Oolite Bulletins

This is just an idea, that came up just recently again.
It is a bit strange, that you have your own ship, that costs heap'n'heaps of credits (look at the costs for a ton of food and than again how much a Cobra MKIII is worth) but can't afford some of the more simple equipments for it. Well, maybe you invested everything you had and now you're broke. Maybe you inherited it, or you were the pilot of a company and "bought" your ship's freedom by working hard for them. But under normal conditions you would have taken a loan. Now I know of the  Bank of the black monks and that under normal conditions galcop wouldn't allow loans, but all these privateers must come from somewhere. What if loans are permitted on planets (galcop doesn't interfere in planets affairs after all). A planetary loan might be allowed in case you want to buy a ship. This would be in the very best interests of galcop as it increases commerce.

I believe this can be covered by an OXP and I'm going to write one. But before I begin I wanted to introduce the idea to the community and how I'm going to do it. (I'm especally interested in feedback regarding other takes on it and pointing out flaws in mine or other one's approaches.)

IMO such a loan should provide a fair challenge for beginning commanders. It should make life harder for them. Amassing enough money for the better equipments should be harder.

It should be usable for a Corba MKIII high loan, let's say 125000cr for a beat up one, but my OXP will be programmed with a smaller starter ship in mind, as this is an OXP, that should flesh out such a beginning phase. Therefore my examples will be for such a approach.

I thought about something along there lines:

The player starts with a loans of 20000Cr and a Transporter or modified Worm bought from it.
When docking, there will be weekly events that take a bit of the players credits to repay the loan. Of course the player has to be punished, if she/he failed to create enough profit. That punishment would come in form of a small increase of the debts. There also should be money left for the player. The event (and repayment calculation) might look like this.

20000cr total debt
1000cr 5% weekly repayment rate

700Cr player's money
500cr will always be left on the players account, therefore
-200cr repayment this week

19800cr debt left
+ 19.8cr 0.1% weekly interest (5,5% yearly interest)
+ 40cr punishment (5% of 800cr [1000cr-200cr] not repaid share of this weeks rate)

19859.8 total debt left. Till next week.

This would happen, when the player docks with a galcop facility and another 7 days have passed. If more than 7 days have passed, this will be taken into account and be treated as if the player was too broke to repay the last rate.

Commodities in the cargo hold aren't touched either.

Now it stands to see if this is even manageable for a new commander. Ideally the repayment of the debt takes a while and hurts, but not too much and is manageable. Like everything in oolite life should become easier with more equipment installed.

In case the debts increase more than is manageable (more than 1000000cr) the commander is forced to retire (is this possible for an OXP?). That shouldn't be a too bad as a punishment for the player, as the commander is still young (a few hours/days of gameplay) and can be undone by removing the OXP as no real debt is created in the gamestate. The debt is meant to be something, that is only bothering in the early phase.

Also off-schedule repayments are allowed, too.

As for a Cobra MKIII the debt should be 125000cr (A new costs 150000cr. Lets say it is used and the commander had a few bucks himself.)

Let's see.
125000cr total debt
6250cr 5% weekly repayment rate

700Cr player's money
500cr will always be left on the players account, therefore
-200cr repayment this week

124800cr debt left
+ 124.8cr 0.1% weekly interest (5,5% yearly interest)
+ 302.5cr punishment (5% of 6050cr [6250cr-200cr] not repaid share of this weeks rate)

125227.3 total debt left.

Hmm. That's quite harsh. But I can tinker with the intervals, rates, interests and punishment rates until it fits.

Of course this is only one take on it. I also fought about subtracting 5% every time the player sells commodities. How would your take on it look? Maybe the OXP could even implement different repayment schedules.

Buying the ship with a loan, and having to keep the payments up, is a great idea - but it would require some serious rebalancing, especially if you want players to start off in very small ships and work their way up from there (also a good idea). Those small ships are going to have to be made playable, by which I mean players are going to have to be able to work around being masslocked all the time because they're in slow ships, without being expected to dodge around the game by going off-lane. All the ship prices would need to be adjusted, too, so that there is a sensible progression from small ships/small earnings to bigger ships/bigger earnings. Equipment prices would also need to be altered, so that e.g. an extra energy unit is cheaper to fit on an Adder than on a Cobra III.

Actually clearing the debt could be kept as a very long-term goal - like paying off your mortgage. There should be some flexibility built in, allowing players to pay a bit more sometimes, and pay a bit less other times: perhaps the minimum payment might cover the interest only, without touching the actual debt itself.

Players would need credit ratings, which would allow them to take out larger loans to buy larger ships. You might start out with a debt of (numbers here are just plucked out of thin air) C*10,000, and a Worm. By working hard and paying off C*2,500 of the initial debt reasonably quickly, you are able to persuade the bank that you're a good investment, and they let you can increase your loan to C*25,000 to buy an Adder for C*30,000 (after selling the Worm for C*5,000). Credit rating would work like reputation: make lots of early overpayments and it rises; make lots of minimum payments and it starts to fall. If it falls too low, then the interest rate increases (which of course increases the minimum payment rate).

It would add a useful money sink/running cost, but it would need extensive work to balance out ship costs, equipment costs, rates of repayments and earning potentials. The existence of parcels contracts gives a bit more scope to this, though, as it give a way of making money which don't require large cargo holds.

I have to confess I only thought about an initial credit at the beginning of the game for your first ship. But if you're allowed to get one for your first, why not for the next one, too? If galcop restricts loans by planetary banks to ships only, it's justifiable if capable captains can buy bigger ones more easily.

Well. Limiting the OXP to just adding it at the beginning of a new career is easy enough, but making it so, that the additional money can only be used to buy ship is another. You would have to customize the ship purchase GUI. This is possible, but only by replacing the original one, if I'm not mistaken. Quite a huge change, that might mess with other OXPs, but maybe very worth it. The amount of playercredits could be changed everytime the purchase Gui is loaded and unloaded. There would be no disclaimer, that there is additional money displayed, that isn't the player's, but this would work out.

I like the idea of only repaying the interest rate, as this takes the pressure of the player. In the end of the day the player should have fun. But "the bank wants its money back too", so I go with a weekly rate of 1% repayment + this weeks interest.

One thing such an OXP could introduce is the possibility to loose. Failing to keep up the payments, leads to repossession of the ship and reduction of credit rating. Too poor a rating and no possibility to get a ship - GAME OVER! Something that's been lost to modern gaming Would add another aspect to a Oolite, where after a while you just can't loose.

Maybe this could be done by player.endScenario.

Balancing loans drove me nuts when reduxing Black Monks. The problem lies in witchspace and the way it handles time. The original Black Monks had a very functional mechanic: it gave you something like 10 jumps to clear the debt. That made it possible to estimate the average profit per jump and to balance the interest so that paying back the loan was challenging, but not impossible for a Cobra 3 pilot. The first thing I did was that I changed the loan to be a real loan with interest and all broke down . All you need to do, is find those two opposite eco systems that are very close to each other and you have all the time in the world to pay off the loan. And bore yourself to death. In the end I was very frustrated and ditched the project a couple of times before finally getting the idea of forcing the player to pay the debt at a named system. LittleBear named the loans to pilgrimages and the mechanic makes sense in game. And it's much more fun than zipping between two close systems.

Just my experience with balancing loans in Oolite.

Game over is easy btw: player.ship.explode(). Not sure it's fun though.

Nice idea, a start in a Worm with a loan is even harder than anything so far.

The first 30 days could be free from any demand, but interest is counting in the background.

I think Injectors should be fitted into the starter ship to compensate the slowness and no weapons. Even all weapon mounts could be disabled to want a new ship asap.

After many redemption could offer a higher loan for a larger ship.

If the loan reach a too high level due to low payments then after some last warnings force a replaceShip to a cheaper one, down to the starter ship if needed. At last resort could replace to an escape capsule as retirement, which mean a technical game over without explosion or drop out to the main menu.

spara wrote:

The problem lies in witchspace and the way it handles time.

That's true, that: making something that's tied to time, like a standard interest rate, would penalise long jumps. Perhaps then it might be better to tie the interest payments in to number of jumps, or station dockings (if the player starts off in a Worm, they'll spend a lot of time on in-system trade) rather than time: every X (5?) dockings the player makes in a station with a GalCop or Neutral allegiance, they're presented with the next demand for payment. They can choose to pay the minimum, or to overpay, or even perhaps to renegotiate the terms (i.e. extend or increase the loan).

To prevent the player from simply avoiding GalCop/Neutral stations, there would need to be a counter running to track dockings in non-GalCop/Neutral stations. Once this counter reaches Y (8?), the player receives a fairly threatening request to go and dock immediately in a GalCop/Neutral station to make their outstanding payment (say, double the usual rate, plus a minor penalty to their credit rating). Making a payment (either a normal one, or as a result of this demand) resets the counter to 0. If the counter reaches Y+4, they get a final demand: they have to immediately dock at a GalCop/Neutral station (no stops in between) and pay 4x the usual rate, with a bigger hit to their credit rating. If the counter reaches Y+5, they get assassins on their tail. They can buy their way out of trouble by docking at a GalCop/Neutral station and paying a fee equivalent to a multiple of their basic payment, equal to the number of dockings they've made above Y.

ocz wrote:

Maybe this could be done by player.endScenario.

A scenario would almost certainly be the only way to implement this, since you'd need to rebalance ship prices, equipment prices, and trade good prices at least, so being able to replace rather than add to the core plists for those areas would be essential.

A related idea I played around with on paper but never had time to implement ... in Oolite there's a really strong incentive for the player to be law-abiding. Fewer things attack you, you can dock at main stations without being fined a lot, and if you do mess up and accidentally get a record, a few jumps will clear it to the point it doesn't matter much. And yet, there are more pirates than any other single role. (1.80 tried to help a bit with this by making other pirates at least leave a pirate player alone most of the time, but it's nowhere near enough)

So, my idea was also to start the player off not owning their ship - but because it was owned by a company, rather than a loan, meaning that you didn't get a lot of choice in when and where you went, and you didn't get to see much of the profit from the trips (though if you could sneak a parcel in under the seat, some employers might be fine with that) - you might even not be flying the same ship from trip to trip, though the ships you did fly would probably have at least a few upgrades. Of course, you were flying around in a ship potentially worth a lot more than your practical earnings, so you could just steal your "own" ship. Counterbalance that with an extremely persistent criminal record, though, and that "easy money" turns out to be very hard indeed. Now there's a reason for all those pirates to be out there - the criminal route is one there's always a good reason and a lot of temptation to go for...
(Also expandable more: perhaps you're hauling cargo for an employer and get intercepted by pirates - you give up a few barrels to save yourself, which your employer expects and insures for. You then get an offer from the pirates - tip them off about where your next run is, and they'll split the profit from that one 50:50 with you ... so of course the more excessive cargo you "panic" and dump, the more money goes to you)

A lot of that idea could also work as "alternative" ways of clearing a loan on a ship - default on the loan, skip the system, go far enough away your identity is obscured, sell the ship and repeat...

cim wrote:

A scenario...

Which reminds me: must get back into Song of the Labyrinth soon - after the current parcel run, in fact.

cim wrote:

start the player off not owning their ship

Start in a simple spacesuit and choose either a ship for a loan or select from jobs offered by various companies in different ships. When docked return into the spacesuit, then select another job. In this way the player can try many ships shortly after start and take the loan only for his favorite.

GalCop could be one of the companies also where the job is patrol and fight against offenders in a Viper. Even after some gained reputation can take harder jobs in a Viper Interceptor, then later in any owned ship.

Norby wrote:

GalCop could be one of the companies also where the job is patrol and fight against offenders in a Viper.

I doubt whether a Jameson would be of interest to Viper Command - nor would it be an ideal start for said Jameson.

Cody wrote:

Norby wrote:

GalCop could be one of the companies also where the job is patrol and fight against offenders in a Viper.

I doubt whether a Jameson would be of interest to Viper Command - nor would it be an ideal start for said Jameson.

Ok, could be higher requirements to take these jobs, just list to see as a later possibility of a policeman carreer.

On my ever-lengthening list of ideas is a "Police Recruit" oxp, where the player joins a local GalCop squadron and undertakes various missions. If anyone wants to run with this idea I'd be really pleased to see the results!

phkb wrote:

On my ever-lengthening list of ideas is a "Police Recruit" oxp, where the player joins a local GalCop squadron and undertakes various missions. If anyone wants to run with this idea I'd be really pleased to see the results!

This could be a way to bring GalNavy missions back without GalNavy. Just rewrite the missions to GalCop police missions.