Sep 17
Futures Contract
A contract where you primise to deliver X items at Y date at Z price per item. With the total being held in escrow. With a penalty being given to either party for not completeing the terms or a partial completion.
This is a very important contract in the real world because you can for example take out a loan to buy machines and input materials with the expectation of gaurenteed profit.
This would be great in Eco for a number of reasons:
A) Instead of a miner or logger performing a ton of work gathering resources and hoping someone buys it, a smelter, mason or carpenter can make a futures contract for the material they need in bulk and the miner/logger can save their calories for when it's needed.
Another good example can be Cooks making a futures contract for crops, which can allow farmers to plant crops to meet that contract requirement and then hire a gatherer to pick the crops when there are ready or a gatherer can take that contract and buy seeds from a farmer to plant themselves.
B) Bulk transport methods like trains and freighters would gain design space as players can plan more ahead of time and move stuff around in bulk. You could hire someone to transport resources to enable them to complete their contract or rent a bulk moving vehicle.
Pending