Garnishing Income for Overdue Loans

[Mr. Rothschild]

Currently there is a solid refund system in place through national laws that are voted on and passed by council members of each nation. However this reimbursement to bankers is only given when a player goes inactive from the game.

I would like to suggest the ability for a banker to take legal action against an active player who refuses to pay his loan. My thoughts are once a loan reaches 30 days past the last payment date made by the borrower, the banker would have the option to "Garnish" the borrowers daily earnings at a percentage, say 10% for arguments sake. At each daily update, the 10% would be automatically deducted from the players earnings (just as the ship tax currently is) and directly applied to the outstanding loan. Once the loan is paid in full, either by the garnishment payments or the player manually paying off his debt, the garnishment will be automatically removed. This would encourage players to repay their loans as well as give the bankers more security and a greater desire to give loans to those seeking them.

I understand other thoughts have been given in the past and the response was to go out and collect, however typical bankers don't just jump in a ship and take the fight to a bad debtor.

[Most Lee Harmless]

Its pretty much why I stopped doing loans completely : one bad debt could wipe out the proceeds from 10 good ones and the fail rate was too close to that ratio for my liking : but, sad to say, the developers seem to feel that bad debts, be it to banks or nations, are not a priority for recovery save by individual military action, a solution which is daft as it does not provide much of a solution at all.
There is nation loan insurance, but all that does is transfer the unrecoverable debt to the nation, who cant recover it either.

[Big Brother]

Garnishing their "wages" is a valid way to do so.

[Roberts]

Its pretty much why I stopped doing loans completely : one bad debt could wipe out the proceeds from 10 good ones and the fail rate was too close to that ratio for my liking : but, sad to say, the developers seem to feel that bad debts, be it to banks or nations, are not a priority for recovery save by individual military action, a solution which is daft as it does not provide much of a solution at all.
There is nation loan insurance, but all that does is transfer the unrecoverable debt to the nation, who cant recover it either.

As arnt Pirates. Nah they are trying there best, I appreciate what they have done.

[Mr. Rothschild]

Yes, I did mean wages/income and realize the title was not appropriate . It has been fixed.

[PhoenixKnight]

I like that idea

[Big Brother]

For people that make income through plunder, put a tax on THAT income... similar to the way "skirmish" insurance works.

[Mr. Rothschild]

I'm not sure I would try to create a way of garnishing plunder income. I still think there needs to be some small risk in choosing who to lend to. By only being able to garnish their trade income that will reduce the risk significantly I find.

Then the only way to escape repaying your loan is to not trade and only plunder, reducing you to being known as a pirate and not being granted loans anyway as you wont be trusted. The garnishment will still remain and any time you try to trade you'll lose a percentage to your outstanding loan.

[Roileon]

Maybe when you attack a person with an outstanding loan the plunder rate equation is tweaked so you have higher gains?

[Mr. Rothschild]

The idea is that bankers are not fighters and make their profit in other ways therefore may not have the war ships required. The bounty board was one way that could have helped (still not a great method) in securing bad debt without the banker needing to go hunting, however that feature is no longer on the bankers tabs.

I was looking for a way to make bankers feel more secure and by doing so more willing to lend their funds and full fill the role. However if all that comes out of this is a tweak to allow them more profit from attacks I will still not be lending on that as a security.