mayby players could be "rated" according to level, time played, credits on hand, things like that. The more you have the higher the rating and at a certain point you cant borrow credits, but the newer player could still do so.

Hi everyone, something has been bothering me for a while since i first started playing SO, The galactic bank in your secret asteroid base pays intrest. Where does it get this extra cash to pay interest to the investors? What if you could also borrow money from the bank at rates that will be specified later in the post. Banks in real life pay interest to its depositors because it then turns around and lends the money that has been deposited to other people at a higher interest rate, therefore making a profit. I will go over how this could work and what the safety nets would be.

Ok why do we need this ability to borrow money? There are many reasons but here are some of the most important ones.
1. It makes the game more realistic and also adds something new so that the game seems fresh and more interesting
2. This could be a huge help to newer players (explained later)
3.It could also allow newer players to catch up later in a round
4. As stated before it makes the game more interesting as well as adding a new element that allows for new opportunities.

So how can this help newer players? Because, if they can borrow money at a reasonable amount of interest they can then use that extra capitol to buy bigger and better fleets that they could make more credits with during incursions by killing larger aliens. This also answers another important issue of how they would repay, they can make much more than the fleets total value in a day or two through incursions even if they only do a few per day so that they can pay back their initial loan with interest but still have credits left to continue upgrading. Essentially what this would do is give them a boost up so that they could grow faster and faster. This could even be applied to more advanced players who could do the same thing and grow much faster.

The main concerns with this is what should the interest rate be and how could you determine how long the borrower has to pay the loan back. This could be much simpler than you may think. Their could either be an equation to determine interest based on user input such as 1 day 10,000,000,000 credits would give them a rate like 15% due at the end of the next day. Obviously the more you borrow and the longer the term the less interest there is. This system can work exactly as the bank does now, every 60 minutes 1/24 of the interest you will incur that day will be added to the total amount you owe. For example, continuing with our 10b borrowed example, after 1 hour the player would owe 10,062,500,000. The interest would not compound though, it would be based on the initial amount borrowed and the percent interest you pay will be per day just as it is now with the secret asteroid base. Some restraints would need to be made such as ensuring the amount of interest payed is never lower than the amount of interest you could earn through the secret asteroid base with the same amount of credits. This should be a relatively simple thing to put into the game but it will be a great help to newer players and veterans alike.