Rock-bottom price

[Wildeblood]

- you were paid a couple of Credits for taking away 1 tonne of rubbish. You would the fly out to deep space and jettison it where nobody was looking. Being caught do so resulted in a fine. A very poor way of making money, but if there was nothing worth buying, it paid for the fuel for the next trip. (I can't see how to achieve this in Oolite.)

Just offer it for sale normally, and when the player buys some immediately reverse the sale with double the credit. The only drawback is that it won't work if the player is flat broke: for a fraction of a second they do have to actually buy it. I altered McLane's "sell equipment" script like that, so it would display the actual amount I'd be paid for the equipment, rather than the 10 credit dummy value.

[Commander McLane]

I altered McLane's "sell equipment" script like that, so it would display the actual amount I'd be paid for the equipment, rather than the 10 credit dummy value.

The 10Cr is not a dummy value. It's a price. It's not what you receive, but what you pay for the privilege of being able to return an equipment item. Call it a removal fee if you want.

In other words: You don't get the amount you'd be paid, but the amount you'd be paid minus 10Cr. Also, the removal fee may be higher (or lower) than 10Cr in secondary stations.

[Commander McLane]

Tonight though, I pulled into a hermit and the fur price was 0.0c/t. None available of course,

Oops! I missed the last part. I even missed the zeroes in the commodities.plist that indicate that there will never be any furs available.

So Disembodied is right: the price doesn't matter, because you'll never get any furs for 0Cr. Actually, setting the prices to 0 is very common in stations which don't offer the commodity in question anyway.

So no need to do anything to the rock hermit commodities.plist. Mauiby's and SandJ's experiences with actually buying something for 0Cr in a Seedy Space Bar or a Wasp's nest are clearly bugs in the respective OXPs, however.

Zero Cr.. MMM
I've came across 0.1 for some.

This is plainly impossible. All prices are multiples of 0.4Cr, so 0.4Cr is the lowest price you can come across.

[Wildeblood]

I altered McLane's "sell equipment" script like that, so it would display the actual amount I'd be paid for the equipment, rather than the 10 credit dummy value.

The 10Cr is not a dummy value. It's a price. It is what you pay for the privilege of being able to return an equipment item. Call it a removal fee if you want.

In other words: You don't get the amount you'd be paid, but the amount you'd be paid minus 10Cr. Also, the removal fee may be higher (or lower) than 10Cr in secondary stations.

Y'know, I knew all that, but it didn't seem pertinent to the actual discussion at hand.

[Zireael]

Anyhoo, would it be possible to have the Frontier situation (i.e. being paid to remove sth?)

[Eric Walch]

I altered McLane's "sell equipment" script like that, so it would display the actual amount I'd be paid for the equipment, rather than the 10 credit dummy value.

The 10Cr is not a dummy value. It's a price. It's not what you receive, but what you pay for the privilege of being able to return an equipment item. Call it a removal fee if you want.

You could do another tweak to that script. As it is possible to advance the time, I think also removal should take a bit of time. Not as much as installing, but its scriptable so why not do it.

[Alex]

Zero Cr.. MMM
I've came across 0.1 for some. But never an actual 0.0
Maybe for spice there could be a seller that pays to take the goods away?

In Frontier there was one planet (Cemiess) where previous metals and gems were illegal, and you were paid to remove them.

Also:
- fuel could be sold, so you could scrape together credits by sun-skimming, docking and selling the fuel. That ought to be possible in Oolite.

- you were paid a couple of Credits for taking away 1 tonne of rubbish. You would the fly out to deep space and jettison it where nobody was looking. Being caught do so resulted in a fine. A very poor way of making money, but if there was nothing worth buying, it paid for the fuel for the next trip. (I can't see how to achieve this in Oolite.)

Thinking about being payed to take stuff away;
Trummbles came to mind, wonder how much it would be worth to station to rid them of a trummble infestation, not worrying about who's ship infested them in the first place.
Could be a new career path.

[Commander McLane]

I altered McLane's "sell equipment" script like that, so it would display the actual amount I'd be paid for the equipment, rather than the 10 credit dummy value.

The 10Cr is not a dummy value. It's a price. It's not what you receive, but what you pay for the privilege of being able to return an equipment item. Call it a removal fee if you want.

You could do another tweak to that script. As it is possible to advance the time, I think also removal should take a bit of time. Not as much as installing, but its scriptable so why not do it.

That's an interesting idea. I'll look into it. It should of course depend on the item in question, because some will certainly take more time to remove than others.

By the way, and while we're at it: I don't like the way the time is currently calculated in Oolite, especially, I don't like how it quickly becomes ridiculously long for expensive items. I'm not sure off the top of my head if it increases linearly or with some exponent, but I'd suggest a much flatter curve, possibly even with a cap somewhere. If it's currently linear, changing it to the square root of price could be a good start.

[SandJ]

It should of course depend on the item in question, because some will certainly take more time to remove than others.

By the way, and while we're at it: I don't like the way the time is currently calculated in Oolite, especially, I don't like how it quickly becomes ridiculously long for expensive items. I'm not sure off the top of my head if it increases linearly or with some exponent, but I'd suggest a much flatter curve, possibly even with a cap somewhere. If it's currently linear, changing it to the square root of price could be a good start.

Woah, doesn't changing something like this in Oolite require discussion as it has quite an effect on the difficulty of fulfilling missions and other effects? Isn't it opening a can of worms - people might want to suggest the TL of the system in question, whether main station or not, size of the ship, existing equipment (value) of the ship, and all manner of other variables? And impacts on mission OXPs, too.

[Commander McLane]

By the way, and while we're at it: I don't like the way the time is currently calculated in Oolite, especially, I don't like how it quickly becomes ridiculously long for expensive items. I'm not sure off the top of my head if it increases linearly or with some exponent, but I'd suggest a much flatter curve, possibly even with a cap somewhere. If it's currently linear, changing it to the square root of price could be a good start.

Woah, doesn't changing something like this in Oolite require discussion as it has quite an effect on the difficulty of fulfilling missions and other effects?

Yes, of course. That's why I just tried to start a discussion. And now there has already been one reaction.

(Or did you think I'd go and actually change something? I'm not a developer. And Eric's not going to make radical changes just because I made an offhand remark.)

[Eric Walch]

(Or did you think I'd go and actually change something? I'm not a developer. And Eric's not going to make radical changes just because I made an offhand remark.)

No, I have no intention to change something that was in Oolite without ever have been an issue. But it is good for oxp developers that they know how Oolite handles it internally so they can make consistent behaviour in their work. Currently the formula for adjusting the seconds is:

Code: Select all

ship_clock_adjust += deci_credits + 600.0;

That means buying anything costs now 10 minutes + 10 seconds for every credit spend. That means that even buying a bit of fuel costs at least 10 minutes. (That are times I only experienced in RL when filling up my tank during a holiday period) I never realised there was a minimum time adjustment, but it happens, I just checked. Makes sunskimming even more valuable when on a tight time schedule.

[cim]

For quick reference, the results of the formula to a range of equipment are:
Naval Energy Unit (50,000 Cr.): about 5.75 days
Military Shield Enhancement (47,550 Cr.): about 5.5 days
Shield Boosters (14,750 Cr.): about 1.75 days
Military Laser (6,000 Cr.): about 17 hours
Q-Mine (2,500 Cr.): about 7 hours
Beam Laser (1,000 Cr.): about 3 hours
ECM System (400 Cr.): about 75 minutes
Missile (30 Cr.): 15 minutes

[Eric Walch]

Naval Energy Unit (50,000 Cr.): about 5.75 days

Actually is this one given by a mission and you should never have to buy it. Reparing cost only 50% of that. Still a long time.

Thinking of it, The thargoid plans mission just awards it. When the mission was first written we could not adjust time, but I think the mission should do now.

[Smivs]

For quick reference, the results of the formula to a range of equipment are:
Naval Energy Unit (50,000 Cr.): about 5.75 days
Military Shield Enhancement (47,550 Cr.): about 5.5 days
Shield Boosters (14,750 Cr.): about 1.75 days
Military Laser (6,000 Cr.): about 17 hours
Q-Mine (2,500 Cr.): about 7 hours
Beam Laser (1,000 Cr.): about 3 hours
ECM System (400 Cr.): about 75 minutes
Missile (30 Cr.): 15 minutes

Hmmm, so how does it take five times longer to fit a military laser than a beam laser? And over twice as long to hang a Q-bomb on a pylon? That doesn't seem right.
And when I finally get round to releasing Battle Damage, your hull can be patched for 75Cr in about 25 minutes!
Could this be something to look at in the future?

[Gimi]

Hmmm, so how does it take five times longer to fit a military laser than a beam laser? And over twice as long to hang a Q-bomb on a pylon? That doesn't seem right.
And when I finally get round to releasing Battle Damage, your hull can be patched for 75Cr in about 25 minutes!
Could this be something to look at in the future?

Well, the cooling system for both the military laser and the Q-bomb is much more advanced, so it should take longer to fit. How much longer is debatable. Patching the hull in 25 minutes sounds a bit strange though. Maybe the default value could remain in place, but an OXP author can explicitly set the time in the OXP and override the default value.
I know this probably opens a few cans of worms, and Thargoid will probably have to update his ooCheat.oxp with time cheats. But the current setup does result in some inconsistencies.