Beginning the game with a loan to pay off

[ocz]

THX!

I hope you all arrived well in this new year.

I implemented the new JSON save feature. (Changed some lines ) And I fixed a bug. Before I upload ver 0.2.0, I hoped you could help me with some texts again. They should be the last of them.

...and another thing. Loan Repayment OXP. Are you ok with that name? If you thing it sounds stupid now is the time to tell (It was a project name anyway). THIS OXPs purpose is to create an initial debt, not a loan lending feature for buying new ships. That might be implemented as another OXP later, that uses this one as a base. Please keep this in mind if you want to propose a new name. Also, I might decide to stick with the old one, so no hard feelings if I do.

As for the prove reading:
Loan condition text for the credibility:

Depending on the clients repayment behaviour she/he might increase or decrease her/his loan credibility.

Each repaid sum will increase the credibility of the client, while in turn, not fully meeting the rates will decrease it. Partial rate payments will either be met with a pleased, neutral or dissatisfied evaluation, depending on the amount of the repayment.

Unscheduled payments also increase the credibility.

A better credibility will result in a higher allowance over time, while a bad credibility might force the loan giver to lower it to encourage the client to have better repayment behaviour.

Warning commmessage, if the player engages an intergalactic jumpdrive:

WARNING!
You are about to jump out of galaxy [galNumber]!
You still have a loan to repay in this galaxy! You will not be able to repay it in other galaxies and the rates will stockpile!
Your ship will be confiscated, when you return, in case are unable to continue to pay off your increased debts!

As this is a comm message. -> Shorter is better!

And not that important, as this screen will be removed in the beta release, as by than a final decision will be made, if it will be turn or time based.

Choose if you wish for a turn or time based repayment schedule.

In case of a turn based schedule each time you dock at a Galcop facility and each day you haven't arrived at a Galcop facility count as a turn. After 10 turns a new repayment cycle starts.

In case of a time based schedule a new repayment cycle starts each passing week.

[Disembodied]

Suggested edits:

Loan condition text for the credibility:

The client's repayment history can increase or decrease her/his credit rating.

Each regular repayment will increase the client's credit rating; missing a repayment will decrease it. Partial repayments will result in a pleased, neutral or dissatisfied evaluation, depending on the amount of the repayment.

Unscheduled repayments will also increase the client's credit rating.

Clients with higher credit ratings will be permitted to keep and spend more of their own money over time. Those with poor credit ratings might have their allowance reduced.

Warning commmessage, if the player engages an intergalactic jumpdrive:

WARNING!
You are about to jump out of Galaxy [galNumber]!
You still have a loan to repay! You will not be able to repay it in other galaxies and the debt will increase!
If you are unable to pay off the total debt immediately on your return, your ship will be confiscated!

As this is a comm message. -> Shorter is better!

And not that important, as this screen will be removed in the beta release, as by than a final decision will be made, if it will be turn or time based.

Please select either a turn- or time-based repayment schedule.

Turn-based: each time you dock at a GalCop facility, and each day spent outside a GalCop facility, counts as one turn. A new repayment cycle starts every ten turns.

Time-based: a new repayment cycle starts every seven days.

Regarding jumping to a new galaxy: I have a worry that a lot of people will ignore the warnings and jump anyway. It's a long way around the eight, especially if you're a beginner: a lot of players probably never make a full circuit at all, and in this case the OXP just hands out free money and all your work on schedules, etc. is going to waste. Is it possible instead to prevent players from making a galactic jump - perhaps by stopping them from being able to fit a galactic jump drive, or even by removing the drives from sale (or marking them as "unavailable due to outstanding debt") until the debt is cleared?

Of course, if it's possible to prevent a galactic jump, it would probably be necessary to make loans unavailable in Galaxy 4.

[ocz]

Thanks again Disembodied!!!

Regarding jumping to a new galaxy: I have a worry that a lot of people will ignore the warnings and jump anyway. It's a long way around the eight, especially if you're a beginner: a lot of players probably never make a full circuit at all, and in this case the OXP just hands out free money and all your work on schedules, etc. is going to waste. Is it possible instead to prevent players from making a galactic jump - perhaps by stopping them from being able to fit a galactic jump drive, or even by removing the drives from sale (or marking them as "unavailable due to outstanding debt") until the debt is cleared?

Of course, if it's possible to prevent a galactic jump, it would probably be necessary to make loans unavailable in Galaxy 4.

Hmm... I think gameplay wise you are right. Let me play this trough in my Kopfkino (Headcinema). The player runs away from the loan debt. As nearly no information is transmitted into the next galaxy (a reason for that might be, that there is no way to sent it backward through the galaxy cycle. But maybe this only holds true for criminal records to prevent unjustified prosecution.)there won't be any loandata.

The player plays a bit and drops oolite (Bad choice. You should really enjoy it every day for the rest of your life.) Meeehh, but well.

Or the player continues to play, maybe for weeks (in real life time!) has maxed out everything and returns back to galaxy 0. DunDunDUUUUN! A debt of 2 097 785.7 Cr await. Her/His ship is gone in a few payment cycles or she/he bails out again. Well, the player might acknowledge this new turn of events as a fresh and exciting new mission/start,

...but I wouldn't count on it.

It's more likely the player has a change of heart. (A with hateful feelings filled one.) As I don't want to find dead squirrels nailed at my home's frontdoor, I think it's the right decision to do something about that.

First I'll go with autointerruption of intergalactic jumps. You spend 5k on that drive? Heh, too bad, you shouldn't have.

In this OXP, there will be no new loans given, but for the sake of the future development of that feature in another OXP, we could go with: the players vessel either carries the document with it or even better, the loan documents will be transferred every 3 days - 2 weeks into the next galaxy as part of an intergalactic, bureaucratic information transfer. So the loan debt will follow the player in this time interval. The commander can't really cheat with falsified documents, because Galcop just checks her/his state every now and then. The commander carries the loan data with her/him and Galcop puts good trust into that data until the official datastream arrives. (A feature to cheat might be implemented later on.)

[ocz]

How is this? (Grammer- and other-wise):

The client's repayment history can increase or decrease her/his credit rating.

Each repaid sum will increase the client's credit rating. Not fully meeting a repayment will decrease it, in turn. Partial repayments will either be met with a pleased, neutral or dissatisfied evaluation, depending on the amount of the repayment.

Unscheduled repayments will also increase the client's credit rating.

Clients with higher credit ratings will be permitted to keep and spend more of their own money over time. Those with poor credit ratings might have their allowance reduced.

The reasoning behind "Not fully meeting a repayment will decrease it, in turn.":It's important to me, to make sure that every paid credit gives plus-points while ever scheduled but not not paid credit gives minus-points. (if a rate of 1000cr is due, paying 500cr will be viewed as neutral, 700cr as good and 200cr as not enough)

Please select either a turn- or time-based repayment schedule.\n\nTurn-based: each time you dock at a GalCop facility, and each day you have not newly arrived at a GalCop facility, counts as one turn. A new repayment cycle starts every ten turns.\n\nTime-based: a new repayment cycle starts every seven days.

The reasoning behind "and each day you have not newly arrived at a GalCop facility": The countdown continues to count, even when you are aboard a station. It will only resets if you are on your way. (No free days of for you!)

Attention!
You still have a loan debt to settle in Galaxy [galNumber].
You have no permission to leave Galaxy [galNumber] GalCop's jurisdiction. Your Galactic Hyperdrive has been disengaged.

[Day]

Hi there,

just my two cents on this idea, I didn't see this thread before.

There is a loan mechanics in the Animal Crossing game that I found enjoyable: you have all the time to repay your loan, but only when you have repaid it in full are you offered the right to buy anything else.
It could be adapted here with a restriction on some actions as long as you don't have repaid your loan:
- galactic travel equipment buy ban,
- military class equipments buy ban,
- ship buy ban,
- level 15 systems ban,
- corporate systems ban,
- etc...

Han Solo Loan: if you don't repay on time, assassins are sent.
One Piece Loan: some bounty hunters teams specialize in people having not paid their loans.

[Disembodied]

The reasoning behind "Not fully meeting a repayment will decrease it, in turn.":It's important to me, to make sure that every paid credit gives plus-points while ever scheduled but not not paid credit gives minus-points. (if a rate of 1000cr is due, paying 500cr will be viewed as neutral, 700cr as good and 200cr as not enough)

In that case I'd suggest changing the line to

Every repayment will increase the client's credit rating. Missing a repayment, or making an incomplete repayment, will decrease it.

Although I would also suggest not giving people any plus-points for making an incomplete payment. By all means, have the lender be less angry about only getting a payment of 700Cr when 1000Cr is due, than they are when they only get 200Cr when 1000Cr is due, but I'm not sure if any lender would allow an incomplete payment to improve someone's credit rating. If 1000Cr is due, then 700Cr would lose 300 points, and 200Cr would lose 800 points. 1200Cr would gain you 200 points.

Or maybe, if you want to reward people for making their regular repayments on time, you could give them 10% of the amount due, plus 100% of any overpayment. So if 1000Cr is due, and they pay 1000Cr, they get 100 (10% of 1000) points. 1200Cr would gain 300 points (100 points for the 1000Cr, + 200 for the excess 200Cr).

The reasoning behind "and each day you have not newly arrived at a GalCop facility": The countdown continues to count, even when you are aboard a station. It will only resets if you are on your way. (No free days of for you!)

I'd suggest

Please select either a turn- or time-based repayment schedule.\n\nTurn-based: each time you dock at a GalCop facility, and each day spent between dockings, counts as one turn.

[spara]

There is a loan mechanics in the Animal Crossing game that I found enjoyable: you have all the time to repay your loan, but only when you have repaid it in full are you offered the right to buy anything else.

This is a nice and simple mechanic. Don't let the player make a galactic jump or buy a new ship before the loan has been paid in full. Like playing a shareware game.

[ocz]

The player won't be able to buy a more expensive ship as there isn't enough money left for her/him, but he will be able to downgrade.

For now I simply disabled the Galactic Hyperdrive.

I'll see if i let it stay this way, but I do plan to (animal) cross(ing) the players plans for early wealth:

-How does a limitation of valuable commodities to 10 standard units (kg,g) sound? 10kg platinum a 70cr, 10kg gold a 40cr and 10g gemstones a 20cr (1300cr total) are more than enough. Valuable OXP commodities will be treated the same way. (Maybe even only 8 units. this would sum up to around 1000cr) More expensive equipment will than be out of reach, until the current rates of a cycle are paid.

-A general restriction to items costing 2000cr or less is thinkable too, but I have no idea how to implement it in a simple and compatible (for most OXPs and OXP items) manner right now. Condition scripts for example have to be mentioned in equipment.plist.

Regarding the bounty hunters: Maybe I'll implement this later, for the cases, when the player somehow manages to avoid docking at galcop stations at all.

But I have to say, the set of rules in this "simple" loan OXP is growing quite a lot.

Here is version 0.2.0 (still an alpha, but a late one):
I made some minor changes and now its broken. Again right before the upload. This is always happening before the upload. I'll upload it tomorrow

[ocz]

Turned out, it wasn't that bad, it stopped to work. Funny. First thing next morning the OXP worked as nothing happened, without me changing a single line! But I found some major bugs. I hope a squashed them all.

Without further ado:
Loan_Repayment_0.2.0_alpha.oxz

I noticed a few things while testplaying it. Paying the debt rates (turn based) with a Cobra MKIII doesn't seem to be a problem. I managed to just fully paying the first one on its last turn. At that point I already had the large Cargo Bay extension installed. I didn't expect this to be possible. I expected to fail the first few rates. And at the end of the second turn cycle, I had the fuel injectors, beam lasers, fuel scoops and docking computers. AND I already repaid extra!

This isn't what bothers me though. What does is: The debt shrinks so slowly. (At that point a bug hindered it from going down and I noticed late, but still) I made the standard milk (comps-furs) run between Zasoer and Relaes, but I noticed it will take forever to pay up that deed and as those milk runs are the only thing that create enough profit (you just don't have the time create a reputation as parcel or passenger transporter) you'll be stuck with this for a long time. And now imaging I would prohibit more expensive items. Not being able to leave galaxy 0 isn't that bad, with the exception of missions (being asked to look for something missing for example), but other things...
It will take a long time to pay that loan off. The player will be stuck in this phase for a loooong time. I don't dare to make it boring.

On the bright side the player can mass on enough money with those milk runs to pay a few payment cycles while exploring the galaxy and working on her/his reputation. No change there. But eventually she/he must return to make milk runs.

Maybe I'll raise the repayment rate from 1% to 5% again. (hardcore. )

But first I'll see how well an Adder start from Star choices fares.

PS: So, you all are fine with "Loan Repayment" OXP as name, yeah? Last chance. From the looks of it the next release will be a beta and the name will be frozen. Also I tend to the turn based repayment feature as the fixed one.

[Norby]

you all are fine with "Loan Repayment" OXP as name, yeah?

In the current stage maybe "First Loan" would be more precise but I think later the idea could be improved to get another loans, so the current name is fine imho.

[Cody]

Make it sound corporate, perhaps... First Finance?

[Fritz]

And give it a shark as logo.

[ocz]

In the current stage maybe "First Loan" would be more precise but I think later the idea could be improved to get another loans, so the current name is fine imho.

Make it sound corporate, perhaps... First Finance?

And First Finance it is. Thanks to you both.

And give it a shark as logo.

I already had an idea for a logo and couldn't fit a shark in there. But there is still the idea of bounty hunters out there, when missing too many repayment rates. Maybe there will be a friendly warning of a collection agency beforehand.

And here it is, with a few cosmetic corrections:
First_Finance_0.3.0_beta.oxz
(Does still contain the choice option between time and turn based schedule, but I see no reason to not make the turn based one the default one.)

A gave the Adder start a test drive in turn based mode and it was manageable. I followed the same strategy as with the cobra mkIII. I blew the first loan and nearly the second one, too. Affording a fuel injector took a while (2-4 hours). I'm still worried about the time it will take to pay the loan off and how you nearly get nothing in return for it. The Idea to implement a followup loan when paying enough starts to look more like a necessary MUST-BE-IN-INCLUDED feature. Maybe I come up with something else, or maybe if I continue to play it as is, the debt might be settled faster than I expect now.

[Astrobe]

Affording a fuel injector took a while (2-4 hours). I'm still worried about the time it will take to pay the loan off and how you nearly get nothing in return for it. The Idea to implement a followup loan when paying enough starts to look more like a necessary MUST-BE-IN-INCLUDED feature. Maybe I come up with something else, or maybe if I continue to play it as is, the debt might be settled faster than I expect now.

Oolilte is one of those games that become easier as you progress. This affects not only the newbies, but also the vets.

Your OXP can fix that: make it easier to get a decent equipment so you don't spend too much time at first fleeing pirates while doing milk runs, but prevent the player from snowballing money in the long run.

If the loan can be flexible enough to "tempt" the player with a short-term boost with the drawback of a long-term burden, it would be great. I think you shouldn't be too restrictive there, so that a "good guy Jameson", could have at some point to consider trading illegal stuff or turn to piracy in order to pay their debts (maybe even forcefully change their status to offender in case of default and/or block the escape pod insurance so that if he/she gets shot down in this condition, it's really game over for those who consider "Press space commander" as such); or if the player really wants to stay clean, they could also sell their ship for a lesser one and try to start over.

That kind of game mechanic is totally in line with a space trading and fighting game.

[ocz]

I get what your saying, but that snowball effect you mentioned (snowballing) is the tricky part.
There are a few items (that are considered a must have for good reason), that make it much easier to make money in a shorter amount of RL-time. "Large Cargo Bay" and "Witchfuel Injectors" are incredible powerful items in hindsight on their price. (They are much to cheap IMO to be considered balanced (, as the cobra mkIII is in itself).) I see no new to make them easier affordable. In Alite there are no injectors and the "Retro Thrusters" do cost 8000Cr. Now this is a hefty and a loan would make sense there.
Now I "balanced" (I confess, I balanced it not very much) the loan rates in a way, that even an adder start is doable. But I second, it's rather tempting to resort to illegal stuff under that kind of pressure. But if a Jameson want to stay clean it is possible. I switched from milk runs (which owned be just enough plus a bit extra) to bounty hunting (after I had enough to buy an injector and a beam laser) and while it takes a bit longer in RL-time I make more than enough in in-game turn-cycles to affort a military laser soon. Took me hours though!

Your analysis is correct. Oolite is a game, where it gets easier with equipment (leveling up), but my current loan repayment schemata is no exception. I would have to think of a new repayment plan and implement it. In "Recettear" (Capitalism, ho!!!) the repayment rates rise exponential each week. This would make a nice in the beginning, but challenging in the end sort of credit you mentioned. (This would also shorten the overall repayment time, that irks me.) But there is another side to this: After you bought those items you make a bit more money and than? There is no continued improvement flow ingame. After you bought the essential items, there are a few good advanced items, that help you to make even a bit more money, but then the next step is a bigger ship. You hit a wall as you just can't earn more money and have no contract reputation.
(Also, in Recettear this kind of repayment is challenging and players try until they are successful, but I fear it would just scare players away in Oolite's case.)

Here's how I see the gameflow:
Start phase (no items, few credits):

• - player starts trading until she/he can afford to fill the ships belly completely with the most profitable items and/or takes one/a few parcel contracts.

Beginning phase (basic items, some money, that is invested at once):

• Player fits the ship with the most needed items (Large Cargo Bay, Injectors ,Passenger Berth Beamlaser, fuel scoops) to make earning money easier.
• Player continues trading/takes more contracts wherever possible/starts bounty hunting
• Wow, that first overhaul came surprisingly!

Early phase (Advanced items, some money, that is saved (in form of platinum,gold and gems when cheap and sold off with profit) to buy expensive items):

• Player saves money for expensive items.
• Player continues with boring milk runs/fulfils contracts and increases reputation with little gain at this point/shoots down offenders to finally buy that shield modification. What does that compass do? Oh, neat! Ah, the military laser. What can you do? WAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!

Middle phase (Nearly all items are bought, money can't be spend for much else)

• Player has almost everything and wants a new ship.....Ohhh, this'll take a while.
• Player continues with boring milk runs/fulfils contracts and increases reputation with still little gain at the beginning of this phase, but it gets better/shoots down offenders to finally buy that other ship.
• Oh, a mission. Exciting! Hmm, it's a hunt.
• (Casual player quits around here. Not that casual player starts to look into OXPs and starts anew. Hardcore fan continues)

Late phase:

• Can't tell you anything about it. Haven't been there. I hope I haven't lost the respect of the other board members with that statement.

As there is much challenge and growth involved the start and beginning phases are my favourites. The early phase is exciting and fun, too. It's that gap between the last bought item and that new ship, that gets old. I haven't seen any change in my contract reputation and than I explored the OXPs....and here I am.

I do believe that the first 3 phases are over too quickly! Therefore I love spara's start choice (I believe that makes the 5th time it mentioned this on the board) and I created this loan OXP. All just to milk that phases a bit more.
A loan in the beginning would instantly end the start and beginning phase and set the player right into the middle of the early phase.
A later, earned small kind of loan, would just shorten the early phase.
A loan that shortens the gap between purchasing two ships might be a fine thing!

But as I mentions: Your point is very valid! The game gets easier and fails to deliver an exciting turn after buying all the equipment. I'm more than just hesitant to make the items even more easily affordable (I like the players running from pirates!), but if you have an idea how to use the First Finance OXP afterwards to give a challenge, I'm very interested!!!

Oh God! This posting is this long again! Just what am I doing?