One area where Elite: Dangerous is severely lacking is in mechanics that allow players to directly funnel credits from their accounts to other player's accounts. While there are legitimate reasons to limit these kind of transactions or not permit them whatsoever that doesn't mean that some kind of compromise can't be imagined that would make a "Fleet Bank" viable.
The key is "investment banking". Allow wealthy players to invest their hard-earned credits at a station. These investment credits then become available to other players in form of a loan which must be paid off with 10% interest.
The borrower can only borrow a certain amount based on their current assets ... thus preventing them from borrowing an "unlimited" supply of credits and they can't borrow more than what has been invested at that particular station. Payback will be taken in the form of 10% of any transaction that the player receives credits from until the loan balance is paid in full. The lender will receive shares of the 10% interest fee paid by the borrowers.
Here's how borrowing would work: You can borrow up to 100% of your current assets. For a player in a starter-Sidewinder that would allow them to borrow 1,000 credits ... not enough that they could jump past the lower-level content that helps them acclimate to the game. A player with enough credits to finally afford that Anaconda (roughly 100,000,000 credits) would be able to borrow enough to get that ship fairly well equipped while still having enough for the rebuy. Again ... enough to give them a hand without leapfrogging the content.
In addition, we could add a new "Investor" rank to the game to sit alongside "Combat, Trade, and Exploration" ... finally removing the CQC rank once and for all!
Investor Ranks would be:
Good
Mostly Good
Backer
Lender
Money Monger
Usurer
Loan shark
Evil
Elite
The key is "investment banking". Allow wealthy players to invest their hard-earned credits at a station. These investment credits then become available to other players in form of a loan which must be paid off with 10% interest.
The borrower can only borrow a certain amount based on their current assets ... thus preventing them from borrowing an "unlimited" supply of credits and they can't borrow more than what has been invested at that particular station. Payback will be taken in the form of 10% of any transaction that the player receives credits from until the loan balance is paid in full. The lender will receive shares of the 10% interest fee paid by the borrowers.
Here's how borrowing would work: You can borrow up to 100% of your current assets. For a player in a starter-Sidewinder that would allow them to borrow 1,000 credits ... not enough that they could jump past the lower-level content that helps them acclimate to the game. A player with enough credits to finally afford that Anaconda (roughly 100,000,000 credits) would be able to borrow enough to get that ship fairly well equipped while still having enough for the rebuy. Again ... enough to give them a hand without leapfrogging the content.
In addition, we could add a new "Investor" rank to the game to sit alongside "Combat, Trade, and Exploration" ... finally removing the CQC rank once and for all!
Investor Ranks would be:
Good
Mostly Good
Backer
Lender
Money Monger
Usurer
Loan shark
Evil
Elite