Oolite Bulletins

Diziet Sma wrote:

Shades of Sid Meir's Pirates!

Put in a nice end report summarizing your achievements in game (with oxp hooks naturally) and a little semi-random story telling what happened to you after your retirement. I could see some potential there.

ClymAngus wrote:

It is always an option. I think it might be worth stealing from other franchises. How do other people deal with the money mountain?

They often don't ... I remember seeding a whole field with piles of unspent gold in the original Diablo, and that was in a game with a fixed end. Offering the player the chance to retire, where the amount of money is a sort of score as per Pirates!, is a possibility, but I wouldn't like it to be compulsory. But it's still possible to accumulate vast quantities of unspendable cash long before you get to Elite.

Playing with the maintenance costs is probably the easiest and most natural way of at least putting the brakes on the money-avalanche; just add a growing multiplier to ship repair and service costs (even to fuel prices: the hyperspace engines might get thirstier and less efficient) over time. A major - and expensive - overhaul could eventually become necessary to reset the multiplier back to 1.

How about it being impossible to transfer credits from one galaxy to the next: After every galactic jump you start with 0Cr or the Cr you had last time you were there? So not all your wealth is accessible at any one time.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Unfortunately, the game (wisely) does not permit OXPs to mess with Trumbles..

Well, THIS kind of 'messes' with them

Venator Dha wrote:

How about it being impossible to transfer credits from one galaxy to the next: After every galactic jump you start with 0Cr or the Cr you had last time you were there? So not all your wealth is accessible at any one time.

That's an interesting idea ... you could take a chunk of starting capital with you in the form of bullion and gemstones, but it would definitely be a limiting option!

Disembodied wrote:

Venator Dha wrote:

How about it being impossible to transfer credits from one galaxy to the next: After every galactic jump you start with 0Cr or the Cr you had last time you were there? So not all your wealth is accessible at any one time.

That's an interesting idea ... you could take a chunk of starting capital with you in the form of bullion and gemstones, but it would definitely be a limiting option!

Indeed, and introduce something that more or less forces you to change chart sooner or later.

Edit: Following my earlier post, every hyperspace jump ages you, but a galactic jump makes you young again.

spara wrote:

Indeed, and introduce something that more or less forces you to change chart sooner or later.

Those ideas do not appeal to me!

Cody wrote:

spara wrote:

Indeed, and introduce something that more or less forces you to change chart sooner or later.

Those ideas do not appeal to me!

Yup. It would be a different game altogether. I actually don't think the large pile of money is a real problem. It's the fewness of things to do when one has already mined, couriered, hauled, hunted, traded, fought the bugs and gone around the eight too many times in one game. If the game is to be further prolonged, then more and deeper career options and missions are needed. I would vote for ending the game at some point.

spara wrote:

I would vote for ending the game at some point.

I'd vote for giving the player the option to retire, so they could round off a character's career if they wanted to, but I wouldn't make it compulsory.

Have an option to buy a moon somewhere. You might even consider the option of having it as a family business with the owner being your grandfather and he allows you to use it as your garage. Have goals to reach first e.g. time played, kill score, number of times round the eight....ect. Could be plenty of suggestions for criteria to be met before you could get your 'retiral home'.

spara wrote:

I actually don't think the large pile of money is a real problem.

It certainly ain't a problem for me - but my operational float is only about 2.5 million, and that's been more or less static for quite a while!
Thing is, it depends somewhat on one's play style. I spend oodles of credits on repairs - a few bad runs of luck, and I can be 500,000 down!

Fatleaf wrote:

Have an option to buy a moon somewhere.

Don't know about a moon, but I wouldn't mind an option to buy a rock hermit!

Disembodied wrote:

spara wrote:

I would vote for ending the game at some point.

I'd vote for giving the player the option to retire, so they could round off a character's career if they wanted to, but I wouldn't make it compulsory.

Yes, definitely optional. Maybe after reaching the elite status, the game would offer a possibility to retire and give some nice semi-random story of your retirement days if you did. We could even have a table of retired commanders here. Name, retirement date, retirement place etc.

One more idea that I have introduced before, which I masochistically like and have played, is a version of an ironman game where instead of dying, you get to load the previous save game but your pile of credits halves. I think I even wrote an oxp to help playing that type of game. It worked so that with autosave your save file is tagged and if you load, your credits get halved. But if you save the game from the menu, the save file gets untagged and you can load the game as usual. Required a little bit of self-discipline, but worked right from the game with no need for save file hacking.

Maybe there could be some support in the core game for ironman type of game where loading the game after press space could somehow be penalized? Here's how it could work:

1. Option somewhere to put ironman game on/off.
2. In press space situation, the save-file that was used for the game would get tagged.
3. A tagged file could not be loaded.

It has loopholes of course and would require the use of only one save file, but for someone wanting to play this way, I don't see that as a problem.

As a bonus it would be nice to be able to write an oxp that could change the effect of tagging from pure ironman to for example halving the money.

Now that would solve all your currency problems . Resurrection is not be cheap .

I really like the "separate fortune in each galaxy" idea - of course the way to game it is to take on a lot of gold, platinum, and gem contracts immediately before leaving, then take the hyperjump and default on the contracts. But even then that probably cuts it down to a million or two as starting funds.

ffutures wrote:

I really like the "separate fortune in each galaxy" idea - of course the way to game it is to take on a lot of gold, platinum, and gem contracts immediately before leaving, then take the hyperjump and default on the contracts. But even then that probably cuts it down to a million or two as starting funds.

Should your reputation also vanish after galactic jump? They probably don't know you anyway?

I still like this idea, sort of semi-fresh start, but does it lead to avoiding galactic jumps? Should there be some incentive to move on?