[WIP] Corporate Trading Outpost OXP

[Pleb]

As it has been so long since I was on here, I couldn't remember my password or what email my forum account was on so I made a new account. Also, I've been trying to get my old Taxi Galactica OXP to work as I managed to convert it from the old scripting format into Javascript, but there are many bugs with it so I've shelved it for the time being...

But here I present another OXP I had an idea about years ago when I first started playing Oolite. A Personal Station, owned by the player, and with upgrade options and missions available. The station itself is the Griff Trading Outpost, which can be purchased in any system that a Constore (from the Your Ad Here OXP) is not present, excluding Anarchy systems. It is very expensive (100,000 credits!), but will generate profits every 5 jumps you make.

You can also purchase upgrades for the station to increase the amount of profit you generate. This currently consists of replacing the Navigation Buoy for the station with a Billboard Buoy, hiring Corporate Frigates to guard the station against piracy, hiring a hOoPy Casino ship to sit outside the station and attracting Star Liners to the station. You can also clear your bounty and refuel your ship for free at the station. Also included are some randomly generated delivery missions.

At the moment this OXP requires the Your Ad Here! OXP, the Galactic Navy OXP, the hOopy Casino OXP and Liners OXP. Also requires Oolite 1.76. Try it out, and if people don't like it I will either try to improve it or remove it if this annoys anyone.

Credits go to:

Trading Outpost Model/Textures/Shaders - Griff
Your Ad Here! OXP - Griff, DaddyHoggy, Pangloos, Disembodied and Eric Walch
Galactic Navy OXP - Nemoricus
hOopy Casino OXP - Murgh and Eric Walch
Liners OXP - Thargoid, P A Groove, Smivs and Griff

Download this OXP!

[Cody]

Welcome back... pleb87, wasn't it?

[Commander McLane]

It is very expensive (100,000 credits!), but will generate profits every 5 jumps you make.

I wouldn't call that expensive, because I could currently buy 140(!) of them with my cash.

From that angle it looks more like a make-money-for-nothing scheme, which I find unbalancing and therefore thoroughly uninteresting.

So, given that a decent ship costs at least 500,000Cr, and likely more than a million, I'd say that a full constore will at least set you back about 5 to 10 million credits. 100,000 is ridiculously cheap.

[Disembodied]

I agree with Commander McLane, 100,000 credits is very cheap – substantially less than the price of a Cobra III. But equally a price of several million means that only the truly dedicated would ever get a chance to play with the OXP (I've been going for a long time now and have more or less given up making big bucks now I have my Wolf II SE: I've yet to break my second million).

Perhaps, rather than buying a whole station off-the-peg, as it were, the player could become part of a consortium that's building a station? So there could be some initial surveying missions first, followed by some pirate clearouts, followed by some time-dependent special cargo deliveries, followed by some "dealing with local competition/hostile takeover bid" missions. All the while the station would be being built, depending on whether the player succeeds in the missions or not. The player could have the chance to make several payments as a shareholder, which – if the station finally gets up and running – could begin to generate a bit of profit – probably not a huge amount, though: the big appeal would be to have helped build something that responds to you. Basically it wouldn't just take money, it would take a bit of work to build the station in the first place.

[Smivs]

Perhaps, rather than buying a whole station off-the-peg, as it were, the player could become part of a consortium that's building a station?

This sounds very much like the Colonisation WIP.

[Zieman]

This.

Perhaps, rather than buying a whole station off-the-peg, as it were, the player could become part of a consortium that's building a station? So there could be some initial surveying missions first, followed by some pirate clearouts, followed by some time-dependent special cargo deliveries, followed by some "dealing with local competition/hostile takeover bid" missions. All the while the station would be being built, depending on whether the player succeeds in the missions or not. The player could have the chance to make several payments as a shareholder, which – if the station finally gets up and running – could begin to generate a bit of profit – probably not a huge amount, though: the big appeal would be to have helped build something that responds to you. Basically it wouldn't just take money, it would take a bit of work to build the station in the first place.

100 000 Cr would be a good initial investment.

[Switeck]

Spotted this message in Latest.log:
06:40:27.109 [script.javaScript.exception.ooliteDefinedError]: ***** JavaScript exception (nova_bomb 1.0): Error: Ship.removeEquipment: Invalid arguments ("EQ_PLEB_NOVA_BOMB") -- expected equipment type.
06:40:27.109 [script.javaScript.exception.ooliteDefinedError]: ../AddOns/Corporate Trading Outpost.oxp/Scripts/nova_bomb.js, line 17.

Seems you renamed EQ_PLEB_NOVA_BOMB to EQ_NOVA_BOMB at some point?

That nasty item either shouldn't exist or it should have far more to it than how it currently works. Besides the text, it doesn't appear to do anything for 20 seconds. Then the star goes nova. Stealth bomb? Destroying systems should generate infinite bad karma/bounty that you can never get rid of. I hope it's part of a critically important campaign to justify its purpose in this OXP.

A basic corporate station might only buy/sell TL 3 or lower stuff. You'd have to upgrade that to get TL 12 or greater, or make the prices cheaper, or add a shipyard, or add Ad billboards to the station (like a regular Your Ad Here station) to generate advertising income.

[Pleb]

So, given that a decent ship costs at least 500,000Cr, and likely more than a million, I'd say that a full constore will at least set you back about 5 to 10 million credits. 100,000 is ridiculously cheap.

I made it cheap for now so that it could be tested a lot easier rather than having to save up loads just to test the OXP. I admit that 100,000 credits is rather cheap and I did consider putting it higher even for the test.

Perhaps, rather than buying a whole station off-the-peg, as it were, the player could become part of a consortium that's building a station? So there could be some initial surveying missions first, followed by some pirate clearouts, followed by some time-dependent special cargo deliveries, followed by some "dealing with local competition/hostile takeover bid" missions. All the while the station would be being built, depending on whether the player succeeds in the missions or not. The player could have the chance to make several payments as a shareholder, which – if the station finally gets up and running – could begin to generate a bit of profit – probably not a huge amount, though: the big appeal would be to have helped build something that responds to you. Basically it wouldn't just take money, it would take a bit of work to build the station in the first place.

This I like the sound of. I was always planning to add more specific missions rather than just randomly generated ones, like ones that deal with killing off competition and 'persuading' local system governments to support the station. Of course I wouldn't want to copy any of the ideas from the Colonisation WIP, but this is a much better direction to go in I feel.

That nasty item either shouldn't exist or it should have far more to it than how it currently works. Besides the text, it doesn't appear to do anything for 20 seconds. Then the star goes nova. Stealth bomb? Destroying systems should generate infinite bad karma/bounty that you can never get rid of. I hope it's part of a critically important campaign to justify its purpose in this OXP.

This actually shouldn't have been in this release and I forgot to remove it before uploading the OXP. Its a weapon I was developing for a future mission but as you said, the ability to destroy an entire system should have serious repercussions, and this is extremely advanced technology that shouldn't be in the hands of the Galactic Co-Operative... (It also needs some work done to it because as you rightly said it is very basic at the moment.)

[Switeck]

Ah, legacy code from/for something else you were working on.
Or most evil testing equipment.

[Potential Debris]

I agree with others that 100k is far too cheap.

...hiring Corporate Frigates to guard the station against piracy...

So if you don't buy protection (and maybe even if you do) you can expect to come home sometimes and find that your base has been overrun by trumbles / looted by pirates (effectively draining your bank account) /completely destroyed by your randomhits enemies? This would introduce some *very* necessary balance to the mod.

A cheaper, less effective defence option should be to contribute to the local police retirement fund, to persuade them to cruise by your station a little more often than usual.

It would also be fun for it to come under attack while you're in residence occasionally so that you have to launch and defend your base.

..You can also clear your bounty...

What's the in-game rationalisation for this? If you were running you own hacker outpost, it would make sense, but a constore?

Finally, with the new OXP hooks being introduced in the next version of Oolite, it might be possible to have a "garage" in your station, allowing you to keep multiple ships. That would be nice. Of course, every docking berth you take up with your personal ship collection is one less docking berth available to customers, and so less ongoing profit...

[Pleb]

...hiring Corporate Frigates to guard the station against piracy...

So if you don't buy protection (and maybe even if you do) you can expect to come home sometimes and find that your base has been overrun by trumbles / looted by pirates (effectively draining your bank account) /completely destroyed by your randomhits enemies? This would introduce some *very* necessary balance to the mod.

A cheaper, less effective defence option should be to contribute to the local police retirement fund, to persuade them to cruise by your station a little more often than usual.

It would also be fun for it to come under attack while you're in residence occasionally so that you have to launch and defend your base.

I like the idea of having to bribe/pay the police to protect the station, and the idea of having to defend the station from pirates/competition. Both these ideas will be acted upon and included. I also like the idea of coming back and the place has already been attached or looted and you have to then pay the costs of repairing/restocking the station.

..You can also clear your bounty...

What's the in-game rationalisation for this? If you were running you own hacker outpost, it would make sense, but a constore?

Finally, with the new OXP hooks being introduced in the next version of Oolite, it might be possible to have a "garage" in your station, allowing you to keep multiple ships. That would be nice. Of course, every docking berth you take up with your personal ship collection is one less docking berth available to customers, and so less ongoing profit...

The only reason I included an option to clear bounty was by using the station's money to pay your own bounty. I could always remove this as then you wouldn't need to visit Hacker Outposts and I wouldn't want to overide anyone elses OXP.

I have noticed the new features being planned, and I have already been drawing up plans to include some sort of garage, although perhaps that is expanding out too far and again I wouldn't want to rip off another person's ideas for another OXP...

[Pleb]

Ah, legacy code from/for something else you were working on.
Or most evil testing equipment.

All will be revelealed...at a later date

[Potential Debris]

I have noticed the new features being planned, and I have already been drawing up plans to include some sort of garage, although perhaps that is expanding out too far and again I wouldn't want to rip off another person's ideas for another OXP...

I wouldn't worry about that, plenty of OXPs overlap, and I get the feeling there will be plenty of personal garage mods available soon.

[Commander McLane]

..You can also clear your bounty...

What's the in-game rationalisation for this? If you were running you own hacker outpost, it would make sense, but a constore?

Finally, with the new OXP hooks being introduced in the next version of Oolite, it might be possible to have a "garage" in your station, allowing you to keep multiple ships. That would be nice. Of course, every docking berth you take up with your personal ship collection is one less docking berth available to customers, and so less ongoing profit...

The only reason I included an option to clear bounty was by using the station's money to pay your own bounty.

I'd think that's a misconception of a bounty. A bounty is what someone gets paid for killing you or capturing you and delivering you into custody. It's not what you (or someone else on your behalf) pays in order to clear you. That would be a fine.

As far a I understand you idea, you would not end up either dead or in GalCop custody, so there is no bounty involved. Buying you out of jail (or out of the 'most wanted' list) should always be a great deal more expensive than the bounty on your head, or else all criminals would do it all the time.

[Pleb]

I'd think that's a misconception of a bounty. A bounty is what someone gets paid for killing you or capturing you and delivering you into custody. It's not what you (or someone else on your behalf) pays in order to clear you. That would be a fine.

As far a I understand you idea, you would not end up either dead or in GalCop custody, so there is no bounty involved. Buying you out of jail (or out of the 'most wanted' list) should always be a great deal more expensive than the bounty on your head, or else all criminals would do it all the time.

Okay I have misunderstood the idea of a bounty. I thought this was simply a price on your head set by GalCop. This is something I will remove from any future releases as I don't want to get off the track with the whole personal station idea.

I think some of the ideas raised by Potential Debris on his thread are very interesting and I intend to play around with some of these for the next release. I think getting away from the idea of ownership and more on the line of shared ownership through missions and cash donation is a better and more balanced way of doing it.