Oolite Bulletins

Yes, its colors are green on top, and white on the bottom, with blue trim.

New versions of the base OXP and sets 4.4.1.

1. Station top colorization restored. Thanks to Keeper.
2. Set D Constore rebranded from Star to GalaxyMart since there already is another set with Star brand. Rebranding by Keeper.
3. Buyo label in ASC now shows the name of the brand.
4. Market definition has been modernized. Capacity is 10 and price fluctuation +/-20%. The market is also monitored so it follows the system's legality settings.

That last change deserves some explaining. The original YAH had a flaw (intentional or not, who knows) in it's market definition, causing some of the prices to overflow and producing absurd prices. With luck you could do thousands of credits in one run making this oxp hardly "safe" to install. To make this OXP not game breaking, in some earlier version I capped the profits via scripting. If the market gave you silly prices, the quantities were capped to prevent making ridiculous amounts on credits. It worked, but it was done with scripting and I have always felt it was a bit awkward. So in this version, there is a new, more modern and non-scripty market definition.

The market is capped to 10. Quantities are calculated from the system quantities with high variance. The prices follow the system prices with +/- 20% variance.

The game play element I'm trying to achieve here, is an interesting place to visit when entering system while trying not to break the game economy. Ideally the player visits the Constore on system arrival to see if she can sell a small amount of of the cargo carried to the Constore and buy a small amount of cargo to be sold at the main station. The quantities and the prices should be such that it's exciting and interesting, but not overly prosperous.

Let's see how this works.

spara wrote:

The market is also monitored so it follows the system's legality settings.

One of the perhaps unintended consequences from this point is that it's now much harder to find slaves to rescue if you have the Illegal Goods Tweak installed - you're left with Space bars, and not much else other that what you can scoop. Slaves are available at constores, but you're labelled an offender as soon as you launch even though your intent is to release them. But maybe that's a good thing, making the decision to release the slaves a much more notable event, rather than a perfunctory "dock at constore, buy any slaves I have room for, release at main-station". It would be good to toss this around a bit though. My preference would be for constores to ignore the legality settings of the system, perhaps with fewer on offer, but what do others think?

phkb wrote:

spara wrote:

The market is also monitored so it follows the system's legality settings.

One of the perhaps unintended consequences from this point is that it's now much harder to find slaves to rescue if you have the Illegal Goods Tweak installed - you're left with Space bars, and not much else other that what you can scoop. Slaves are available at constores, but you're labelled an offender as soon as you launch even though your intent is to release them. But maybe that's a good thing, making the decision to release the slaves a much more notable event, rather than a perfunctory "dock at constore, buy any slaves I have room for, release at main-station". It would be good to toss this around a bit though. My preference would be for constores to ignore the legality settings of the system, perhaps with fewer on offer, but what do others think?

Good points there. Indeed the "buy slaves from the constore and sell them at the main station" scheme is not preferable. I also find it a bit questionable to have these well known stores with beacons and everything to not follow system regulations. But let's here opinions here.

My personal opinion is that the only ways to get slaves unsanctioned should be from non-beaconed stations like rock hermits and by scooping pods. Overall GalCop seems to dislike slavery since it has issued market restrictions.

spara wrote:

New versions of the base OXP and sets 4.4.1.
4. Market definition has been modernized. Capacity is 10 and price fluctuation +/-20%. The market is also monitored so it follows the system's legality settings.

That last change deserves some explaining. The original YAH had a flaw (intentional or not, who knows) in it's market definition, causing some of the prices to overflow and producing absurd prices. With luck you could do thousands of credits in one run making this oxp hardly "safe" to install. To make this OXP not game breaking, in some earlier version I capped the profits via scripting. If the market gave you silly prices, the quantities were capped to prevent making ridiculous amounts on credits. It worked, but it was done with scripting and I have always felt it was a bit awkward. So in this version, there is a new, more modern and non-scripty market definition.

The market is capped to 10. Quantities are calculated from the system quantities with high variance. The prices follow the system prices with +/- 20% variance.

The game play element I'm trying to achieve here, is an interesting place to visit when entering system while trying not to break the game economy. Ideally the player visits the Constore on system arrival to see if she can sell a small amount of of the cargo carried to the Constore and buy a small amount of cargo to be sold at the main station. The quantities and the prices should be such that it's exciting and interesting, but not overly prosperous.

Let's see how this works.

Actually I'm working on alternate market definitions that go more or less the same way:
- quantities capped to 32 instead of 128
- quantities are more random

The idea is to make trading less boring by creating random overflows and shortages. The effect is that you sometimes have to visit more than one station in order to empty/fill your cargo bay. It is of course more likely to happen if one loads with one type of good rather than loading different types.
The 32 cap works best with ships that have around that amount of cargo space. It also requires to have some OXPs that add stations, and the Market Inquirer MFD in order to know where you can sell or buy commodities within a system.

I didn't touch illegal goods though. I don't know what to do with them actually. To me, they can only make sense if they are "semi-legal" (or semi-illegal). That is something like free to trade in unsafe systems (from anarchies to dictatorships), and ignored in the safer systems (except for some dark corners - and don't look like one of them). One could go one step further and have each system type associated to an illegal good; for instance anarchies -> firearms, feudal -> slaves, dictatorships -> narcotics. That's actually something I think I could implement if people see it as a good idea.

Also, I'd like to suggest to relocate the Constore to the orbit of the moon of the main planet when present.

Astrobe wrote:

I didn't touch illegal goods though. I don't know what to do with them actually. To me, they can only make sense if they are "semi-legal" (or semi-illegal). That is something like free to trade in unsafe systems (from anarchies to dictatorships), and ignored in the safer systems (except for some dark corners - and don't look like one of them). One could go one step further and have each system type associated to an illegal good; for instance anarchies -> firearms, feudal -> slaves, dictatorships -> narcotics. That's actually something I think I could implement if people see it as a good idea.

I like the idea, but I'd make all goods legal in the top and bottom systems (Corporate States and Anarchies). Everything's legal to trade in an Anarchy because there's nobody to enforce any law; and everything's legal to trade in a Corporate State because of their commitment to the free market.

• Feudal states would restrict the trade in slaves (serfs are bound to the land they work on).
• Multi-government states would probably restrict slaves, firearms and narcotics, due to the multiple legislatures (State A might be fine for Firearms, State B might be OK with Narcotics, etc.)
• Dictatorships would probably ban Firearms (violence is a state monopoly)
• Communists would probably ban all three (ditto, plus We All Work for the State, and good Stakhanovites don't get zonked)
• Confederacies and Democracies … both would ban slavery, I think. Maybe Confederacies would ban Narcotics and Democracies would ban Firearms?

Indeed, the illegal cargo issue should be solved some other way than with individual station OXPs like this. Altering system import/export restrictions sound like a better solution. And one might assume that constore brands would just honor/exploit current system limitations.

All main stations are run by GalCop. And they follow some universal GalCop law. That would need to change to be more like system law. Or a hybrid between system law and GalCop law.

From game play view, only the most dangerous systems should allow contraband export. Just because there should be substantial risk in acquiring the goods to be sold in safer worlds.

But maybe that's something that Smuggler's... OXP already does.

spara wrote:

From game play view, only the most dangerous systems should allow contraband export. Just because there should be substantial risk in acquiring the goods to be sold in safer worlds.

A good point. And the profitability of trading in these items would have to be adjusted: Narcotics prices are seemingly random, and Firearms and (especially) Slaves are not very profitable. If there's risk, there should be reward. Ideally, slave-trading should be potentially the most profitable business, as it's the most morally questionable. It's easy to be good when there's no money to be made!

spara wrote:

But maybe that's something that Smuggler's... OXP already does.

Kind of. The logic used for making goods illegal follows some of what Disembodied described, but they are illegal only for a brief period of time. And Smugglers mostly stays away from Slaves and Narcotics, other than making narcotics illegal to import. Otherwise they're the same as core.

Smugglers also doesn't mess with quantities of goods (except in one isolated edge case). It just changes prices and legal status.

Well is good to see the my favatire oxp is still under develpment.

How are you Disembodied?
is good to see that you are still active in the forum (In contrast with me )

Hi Ark! Long time no see … glad you're still around. I'm fine, if still slightly obsessive!

Hi folks

Dr. Nil checking in here.

A user named BlackWolf sent me a PM, but I cannot log in to my old, old, old account and the BB doesn't seem to be able to reset my PW.

Also I am not allowed to write PMs with this new and temporary account.

So I decided to respond in this old thread, since the message was probably related to this one of my old OXPs.

Sweet to see that people are still playing Oolite after all those years.

As always when checking in - anything I created for Oolite OXPs is free for all to appropriate and use however you see fit. Enjoy!

X-Dr. Nil wrote: ↑Fri Feb 23, 2018 2:39 pm

I cannot log in to my old, old, old account and the BB doesn't seem to be able to reset my PW.

The forum software is a little flaky at the moment, so that may be why. You should be able to send PMs now though.

YAH has been updated to 4.5 to better work with external ad packs. This time I needed to do some big changes to the ad handling under the hood, so please report all weirdness.

Just noticed that packs A,C,D,E,F and G have received updates, but set B didn't. Was that intentional?