Money controlling it

[Mouser13]

Well it been a long time since I have been GMing/playing RIFTS. Just wondering how you guys control money.

How I have always done it was you get what they have left clips and ammo and guns at standard blackmarket sell prices at somewhere between 10-30% based on what it is. Which uselly means players get alot of money.

[Natasha]

You lost me.

[Dog_O_War]

Repairs&Ammo control money. Racial bias controls money. Personal habits control money.

I'll give you an example of what I mean.

A shoot-out occured between a dozen rival gangs, a black-ops squad from FQ, and the PC's were involved in it.
Gunfire hit everyone, though the scenario was easy; the majority of forces (the gangs) were using cheap and knock-off gear (pretty standard). The Black-Ops team was a group of SAMAS, and really, really not worth fighting. They bugged out - and thus offered no loot. The gangs were wearing piecemeal MD armour (about the equivalent to dog-pack riot armour; 20 points) which the PC's would fight some of the rival gang-members. Their weapons and armour looted came to a total of about 80,000Cr looted; a pretty damn good haul for three guys with light weaponry and no PA.

BUT, PC repairs and ammo totalled around 74,000Cr - they walked away with +6000Cr in looted equipment.
Unfortunately the merchants in Old Bones weren't looking for beat-up and knock-off goods, so they lost 1/6 of that (1000) in conversion. They ended up with 5000Cr. after repairs and ammo. costs.

This is how I put a definite curb on character profits; 5000Cr is good enough to stay fed, clothed and sheltered for a long time, but it doesn't offer the high-life, but not good enough for the adventuring type.

Basically if you're players are running high-profits on re-sells, then you need to make sure you're deducting profits for the selling of damaged goods, dangerously illegal goods (like selling FQ weapons in FQ), and repairs. Really, repairs and ammo. nearly break a player group of their funds. Anyone in a suit of PA will be a major economical drain, as will anyone using weapons that fire mini-missiles, or use up e-clips like they were going out of style; the C-29 plasma cannon for example. An e-canister is usually 10 times the storage capacity of a short e-clip, and a short e-clip costs 1-3 thousand credits to reload.

[Killer Cyborg]

As has been said, armor repair and ammunition.
Also, pay some attention to encumberence; where exactly are they PCs carrying all that loot?
Also, a lot of places don't deal in credits. So that CR 10,000,000 credit card is worthless, but if you give them that laser pistol they might put you up for the night.

And something to keep in mind is that when the party runs into demons or other monsters that don't have any loot, they're operating at 100% loss unless they're being paid to kill the bad guys.
You kill a dozen demons/monsters with little problem, but lose a total of 30 MDC combined from armor damage, that's about CR -30,000, not to mention the cost of e-clip recharging, grenades/missiles used, etc.

[Noon]

Well it been a long time since I have been GMing/playing RIFTS. Just wondering how you guys control money.

Well, if you want to control it, you speak to the player and tell them to erase the amount of credits on their character sheet, then you tell them the amount to write down.

Trying to find ways for the game world to do this for you is just passive agressive.

If you want to semi control it, let them gather as much as they do in play, but state a rule (state it before play) that at any time in play you can roll to see if a random event takes/looses it all, with a X percent chance (make X what you want it to be).