Oolite Bulletins

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 (v1.1)

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!

Fastest 1.1 release in the west. Fixed an issue in the shipdata, and tweaked the model a little to make it more suited to it's role.

Same link above.

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.

Another thought about the above.

The opinions above are mine - they may not be too widely shared.

If one is going to work on Diplomancy OXP, there are a bunch of things it would be nice to add in:

• real wars
• linking things together in terms of reputations (vanilla game/GalCop Missions/Feudal States/RSS/Jaguar Company etc.)
• is denial of visas tied in to incidences of quarantine?
• ... and the Library.oxp P.A.D. (citizenship/planet of birth and there may be more)
• relevance of Home Systems

Rather than faffing about the publicly available version of Day's oxp, perhaps just print the necessary tweaks on the wiki page? I don't think that this is quite the same as Fuel Tweaks (for which there was no evidence that more was hidden inside the OXP unless one read the wall of text on the wiki page or snooped inside it). Here it is a tweak for those who want to adjust it a little in a way that is obvious, and who have enough knowledge to inspect the wiki page for details.

I was nosing around inside Diplomancy trying to see if there was anything obvious to tweak in terms of upping Visa costs... and I've just discovered another OXP hidden away inside Diplomancy! WarZones.oxp.hide - written by somebody calling himself "phkb".

1) I presume that it is there for future reference. Does it work?

2) We now have four OXPs based around Diplomancy!
*Rexebe Citizen
*Digebiti Subject
*Quick Visa
*War Zones (unfinished?)

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 11:35 am

and I've just discovered another OXP hidden away inside Diplomancy! WarZones.oxp.hide - written by somebody calling himself "phkb".

Aw, dang.

You weren't supposed to see that!

Yes, I was playing around with the idea of leveraging the "Factions.oxp" into a Warzones addition for Diplomacy. One of my many ideas that was stewing away in the background. I obviously forgot to remove the evidence before pushing that fix a year or so ago.

Will I get around to it? No idea. Anyone else is free to run with the idea though. I don't think enabling that code would do anything - I don't think I even got it to a demo stage. I remember beginning the process of stripping Factions down, taking out all the bits I didn't think would be required, and kind of stopped there. So there's no telling what state it's in.

phkb wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 7:04 am

if it gets that far!

I had a feeling...

I'm not going to argue too much about this, but I thought a couple of points were worth mentioning.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 8:55 am

The idea of an installation at the beacon dedicated to selling visas strikes me as immersion-breaking.

In my mind this is no different in our world, arriving at your destination and arranging to get a visa on the spot. Obviously, in RealLife(tm), that might not be possible in every country, but it certainly is in many and what I've experienced from my own travels.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 8:55 am

How does this beacon communicate with the home station? How can the government make sure that it is not hacked?

Well, these are in their own systems (ie you can only get a local visa, not a visa to any old place), and the WP beacon is (from the game's perspective), only a few thousand K's from the main planet. Radio waves could be employed and still get reasonable throughput. Heck, maybe by the 33rd century a wifi connection could run that far! I don't think comms are a problem. As for hacking, I'd be more concerned about dodgy diplomatic officials selling overpriced visas (with inevitable kick-backs) at the main stations in other systems. How does a Dictatorship system keep tabs on the happenings at the neighbouring Communist system, or viceversa? The potential for scams is far greater there, than for someone rolling up to a facility near the busiest spot in the system and trying to hack their way in.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 8:55 am

Why have the pirates and the Thargoids not reduced it to dust?

I'm sure they do, just like the WP beacon or any other facility in the system. If you think it would be that much of a problem, I could put a turret on it.

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 8:55 am

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.

Re: the delays - sure, in real life it can take months to get a visa for some places. But Diplomacy doesn't simulate that. It doesn't restrict you from buying a visa in any way (except, of course for the one you noted - when relations between the current system and destination are bad). You got the cash? Here, have a visa. Need another 24h? Sure, no problem. Instance access, straight away, no questions asked. How does that work? No idea. I wasn't trying to change the underlying way Diplomacy works. I'm doing it in exactly the same way.

You appear to be suggesting the problem to be fixed is built into the core functioning of Diplomacy. There may very well be a good and logical reason to make the changes you're suggesting...

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Fri May 23, 2025 11:16 am

perhaps just print the necessary tweaks on the wiki page

...but they aren't tweaks. Well, the visa cost probably is a tweak, but real wars, properly linking up missions, integrating Library PAD with various Diplomacy functions - they aren't tweaks. They all involve a lot more work. This was a simple and (well to me at least) elegant solution that (again, to me) seemed logical and believable. I mean, have you tried it? Did you notice that a visa purchased through the "Quick Visa" process costs 50 times more than the one you could have bought at the previous system?

In any case, I wasn't trying to "fix" Diplomacy. I know it might sound strange given how many OXP's I end up diving into to bugfix or enhance, but I'm not actually trying to take on everyone else's abandoned code. I do like playing the game - I just also like programming, so I get enjoyment no matter which itch I scratch.

Anyway, this one may not last (and end up just running on my system along with my Sun Skim Gates oxp), but we'll see if any other opinions bubble to the surface.

Oh, and if you don't like the self-serve visa stations, you can turn them all off and just keep the alert function.

I'm not knocking you. There is an issue. You did come up with a solution!

But I do feel that unbought visas would be handled by the system at the Main Orbital Station and involve lots of waiting, money, hassle etc. But that's me. And for other players, it is super that you are offering them a choice. And I'm sure that your choice was a darn sight easier to programme!

There is also the possibility, eventually, that elevated rank in the Galactic Navy or a suitably impressive reputation in Home System OXP/Feudal States OXP would earn one a visa-free diplomatic passport, working everywhere (apart from systems at war with the passport issuer!)

New version now available (v1.2) from the link in the first post. This version fixes a bug with PlanetFall2 locations, which weren't accepting the locally purchased visa.