It is a bit strange, that you have your own ship, that costs heap'n'heaps of credits (look at the costs for a ton of food and than again how much a Cobra MKIII is worth) but can't afford some of the more simple equipments for it. Well, maybe you invested everything you had and now you're broke. Maybe you inherited it, or you were the pilot of a company and "bought" your ship's freedom by working hard for them. But under normal conditions you would have taken a loan. Now I know of the
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Bank of the black monks and that under normal conditions galcop wouldn't allow loans, but all these privateers must come from somewhere. What if loans are permitted on planets (galcop doesn't interfere in planets affairs after all). A planetary loan might be allowed in case you want to buy a ship. This would be in the very best interests of galcop as it increases commerce.I believe this can be covered by an OXP and I'm going to write one. But before I begin I wanted to introduce the idea to the community and how I'm going to do it. (I'm especally interested in feedback regarding other takes on it and pointing out flaws in mine or other one's approaches.)
IMO such a loan should provide a fair challenge for beginning commanders. It should make life harder for them. Amassing enough money for the better equipments should be harder.
It should be usable for a Corba MKIII high loan, let's say 125000cr for a beat up one, but my OXP will be programmed with a smaller starter ship in mind, as this is an OXP, that should flesh out such a beginning phase. Therefore my examples will be for such a approach.
I thought about something along there lines:
The player starts with a loans of 20000Cr and a Transporter or modified Worm bought from it.
When docking, there will be weekly events that take a bit of the players credits to repay the loan. Of course the player has to be punished, if she/he failed to create enough profit. That punishment would come in form of a small increase of the debts. There also should be money left for the player. The event (and repayment calculation) might look like this.
20000cr total debt
1000cr 5% weekly repayment rate
700Cr player's money
500cr will always be left on the players account, therefore
-200cr repayment this week
19800cr debt left
+ 19.8cr 0.1% weekly interest (5,5% yearly interest)
+ 40cr punishment (5% of 800cr [1000cr-200cr] not repaid share of this weeks rate)
19859.8 total debt left. Till next week.
This would happen, when the player docks with a galcop facility and another 7 days have passed. If more than 7 days have passed, this will be taken into account and be treated as if the player was too broke to repay the last rate.
Commodities in the cargo hold aren't touched either.
Now it stands to see if this is even manageable for a new commander. Ideally the repayment of the debt takes a while and hurts, but not too much and is manageable. Like everything in oolite life should become easier with more equipment installed.
In case the debts increase more than is manageable (more than 1000000cr) the commander is forced to retire (is this possible for an OXP?). That shouldn't be a too bad as a punishment for the player, as the commander is still young (a few hours/days of gameplay) and can be undone by removing the OXP as no real debt is created in the gamestate. The debt is meant to be something, that is only bothering in the early phase.
Also off-schedule repayments are allowed, too.
As for a Cobra MKIII the debt should be 125000cr (A new costs 150000cr. Lets say it is used and the commander had a few bucks himself.)
Let's see.
125000cr total debt
6250cr 5% weekly repayment rate
700Cr player's money
500cr will always be left on the players account, therefore
-200cr repayment this week
124800cr debt left
+ 124.8cr 0.1% weekly interest (5,5% yearly interest)
+ 302.5cr punishment (5% of 6050cr [6250cr-200cr] not repaid share of this weeks rate)
125227.3 total debt left.
Hmm. That's quite harsh. But I can tinker with the intervals, rates, interests and punishment rates until it fits.
Of course this is only one take on it. I also fought about subtracting 5% every time the player sells commodities. How would your take on it look? Maybe the OXP could even implement different repayment schedules.
Would add another aspect to a Oolite, where after a while you just can't loose.
. All you need to do, is find those two opposite eco systems that are very close to each other and you have all the time in the world to pay off the loan. And bore yourself to death. In the end I was very frustrated and ditched the project a couple of times before finally getting the idea of forcing the player to pay the debt at a named system. LittleBear named the loans to pilgrimages and the mechanic makes sense in game. And it's much more fun than zipping between two close systems.
