Oolite Bulletins

spara wrote:

Good point, now we'll just have to come up with an in-game explanation of how the data is transmitted to the insurance company when launching from a Hacker Outpost .

There's already a delay of (potentially) several days before you get your new ship. Presumably some of that is insurance company investigations.

The blackbox of the ship is placed in the Escape Pod what you must submit to examination. Flight data can confirm equipment changes, for example faster recharge in energy level mean you surely bought some Energy Unit, etc.

Later can be made a hacked blackbox which maybe accepted by the insurance company maybe not. If somebody reported that you landed on a non-main station then the investigations take longer time, much longer if it is not the first time which increase the chance of the exposure.

spara wrote:

Norby wrote:

But I suggest to take at every launch to avoid an unfair money-making possibility to dock on a non-main station, sell equipments, undock, eject to get back the equipments and repeat.

Good point, now we'll just have to come up with an in-game explanation of how the data is transmitted to the insurance company when launching from a Hacker Outpost .

Selling of equipment is not part of the core game. This is something that should consider OXP authors only. As core development goes, the situation described above is a non-issue.

another_commander wrote:

Selling of equipment is not part of the core game.

Most equipment. Pylons are sellable, though, so buy four Q-mines, fly to secondary station, sell them, then use an escape pod. Total profit just short of 9000 credits.

(And with saving-at-secondary coming up in 1.79, maybe some pilots won't even visit the main station very often)

cim wrote:

another_commander wrote:

Selling of equipment is not part of the core game.

Most equipment. Pylons are sellable, though, so buy four Q-mines, fly to secondary station, sell them, then use an escape pod. Total profit just short of 9000 credits.

(And with saving-at-secondary coming up in 1.79, maybe some pilots won't even visit the main station very often)

True. I would vote that pylon equipment is completely excluded from insurance.

Still a bit confused, but I'll soldier on. This suggested 'snapshot' of the ship at launch from the last main station - would this be from the save-file?

Cody wrote:

This suggested 'snapshot' of the ship at launch from the last main station - would this be from the save-file?

No. The proposal is this: Every time the player launches from a GalCop station the list of active equipment on their ship gets stored in memory. If the escape pod is used before next docking at GalCop, the player gets their ship back, with all equipment that is stored in memory (i.e. equipment that they had at launch from last main station), minus pylon weapons. Any equipment that was damaged when they launched will not be included in the ship given to them.

Ahh... thanks for the clarification, Admiral.

G’Day Commanders!

I have an idea. I also came across nonsense where you get a replacement ship with all damaged equipment remained. There were few discussions around here about adding comprehensive insurance. I would like to suggest an OXP which will mimic the real life car insurance.

For example, you have a car and you insured it as a base factory model. Later on you fitted it with say subwoofers, nice sound system, may be a turbo accelerator. These additions may increase market value of the car. Ollite perfectly reflects that when you iron ass your ship. Then you call your insurance and add these changes to the list. They may agree to add these changes to the list and may say that your premium is now changed and you have to pay a little more. To keep it simple in oolite I suggest adding an entry in F4 screen called “Comprehensive Insurance”. That entry will appear only when escape pod is purchased. I agree that buying an escape pod covers only ship hull and any none breakable additions like extended cargo bay and any fitted passenger berths. Any additionally fitted breakable equipment will be covered by “Comprehensive Insurance”. When you click on that entry you will be presented with a screen listing equipment that was not added to insurance and allowing you to add them for a price calculated from the say 5% of the cost of equipment to be added. Say you bought ECM system 600 cr, Missile Spoof 1000 cr, so the cost to insure these will be 600*0.05 + 1000*0.05 = 80 cr. Next time you eject you get a ship with all insured equipment unbroken and fitted, any that are not added to the list will be lost. To make it more interesting we could make that cost of any insured equipment is fully refunded and you have to refit it yourself. It will be tricky if you ejected in low technical level system. Or maybe make it as an option say you pay 5% for refund or pay 10% to get it refitted. Once you got the ship back you will have to insure that additional equipment again once you buy escape pod back.

These are my thoughts. I welcome suggestions.

PS: I know above in this thread were suggestion about Insurance OXP. I just wanted to come up with something more specific and if possible to keep it simple, please no monthly fees.

Cheers,
V-SFC

Ok, monthly fee is not needed if the cost of the insurance will be changed after each payout. If a pilot ask for a new ship every day then the price rising shortly up to the full cost of the ship.

The simplest solution about the damaged equipments is to leave these uninsured. Can make contests to deteremine how much damage was in the lost equipments so the best if insure the undamaged ones only recorded at last undock. The player can be know if not fix an equipment in the dock then will be lost when ejecting.

In this case non-breakable ones counted as others: must pay some fee if want to get these back. Equipments awarded by missions still must be handled separatedly.

The Escape Pod is not a must to show the Insurances line in Interfaces, a good agent will buy this also if a customer want to sign a contract, simply show a thousand more to cover the cost of the Pod also.

In the Insurances interface can be more possibility, not the full service only but cheaper solutions also. My suggestions:

1. Refit all equipments which was undamaged at last undock before ejected.
2. Refund equipments over the tech level of the system where ejected.
3. Custom selection of equipments (not insured/refund/refit).
4. Escape Pod only which give a starter Cobra MkIII.

Refit cost start at 10%, refund at 5% (good idea V-SFC, thank you!), the difference cover the reward of a transport mission from the nearest advanced system.

Custom selection give the possibility for example to refit Injectors (cheap but need tech level 11) when not enough money to the refit insurance of the whole ship.

The Escape Pod without extra insurance is too cheap if can give back any costly ship, so I think it will be more interesting if there are a risk to fall back to the Cobra if fly without additional insurance. Until the player can not buy better ship the Pod is enough but when can pay hundred thousands for a new ship then can pay ten thousands also to do not fall back to the start.

Thanks, Norby, for more clarifications.

I think we need to come up with specific spec about how we want insurance to work and decide will it be a core game change or an OXP.
First of all let’s clarify what we mean by insurance in oolite. This game is about surviving in the very dangerous place called space. It is not really much about money, but simply staying alive. This you can feel right from the beginning of the game. If you do not have an escape pod, you survive if you managed to dock somewhere even in the badly shot up ship. Escape pod lets you continue game even when ship is vaporised, but without ship you cannot continue this game, so here comes insurance. Our task here is to extend the functionality of the so called insurance in a way so player will be getting the ship back in the right condition. At the moment the cost of the escape pod (insurance) is fixed and I agree with a point that it is very cheap if player has a super cobra bought for 6 mils of credits. I would like to suggest making the escape pod free, but charge only for insurance. If you started with Cobra Mk III the starter trade in value of it is 111000, the cost of escape pod is 1000, which is rounded 1 precent of the cost of the ship. We could take it as a base for a cost of insurance. If you choose to start with Adder trade in value of which is 65000, than the cost of escape pod (insurance) can be set as 650 cr. When you buy a new ship it may have an escape pod fitted and the base cost of the ship should be taken as a base line for calculating insurance. If you bought the ship with already fitted escape pod it means insurance was included in the price. By purchasing super cobra with cost value of 6 mils, the escape pod cost will be 60000. We can make so this insurance includes all equipment that came with ship when it was bought. All the additional equipment can be insured in a way I described in my previous post.

Now let’s consider a situation. On a way to the station our poor Jameson got attacked, but survived with broken equipment which he paid 47500 to buy. Ships Automatic repair system did not finish yet repairing a ship and he docked to station to refuel. He chose not to repair as the self-repair system still was working on it and got off the station and been again badly attacked to the point that he even did not have a time to blink and only survived because auto eject got him out of the ship. I don’t think he will be happy to lose that equipment just because he did not repair it, nor he would be happy to get a starter ship again if he happend to start from Adder broke. It will be better if we allow players to choose which piece of equipment to insure. I did suggest making price of equipment insurance as 5% or 10% of the cost to buy. Even if we use 1% or 2% of a cost to buy the insurance for 47500 will be 475 cr and 950 respectively.

If you are happy with proposed suggestions, I can try to start working on OXP, or twick a trunk code, but I think I would need some guidance and suggestions from Elite Commanders here.

Right on Commanders!
V-SFC

vsfc wrote:

Thanks, Norby, for more clarifications.

Incoming more.

I always talked about an OXP and not a core game change. I think the original method can stay in for the lovers of the original feeling and if changed then probably somebody will make an OXP to change it back.

The ship hull can be handled similarly as an equipment, so we can talk about the insurance price and can be refitted or refunded.

The cost of the Escape Pod is read-only, to avoid roundabouts should leave at the original cost and take additional money in the Interfaces screen.

1% is too cheap in my eyes but discounts are acceptable for larger ships. I imagine rebates from the whole insurance fee over certain amounts. For example if an Adder or a few equipments insured for less than 10.000 credits then pay 5% for refunds and 10% for refits, but a Cobra MkIII refit (which including transport to systems under techlevel 7) costs more than 10.000 so can get 20% discount and pay 8% of the stock price. The maximal discount maybe 50% over 100.000 credits (for ships over 2M).

It is possible to hold the old insurance after changed the ship to save money: if insured a Python before but bought a Boa now then you can choose to buy a new (more costly) insurance or stay with the old one and accept a Python after ejected.

Allowing to insure damaged equipments open the possibility to insure against normal damages also (without eject). I think "repair" is a third possible service over refit and refund which is much more costly but can fix broken equipments in low tech systems also (including transport fees).

We should discuss it a bit more and wait for reactions before start making this OXP but I can help meantime if you ask me in pirvate.

In the other hand may be we are trying to fix a wrong thing? May be we need to look at breakable equipment OXPs and change their behavior in a way that when player ejected change status of equipment to fixed. This will remove that nonsense with getting replacement ship with broken equipment. Yaaa, this can be treated and used as a cheat, but vanilla oolite does not have many breakable staff, so here go our nice ideas about insurance and I have a feeling that this may introduce major changes to the game play and if someone is not happy with changes just remove an OXP.

Sorry Norby, making another OXP to reverse affect of an OXP sounds a bit silly.

vsfc wrote:

… vanilla oolite does not have many breakable stuff …

Errm, basically all vanilla equipment is breakable (only the large cargo bay and the passenger berth are exceptions), and that's why we're having this discussion in the first place. Because some breakable vanilla stuff is also among the most expensive equipment that exists (military shield enhancers), which is exactly what creates the possible exploit to begin with.

Commander McLane wrote:

vsfc wrote:

… vanilla oolite does not have many breakable stuff …

Errm, basically all vanilla equipment is breakable (only the large cargo bay and the passenger berth are exceptions), and that's why we're having this discussion in the first place. Because some breakable vanilla stuff is also among the most expensive equipment that exists (military shield enhancers), which is exactly what creates the possible exploit to begin with.

Ok, sorry, I did not really learn what functionality is vanilla and what is not. I just tend to install lots of OXPs at the very start, which did made some basic non-breakable equipment breakable. From your comment, Commander, I understand this sort of behaviour we are trying to fix was originally in oolite?

Thanks