Oolite Bulletins

I think that the BlackMonks are the most flavorful addition to the Ooniverse. Some time ago I made a js conversion of BlackMonks and never released it. The reason is that in the process I felt the game mechanic of the oxp was so faulty that I could not amend it. In other words I was not happy of the result. I had a few issues with it:

1. The dead end that the player will meet if he/she fails to deliver. I get the joke, but I still think it's flawed. The player needs to be punished, but the no way out situation is too harsh. So I tweaked it so that, if the player returns to the monks too late, he will be stripped of everything valuable and if that's not enough, then it's a broke adder start time. Problem solved.
2. Random black monk punishers were too frequent and repetitive to my taste, so I tweaked them so that you rarely meet one and more rarely you see them punishing someone. Problem solved.
3. But then the real problem, the money lending business. The original mechanic is tied to jumps and I think that works brilliantly. From designer perspective, it's possible to roughly predict how many jumps are needed to do some business and still be able to pay back. That's good. Easy to make it challenging, but not impossible. But from players perspective that's just stupid, it's hard to reason why the loan is tied to jumps rather than time. So I switched it to time (as have been requested multiple times) and all of a sudden the loan time is either ridiculously small or long depending on the distance of the trade systems. I wrestled with it for a while and when I just could not find any sane way to balance it, I just ditched the whole conversion .

But now I've got a new idea . How about making these money loans a transfer missions with a twist. And that twist is interest. The player wants to loan 20 000 credits. Black monks can do that, but for some reason they want you to pay back at some other named system. With an interest naturally. So you have to be there by time and you better have those credits and the interest. You need to trade/bounty hunt/mine whatever on the way to accomplish that.

And the reasoning. The player is actually working as middle man in some shady money transfer gimmick. Money laundry maybe. That's probably something illegal, so to make it look like legitimate business, the money is in fact lend to the player with real interest.

So now we have a mechanic that gives a beginning player a nice credit boost at start and pushes him to travel the chart rather than "boringly" jump between two systems.

Does this sound worth pursuing?

spara wrote:

So now we have a mechanic that gives a beginning player a nice credit boost at start and pushes him to travel the chart rather than "boringly" jump between two systems.

Does this sound worth pursuing?

Definitely, yes! Especially if the destination is quite some distance away. As an additional wrinkle, perhaps the original details of the contract could be quite generous, allowing the player plenty of time - but half way through, up pops an urgent communication from the bank: "Change in circumstances, economic situation, blah blah, and your repayment time is now much, much sooner than you thought. We trust that this will not be too great an inconvenience to you." It shouldn't be impossible, but it should be a nasty panic-inducing surprise.

Good idea. Another tweak if the final destination is not known right at the start, just a waypoint system where will get the destination. This leave the player in thrill about the remaining time is only barely enough.

This is starting to form in my mind. Black Monks 2.0 might be coming some day, or not. We'll see .

GalCop officials thought they were clever when they banned short term loans in GalCop space. Their aim was to run Black Monks and their shady business out of business. It worked, for a week or something. Then the Monks and their high payed attorneys came forward with a new product: Short Term Investments.

GalCop regulations allow organizations to invest on endeavour that has been well documented. At minimum business plan and predicted investment time has to be documented.

So now Black Monks officially invest on traders. And they do it very easy for the poor applicants in need of credits. All you have to do is ask for money and they will tell you where to go and how much you have to earn. When you sign the contract, it's officially your business plan. Nothing illegal in that.

Whispers have been heard that there might be something shady happening with all this credit transferring. The owners of credits change so quickly that the officials have hard time keeping up. But that's just rumours of course. Money keeps the the Eight going. Right?

Thank you I wanted regulation in the handwavium.

Can't have empires without regulations, and for me the Oolite geostrategy is some empires' struggles.
A pan-empire organization like the black monks has to be controlled, and has to evade this control

Lots of good ideas here.. I like!

This time I'm actually doing some planning before I'll start scripting. Must be the first.

Hello Commander Jameson. Are you looking for a short time investment on your endeavours?

As it happens, we have a contract ready for you. All you have to do is fill in the blanks, sign the contract and off you'll be making profit.

Interested? Good.

First you'll need to select your financial need. There are three choices there: 5000, 10000 and 20000. Can't go higher, sorry, regulations you see. Oh, and that will set the deadline and destination automatically. Easy for you. There's not much we can do about those. Due to the current GalCop regulations, those need to be set for us to be able to invest in your endeavour. Shouldn't be a problem? Right?

Note also the fixed interest. On top of helping traders, it's business for us. We'll be looking at 50 % profit. That's not negotiable, sorry. A word of warning though. If you fail to deliver, you'll better work out a quick retirement plan. We have a reputation to keep, you see. We do not make bad investments. Ever.

Great, now just sign it and we're done. Pleasure doing business with you.

spara wrote:

Note also the fixed interest. On top of helping traders, it's business for us. We'll be looking at 50 % profit. That's not negotiable, sorry. A word of warning though. If you fail to deliver, you'll better work out a quick retirement plan. We have a reputation to keep, you see. We do not make bad investments. Ever.

"- 50% without risk?! What about competition?
- What competition?"

Separate suggestion: if a trader manages to repay his loan, he can take a new loan only with a greater amount.

Another suggestion: lending money in a system, and taking it back in another, probably in a different empire, is perfect for money laundering. A small group inside the Monks could be using this to its advantage, generating a mission with inside battles, investigations, etc.

Good ideas spara

Something you might like to consider is loan amount relative to cargo hold. I like to start in a much more humble ship than a Mk III (I once started in a worm... that took some time ) and so a loan that might be easy to pay off in one ship might be next to impossible in another. Likewise, if the player approaches the monks later in game then they might have a much bigger ship (e.g. Python ET) and much greater assets.

I once used a hacked version for the start of a game, the idea being that the loan had paid for my ship rather than equipment etc. It was fun I even took down a black monk gunship in my adder Admittedly I had some help from a viper pack (who were dropping like flies) but it was having a lot of trouble targetting the adder head on, so you might want to look into that.

Once again spara, thanks for blowing the dust off another great oxp

I like where this is going!

Still working on this one. Investment runs are working nicely, but it will take some time before I'll be ready to put something out. Being aware that the investment runs are mainly for starting players, I've reduced the number of monasteries drastically. After their primary function they are in practice eye candy. As nice as they look, they wear out soon if they are all over the place. But... they could be offering something for seasoned players too .

So Holy Fuel would be available only from monasteries, so nice for a dedicated project where you prepare yourself before beginning, but useless for day-to-day operations where you need fuel everywhere. I like this

Day wrote:

So Holy Fuel would be available only from monasteries, so nice for a dedicated project where you prepare yourself before beginning, but useless for day-to-day operations where you need fuel everywhere. I like this

Yep, the shop will only be selling blessed products. Maybe a blessing for your ship to ward it from evil (small maintenance actually)? Sacred lasers perhaps (funky colored pulse lasers, the same color that MonkGunships use). In other words suitable branded equipments and services close to core.

spara wrote:

Yep, the shop will only be selling blessed products. Maybe a blessing for your ship to ward it from evil (small maintenance actually)? Sacred lasers perhaps (funky colored pulse lasers, the same color that MonkGunships use). In other words suitable branded equipments and services close to core.

I'll take a Holy Heat-Seeker and two Blessed Chaff canisters, your grace.

Layne wrote:

spara wrote:

Yep, the shop will only be selling blessed products. Maybe a blessing for your ship to ward it from evil (small maintenance actually)? Sacred lasers perhaps (funky colored pulse lasers, the same color that MonkGunships use). In other words suitable branded equipments and services close to core.

I'll take a Holy Heat-Seeker and two Blessed Chaff canisters, your grace.

Would you have some blessed slaves?