Help rid me of these turbulent priests!

[Lt Cdr Roy Orbitson]

Yes, I've got monk trouble. The debts keep mounting and it's hard to concentrate on earning credits when a bloody great gunship keeps appearing on your six and blasting you with its plasma cannons. What can I do? They even pursue me into the space station protection area, though I at least managed to destroy the last attacker with the aid of the local constabulary.

I know I'll never borrow money again.

[another_commander]

If all else fails, maybe removing the Black Monks OXP would work?

[CheeseRedux]

Yeah, removing the OXP is an immediate fix. Bear in mind that if you ever reinstall it, they will be back on your six again quicker than you can say 'press space commander'.

Another alternative is to edit your save game and remove the bit that makes them come after you. I'm almost certain that LittleBear posted instructions some time ago.

As for in game solutions, I'm afraid I've got very little for you.
Once I discovered that the supposed 'repay us in xx weeks, or else' actually translates into 'repay us in xx jumps, or else', I reverted to my pre-Monk save game and never looked back.
If you don't want to cheat*, the only advice I can think of is to repent.
Repent, I say!
Sell all your cargo and buy a cheaper ship, then repay the Monks. I've no clue if it will help or not, though.

*By some definitions of cheat, at least. YMMV.

[Lt Cdr Roy Orbitson]

I don't know what happens to a defaulter who goes near a monastery, maybe they open fire? In that case would be a hell of a job to get in there alive even if I could repay them.

Isn't the weeks/jumps thing a bug? I was sure I was making enough to pay them back in time. Would have all been fine but for that.

Ah well, back to Lave it is then.

[CheeseRedux]

I wrote the script for black monks quite a long time ago, so its faily simply. You can recover from being a bit late. They will charge you a penalty sum on top of the capital and interest you already owe, but will permit you to redeem yourself by doing so. But the way its currently scripted, if you are really late (I think I set this as a month), then they will never let you darken their doors again and will just throw you out if you try to dock.

See the Black Monk Customer Services Dept. for further details, or visit the release thread.

The weeks/jumps thing isn't quite so much a bug as it is a faulty description of the conditions. The OXP was not intended to be the fast track to riches for a young Jameson. The # of jumps was a result of careful playtesting, and in order for you to be able to turn a profit from the loan, you really need to use that money to make money. Taking out a loan to buy yourself a Mil laser is not recommended.

[Chrisfs]

The big problem with the weeks=jumps condition is that it is not compatible with the bulk cargo aspect of the game. If I see that I can buy x tons of something and get paid a premium if I deliver it in x weeks, and then borrow the money from the monks to be paid back in less than x weeks (which turn out to be jumps not weeks), then although it should work, I'm actually quite hosed, since the concept of weeks is radically different between the two contracts.
So using the monks to finance a big shipment can actually be a bad idea.
The Monks OXP should track time in the same way as the passenger/cargo shipment tracks time.

[CheeseRedux]

This thing has been percolating in the back of my mind for a few hours now.
I've also gone back and reread a bunch of the older threads about the BMB.

While there already exists code that switches the repayment timing around, I've come to the conclusion that it's best to leave it as it is.
If changed to time-dependent, the OXP is left vulnerable to short-jump exploits. All it takes is for a young Jameson to find 2 planets about 2ly apart and trade between them until sufficient money has been made to repay the loan. This would turn the BMB into the make-money-fast scheme it was never meant to be.

As for using the BMB to finance big contract hauls, I really don't see the problem. If memory serves me right, the deadline is 16 jumps, which should be more than enough to get most contracts done.

The real problem arises when young Jamesons get caught up in the weeks=jumps misinformation, as just happened with Lt Cdr Roy Orbitson.

(Incidentally, I see we have totally forgotten the mandatory greeting. Immediate rectification to follow immediately:

Welcome to the forums, Commander Orbitson. According to a recent poll, they're the friendliest this side of Riedquat.)


Suggested immediate fix: Put a warning on the Wiki page of the OXP that the Monks, due to inconsistencies between religious dogma and timekeeping in space, have a bit of trouble differentiating between the concepts of weeks and jumps. In fact, the teachings of their Divine Prophet* clearly states that a jump always takes a week. No evidence of the contrary has managed to budge their belief in the Prophet's infallibility, on this or any other matter.

Less immediate fix: Get the wording of the loan contract clarified, and upload a new version of the OXP. This of course entails rousing LittleBear from hibernation.


*No, I'm not talking about that Prophet. In fact, it's been so long since I've had any dealing with the Black Monks I cannot even remember if they have a prophet. I just threw together a few lines of religious hogwash** as an example. Sheesh!

**No, I'm not in any way, shape or form ridiculing religion. I'm ridiculing religious fanatics. Double-sheesh!

[Disembodied]

[...] Divine Prophet [...]

I think you spelled it wrong ... Divine Profit, surely?

I've never borrowed from the Bank of St Herod myself, but I think the weeks/jumps thing definitely needs to be rectified. The longest jump you can make takes just over 46 hours, so there's a huge difference.

I don't really think it's much of a problem if people find a short-range trade route, myself. If they can pay off the loan in time then they're using the Monks, if not to get rich quick, then to get rich quicker – but they've had to alter their gameplay in order to do so. A better solution might be to put a lower cap on the amounts the monks will lend (i.e. not nearly enough to fully kit out a new ship – say a couple of thousand) and stick a much tighter time limit on repayment (7 days?). That way, nobody's getting rich quick – all they're getting is a shortcut to a beam laser and some other minor bits, and there's barely enough time to find a really easy milk run.

[Commander McLane]

Substituting jumps for weeks was done purely for convenience by LittleBear, because e thought using actual weeks wouldn't be possible in legacy-scripting.

I actually suggested a way to implement it after the OXP was released (it's somewhere in its thread), but he didn't feel like re-writing the whole thing. And that was that.

I still think it wouldn't be too much work to implement the change from jumps to fixed periods of time. By the way, one is completely free to define how long those periods should be. I think even back then I suggested to shorten the "weeks", in order to not change the current time frame too much. One could easily drop the information that for some reason the Black Monks are using a "week" that consists of four or five days only.

A better solution might be to put a lower cap on the amounts the monks will lend (i.e. not nearly enough to fully kit out a new ship – say a couple of thousand)

The Black Monks only give you 20,000 credits, so I think that's not a real problem. It's not enough to buy any serious equipment, and much less a new ship.

[Disembodied]

The Black Monks only give you 20,000 credits, so I think that's not a real problem. It's not enough to buy any serious equipment, and much less a new ship.

₢20,000 is a lot of dough for a starting player! It'll kit out your Cobra III with a cargo bay expansion (₢400), a military laser (₢6000 – one of the most serious pieces of kit in the whole game), fuel injectors (₢600), ECM (₢600), an Extra Energy Unit (₢1500), fuel scoops (₢525), docking computers (₢1500), Scanner Targeting Enhancement (₢450), multi-targeting system (₢325), 4 hardhead missiles (₢1400, not counting what you'd get back for selling the 3 standard ones that come with the ship), an energy bomb (₢900), a target system memory upgrade (₢1250), an advanced space compass (₢650) ... and I've still got ₢3900 left to buy 35t of computers and still have change. OK, it's not an iron ass, but it's a hell of a lot better than a starting Cobra III. To be honest, I think it's far too much, for a beginning player anyway.

It might be better if the Monks geared their loans to the player's kill count, or even how long they've been flying (if that's possible). ₢2000 for a starting player would make a significant difference (beam laser, injectors, and nearly enough for an ECM or a fuel scoop).

[maik]

It might be better if the Monks geared their loans to the player's kill count, or even how long they've been flying (if that's possible). ₢2000 for a starting player would make a significant difference (beam laser, injectors, and nearly enough for an ECM or a fuel scoop).

Sounds very reasonable. A new Jameson will have a horrible credit rating, even by Black Monk standards.

[Switeck]

The Black Monks OXP seems to be written using the older script type with a hard-coded 20000 credit loan, complete with hard-coded interest amounts of ~625 credits for each jump.

While that 20000 credit loan seems "huge!" to a starting player, you cannot use more than a little of it to outfit your ship or you'll be unable to repay the loan.

₢20,000 is a lot of dough for a starting player! ... and I've still got ₢3900 left to buy 35t of computers and still have change.

And you have ~16 jumps to pay back a final total of 30100 credits.

If it is their goal to keep people in the blessed state of debt (having a loan with them), then they need to relax their loan conditions slightly and also start out with small loans to new and unreliable victim-customers and increasing loan sizes to repeat visitors. The first loan should also have the worst percent interest rate.

[Commander McLane]

The Black Monks only give you 20,000 credits, so I think that's not a real problem. It's not enough to buy any serious equipment, and much less a new ship.

₢20,000 is a lot of dough for a starting player!

What Switeck says: the interest rate is prodigious and the player has very little time to repay the loan. If he uses more than a tiny fraction of the money for equipment, he will fail to repay in time. Failing means certain death (that's the very reason why the Black Monks ships are so strong).

So, the in-built counter balance of the OXP is nothing less than a guaranteed "Press Space Commander", which is a fairly strong balance, I'd say (the strongest possible balance, to be precise ).

[Lt Cdr Roy Orbitson]

I'm sure it would be possible to fully kit out your ship and make the money in 16 jumps as long as you knew that was the deal you had. It seems quite a few pirates are carrying tens of kilos of gold and platinum... if there is any fair way for a commander to get rich quick, it's got to be by taking on violent anarchies without a shield booster.

[Switeck]

For that, you'd want Beam Lasers (1600Cr) front and back, ECM (600Cr), Fuel Scoops (525Cr), Witchfuel Injectors (600Cr), Advanced Space Compass (650Cr), Scanner Targeting Enhancement (450 Cr), ...maybe an Extra Energy Unit (1500Cr), and probably a Large Cargo Bay (400 Cr).

1600+1500+ 650+ 600+ 600+ 525+ 450+ 400 = 6325 Credits total, of which only 1200 Credits are recoverable by swapping the Beam Lasers back to Pulse Lasers. (Skipping the EEU reduces that to 4825 Credits, but I'm assuming the EEU is added.)
Or...you could have front and back Military Lasers for 16325 Credits total, with the expectation that you'd HAVE to swap them back to Beam or Pulse Lasers to pay off the loan. Swapping out to Beam Lasers means you get 10000 Credits back. Or Pulses for 11200 Credits back.
So even swapping back to Pulse Lasers, you'll have to make ~7700 Credits from busting pirates and looting cargo canisters...in a there-and-back trip to an anarchy from the nearest Black Monk Monastery.

Add in the 35 tons Computers you're possibly selling for ~30 Cr/ton profit (1050 Cr total profit) at the Anarchy, and that reduces the extra amount you need busting pirates from 7700 Cr to 6650 Cr, but it would mean you have to make a mad dash to the main station before you could scoop anything else...leaving fewer populator-added pirates to kill by the time you get back out.

Selling 100 kg Platinum at 77 Credits/kg would cover not bringing any computers. That's almost the max you could sell at once. By selling computers, you could reduce that to ~87 kg Platinum.

Figuring in 20 Cr per pirate kill and about 1 Platinum (at 80 Cr/kg) per pirate -- that's ~100 Credits per pirate value. Call that 70-80 pirates -- possibly more than is in the whole system! And that's being optimistic on each pirate's average value. Deep Space Pirates OXP would add more pirates, but they're far less likely to have any cargo...and in an Anarchy system, more likely to kill you as they can sometimes be in packs of 5-14 each!

If you go to the main station and save every-so-often, it's still probably doable in 2-4 hours.

But if you do more than jumping to an anarchy and back...
Each additional jump would cost another ~700 Cr, or maybe 7-10 additional pirates...minus any profits from trading.