[WIP] Ship's Accountant 0.1

[Walbrigg]

This is a pre-release of my Ship's Accountant OXP. It tracks profit and losses through the game, and provides summary reports (when docked) via station interfaces (F4).

I wouldn't really advise adding it to your normal play as yet: if I make any changes to the persisted data format, then it will get confused. Once I have a proper release, I'll aim to keep that stable. But you can try it out and see if it looks at all useful.

From the readme:

This is the Ship's Accountant - the indispensible tool for anyone who seeks to make a profit in space. What you can't measure, you can't manage.

There is some overlap of function with other add-ons, for example the AI Trading Assistant, but the purpose is distinct. The aim is not to guide your business at the tactical level answering questions like "what cargo should I buy for a run to the next system?" Rather the Ship's Accountant guides your business strategy: answering questions like "Am I making as much profit in this part of the sector as I did 10 days ago in another part? Am I making more profit by trading, or by fighting? Does a long passenger run make more profit than just carrying cargo around?"

The accountant tracks profit and loss. Trading profit is accrued when you hyperspace into a system where your cargo is worth more. Bounties and scooped cargo are counted as profit immediately. Shifting assets from one form to another -- cash to ship's equipment, cargo to cash -- does not count immediately as profit or loss.


Development Notes

This is an early pre-release version, with known limitations:

• * Presentation needs work: better tables and a background image
  * More choice of reports, including a straight ledger view
  * No support for handling buying a new ship or using an escape capsule
  * Not sure about doing business at non-main stations
  * Not tested in interstellar space
  * Bugs. I would be surprised if there weren't a few.

It should not be used in your main game in this state, it's provided
for evaluation purposes only.

Other possible future enhancements:

• * Tool to examine the ledger & reports outside oolite by extracting
  from log file or save files
  * Ability to manually annotate adjustments to show their cause
  * Integration with other OXPs (Black Monks a priority)

Version History
0.01 3rd February 2013 first WIP release

Screenshots: http://walbrigg.tumblr.com/post/4221999 ... 1-of-ships
Zip download from Box: https://www.box.com/s/2wigkl3z47z4818wha3q
Shar download from tumblr: http://walbrigg.tumblr.com/post/4222112 ... untant-oxp

(If you remember 8-bit elite, you might remember shar distribution... It's what you might call an experiment: I was observing that actually sharing files was getting as difficult as in the usenet days, so I attempted a usenet solution.
I think it might work, but only because there's (as yet) no graphics or other media in the OXP. I can't see being able to post megabytes of uuencoded binaries as a tumblr post).

[ozhank]

Looking good - it's something I've been looking for as I have trouble working out profitable routes. It will be of great assistance.

[Walbrigg]

One thing I forgot to mention...

As it stands adding the OXP adds the Ship's Accountant functionality. I think it's maybe more normal for stuff like this to be installable equipment. Is that right? Probably another change to make before version 1

[Diziet Sma]

Hmm.. purchased equipment, or standard-issue ship's software? I could go either way on that one.

[Wildeblood]

This is a pre-release of my Ship's Accountant OXP. It tracks profit and losses through the game, and provides summary reports (when docked) via station interfaces (F4).

Something is buggy in your mission screen handling, but since they've always mystified me I can't offer any insight, just a description: I start a game, view one of the interface screens such as Trading Assistant or Trophy Collection, when I exit that screen I get one of your report screens appear as if I had just left the first Ship's Accountant screen. It only happens the first time I view one such screen, after that they behave normally; that hints at a variable not initialized perhaps.

[Cholmondely]

This is a pre-release of my Ship's Accountant OXP. It tracks profit and losses through the game, and provides summary reports (when docked) via station interfaces (F4).

Added to the Brilliant but Broken wiki page



Edited to add:

Wiki page now up: https://wiki.alioth.net/index.php/Ship% ... untant_OXP

[Cholmondely]

Some pretty pictures (if you are an accountant!)



Note how new OXP commodities (Quirium Crystal) are seamlessly incorporated!