaking his head. “They’re tighter than Dick’s Hatband about sidearms. Want to bring in your Rigby SXS .500 Nitro Express double rifle? Not a problem. Sidearms, especially in your alien hunting calibers, nope.”
Well, that’s just….*dandy!”, I reply, semi-put out. “Now what the hell am I going to do?”
“Ever think that’s why Ruin and I are here, now?”, Rack asks.
“And here I thought it was just so you could bask in the warm glow of my fucking wonderful personality. Or that you actually cared about me as a real goddamn human”, I joshed.
“Ummm…yeah”, Rack replies, “There’s no way we can answer that without going on some Deadpool list. “
I agreed.
“OK, here’s the deal: you get your sidearms, ammunition, speed loaders, brass knuckles, Asp, laser range finders, Sap, Zeiss scopes, Kukri, Wisconsin Cheese Whittler, Buck folding skinner, Marine K-Bar, those two ultra-illegal Cheburkov Cobra titanium switchblades...”
“Three. Olga the KGB lady sent me one for Geologist’s Day.”
“Ahem. Those three ultra-illegal Cheburkov switchblades, that Wyoming Speedholer, your MASER Time-Distance Computer, garrote, pocket rail gun and whatever else lethal you carry and deposit it in the iron box in the trunk. We’ll ensure that it’s delivered to Esme post-haste. And by post-haste I mean one of our guys will deliver it personally.”
“Well…I suppose”, I conceded, “But best send someone who’s been to the house recently. I don’t know how much bigger Khan has grown since I left on this little fantasy trip. Wouldn’t want a star on the wall in Langley for someone eaten by a mastiff. Want to see a picture….Oh, bother. That’s right. My phone’s at the bottom of fucking Lake Maracaibo.”
“Good point”, Ruin interjects, “Guess we’ll do a little road trip and deliver it ourselves. Best call Esme and let her know what’s going on.”
“I have no objections to your proposals. Please give Esme this when you see her. I had some luck in the Calaveras Casino and if I don’t send her some mad money. Ouch. She’ll never forgive me for not taking her along to Japan.” I asked.
“But I thought Esme hated Japan? Too crowded and too ‘fussy’, I believe was her estimation.” Ruin asked.
“Yes, but once she saw the Ginza, all bets were off. Shopping the likes of which even Allah himself hasn’t seen.” I replied, slowly shaking my head.
“I see”, Ruin said, “Well, since you’re off to Sapporo, perhaps you can do a recon for Esme on the shopping there.”
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”, I smiled, “Now I know why I let you guys hang around with me.”
So, as advertised, I am now standing on the tarmac at LAX, basically feeling naked.
“Can’t I keep just one switchblade?” I moaned to Agent Rack.
“Go ahead, if you’re really keen on donating it to Japanese customs”, he replied.
“Fuckbuckets.” I groused.
“There, there now. That’s the usual Dr. Rocknocker of which we’re all so fond.” Agent Ruin chuckled.
“Remember, you do have that wallet-sized credit card gizmo from the Company. So you’re not entirely ‘naked’. Think of it as an emergency breechcloth.” He smiled.
“I’d like a larger model if you don’t mind. It’s chilly out here.” I joshed.
After Agents Rack and Ruin stripped me metaphorically naked as they de-weaponized me, they handed me a Business Class ticket to Tokyo, and a pass to the Japan Airlines Hospitality Suite and Lounge.
“So sorry you guys can’t hang around and have a few farewell snorts”, I chided, “But you’ve got a bit of a drive, so best be off before the weather turns to shit.”
“Who says we’re driving?” Agent Rack asked as he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the ready and waiting C-130 cargo plane currently taxiing slowly in our direction.
“Well, in that case”, I smiled even more broadly, “Let’s invite the flight crew to join us. That’ll make the flight home all that much more interesting.”
After near tear-jerking farewell sentimentalities, i.e., “Piss on you”, “Get stuffed” and “Take a fuckin’ hike”; Agents Rack and Ruin, my weapons and the Agency’s plain-Jane Blue Chevy were all nestled snugger than buggers in ruggers in the belly of the thundering C-130.
Now truly on my own, I trudge the hundred thousand or so centisteps to my departure terminal, make a quick recon that my flight’s still slated to go in a generally westward direction, and hightail it to the nearest courtesy desk to ask for a motorized cart to take me and my remaining luggage to the JAL Hospitality Suite.
Hey. I’m old, infirm, and currently among the walking wounded.
Anyone that disagrees risks an Ankylosaur tail club swat or Thagomizer to the skull.
Finally ensconced in the JAL Hospitality Suite, Polo Lounge of course; I was drinking Tokyo Teas (3 oz. vodka, 2 oz. gin, 2 oz. rum, 1 oz. triple sec, 1 oz. Midori, good splash of lime juice, a slight splash of 7-Up (diet, of course), over ice with a lime wheel) with Pabst Blue Ribbon Extra 1844 chasers and Hangar One’s “Fog Point” vodka on the side, hiding from the brutish realities of this foul year of two thousand and twenty-something, Common Era…
I’ve already called Esme and we’ve had a good, long chat. She still managed to give me her shopping list for whenever I find myself bored on the Ginza.
She’ll be shocked when she learns that I’m not going to be in Tokyo long, but have 1st class tickets on the Bullet Train to Sapporo. Still, I’ll probably find myself in Pole Town or the Stellar Place there, trading piles of US greenbacks for locally produced Japanese curios and clothing.
I can hardly wait.
I order another round of drinks, as the wonderful attendants in the Hospitality Suite were bored out of their skulls because of the COVID-induced drop-in customers flying anywhere that requires a hospitality room stay, and I was virtually the only one around. They tried their level best to outdo each other when it comes to Japanese efficiency and friendliness.
After a couple of hours, they ask if I would like something from the grill, as the day chef had “the COVID” and the night chef just arrived. A quick perusal of the menu and I chose a 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse and another round of drinks.
I usually don’t like to eat too much before I fly, but JAL tells me the flight is going to be virtually empty, something like <121 pax, all told, so restroom availability shouldn’t be too much of a concern.
Plus, who am I to say no to a free, blue 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse?
There was a bit of difficulty conveying to the chef through the intermediaries of the hospitality just how I wanted my steak.
“Blue,” I said.
“Brue?” was the reply.
“Rare. Very, very rare.” I continued.
Look of total bewilderment.
I drag out my Personal Language Pro, speak “Steak, very, very rate” into the infernal gizmo, and hand the contraption to the attendant.
“珍しい、非常に珍しいステーキ?”[ Mezurashī, hijō ni mezurashī sutēki?]
“Raw! Nama!” I say, louder than need be.
They toddle off to find the chef.
“How is it sir, that you would like your steak cooked?” he asks.
“Very rare. Just a minute or two per side. Inside still cold.” I instructed.
All I got for the trouble was a puzzled smile.
“Give me the language gizmo…” I type in a few words…
“お尻を洗い、角をノックオフして、ここから出してください”
[O shiri o arai,-kaku o nokkuofu shite, koko kara dashite kudasai.]
“Wash its ass, knock its horns off, and walk it out here.”
“OH!” as the lightbulb pops. “Rare. Got it! Excellent!” the chef laughs and zips back to the kitchen.
Like I always say, I’m nothing if not the international ambassador of amity and goodwill.
“Crack tubes!”
Dinner was fantastic. I do wish I could have somehow mailed the Porterhouse bone back home for Khan. After that hambone incident, he might even taste it.
Finally on the plane, in an almost empty Business Class, the flight captain informs us that we’re headed to Haneda Airport Tokyo and anyone not headed in that direction better ‘haul ass off’ the flight or forever hold their peace.
Late-night international flights tend to be a bit more wooly than your average Chicago to Omaha gig.
Especially when the flight’s damn near empty and we have the next 12 hours or so to be best friends.
We taxi, turn and head into the wind. I’m doctoring up a couple of dossiers and keeping my personal cabin attendant, Luna since there were two of us in Business and two business flight attendants, busy with her trying to play ‘Stump the Geologist’.
“I’ll bet you never had this before.” She beamed and handed me a tumbler of very dangerous-looking brown liquor.
I cautiously sniff, take a modest gulp, swirl and glug the rest down.
“Ohishi Single Sherry Cask”, I say with a muffled belch. “Light. Fruity. An Englishman’s drink.”
“Oh. You knew. Let me try again.” She smiles beatifically.
“I have no objections to your proposal.” I smile as nicely as this crotchety old Komodo Dragon could.
She returns with another flagon of spirits; it smells of obsidian, leather, and earth.
I just had some of this back in LAX. I take a snort, smile, and shotgun the rest.
“Hibiki Japanese Harmony…lovely stuff.” I smile. “A little light for my jaded palate, but I’d never turn it down if it were free.”
“Oh, you win again. Wait. One more.” She smiles and skitters off to the galley.
She returns with another soupçon of some more dangerous brown liquor.
“Here, try this. It will make you very popular at social gatherings”. She smiles.
Sniff. “Splendid.” Snort. Swirl. Smile. Shotgun.
“Kanosuke New Born, if I’m not mistaken.” I smile back. “Very nice. I really do like this one.”
“You too good at this. One more!” she stands and stomps off defiantly. She returns in a trice and hands me the glass.
“Hmm…brown. Light notes of earth, leather, dating your daughter, and Kentucky…
“Beam Suntory, right?”
“You know them all!” she says, feigning irritation.
“And I thank you. Those were all excellent. Now, anything in the dangerous clear liquor category? I asked.
Luna smiled as I palmed off a 20k yen tip.
“Oh, no sir. Wait until we land.” She demurred, referring to the gratuity; which is know is not de rigueur in the Orient, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Just in case we never make it to Tokyo”, I laughed, unknowingly presciently.
We both chuckled about that last line as she tried out various sakes and shōchūs and an actual Japanese ‘White Liquor’ (ホワイトリカー), which were all excellent as was the company.
I tell her that I need to get some work done and could she bring me a tall Rocknocker. After explain the origins and construction of the eponymous drink, she brings me one that must tip the scales at 1 or so liters.
She settles down to an empty seat and I get after the work that I need to finish before we land. I’m about ½ way through my drink when it felt as if the plane hit a brick wall. She quivered and quaked and clutched at herself while I made some comments about the pilot’s mental health.
We dropped like a paralyzed falcon, then just as suddenly, felt like it was an express elevator to Angel’s 11. The plane bucked and shimmied, wickedly. Then we slam-danced right and fell a few more stories. It was like we were in a Mixmaster and the owner was trying out every speed.
The emergency lights in the 777-300ER popped on, and the fasten seat belt sign barked loudly so even sleeping travelers could enjoy the show.
Rinse. Spin. Shudder. Repeat.
Finally, the ride smooths out and we hear the captain on the blower.
“This is your captain speaking…ah, we seem to have hit some uncharted turbulence back there.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious”, I muttered.
“Everything’s A-OK. “ he reports.
“That’s good”, I note.
“But…”
“There’s always the but…” I groan.
“…we have a couple of warning lights for which we can’t quite account. So to just be safe and certain, we’re going to divert to Hawaii, get a clean bill of health and resume this flight once we make sure everything here is hunky-dory.”
There were scattered groans and applause. Add them together and divide by two and the average response on the flight was “Meh. Whatever.”
Except for the other guy in Business, with whom I hadn’t shared two words. He began to absolutely lose his shit.
“Oh, man! We’re so screwed! Mechanical malfunction? What does that mean?” he positively fizzed with fear.
The flight attendants tried to calm him down, to no avail. They basically gave up and said they’d report his misgivings to the Captain.
I motioned over to my personal flight attendant, Luna, and asked if I could be of service.
“Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled at me, “If you could speak with him. You are so calm, and he is…”
“Losing his bloody mind”, I chuckled as I finished her sentence for her. “Of course, I’ll take a stab at it.”
So, I grab my drink and ease over to my Business Class partner and introduce myself.
“Hey, pal. How’s it going? I’m Dr. Rock, gentleman, scholar, and connoisseur of cigars and things alcoholic. You doing OK?”
He looks at me with an ashen face and his eyes the size of bloodshot dinner plates.
“Yeah. I’m Todd Schotts. I’m flying to Japan for business.” He mumbles
“No surprise there,” I reply calmly and take a slug of my drink.
“But now we’re all going to die. The plane is busted and we’ll crash…” he started off again.
“So, Todd is it? Good. You drink?” I asked.
“Yeah?”, he stammered back.
I asked Luna to make us a fresh batch of my eponymous cocktails.
“OK, Todd, listen up”, I began after the drinks were served, “I have flown literally millions of miles over the last 4 decades. On Aeroflot when it was still the USSR. On TACA (Take A Chance Airways), on Chalk’s in the Caribbean, on Bob’s Verrifast Plane Company in Rhodesia, on regional carriers that don’t even exist anymore. All over the world. Had some bad experiences flying, and me ol’ mugger, this ain’t one of them. This is nothing more than the glitch for this mission.”
I chuckled lightly and complimented Luna on a fantastic drink.
“Yeah…yeah…yeah…but we have to land and check out some lights…” Todd squealed.
“Well now, Todd. It would be rather difficult to do any external assessment while in flight, don’t you agree?” I asked.
“But we’re diverting. We have to land and that adds more risk. We’re going to crash and die!” he was coming more and more unglued.
“I will bet you every cent you have on your person and home bank accounts that that will not happen”, I chuckled.
That took him by surprise. At least it shut him up for a while.
“Look, Todd. This is Boeing’s latest model. They have the most incredible safety record. And if a little clear air turbulence were to be knocking planes out of the sky, don’t you think we’d hear about it as the press went berserk?” I asked.
“But they don’t know what the lights mean! What if one of the engines’s out? How far can we fly on one engine?” Todd stuttered.
Having my fill of a supposedly grown man with inane childlike fears, I calmly replied,
“All the way to the crash site.”
He went white.
“...hope we hit something hard. I don’t want to limp away from this.”
He went limp.
Then I went to my seat and motioned for Luna to prepare a reload.
Of course, 45 minutes later, we land without incident at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, Honolulu Hawaii.
We were told to just wait around until they figure out what the problem if any, was.
They had officials waiting at the end of the jetway to check our COVID status and passports before they let us loose in the terminal.
I asked Luna if she knew this airport. She noted that she did.
“Is there a JAL hospitality room here at this airport? I asked.
“Yes, Doctor. It’s the Sakura Lounge. It is located on the third level above The Local, Terminal 2.” She replied.
“Please notify whoever needs to know that that’s where I’ll be for the duration”, I smiled and handed her my business card. “See you soon, I hope.”
“Oh, Dr. Rock”, she replied, “I am sure it is nothing much. We’ll be back in the air within mere hours.”
“Well then”, I smiled, “Guess I’d better get ready to hoof it to the lounge.”
“Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled, “No rush. I will call for you a courtesy cart. You are injured, you are Business, you are priority.”
“I love that Asian efficiency.” I smiled back and toddled down the jetway.
At the terminus of the jetway, I show my COVID-clear papers, dates and times of my Anti-Virus vaccine administrations, the letter from Virginia clearing me of all detention, and my red Russian diplomatic passport.
While in the cart, whizzing our way to the JAL lounge, the driver said “Man! You must be some kind of VIP. You were through that welcoming committee in less than two minutes!”
“Me? Nah!”, I chuckled, “Just an old phart of a geologist that they didn’t want to mess with. Not on such a bright, sunny day as this.”
“I see you’re not wearing a mask.” The driver quipped.
“Very observant. There are reasons for that.” I replied.
He careens around a corner and if this were a normal pre-Covid day, I’m certain we’d have killed hundreds. However, the airport, as I’ve come to grow accustomed to, was virtually deserted.
“Yeah? Like what?” he asks.
“Well, Scooter, 1. I have an active and hardworking immune system that I let off the chain every once in a while for exercise. Got to let it know what it’s up against, right? 2. I’ve had all my shots and some that were experimental. They seem to have worked. And 3. I find it difficult to drink and smoke cigars while wearing a mask. However, if you’d prefer, I will mask up. No problem, though it still is optional.”
“Nah, man”, he said, “I was just wondering if you were one of those religious idiots or conspiracy nuts.”
Nope”, I smiled back, “Just another geologist out in the world plying his trade for cash. Y’know, whorin’ around for money.”
He laughs aloud as we skid to a stop right in front of Lounge.
I slip the guy a $20 and ask if he’d listen for the JAL flight I was just on. If we’re going on ahead today, I’d need him to scoot by and putt-putt me back to the plane.
He laughs and pockets the $20 as quick as a mink ruts.
“No worries. I’ll just hang around this area. I hear anything about the flight, I’ll come and let you know.” He grins.
“Good man”, I say, as I hand him my card. “I’m Dr. Rocknocker. Call me Rock”.
“And I’m Kapula Mano, call me Kap” he replies.
“Good man”, I say again, “Hope to see you in a while.”
He grins, floors his electric cart, and peels out at speeds approaching 4.5 MPH.
I wander into the lounge, show my credentials, and am escorted to a post up on Mahogany Ridge.
The bar is very quiet. Besides the bartender, I can’t see anyone else in the darkened and Smooth Jazz-infused drinking emporium.
I order a local drink, a Mai Tai, just for the experience and something a bit different.
It’s served in a goldfish bowl on a stem, bedecked with a slice of lime, a sprig of mint, a stick of sugar cane, a polychromatic orchid, and the obligate paper umbrella.
“Ah. Mai Tai. I will enjoy it.” I said to no one in particular.
One was enough, and I decided to go back to the old standard. Once I explained to the bartender what that was, he made them heroic and enthusiastically.
I’m reading up on a random dossier, making notes in a new file, and puffing away on a Fuentes Onyx double Maduro Churchill cigar.
I hear a slight cough coming from my right, and this here lovely lady, she sat to my immediate starboard and looked at me semi-quizzically.
Not in the mood for shenanigans of any stripe, I give her the obligate Baja Canada nod and tilt of the drink. I return to my dossiers and continue to read and take notes.
“Excuse me!” I hear.
Fearing the worst, either the woman is Karen-oid anti-smoking or a religious fruit-and-nutburger, I slowly turn to face her and reply, somewhat glacially, I have to admit.
“What?”
“That cigar…”
“Here we go…” I mutter, eyes rolling northward.
“Smells exquisite. Could you tell me the brand? My husband would enjoy some like that.” She notes.
Instantly my demeanor switches 180^0.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s an Arturo Fuentes Onyx. Churchill size, or 60 ring x 7” length, double Maduro. Here, take one for your husband. I have an ample supply.” I smile.
“Oh, no. I couldn’t. Could I?” she asks.
“Please. I insist.” I smile the best I could given the circumstances.
“Thank you. You’re too kind…umm…Mr….?”
“Doctor. Doctor Rocknocker. World traveler, oilman, and international ambassador of amity, good drinks, and fine cigars. Call me Rock” I said.
“Oh! A Doctor?” she brightens.
“Yes, of Petroleum Geology and Engineering. Not medicine.” I chuckle.
She chuckles back.
“And I am Hella Aaberg”, as she offers her hand for a quick shake.
“Interesting name, Hella. Scandinavian or Old German heritage?” I ask.
“On my father’s side. He’s Finnish.” She replies.
“But I’ll wager your mother is not Scandinavian, correct?” I ask.
“She was from Truk, an island…”
“In the South Pacific, Micronesia. Was she from Weno city?” I asked.
“Why yes. How could you possibly know that?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ve been there. Great diving amongst the WWII wrecks. I think it’s actually called ‘Chuuk Lagoon’ or something like that now.” I said.
“That’s right! Amazing. Where else have you been?” she asked.
“Anywhere there’s oil, strife, booze, cigars, heavy explosives and typically long distances from whatever most normal people call civilization,” I replied with a chuckle.
Suddenly, I hear a voice booming out behind me.
“Why don’t you save that rapier-like wit for those musky-fuckers back home, Rocko?”
My expression changes. My eyes pop fully wide open.
“Hella?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“May I ask you a favor?”
“You can ask…”
“Thank you. Now, looking over my shoulder, is there a hulking goon of a person, thin up top, paunchy halfway down with the most ridiculously tiny sized shoes you’ve ever seen for a so-called grown man?” I ask.
“Yes. Yes, there is.” She replies.
“I thought so. Many thanks.”
I spin and launch off my barstool and grab Toivo by the hand. He hadn’t seen my left-hand Thagomizer yet.
“Toivo! You old sumbitch. What the flying fennec fox fuck are you, of all people, doing in Hawaii?” I laughed.
“Just keeping an eye on you, Rock!” he laughed equally as loud.
“No, fucking-A, seriously. What the actual fuck? What are you doing in this actual nice place?” I asked.
“Just headed to Tokyo to conduct a bit of service company business. I walked into the lounge and smelled a foul cigar. I figured it can’t be the venerable Dr. Rocknocker. He’s back at some school up north terrorizing geology and engineering grads and undergrads.” Toivo laughed.
“But there I was. Surprise!”, I laughed and pumped his hand.
“What the fuck, Rock. Now what did you do?” he asks, referring to my Ankylosaur tail club left hand.
“Ah, fuck. Long story. Oh, pardon me. Toivo, this is Hella. We were just talking about the South Seas Islands.” I said.
“Planning on running off together?” Toivo laughs, to the amusement of neither party.
“Oh, and this idiot is Toivo, a man with a congenital foot-in-mouth disorder. He’s mostly harmless.” I noted to Hella.
Greetings were shared all around. Hella made some small excuses and said she needed to depart. I gave her another cigar for her husband, shook her hand, and wished her well.
“Here’s my business card. If your husband has any questions, have him drop me a line.” I noted.
Hella smiled beautifully. She said she would. Then she thanked me shook our hands, and like that, there she was, gone.
“Well Toivo, you old bastard. Don't just stand there in the doorway like some lonesome goddamn mouse shit sheepherder, get your ass over here and have a drink.” I motioned over to my perch on Mahogany Ridge.
“Don’t mind if I do”, he says as he deftly winds his way to a seat to my left, snagging a cigar out of my pocket on the way over.
“You might want these”, I say in an exasperated tone, and hand him my gold Dunhill Hobnail lighter and V-cutter gizmo.
He cuts and fires up his heater.
“What you drinkin’, Rock”, he asks.
“Anything with alcohol, as usual. You know that Toiv.” I reply.
“No. I mean right now.” He clarifies.
“Well, I had a Mai Tai. Very nice if you like fruity, flowery drinks. It’s the locals’ favorite.” I reply.
“Sounds good. I’ll have several. And you?” Toivo asks.
“My usual. The bartender is already apprised of the situation.” I reply.
Toivo smiles the smile of one knowing his sobriety is going to be taken out for a swim. Hell, taken out and tossed into the deep end.
Toivo and I sit there, swapping lies, smoking cigars and sipping at our toddies.
Hell, Toivo was slurping them like a sump-pump during an extra-wet summer.
We chattered about family, work, whether or not Tokyo was going to host the Olympics or if the COVID-boogie man scared everyone off.
Toivo, always one afflicted with TB (“Tiny Bladder”) got up to go to the loo for the third time that hour. He left his pocket organizer on the bar and I swear on a stack of Origins of Species, I didn’t touch it.
I reached over to his vacated seat to retrieve my cigar lighter when I looked down and saw in his organizer a tab that reads “Rack & Ruin”.
“Oh. No. Fucking. Way.” I recoiled as I’d just reached out and petted a 6-foot hungover scorpion.
“One of my best friends? Secretly allied with the Agency? No. Not possible.” I drained my drink and called for another.
“No. No. No. It can’t be. No. No fucking way…” as doubt began to dissolve when I thought back to all those times I had just ‘run into’ Toivo.
“But he’s oil patch as well. That could be chalked up to coincidence.” I ruminated quizzically in my brain.
I quickly reflected back on J.M. Darhower: “Yes, you see, there’s no such thing as coincidence. There are no accidents in life. Everything that happens is the result of a calculated move that leads us to where we are.”
She may be the author of the execrable New Adult Sempre series, which Esme likes and I loathe, but she might just be right on this occasion.
Toivo return, lighter in the bladder and good sense. He never even noticed he’d left his organizer out in broad bar light for all to see.
“So, Toivo, when’s your flight?” I ask.
“Oh, man. Was I lucky. The JAL flight to Tokyo from Los Angeles had mechanical trouble and had to divert here. I got a ticket on the plane for that flight, when it continues.
“You mean ‘if it continues’,” I replied.
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I meant. Hey! Was that your flight?” he asks innocently. He’s really innocent of fieldcraft.
I decide to have some fun at my old friend’s expense.
“Yep. Hit some CAT (Clear Air Turbulence) and the JAL pilots reported some lighting problem. No apparent ruin to any of the systems. They relay racked their brains to figure it out, but they couldn’t that’s why I here.” I said, waiting for the words to swim upstream in Toivo’s coconut and make some sort of connection.
“Yeah. Double lucky. No problem with the plane and I get to go to Japan early.” Toivo crookedly grins.
“So, no trouble with the plane? Then why haven’t I heard that the flight’s going to resume?” I asked as I pushed a fresh, seriously strong drink to Toivo.
“Oh, must have heard it in the john.” Toivo countered and tried to cover his tracks by taking a huge gulp of his drink and damn near dying coughing.
I pound on Toivo’s back.
“Heimlich time?” I ask.
Toivo signals ‘no’.
“Jesus Christ, Rock. What was that?” he asks.
“Just my usual”, I innocently replied.
“Holy fuck. No wonder you have the reputation of…” Toivo realizes too late that he’s said too much.
“Yeah. They can rack you out. Really ruin a person if they’re not careful.” I reply icily.
“Why, Rock. Whatever do you mean?” Toivo slurred as he realized he’s been caught out.
“The jig is up, you turncoat. You know Agents Rack and Ruin from the agency. Right? You keeping tabs on me for them? You Quisling! You Benedict Arnold!” I almost was on the verge of losing my cool.
“It was nothing. They approached me years ago as I kept being mentioned in your reports. They asked me for some information. One thing leads to another…” Toivo was ready for an Ankylosaur tail club swat to the bean.
“Oh, put your fucking hands down, you asshole.” I smiled and chuckled.
“You’re not mad?” Toivo slurred badly. I had the bartender make him another special drink.
“No, Toivo. Not mad. Just disappointed.” I said, smiling like a Komodo Dragon just finishing up a fortnight-old wildebeest.
Toivo sat there and puzzled and puzzled until his puzzler was sore.
“You’re not going to kill me or anything rude like that?” Toivo asked, half-assedly trying to inject humor into the proceedings.
“Nah. The paperwork’s too ridiculous for me to do another liberation. But, Jesus Fucking Christwagons, Toivo; you could have mentioned it to me. Fuck, I thought we were friends to the end?” I said, dejectedly.
I was really getting through to Toivo. I could tell he was loaded; feeling like shit and massively deplorable.
Great fieldcraft, indeed.
I told him things “are what they are” and that I won’t blow his cover nor his honorarium.
He began to feel better. I often wonder if he was serious about the sanctioning thing.
Then I delivered the strategic missile strike.
“Just remember, Toivo. I wrote your dossier for the Company…”
He swivels to look at me.
“And one for the KGB. Olga says ‘howdy’.” I grin evilly.
Toivo short-circuited at that. Russia is his company’s bread and butter. Now he has the KGB as well as his best buddy looking over his shoulder at every move.
I bought him a few more drinks and continued to needle him about his ’leading a double life’. He was well and truly fuckered when the electric tap-tap driver from before came looking for me to whisk me back to the plane.
Seems it was simply some knocked-out wires on the plane, or slammed bulbs that were generating a false positive, indicating something other than the system that alerts one to something haywire went haywire.
Toivo was pretty much down for the count. I got him sober enough to hand them his ticket and ensure that he was really supposed to be on this flight. Thing was; h e was in Economy, and I was, as always, in Business.
I spoke to Luna, and the plane was going to be even less crowded than previously because some folks could or wouldn’t wait, or didn’t want to go on with the rest of the trip on a ‘damaged’ aircraft, or were just stupid and superstitious.
“Luna, could I pay for the difference between Business and Economy for my less than 100% conscious friend here? He’s had a rough day.” I asked.
“Dr. Rock. Just put him into Business. No one will be the wiser. Luna says so.” As she gave us a grand smile.
“Luna, I owe you. Thanks so much.” I said.
“Now get on board. Your friend looks like he needs all the downtime he can get.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I said and saluted here be best I could which dragging a schnozzled Toivo down the jetway.
I dumped Toivo in a window seat well away from my seat. I know Toivo. He snores like a semi-load of live hogs rocketing downhill locking up the brakes at 88 MPH.
Surprise! There was no one else in Business. Luna looked at me, at Toivo, and gave me a thumbs up.
Whatever I can write to further her career at JAL, she’ll have it before I deplane.
We finally get everyone settled, and with Captain Kangaroo at the helm, we bounced gracelessly off the tarmac, into the warm, tropical Hawaiian air, finally headed for the Land of the Rising Sun.
Toivo was snoring like a chainsaw hitting rusty nails as I worked on the various letters, communiques, and dossiers which needed updating before we reached touchdown. I gave Luna a thick letter with instructions not to open it until we were on the ground and Toivo and I were well off and away into the terminal.
We left Hawaii at 1300 hours, so we should arrive at Tokyo Nareda around 4:00 pm, the previous day. I was so bereft of time and time zones, I couldn’t figure out what time it really was, as judged by my biometric rhythms, so I asked Luna for a stiff drink as I was kicking off my boots and going to attempt to get some kip.
She brought me another liter or so eponymous drink. I was sawing logs by the time I slurped the last swig of that nifty drink.
Suddenly, or later, I have no idea really, some loudmouth drunk asshole from way-the-fuck-back in economy-land toward the ass end of the plane staggered into Business demanding free drinks.
Luna was nothing but civil, and asked him to both shut up and return to his seat. His air cabin hostess, or whatever the fuck they’re calling them these days, will attend to his needs.
“Naw they won’t! They want me to pay for more drinks! I’m broke but I demand more booze! You fucking owe me.” railed the asshole. “I sat at the bar in Hawaii for four hours. Them fuckers charged me an arm and a leg!”
“No, they don’t owe you shit”, I said in a voice that unmistakably loud and clear.
“Fuck you, old man! You stay the fuck out of this!” he bellowed. “Shut up or I’ll do ya’!”
“’Old man’? ‘Do me’? Excuse me. Luna, may I have a word alone with this individual?” I asked sweetly.
Luna shook her head in the affirmative, and I stood up to confront this flagrant asshole.
“Now look, Scooter. You have gone way, way over the fucking line. You are loud. You are abusive. You are obnoxious. And you stink. Plus you insulted a person who is just barely containing his righteous wrath right now. So, I’m giving you one and one only chance to shut up, sit back down before your body spontaneously develops all sort of bruises, contusions, broken bones, and unconsciousness.” I said calmly, evenly, and threateningly.
“What da’ fuck you think you’re going to do…old man?” he screeched, trying to inflate himself into full mammalian threat posture, all 5’ 9” of it.
He didn’t notice Toivo walking up quietly behind him, as Toivo was returning from the head, quiet as a moose.
“Well, Scooter, I am an Air Marshall. Duly appointed, fully trained, and properly pissed off. Right now, I can arrest you, physically detain you, turn this flight around and take you to the Hawaiian police, at your cost for the inconvenience of the entire flight. Or I could arrest you, physically detain you, and turn you over to the Japanese authorities when we land. It’s really your choice. Choose wisely.”
To be continued…⇝

Atlantic City Trip Report 2/4-2/6 (my biggest AC win yet)

What Is YOUR Plan?

Accuse me of stealing? You will lose everything

More realistic money situations!

Ok, so there's a lot on my mind here and I'll try to break it down as clearly as possible. (Also I'm sorry if any of this has been mentioned before and I haven't seen it). As psychotic as it sounds, I think it would be really cool to have your Paralives be really influenced by money. Money is a HUGE factor in real life, so I think it should be a major point in a life simulation game. Some of these ideas might be lame or too intricate for some players, but I think they'd be SO COOL if they were included. (Maybe there could be setting options to turn some of these on/off too)
Starting Funds What if each family started out with a DIFFERENT starting fund? In The Sims, it's kind of based on how many people are in the family, but every family is pretty much the same. What if there were some questions you could answer in the create-a-family section that determines how much money you start out with? Like whether the parents already have college degrees/stable careers, if they have debt, if they have other things that would influence their monthly payments, etc. So maybe there could be a way to start out with a certain NET WORTH rather than a set amount of funds. Maybe your family was born rich, or born poor, or just middle of the road.
Emergencies It's a life simulation game. Emergencies happen! Maybe there could be car accidents, little Timmy fell off the jungle gym and broke his arm, Mom got food poisoning from the evil Karen at the parent/teacher conference, Grandpa had a heart attack. There could be a popup that gives you the option to go to the hospital, the doctor, an urgent care, or just deal with it at home. Each option would result in a different bill you receive and have to pay. And depending on the severity of the emergency, it could go really well...or really bad for your Para. (But I think you could also have the option to change your mind if you wanted to go to the hospital rather than sleeping it off.)
Maybe every action could have a behind-the-scenes percentage of whether or not an accident could happen with it or not. (Similar to if your Sim catches food on fire, or if your Sim gets pregnant after trying for a baby, etc.)
You could also choose a home birth or a hospital delivery, depending on if you want the bill or not.
Health Insurance
You could choose whether or not to have health insurance. You could choose whether you want to have a percentage taken out of your paycheck for it or not. If you want all of your family members covered on the plan and what types of things would be covered on your plan (health, vision, dental, etc.) and depending on the plan and how much percentage is taken out of your check, this could have a direct impact on the amount of the bill you receive (maybe you only pay 20%, or maybe it's fully covered, etc.).
I do realize this is a very American thing, so I get it if it doesn't go over very well in other countries and wouldn't be included lol. Maybe there could be a settings feature to turn this off or on?
Weddings/Marriage/Divorce Depending on the size of your wedding, you could end up with a huge bill, or make a profit! You could set a budget for your wedding and each little factor could change the total cost of the wedding. You could do it DIY and make specific changes to everything. In real life, there are also wedding venues (or wedding planners) that take care of everything and just tell you the total price. Both of these options could be good for players who want total control over the details or just have it done for them. Then, depending on the number of guests (or how rich/poor the guests are), they could give you really NICE gifts/cash or not-so-great gifts/no cash. Maybe you could also opt to have a giftless wedding or a cash-only wedding.
You could also marry a rich Para and get rich quickly that way. Or you could marry a poor Sim and acquire their debts, bringing down your net worth.
You could also have a very nice and clean divorce or an ugly one that requires lawyers. Depending on how the divorce goes, (maybe one Para wants the divorce and the other doesn't??) you may have to spend more on a lawyer, or they could both agree and it could be free of cost.
Child Support/Alimony In continuation of the divorce bit... If you have assets together, you may need to hire a lawyer to mitigate alimony and/or child support. Depending on the assets/children/etc., you may have to pay the other Para a certain amount, you may receive payments, or it may be an even split and neither party owes anything. There could also be an option to go lawyer-less and just work it out with the other Para (if they are willing, of course...)
Lotteries/Casinos I know in The Sims, there's Lottery Day (I think it comes with Seasons?) where you can buy a lottery ticket for $100 and you may or may not win. I think this could be fun if it were an option all the time! And there could be different types of lotteries you could win and different types of prizes. Maybe some tickets could be a MILLION dollars and you have a 1% chance of winning. Maybe it's a scratch-off ticket that you could win $10,000 on and you have a 4% chance of winning. Maybe it's a car, movie tickets, etc. It doesn't just have to be cash. This could be demonstrated as a popup, or they could go to a gas station to buy tickets.
There could also be casinos you could go to and have the same types of winning chances. Just a thought there :)

Addictions? This could be triggering, so maybe there could be a settings option to turn this off or on. Not necessarily drug or alcohol addictions (although, maybe there could be references, kind of like how The Sims uses juice to represent alcohol, etc.), but maybe there could be things that the Paras can get addicted to and they could either indulge in their addictions or spend money to get help for it. It could be things like the aforementioned lottery tickets/casinos, maybe addicted to a certain type of food (grilled cheese aspiration anyone??), maybe they have a video game addiction, etc.
To bring this point back to money - some addictions may cost more than others. Like if they ONLY like the highest priced food items, or they're spending a lot on lottery tickets, etc. They could go to rehab to cure them of their addictions.

Utilities You could choose different companies to go through for your different utilities and choose whether you want them or not. Power, Water, Sewer, Trash, Internet, Phone, etc. Maybe some companies bundle plans together and you get a discount. And depending on the company, you may have really good service or really bad service. You could choose to move between phone companies/internet companies, etc. And maybe you don't want cable TV because you just want to stream TVs and movies from the internet, so you could choose what access you have. Maybe some of the companies require a deposit if they're highly rated or something of that nature.

Credit Cards, Loans, Mortgages, and Other Debts Personally, I don't like being tied to what's only in my Sim's bank. I think it could be cool to have credit cards, loans, etc. If there's a pre-built house that you REALLY want your Sims to have, you could take out a mortgage and you could have monthly payments. You could also take out a loan if you're renovating a certain room in your house or need help to cover other debts. You could also do credit cards if you don't want to take out a full loan, etc.
This could be a fun opportunity to bring back the repo-man. Your Paras could also have a credit score, so if you pay your bills on time and aren't super deep in other debts, you have the chance to have a higher loan/mortgage/credit limit. And if you don't pay for it, you could get things taken away.
Bankruptcy In continuation of the last point, if your Paras are too deep in the debt and can't seem to get out of it, they could file bankruptcy. They'd have to pay for a lawyer to clear their records.
There could also be a setting to turn credit on/off, as I could see how credit could be an annoying feature for some players.
Different Bank Accounts for Each Family Member You could have a bank account for each family member or have everything bundled into one. Your kids could have a piggy bank or your teenager could have a part-time job. It would be nice to keep things separated (or all put together) if you want one person in the family to be working towards a certain goal. (Teenager wants a car, the boyfriend is saving up for a ring for the girlfriend, etc.)
You could also get a savings account(s) and dedicate each account towards something. Future house goals, wedding, vacation, emergency funds, etc.
Maybe stocks/investments could be a part of that too?
House Issues/Value In continuation of emergencies, there could be different house problems that come up. Some things could be small and easily fixable by your Para people, like a broken TV/computer (you could either replace it, fix it yourself, or pay someone to fix it like you can do in the Sims) but maybe there are some other house emergencies that could happen. A tree falls on the roof and you have to pay to get that fixed, a burglar busts down your front door or breaks a window, a pipe burst, and your entire basement gets flooded, etc.
You could still choose the same things, like replace it, pay someone to fix it or fix it yourself. If you fix it yourself and you're not handy, it may make it worse, better, or it could just happen again.
Depending on the severity of the issue and/or the fix of the issue, it could affect the overall value of the house. You could choose to ignore the giant hole in the roof, but if you ever want to sell the house, you're not going to get as much money as a house with a brand new roof.
Over time, parts of your house could start to decay (like roofs, floors, walls, etc.) and they may need updated after a certain amount of time. This could be dependent on factors like the quality of the item you used in the first place. Cheap roofs would need to be replaced sooner than a really high-quality roof, etc. Heavy-traffic rooms may need the carpet replaced, there could be stains, marks, etc. that gradually build up over time.
Selling a House In continuation to the last note above, you could choose to sell your house and have it be put on the market. You could have a few options with this, which depending on the type of player you are, could be very beneficial.
One option could be to just sell it as is. You may not get as much money for it, but you could just instantly sell the house to someone who buys up houses (Like an Ug buys Ugly Houses type of person). This could be a good feature for a player that just wants their Sim to move. You could also sell by owner or go through an agency. If you sell by owner, you may get lower offers on the house from different buyers. If you go through an agency, you may get higher bids, but you would also have to pay certain closing costs, etc.
You could also have an appraiser-like person come to your house before you decide to sell and let you know what things you could change that would improve the overall value of your house and what things are already really good. (You should replace the carpet, replace the windows, doors, etc.)
Once you're ready to sell, there could be a list of 3 or 4 families who want to buy your house with different offers (maybe they could also have contingencies, like I'll pay you what you're asking if you change the carpet, etc.) and you could pick which one you want to do. If there are contingencies, it could be based on what the appraiser noted if you didn't make the changes they mentioned.
Become a landlord or a flipper Maybe instead of selling the house, you just want people to pay you directly month by month. You could set your house (or maybe even just a room/part of your house) for rent and have a list of people who want to live there that you could choose from. They could each have things about them that could make them a good or a bad tenant. For example, maybe they're VERY accident-prone and things break very easily. You may or may not want this type of tenant. Or maybe they're really clean people (which could be nice) but they are very picky and may be calling you to fix things all the time. You could be a good landlord and go take care of your tenants, or you could be a bad landlord and ignore them, which they'd eventually stop paying and leave. You could also choose to kick the tenants out if you want new tenants or if you just want to sell it instead of renting it out anymore.
You could also just buy up bad houses, improve/flip the houses, then sell them/rent them out for profit!
Buying or renting a house Opposite of selling a house, you could also go through a process for buying or renting a house. You could have the option to just buy a house as-is (good for players who just want to get to the point). Or you could go through an agent/realtor who can help you find the perfect house for what you're looking for. You could enter details like the number of bedrooms, bathrooms, price point, etc., and they could give you a list of houses. Some of them may be in great shape or some could be in not-so-great shape. You could choose to place an offer on the house or you could choose to set contingencies. If you go through the realtor, they could also give you insights on whether the seller is willing to sell for lower than asking-price or not, willing to work with contingencies, etc.
Ok, those are my ideas 😂😂 This ended up being way longer than I thought, but I think these would be cool ideas.

Cayo Perico Heist Guide (Edited)

PRESS START<
Hey everyone since the update in GTA this newest heist has been the most profitable and easiest way to make money. So I wanted to create a guide to help others master this heist, and to help those who are struggling with it.
Note: This guide is for new players, first timers, and anyone who is struggling to complete this heist. Please use this as reference to deepen your understanding of the heist. If you have a better strat, more power to you. This however is my strat, criticism is welcome.
So to begin, you will have to buy the Kosatka (submarine), which is located on warstock for 2.2mil. It also has upgrades you can buy but the most noteworthy upgrade is definitely the Sparrow upgrade (1.8mil) this upgrade will make traveling back and forth much easier since your sub is located in the sea.
Noteworthy things about sub:

If you hover above your sub with a sparrow you can instantly enter it.
You can get free snacks at the cafeteria
You can fast travel; if you never completed the heist its 10k, after completion its 2k
Your toreador vehicle can enter through the bottom
You can call dingy if you can not afford the sparrow

After you get the sub you’ll be introduced to characters and will have to go to LSIA, where you will travel to Cayo Perico, after you arrive everything henceforth is pretty straightforward. After you escape the party you will have to enter the main island through the checkpoint ( Google Boom Gate), PLEASE DO NOT SWIM AROUND THE ISLAND. You will waste so much time doing so, just run through the gated door next to the checkpoint and avoid entering enemy cones, watch for vehicles and watchtower cones. The biggest things to scope out are the infiltration points and exfil points; the airport strip is already marked, the biggest point to scope out after you hack the cameras is the drainage tunnel. This will require swimming, the drainage tunnel is located on the coast of El Rubio’s compound you can dive and find it, Pavel will give you a vocal cue when you find it. When you are looking through cameras after hacking make sure to cycle through every camera, turning to find secondary points, stop until you get back to the Panther Cage. Don’t bother scoping anything else like bolt cutter’s or grappling hooks, because you will not need them. I added a map of Cayo Perico to show where everything is, please note that there are many ways to do this heist this is just my way of doing so. After you found the drainage tunnel and finished your objective, get caught and make your way to the airport strip to leave. Also note there are different Primary targets the first time will always be the files the second will vary, look in the tips for scoping out to see the rankings.

Credit to Sportskeeda
Tips for Scoping out

On your second time doing the heist you will start at the air strip. There are 2 dirt bikes located at the strip one by the entrance to the strip and one by the solar panels next to the power station. You can take the bikes and drive up and over the checkpoint to get to the communications tower faster. At the checkpoint to the left there's a little stone wall in front of the guards tower. You can drive the bike up the ledge and get over it, for a quicker way you can also drive the bike up the ledge a little bit in front of the wall to also get over.
If you solo, scope out any important secondary point. There's a secondary point in the airstrip hangar, at the entrance of the hangar look right to see the box you can climb, use this to get to the second floor to get the secondary point. (To clarify check the targets spawns and only mark coke and weed; do not mark weed at the strip and north dock only coke, mark weed at the main dock)
When you are heading to the communications tower to hack, pay attention to the guard, if there is a guard, the box is located up the tower, if there is no guard it's on ground level.
You can kill yourself or get caught to go back to the airstrip.
You can also poison the guards water supply to weaken them but unless you're going aggressive don’t bother.
There are boats out in water you can steal but I would only do this to scope out the drainage tunnel the first time.
You only need to scope infiltration points and exfils points once, secondary targets and tools must be scoped out every time.
Secondary targets and tools are RNG based so if you're looking for tool and it’s not there it’s because of RNG
Secondary Targets Rank: Gold>Cocaine>Paintings>Weed>Cash
These also will fill your bag different
Gold=66% Cocaine=50% Paintings=50% Weed=37.5% Cash=25%
The price for secondary targets are RNG based but Gold, cocaine, and Paintings have the most value
Secondary Targets Values are RNG based.
Gold=332k, Cocaine=220k, Paintings=189k, Weed=147k, Cash=80k-90kCredit goes to u/FMT_WL1
Primary Targets Ranked: Panther Statue 1.9M>Pink Diamond 1.4M> Bearer Bonds 1.1M> Ruby necklace 1M> Tequila 900k

Preps
In order to start the heist you must do preps, for this heist you can do however many you want but for this guide you will only need to do 5. Keep your sub in Los Santos until the fifth prep mission, if you decide to do the longfin prep you can keep your sub at Los Santos.
Prep 1/ The Cutting Torch:
This prep mission is pretty straightforward, head to the construction site and land close enough. Before heading in, try to locate the yellow hard hat and put it on, this will make the enemy non-hostile, which makes for an easy mission. Your job is to locate the torch in a tool box. You can find it by looking in the box, it's a blue torch, search the box and head back to your sub. Also when searching for the box try to avoid staying in the enemy cones for too long and bumping into workers because this will make the enemies hostile if you do these.
Prep 2/ Safe Code or Plasma Cutter
There are two missions. The mission will vary on your primary, if you have the bearer bonds it’s the safe code, anything else it’s the Plasma Torch.
Safe Code Mission: Head to the casino at the entrance, after entering turn left and enter the elevator (if you have a penthouse you can go up without entering the parking garage). You will have to find a car in the parking garage. It's a yellow cheap car, it never changes. After finding it you will get the card which will allow you to head up into the penthouses, after getting up there search for two guards and head shot with a suppressed weapon. If done right you will calmly walk into the apartment, you can then search the penthouse for the target, he will never change. It's a guy with a cowboy hat, kill him and leave the penthouse, you will have to fight your way out. If you slam into the entrance of the penthouse you will have to fight your way in. After getting the code get back to your sub.
Plasma Cutter Mission: This is pretty straightforward, for ease take your oppressor instead of your Sparrow for higher mobility. You will have to head to the office to get the plasma cutter, but it’s not there. Pavel will instruct you to find the board and take a picture of it, the board is easy to find. Afterwards he will locate them and ping it on your map, they usually always spawn near Vinewood hills or the beach. Take them out with your oppressor missiles and fly over the bag and leave cause they will spawn two cars to shoot you.
Prep 3/ Fingerprint Cloner: This mission is simple, you will have to head to a location on your map, outside are two cameras, ignore them and walk into the garage, after entering take cover behind the box forward and blind shot everyone with your shotgun. After the enemies are dead hack the laptop in the back and head to the archives. Outside the archives are cameras, shoot them and go inside. Pavel will tell you that you're looking for a small card, it always spawns in the back in the desk square, grab it and head back.
Prep 4/ Weapon Load out: Always buy the suppressors, as for which load out I suggest the Conspirator due to the sticky bombs (there is a bug where you will get suppressors without buying them, just in case purchase it to be safe). There are two possible missions you can be given. One is in Los Santos in an office, for the other you will have to follow a Valkyrie up North.
Weapons Possible Mission 1: Pavel will send you to an office in Los Santos you can either go through the ground entrance or the roof, I suggest the roof entrance but no matter what you will have to fight inside. Once inside clear the office and head to the back to find the gun safe, it’s always located left of the desk on the wall, hack the laptop on the desk and open the safe. Grab the weapons and leave. If you enter on the roof you can fly back but two chopper’s will spawn, shoot their gunman on the sides and hellies will be useless. Another suggestion is to leave immediately, and snack up to restore health. On ground level the hellies will still spawn again shoot the gunman and head back to the sub.
Weapons Possible Mission 2: You will have to head to Elysian Island to find the Valkyrie you do not need to stay close to it. You can predict it’s direction and head North to clear the camp on foot, also avoid destroying the Avenger and the Valkyrie. Do not destroy the Valkyrie until it becomes a target on your mini map or you will fail the prep. After clearing the camp head into the Avenger and kill the enemies, afterwards parachute out and leave before more Merrywheather show up.
Prep 5/ Kosatka: ( You can also do the Longfin, but I prefer Kosatka as an approach vehicle.)
This is a simple mission, after starting it head into your sub driver seat and fast travel to the nearest location near the ping. After you arrive dive your sub over to the location, once you get near get on your periscope and missile the boats and the helli. You can sink your sub and engage auto-pilot under water giving you better access to the enemies sub. Try to avoid beaching your sub on shallow water and put it in the middle of the yellow circle. Leave the driver seat and exit your sub, dive into the water and look for the other sub with a yellow marker on top. After entering the enemies sub you must locate the jammer. You have two paths, one on the right, this is usually where it spawns, take the ladder down and watch your corners cause enemies are brutal in this mission. After entering the engine room look for a black box with a blue screen at the bottom of the stairs if it's not there head back the way you came. Take the left path and make your way to the control room WATCH THOSE CORNERS. If it's not there head to the back of the control room and take the stairs down, follow the path it will lead you into the torpedo room, that another spawn. Leave and head back to your sub.
Prep 5/ Longfin
This mission is located in Los Santos basically you can take a phantom (Semi-truck) to the police station to pick up a boat of which you can use as an approach for the heist. This mission is simple: you basically go and pick up a phantom, afterwards you drive to impound to pick up the longfin. You will be met with enemies. The one I did was the cop impound, you can enter with your phantom and drive out. It's best to clear the area, and let the cops kill you for an easier delivery (you can't call Lester). You can use your own Phantom wedge to clear vehicles out of the way.
(during the heist you can use this get loot before you enter the drainage tunnel , this can be quicker way if your loot is out the way)
This includes the scope out and the preps
This includes the scope out and the preps
Tips For Preps

The biggest tip is the Sparrow, this will make prepping a joke, the only time you won’t need it is during the plasma cutter and Kosatka missions, but that's due to mobility.
You can see the cutting torch it’s blue
You can blow up the Valkyrie and end the mission to get the office mission to save time, I highly suggest this ( I do this mostly because you have to follow the helli up North and wait for it to land.)
The preps are the same, they never change
Save the Kosatka heist for last so you can do all 4 preps in Los Santos

The Heist
Time to Start the Heist. Go to screen and tab to Finale and shift over to continue to start the mission. Once you get to the selection process pick your options. It should be Kosatka or Longfin, Drainage, Drainage, Main docks or Kotsatka, and Day Time (there's very little difference between day or night). If you're playing with others you must hurry through the selection screen because if you take too long the cuts will reset due to a bug.
Squad Run
When you begin the mission you will have to make your way to the drainage tunnel, if you chose the Kosatka you will have to swim to the tunnel, but if you chose the Longfin you will have to drive the boat to the tunnel. Once you arrive you will have to cut the bars at the gate, a suggestion to do this is to go in a circle three times and cut whatever remains. Afterwards swim through the tunnel and enter the compound.
Compound
Once you enter the compound you will have two directions to go, the left or the right. My way is to go to the left, up the stairs is a guard next to the storage staring out at the water, head shot him and make your way to the courtyard. If you followed my instructions the two guards at the pool will be to your left. In the courtyard there should be a guard coming, wait for him to stop and head shot him. After that, ready your shot at the two guards at the pool, choose your target. Since you're in a squad, ready your shot, as a suggestion one person can count down from three to one to shoot at the same time to eliminate any mistakes ( these two guards usually drop the gate keys). The next is to eliminate the juggernaut, the way to identify him is by his red cone and red skull icon. He can be killed by a single headshot, if you and your squad were quick with the guards at the pool he should be arriving, take him out. In front of the pool there are two separate guards, one will be in front of the office building to identify him, the camera is facing the pool, if you time it correctly he will be to the right of the camera making for an easy elimination. The other guard is North East of the front of the pool, or to the right of the guard you just killed. You can eliminate him if you want too, the reason I do so is because me and my mates can all access the storages without worry. Next are three guards at the office, to identify them they will have red cones. One of the guards will be moving North towards the main gate and then will move South towards the pool. You have two options, one is to wait for him to head North and take him out, or you can head shot him when he’s coming South. To achieve this there are stairs directly in front of the pool, if you take the stairs up to the right you now have enough elevation to see the guards head ( this is tricky to explain which is why I will also have a video example for visual clarification.) After taking the guard out you can head up the stairs into the office area, once up the stairs head to the right, for clarification the pool will be to the left and main gate to your right. Head down the corridor if you have done this correctly the guards back will be facing you, take him out. To your left are stairs that leads to the office, take them up, at this point the guard at the top will start to move. You have two options, one you can wait behind a corner and hit the guard or if you are quick enough the guard will stop for a brief moment, giving a chance for an easy headshot. At this point you can enter the office, where you can grab the second keycard, the first keycard is dropped by any guard you have killed ( it usually drops on the first kill, but this is RNG based). In the office there are three things you can do, one is you can hack the elevator which leads to the basement, ignore this hack. The other things are either a painting that can randomly spawn in the office, and a safe on the right wall in the back of the office. Open the safe to get anywhere between 50k to 100k, THIS DOES NOT TAKE SPACE. When you have everything, start to loot up and fill your bag by going to the storages located around the compound, to open the storages you will need the two keycards and two people. You and your squad mates will have to swipe your card at the same time to open the door, another suggestion is to use the three to one countdown to sync swipes. The South Storage will have a guard moving, the guard is located to the left of the two guards you killed at the pool, take him out and watch for the camera. After you are done, please make sure to save space for the basement storage, make your way to the basement gates, they are located beneath the office building to the left and right, it does not matter which gate you choose. Once you are in the basement you will be presented with a hack, it may look daunting but in fact it is rather simple, I suggest matching the top first and making your way down. Afterwards loot up and grab the Primary Target, it is really straightforward to do so. At this time Pavel will tell the players that more guards have arrived, if you have followed thus far, you do not have to worry. Exit the basement, and head North to the main gate there should two guards, one will be moving the other stationary. You can take the stationary guard, you can also take the guard moving but if you and your squad can make it to the gate without doing so, go ahead. The host will be prompted to select the escape route, select it and a cutscene will begin. After you will be located outside the compound.
Kill in this order
Outside The Compound
You and your squad will be outside, if you are satisfied with your loot head left to the coast, you can jump off the cliff into the water. Once in the water you can swim off the island ,just keep heading straight and eventually you will have escaped. You can also try to steal a boat; note that some have claimed that boats may not spawn but if you manage to grab a boat this can make getting to and from much quicker. If you are missing loot head forward and take the guard next to the bike out, one person will have to head left toward a guard near a helli take him out and plant four stickies on the chopper. At the same time the other members will turn right towards the checkpoint, there should be three guards two together and one separate, and a camera behind the two guards. Take the one separate out, then the two guards, and the camera. Around the checkpoint are three bikes plus the bike with the very first guard killed. One of the bikes is hidden to the left of the checkpoint booth the other is directly in front. Start making your way towards the main docks, turn right into the jungle the moment you leave the stopping checkpoint. Pay attention to the guard tower to your right and avoid his cone, at this time Pavel will tell the squad that El Rubio’s helli is on the move, activate the stickies and he will retreat away from the island. Once you are close enough to the docks go on foot, your objective is to loot and take the boat off the island. There are two secondary loot locations, one is a warehouse with a guard and camera outside, take them out and loot. The other is located to the right with two separate guards, please refer to Sportskeeda map to see the location. Take them out and loot. Afterwards there are 3-4 guards you have to take out at the docks, to leave without alerting the guard. Two guards standing next to the boat, and one or two stationary guards looking out at the water. After clearing the guards, grab the boat and escape Cayo Perico. Congrats you have now completed the heist.
Note: You can approach the compound in any way you choose, my way is a bit complicated but with practice you can clear the compound at the same time as other routes. Feel free to adjust the route in anyway, my route is just a reference to get an idea as to how to approach the compound.
Note: I do it the same exact way when I solo, but since I’m solo I can skip guards and head to my objective. For the Solo run I go for cocaine, you NOT have to do this. I do this to maximize my profit, and since I am competent in my abilities I can clear the mission without many mistakes.
Solo Run
The strat is the same except it will be harder to take out the two guards by the pool, the major difference is you can not open the storage's to get gold or loot, you might be lucky to get painting in the office but that's RNG. A good tip when taking on double guards is to find a good angle, after killing one the other will flinch, he will prop his head up giving you the shot. You can scope the rest of island to find the most profitable loot which is cocaine, if there is none then get weed and cash (by scoping out I’m referring to checking the spawns for coke, if there is none at North docks and the Air Strip I ignore them, I do not mark every item only Coke and any profitable items at Main Docks). After leaving the compound there will be a guard in front of you next to a bike, kill him. Turn left and head to the next guy next to a helli, kill him and plant four stickies on the heli, do not activate them yet. Go back the way you came, there will be three guards at a checkpoint two together, one standing away. Kill the one standing away and then prepare to kill the two guards, after their dead shoot the camera and jump over the stop rail. You will have to be quick because a car will drive towards the checkpoint so make sure to do all that quickly. You have two options: you can swim off the island and finish the heist, or you can head to Main Docks to fill your bag. If you chose the latter run North East into the jungle towards the guards tower, but far enough away so he can’t see you. On your way to Main Dock Pave El Rubio helli will show up on the map, wait for Pavels vocal cue when he tells you that Rubio is in his helli, and then activate your stickies, boom Rubio will retreat. Now you can make it to your objective in peace. You can loot at the Marijuana fields but you may have to take out three guard towers and a single camera, as well as two guards near the fields. I’ll leave this to your gut if you think you can make it to the warehouse without messing up please do so. If you want to head to North Dock and the Airstrip you either can swim there which will eat a lot of time or you can take the boat at the docks to get there faster. Trade off is that if you swim it will take up time, but if you take the boat you will have to clear out guards to safely remove the boat from the dock. If you are satisfied with anything you get then just clear the area with loot and swim or steal the boat. This is for the Airstrip if you do not plan on going here IGNORE this. The Airstrip is an easy place to navigate since a lot of the guards are far from each other so you can clear the airstrip easily. There are two loot spawns one at the hangar with one guard, and a warehouse with two separate guards. There's guard outside the hangar kill him, and go inside, if your loot is on the second floor, look for a forklift and pick up a box lift and it up then press the box against the back of the hangar below a blue tarp you can then climb the lift and the box to get access to the loot. The other airstrip loot spawn is an easy place to clear, one guard will be moving you can head shot him from the hangar, at the warehouse there’s a camera shoot it and inside the warehouse is a guard questioning his career choice, kill him. If you need to head to North Dock head there by bike or by foot, you can loot without killing any guard. After you're done just swim off the Island, or take the boat. Congrats, you have just completed the heist solo.
Note: I will be adding a second strat to clear the compound, the reason for this is because a Redditor provided the strat. I do not mind adding his strat, but I must remind everyone that you can tackle the heist in any way you feel comfortable with.
I missed that gate keys, so I killed more than I should have.
Solo Run Second Strat:
Essentially, it is the same as the other one, except for going left you go right. Your first target are the two guards at the pool. They should be to the right of you, find a good angle and head shot the first one, wait for the second guard to finish flinching and kill him. The juggernaut should be making his way towards you, wait for him to exit the camera’s view and kill him. If the gate key drops pick it up and kill the guard in front of the pool he should be past the camera. Take out the camera and wait for the moving red cone guard to turn his direction North, once he turns around go up the stairs and kill him. Move towards the second red cone guard his back should be facing you, hit him and ascend the stairs. The last guard on top should be moving. You can either wait behind the corner and hit him or speed around the corner to head shot him, it’s up to you. Loot the office safe and make your way to the basement. Finally, use the gate keys to open the basement, hack and grab the primary target. Afterwards head up towards the main gate, a new guard will spawn, you can wait for the moving guard to move out of range, and kill the stationary guard. From there you can run to the gate and exit the compound.
I had brain fart at the hacking lmao
Heist Tips

You can swim off the island from any direction
You can steal boats for faster escape but that's up you
You can sticky El Rubio’s helli for to get him to retreat
In the compound you can jump ledges after clearing the enemies
For double guards, get a good angle after you head shot one guy the other will flinch, you can get the shot slightly after, or you can risk shooting him until he’s dead.
Guards do not react to dead bodies, in day time their visibility is the same as night, an Isolated guard can’t alert if everyone is dead. You can run, guards will only react if you're close, if you miss a shot and it gets near a guard or makes noise this will alert.
You can jump into the ocean to die quickly if you alert inside the compound
If you find a key you can open the desk to get a golden gun
If your underwater and a patrol boats cone is on you, they can’t see you
Cones can be obstructed by objects
? Civilians may be able to alert guard?
Solo is more profitable than playing with friends due to not sharing a cut
If you don’t have to kill don’t, less interaction is good
Being stealthy is the best way, if you alert restart
You can aim in and hold the sprint button to walk faster
To activate hard mode, you have to start the heist when it becomes available
Try to avoid killing guards near the camera cones, the reason being is because this can alert the guards if the camera sees the dead body. Ironically, guards do not alert they seem one.

Game Over>
That's it ladies and gentleman, I hope this guide has helped anyone. I’m aware I’ve definitely went too in depth in this guide but I enjoy making it, Happy Grinding -Leaus

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Fallout New Vegas Criticism

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Galactic Economics 2: Trustworthy

Before you spend money on this game, consider this.

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