Oolite Bulletins

Absolutely 8loody marvelous! Well done LB - I'm so glad I kicked off Roberto's original suggestion again!

They've got to be one of the best looking ships in the game.

So, can you join the Black Monks as a debt collector? (guess you'd need to be deadly or Elite - perhaps put up some of your own money (a lot say 500K Cr) to cover the gunship and as an incentive to collect the debts of others (of which you're paid a percentage of the total owed?)).

Just an additional thought...

Griff did a lot of very nice detailed ships like this one that found a home in Assassins (about 20 new ships from various authors in that OXP! - credited in the readme - plus some of mine, which arn't as pretty), so if you like the Black Monks you really should get around to playing Assassins!

Done the Black Monk Monistory. A rock hermit, but decked out with rapid fire plasma turrets. A hermit seems in keeping with with a religious order that loans money. They have the outward appearance of poverty, but their hollowed out asteroids are decked out with trappings of wealth inside whilst the Monks themselves live simply.

I'll probabley get the AIs done next week. Then maybe another week to do the scripting. I'll like_ship some Cobra's & Pythons to appear occasional as debtors, so the player can see the fate that awaits him if he fails to pay, and change their distress calls from the usual "Help my ship is under attack" to things like "Oh no, Giles save me, the Monks have found me!".

Only downside is I'll have to use mission briefings as there is no other way to acknollege payment of the debt or have the player executed by the Monks should he be silly enough to dock at a Black Monk Base when the debt is due but has insufficent credits to pay. However these briefings will only appear at a Black Monk Base so won't conflict with any other OXPs.

I'll need to do some careful playtesting to keep game balance. The idea is that that the loan will enable the newbie to fit the basics like a Beam, ECM, large cargo bay etc and have enough capital to trade. But if he goes nuts and fits Military Lasers etc then he'll never make it and have to do a few trade runs with the Monks in hot pursute to have enough cash!

Doing the Computers / Furs run will generate enough capital to repay the debt in time, but only just (with maybe 2 or three weeks to spare). He'll then have to high-tail it to a tech level 10 system to repay. The margin will be tight though and should cause the young Jameson a lot of worry as the debt becomes due. In some ways it would be easier to not take the loan out at all, due to the large interest rate and a couple of mistakes in trading will mean the player is a few thousand credits short and will have to make so runs, fleeing on injectors from the Gunships.

The Gunships can be Q-mined or e-bombed, but that only makes the players situation worse:- 900 / 2500 C down the pan, no bounty paid for killing Monks and the debt is now even more overdue so more Monks are going for the player the next time he ventures out of the Station's Safe Zone!

Should I make the jump to that high tech industrial 6.8 LY away or play it safe and go to the Poor Industrial 3 LY away. If the Monks show up when I've no fuel for my injectors I'm done for!

LittleBear wrote:

Doing the Computers / Furs run will generate enough capital to repay the debt in time, but only just

Don't forget precious commodities, and Hoopys

LittleBear wrote:

Should I make the jump to that high tech industrial 6.8 LY away or play it safe and go to the Poor Industrial 3 LY away. If the Monks show up when I've no fuel for my injectors I'm done for!

Or go sunskimming before a long jump

Arh, but if the debt is overdue, Monks will be waiting on the planet-sun line, so scooping won't be too simple!

Reckoned on 1,000 C profit a trade run. So if you borrow 20K, spent 10K upgrading your ship and buying cargo your left with 10K in the bank. The Monks are gonna demand 30K back from you, so you'll need to make 20K profit just to pay the debt. If the debt had to be repayed in 20 jumps then you could just do it. Need to play about with the numbers though, to make things really tight. Most Commanders who take out a loan should have a few run ins with the Monks and a lot of worry about paying them off and after paying off the loan just have a Cobra III with some basic equipment and a few hundred credits in the bank!

What do people think the maxium profit that can be made on 1 jump with a Cobra III with large cargo bay in optium conditions?

I'll then play about with the money lent / money paid back / number of jumps allowed to repay the money to make it tight but do-able!

What do people think the maxium profit that can be made on 1 jump with a Cobra III with large cargo bay in optium conditions?

Wouldn't that be a full cargo bay with Computers from a Rich Industrial to a Poor Agri system? IIRC that would be 35 x (more or less) 35 Cr.

Or you could go pirate and scoop nothing but platinum

@DaddyHoggy:

Guess you havent played Assassins.oxp yet!

This was the first (and only so far) OXP to draw together the abilties of several devs! I can script code and do AIs, but I have no artistic skill! So this OXP drew together the talents of a lot of Ooliters!

Griff, Ramon, Heretic, Wyvern, Murgh, Wombat, Sleezen and myself contributed ships to the Assassins.OXP. I did the plot, scripting and the planets / moons / gass gients, with a lot of other Ooliters building ships to order.

Griff hates doing any scripting or AIs, but turns out some cool ships!

Think that Black Monk ship was cool?

You ain't seen nothing yet!

LittleBear wrote:

Armed!

Here's one taking out a Police Condor, foolish enough to come to a debtor's aid!

Ooo - I feel an arms race comming on!

Battles I've seen between Condors & Thargoid invaders reminded me so much of the ( old ) StarWars movies I had to update that .oxp.

Lets see how the Black Monks strong-arm tactics go down with a SwatCondor or NavyCondor.
( Condor.oxp is about to be updated again - nothing new, but a bug slipped through which is quite important to these ships )

-Back on Topic-

Great work ( as usual ) LB - I very much look forward to this one.
( Wish my coding was on a par with my imagination - I've now got four .oxp's in my pipe that I'm finding very difficult to push out! )

Well piting the Black Monks against police ships (including the Condor) was just a test!

Basicilly the Black Monks are meant to be hard enough to take out loan defaulters, but won't normally engage the police, player or pirates in game! (They only attack cursed debtors)!

If you don't owe the Bank of The Black Monks anything, their ships will leave you alone.

"Here lies poor Tom. Born in Lave by the grace of God. Died in agoney with a stake up his aft view!"

@ LB:

Yes:
- stupidy powerful ships: fun
- but shouldn't interact with player ships directly ( without proveraction )

( Orb are supposed to mind their own business & just act as pretty background unless one has a deathwish & provokes them )

@LB - Currently ripping up carpets in three rooms and laying laminate floors - converting study into nursery and moving study into main bedroom while rebuilding built-in wardrobes to make space! Reading the BBs lots and thinking about OXPs and playing with Snoopes (almost there I think) - so my Commander is still in Galaxy 1 and has only 76 kills and is heading back to "near Lave" to play Asteroid Storm - I plan on playing this game forever so plenty of time to get to Assassins!

(Really really looking forward to it though!)

Got a script working!

Need to playtest and polish though.

Working:-

- Loans can be taken and repayed at Black Monk Branches.
- Docking with a Branch with a loan outstanding shows your statement.
- If you dock with a Branch have enough credits to repay you can repay immedatley or leave payment until later if the loan not yet due.
- If you dock with a Branch have enough credits to repay and the loan is due then the credits are deducted.
- If you dock with a Branch without enough credits to repay and the loan is due, then somthing very nasty happens to you!
- Interest calculated weekly.
- Mission description shows time to repay remaining and status with the Bank.
- Will be attacked if not repayed within four months and the sum you now owe the bank keeps going up.
- Black Monk Gunships can be seen killing NPC defaulters!


I still need to play about with the numbers but this is the idea:-

Wow LB you have been busy! It's looking good. Just a few teeny-tiny things <pedant>"soul" not "sole" perhaps? and "Galactic" rather than "Galatic" and "financial" instead of "fininacial"</pedant> Sorry, one of my many roles is proof reading technical reports....

Calc'ing interest rates weekly is more clever than I thought the scripts could be - I'm presuming you've pre-calc'ed and are setting the mission vars as you go?

I doth my cap and tug my forelock.

Laminate flooring is laid in bedroom no.2, also had to rebuild a wardrobe (broke while being moved) - getting quite good at the old carpentry thing however, not very conducive to writing oxps!
later,

DaddyH

Fixed typos! Cheers!

Oolite has an add: {mission_var}

and a decrement : {mission_var}

Which allowed me to do the increasing intrest rate, executed by the Black monks if silly enough to dock whislt owing them money, given the choice to pay up if debt not due, and script NPC attacked by monks and player attacked by black monks,

"Currently it has duel front lasers "

this would be perfect for my ship design but i didn't think it could be done. how do you code that into the shipdata and shipyard plists then? does it cause bother if you want to mix and match guns instead of having paired types? how can you select "right wing" or "left wing" when fitting weapons at a station??

That Black Monk ship is AMAZING.
Buuuuuut...
Won't it consume my iBook's soul?
Looking forward to the OXP!