My ship's my passport and my credit card

[snapshotbygdw]

When citizens can freely travel between planets how do they prove who they are and what wealth or authority they carry?

Here's my solution: your ship becomes your personnal records. Upon leaving a planet an individual's entire status and history (social, criminal and credit) inculding biometric details are downloaded to the computer of the ship they own, crew for or are taking passage on.

When they arrive on a new world the onboard computer is interrogated and this data is downloaded to the planetary network or supporting documents are printed (dependant on tech level). Any changes which occur on planet can be added to the files and then these updated records will travel onwards with them.

This also helps explain the need for such heavy and large ships computers. Size is now a reflection of the need to make data storage as secure as possible. Also authorities realise that no system is hack proof (especially given the duration and isolation of jumps) so ship's computers have failsafes which alert law agencies to the fact that alterations have occured. The system is desigened to make it very difficult to hide the fact that data has been altered in transit.

Whilst X-boat confirmation is still required for high levels of wealth or authority I have found this system works well for proving who or what people are over sector distances given CT's restrictions on speed of travel. Also it creates a workable sector wide computer network because whilst ships (or honest ones at least) will wipe passanger's data once they disembark planets can retain any useful data in their achieves.

Anyone who arrives on a planet with files that appear to have been altered must await X-boat confimation before being permitted exit from the starport or onward travel, although some planets will be happy to let the unidentifiable wanderers leave and become someone else's problem.

I am sure many ref's will see the great potential this system has for tempting players.

"sorry posted in wrong forum can mediator move to ct please"

 

[hdan]

That seems reasonable. I still think there is a place for "hard currency", though maybe that place is on worlds with little Imperial infrastructure (Class D or worse) or beyond the Imperial borders.

Inside "civilized" space, having your own ship carry a "soft account" of your identity and finances makes sense, especially if the X-boat network ALSO carries that information, and the Scout Service performs audits on all time-stamped transactions as the data arrives. (An X-boat comes into system, broadcasts its financial records, and then the computer notices discrepancies between what your ship reported and the X-boat records - Congratulations, you now have a warrant out for your arrest, which will be carried at the speed of X-boat traffic. Let's hope it doesn't catch up with you on a HiPop world with a big LL. (Further digression - some smaller worlds may decide not to hassle you because of lack of enforcement power, or maybe player bribery. Maybe the players can get things sorted out before jumping into a more sophisticated world?))

As a passenger, you would also carry a soft-account, but presumably you'd have a homeworld to reference against. (Ships would reference their charter world; Travellers as you suggest would reference their ship. Subsidized and Corporate shipping would reference their company accounts.)

On any world, you could draw on your imperial account and get either hard credits (for travel beyond the reach of the Imperium) or local currency if you are going planet-side. Smaller population planets or "core systems" will probably use CrImps for their local money, but older civilizations or recent allies will probably need some money changing.

In fact, I bet there's a market for certail off-world currencies among Imperial numismatologists, especially from Red zoned worlds.

Your Imperial Account is also the right place to make mortgage payments. Your ship's records may claim that you've transferred the right money, but if the local world has a bank branch and financial information that is fresh enough, you might find your ship impounded when you land. Of course maybe the local bank rep is a corrupt official who is either trying to shake you down, or might be willing to "find" that payment's data packet for the right price.

The GM would need to keep track of what player actions were known about in what parts of space, and doing deals "under the counter" with raw CrImps becomes meaningful if you want to conduct some business away from your official accounts.

Of course this gets into the whole ship ownership problem; even if you legally salvage a ship, you might find yourself out ahead of the paperwork and treated as a pirate, especially if you travel far from the X-boat network. Or maybe you ARE a pirate who has hacked the ship's registration information, and no confirmation is actually coming....

In short, I like your idea because it opens up a lot of possibilities to hassle the players, and a lot of opportunities for players to attempt to circumvent the system.

As a counter point though, you could just use the "ship as id reference" idea as handwavium to not hassle your players about their finances. Not everyone wants to play "Auditors and Admisitrators".

 

[Vargas]

What's missing in the scheme is a form of personal authentication. The problem is not transporting the data, it's proving that you are who you say your are, that the data is yours and that it has been unaltered. I think the solution is some form of public key security certificate scheme. The local trust authority would be based out of the starport because they are regulated by the Imperium. Something similar would be done for ID transponders.

 

[hdan]

Vargas - agreed. I implicitly assumed that the Imperial Star Port Authority would have some sort of key verification. For worlds that don't have a good enough star port, you would need to have a "crate of CrImps" along with you when you go. I imagine traders working on the fringe of civilization would do most of their business in hard-CrImps.

I haven't decided how much the banks would care about having proper balance sheets that account for hard currency withdrawn or deposited. That's a potential hole in the scheme, though really the Imperium is designed to promote free trade, so it's likely that local officials won't care much about what happens "off the books" unless there's a problem of some sort. And as long as the official accounts are kept up to date properly.

Depending on how much you want players to feel beholden to the bank, you could require all cash to be accounted for (probably an Admin roll at annual refit time, +DMs if the players aren't trying to get away with something), and in the case of a Subbie, I would think that ALL activity would need to be conducted "On the Books", unless the crew rented out cargo space for themselves. As long as they only used uncommitted hold space, probably no questions would be asked, but they'd better not be shorting "paying" customers to do so....