equipment buying time oddity (trunk)

[Commander McLane]

As you know, buying equipment from the F3-screen takes time, proportional to the equipment's price. Cheap things take negligible time to install, expensive things take a little longer. Very expensive things may take, well, quite a while.

As I'm updating Killit.oxp, I just bought myself an OMGWTFBBQ-weapon. It's the most expensive equipment item I know of, with a price tag of 5 million credits per piece. And I just found out that it takes a whopping 579 days(!) to install if I stay in the equipment section. That's a year and seven months, which you have to wait until you can bring true mass destruction to the Ooniverse. Seems it's a complicated device.

However, my main point here is the "if I stay in the equipment section" part. Because I noticed that, when I press F1 to launch, the clock stops immediately. It doesn't advance to the end time, but simply starts ticking normally from whatever time it has reached when I press F1. I think that can't be right.

[Smivs]

As you know,

I didn't !

[Switeck]

If time is simply cost-based, it would mean a basic missile would be far quicker to replace than a ECM-resistant hardhead missile. If true, that doesn't seem right.

[Commander McLane]

At this price level it doesn't really matter. The difference will be a matter of seconds.

No, I'm wrong. A normal missile takes 15 minutes to install, a hardened missile 1:08 hours.

[Disembodied]

If time is simply cost-based, it would mean a basic missile would be far quicker to replace than a ECM-resistant hardhead missile. If true, that doesn't seem right.

There's more paperwork required ...

[another_commander]

It takes approximately 45 minutes to wire the electronics of an ECM hardened missile during installation. It's all in the manufacturer's manual, c'mon people, read those things!

[Commander McLane]

It takes approximately 45 minutes to wire the electronics of an ECM hardened missile during installation. It's all in the manufacturer's manual, c'mon people, read those things!

My point are not the times as such. My point is that all this wiring can be skipped just by launching right away (without any consequences for the proper functioning of the missile or other equipment).

Having clarified that, I do think that we need to spend some thoughts on this rather plain price-time-correlation. We scripters are using "make it expensive" as a form of balancing more powerful equipment. Seldom are we aware that 'expensive' also automagically means 'takes long to install', or 'takes excessively long to install'. For something in the region of 10000 credits it's a good day, something around 30000 credits takes about three-and-a-half days, something for 50000 credits is nearing a week. Yes, probably the Military Shield Enhancement takes five days of paperwork alone, but this cannot always be the justification for any OXP equipment which is purely made expensive for balancing purposes. (This is firmly in the realm of feature-discussion, so it's clearly a post-stable thing.)

And what makes absolutely no sense is to have all the paperwork cut short just by leaving the station immediately after the transaction. The player can't be forced to not press any button until the clock adjustment is over. The game has to take care of that. (And this would be a bug fix.)

[Eric Walch]

The player can't be forced to not press any button until the clock adjustment is over. The game has to take care of that.

Yes that would be a annoyance when the game would freeze during a time adjustment.
The time adjustment adds has some nice scripting problems. In UPS I had a mission with a tight time schedule. On entering the system I always updated the mission description with the number of days/hours to go. And than I failed to deliver in time while I had time according to the description.... Than I realised the adjustmen. For a script it is not possible to access the adjusted time when busy adjusting. The read time during adjusting is always older than the real time. The only thing we have is the property adjusting. So UPS now gives a mission description updating time..., starts a timer and writes the correct time to go when adjusting is over. Both on entering a system and launching.

[Switeck]

I'd be happy if missile pylon mounts remained 10 minutes for everything.
They're supposed to be "plug-and-play" anyway and don't require possibly cutting open the ship to get to.

Look how fast we can shuffle around buy/sell cargo. Nearly no delays there!