phkb wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 7:04 am
Just to be clear from the outset, this mod is an addon to the Diplomacy mod.
This mod does two things. Firstly, if the player doesn't have a citizenship or a valid visa when they arrive in a new system, it will warn the player that a visa is required for docking at system stations.
Additionally, it adds "Quick-Visa Self-Service" stations near the witchpoint, which allow the player to purchase 24h, 48h or 72h visas for the current system, at a substantially inflated price.
To use the Quick-View Self-Service station, approach the station until you are within 1km of it. At that point, Broadcast Comms options will become available, allowing you to select 1 of three different options: Purchase a 24h visa, purchase a 48h visa, or purchase a 72h visa. Select the desired option using the Broadcast Comms MFD, and transmit. After a few seconds, you should see a response that your visa was approved and the credits have been deducted.
And just because it was fun, I thought a little backstory might be entertaining.
It's the bane of many a pilot's life. In a hurry to reach a destination, they launch and jump into a new system, completely forgetting that a visa is required. They jet along the spacelane to the main station, only to discover, to their horror, that they would be denied entry.
Into this dilemma came Quick-Visa, a startup conceived with this one issue in mind. Based in the Galaxy 4 system of Edorqu, the trio of entrepreneurs who funded the initial investment, discovered there could be a solution that was both beneficial to the systems requiring visas, and lucrative enough to fund the massive outlays envisaged. Initial tests confirmed their analysis that pilots would be willing to pay a significant amount over the normal visa cost to avoid the other hassles of not having one.
They began by reaching out, through diplomatic channels, to many of the communist and dictatorship systems in their own corner of the galaxy. Would they be interested in getting additional income, at almost no cost to them, while providing a benefit to incoming traders? Understandably, given those terms, many were willing to participate in a trial.
And so the rollout began. Old communication stations were repurposed, chosen largely because they were so cheap and had enough existing technology on board, given a shiny new coat of paint, and deposited near the witchpoint of some carefully selected systems.
No one could have predicted just how effective they were. Within just a few days, not only had they been able to pay for the stations already purchased and issue massive payments to the governments they were deployed in, they were scrambling to answer all the diplomatic calls they were receiving. Could they deploy the system there? How quickly could they get it set up?
Money was being thrown at them from a variety of directions, and in a short amount of time the system was rolled out across all the charts. The start-up out-grew it's original offices and moved to a private station of their own design in a far off (and secret) corner of the galaxy, and the money just continued to roll in.
Everyone was happy - the governments, the investors, and, to a certain degree, the pilots who kept paying for the over-priced visas. It was certainly cheaper than getting a fine at the station, and quicker than doing a fuel-scooping run to the sun.
Anyway, you'll need Diplomacy and Broadcast Comms to use this one.
Download a copy here:
QuickVisa.oxz
Lots of options in Library to tweak things. I'll expand all that when I get to the point of making a wiki page - if it gets that far!
If there are no errors reported I'll look at adding this to the manager in the near future.
Let me know what you think. At the moment I've put this into "Miscellaneous" because I couldn't think of anywhere else more appropriate. It was probably late at night too, so that probably didn't help. If you think a different category would suit this better, I'll change it before putting it in the manager.
Enjoy!
August Admiral!
I confess to being flabbergasted! The only way that you could have discovered a need for this, methinks, is by actually playing the dreaded game!
I had thought that you were
far too busy overseeing operations in the cavernous OXP laboratories of the Griff Research Station, overseeing your hordes of minions, creating specular maps, updating missions, and responding to entreaties to fix errant OXPs for translation - or to tweak bits for Stranger's World
etc (not to mention nabbing a quick pink gin in the Admiralty Bar while grabbing a short breather) to ever actually
enjoy the fruits of your labours!
This is one which I've been puzzling over for some time, as I play with Diplomancy continually. I enjoy what it adds to my game, but feel that there could be more.
The idea of an installation at the beacon dedicated to selling visas strikes me as immersion-breaking. Why have the pirates and the Thargoids not reduced it to dust? And... how can there be any proper control over who gets them? How does this beacon communicate with the home station? How can the government make sure that it is not hacked?
Might I venture the following?
1) In RealLife™, Visas are used to raise money/keep out undesirables/keep a track on visitors (I presume that Visa renewal is implicated here). And entering a country illegally without one is a major pain if one is caught - and in the more unsavoury regimes, can be utterly unpleasant (imagine North Korea!). Prison. Stonkingly massive fines. Et cetera.
2) Diplomancy rightly (to my mind) prevents buying visas in anarchies or in a system at war with the system to be visited.
I feel that the price of a visa is too low and should be based on the size of the ship. Cobras (sizeable hold) would be expensive. This will clobber my usual route to riches (Lave >Zaonce
needs visa > Isinor <> Tionisla). But if I buy a Fuel Tank, then I can get there without a visa.
There should also be delays in getting the visa which depend on one's legal status and reputation.
3) With Black Markets OXP, it should be possible to buy a dummy visa at the in-system Rock Hermit Black Markets, and other Black Markets reasonably close to the system in question.
This faked Visa could have issues similar to Anarchy's "Multi-Passed ID" - it could be detected after docking as a forgery, with interesting consequences (prison? Stonkingly massive fines - with a Black Monk present in case there are problems paying or having one's ship confiscated and the balance after the fine given to you with the option to approach First Finance OXP for a new loan) for a smaller ship?
4) Attempting to dock without a visa could have more consequences.
i) Be allowed to dock, spend a lot of time in a queue and then (if admitted) pay through the nose (if one has a clean record for that system). Or bribe for less, and since one still has no visa, have to bribe again at other stages too (using the F8 screen, using the F3 screen, etc.)! With a less clean record then prison/bribery beckons.
ii) while in the system it should be possible to renew one's visa (money, queues, bribes to get to the head of the queue).
5) My visa often runs out while I'm docked if I'm having "ship maintenance" etc. The OXP Visa only covers docking, not launching. I should be arrested when I try to launch and either fined, imprisoned or pay a hefty bribe.
6) Corporates would have police at the Beacon (the only way of getting to the system) checking the Visas of those coming in! Commies and Dictatorships would
try to do the same.
7) My actions should affect my reputation in-system
Summary.
This is all a heck of a lot. It is also utterly unpleasant (but then so are Corporates, Commies and Dictatorships!). But I do feel it conforms more to what we joyfully experience in RealLife™ and what one would expect in the Ooniverse.
The most important parts, I feel, are ramping up the costs of visas, the costs of fines and enabling local Black Markets to sell dummies. The other twiddles can wait.
