Oolite Bulletins

Written by LittleBear & Griff.

This OXP Adds:-

- Giant Black Monk Monasterys (Dockable Stations) added to Tech Level 10+ Systems.
- The dreaded Black Monk Gunships can be seen shooting down NPCs who failed to pay up.
- A Multi-Staged Mission / Feature. (13 Mission Briefing Screens)
- Players can also take out loans (at an extortionate interest rate!)
- Players who fail to repay on time will also find themselves in a Gunship's sights!

Overview
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The Order of the Black Monks of St. Herod (banking with a smile and a stab) is a deeply religious sect dedicated to the noble aim of allowing more space-farers to turn away from the sins of Solvency and embrace the Holy State of Debt.

Black Monk Monasteries are vast structures, comparable in size to a Tours Station, but brisling with The Holy Cannons of Defence. Monasteries appear in the Space Lanes in systems with a Tech Level of 10 or above. They can be located by setting an Advanced Space Compass to B, but this is not really necessary as the massive platforms are visible to the naked eye from the witchspace point.

Commanders who chose to dock with a Monastery will be offered the option to take out a loan. The Monks terms are clearly explained. Repayment of the full capital with interest must be made by the due date. The Debtor must return to a Monastery in person to make payment on or before the due date.

Fail to return and the horribly armed Black Monk Gunships will be despatched to hunt down the Accused Defaulter to purify his soul with Blessed Plasma. Many Commanders have reported seeing the Gunships engaged upon their Holy Work, shooting down trade-ships in the space lanes. Despite the debtors’ pitiful pleas, it is unwise to intervene. Returning to a Monastery with insufficient funds to pay a due debt is also suicide.

Interest is calculated weekly and continues to accrue until the debt is settled. Should you chose to take out a loan, returning to a Monastery will show your outstanding balance. The option to repay early and save credits will be given, if you have sufficient funds to pay.

Despite these disadvantages, if your trading, bounty hunting and piracy skills are good enough taking a loan may have its advantages, allowing you to buy cargo or fit equipment that you could not otherwise afford. Remember though that a large part of your profits will be eaten up by
the mounting interest. Defaulting is not recommended!

Dare you take a loan with the Bank of the Black Monks?

I have submitted the OXP to Oosat2, until it appears download from the "Black Monks" link on my signature!

Looking forward to this one!

Well done LB/Griff!

mmmmm - moon waffles...

Looks good.

It can be used as a more realistic way to speed up a newly started commander than downgrading

I'd like to downgrading see disappear completely as an option. That could be done by making your first ship have a trade-in value of -50,000. No one, including Lave Academy realistically hand out CMK3s for free. So you borrow your first ship and pay 50k rent for it, when buying your first own ship.

The first version I posted had two Bugs in it:-

V.1.0 contained a case-sensitivity bug (no problem on Windows or the Mac - but causes a crash on Unix). This version fixes it!

Another bug was also present, which is now fixed, but I can't tell you what it was to avoid a spoiler!

The link on my Sig is now to V1.1. If you downloaded an earlier version, update to this one.

@Dr Nil - yep! Glad to see someone agrees:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=2235&start=0

Would be cool to have, say, three starting options (à la Frontier):

1. Cobra Mk III, Lave, 100CR (for newbies!)
2. Second-hand Adder, somewhere else in galaxy 1, 100CR
3. No ship, Lave (with loan facilities available), 0CR!

Roberto wrote:

@Dr Nil - yep! Glad to see someone agrees:

https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?t=2235&start=0

Would be cool to have, say, three starting options (à la Frontier):

1. Cobra Mk III, Lave, 100CR (for newbies!)
2. Second-hand Adder, somewhere else in galaxy 1, 100CR
3. No ship, Lave (with loan facilities available), 0CR!

Yeah. I also wouldn't mind one of those starting places to be Earth like in Frontier (or was it Mars...). Anybody working on the Earth.oxp?

Dr. Nil wrote:

No one, including Lave Academy realistically hand out CMK3s for free. So you borrow your first ship and pay 50k rent for it, when buying your first own ship.

I can almost see it:

'Stood at the exit to the station-planet transit station, Chas Valet looked dolefully at the meagre contents he'd left the Lave Academy with. In his battered kit bag was three changes of clothes, two of which needed cleaning, his graduation holo-pic and a letter from his father expressing his joy at his son's success and making veiled suggestions that he return home to carry on the family business. Chas knew there was no chance he would spend the rest of his life pushing a plough through a muddy field. He'd graduated in the top forty of his class, he was going places as Lotan had always put it. Lotan was always landing on his feet, when he'd graduated in the top ten, he'd been approached at the graduation ceremony by a man in an official-looking uniform and whisked away to a private meeting. That was the last he'd seen of his roommate of four years. Even his kit was gone from their bunkroom when Chas went to pack.
Chas looked at the small poly-plas chit in his right hand. He'd held it gripped there all through the half hour flight from Lave's Hideki Space Port up to Coriolis One. The chit was a discount marker for the Cowell MgRath stockist on the station. It, plus the Credits that the Lave Academy had placed in high interest holdings for his graduation, would secure him a new Cobra Mark III. On top of that, in time-honoured fashion, he'd also sold his uniform and ceremonial sword to a new student for 100 Credits.
One of his classmates had traded his marker for an Adder at Leesti and had Credits left over to buy himself passage there and plenty of booze for the journey. Chas had thought about it when he'd heard about it, but then though better of it, let the idiot fly a hunk of crap that'd probably get trashed by a glancinghit from a micrometeorite. Chas definately felt that flying an adder after four years hard work would be just like working his fther's farm. He turned and walked smartly towards the shipyards where the Cowel MgRath agent waited with his future....'

Captain Hesperus
"Ah, the memories."

Hi All,
Not to get off the track that this thread was heading toward....But,
Every time I head toward a Black Monk's station a Hot Rod Hatchling BoyRacer challenges me and attacks! Every time.
What gives?
Best, Michael

The Racer isn't added by Black Monks, however both OXPs script the appearance of their ships. Black Monks adds the Monk Base at 0.33 if the techlevel is 10 or more. Murgh also adds Boyracers to the space lanes at 0.3 if the techlevel is 10 or more. Hey perhaps he just took out a loan and is trying out his new craft!

Little Bear, one other thing:
The use of "B" on the advanced compass as a locator for the bank ocnflicts with the use of "B" in the ionics.oxp as a locator for the Ionics CR150 Weapons Platform.
Perhaps this belongs in another thread, but I wanted to let you know.
Best, Michael

Will change it to M for monks in the next update!

LittleBear wrote:

Will change it to M for monks in the next update! :)

M for Monastery?

M for Money...

Hi LittleBear!

I followed your advice and had a deep look into BlackMonks to find parts that I could use for Anarchies. While doing so I collected some observations, remarks, thoughts and ideas. I hope you don't mind me sharing them here. Please don't see them as witty criticism, but as the offer of help to even improve a good OXP.

1) Very often the "over-priced shipyard" is mentioned, but in fact the monastery has no shipyard. So perhaps it should be the "over-priced outfitting department"? I don't actually think the prices in the shipyard could be raised by an OXP without overwriting all possible shipyard.plists. In the shipdata there is isCarrier (why that?), but no hasShipyard.

2) Probably you just wanted a strange spelling, but usually it would be "Chapel" (some monkbriefs). Also I guess it should be "sacred nano-bots", not "scared" (monkbrief2, same again in monkbrief9). More typos: It should be "Ensure however, that thou hast" (instead of "has") and "disciples" instead of "disciplines" (both monkbrief 7), and "proceed immediately" in monk_header3. Hope I got them all.

3) As far as the overall lingo is concerned the monk-talk is quite athmospheric. Good! Only the use of "you"- and "thou"-forms seems a bit erratic, changing even from one sentence to the other. Perhaps it could be unified a little? As in traditional biblical English "thou" etc. is used for superiors (and especially the deity of course) and "you" for ordinary people, perhaps there could be a descent. "Thou" as long as the player is a Righteous Debtor and "you" (or even "he") as he turns into a Vile Sinner or Defaulter.

4) The Monastery defends itself only if attacked from in front of the dock (and then quite effectively, my Imperial Courier was toast within seconds), but as long as I fired at it from sideways I obviously was out of the firing angle of the plasma turrets. So nothing happened to me but a curse. In monkstationAI there is quite a lot of launchDefenseShip, but in shipdata there is nothing but max_defense_ships 0, so no defense.

5) One problem of timing. In all the messages the monks count in "weeks", however in fact it's just 16 jumps that are counted. But a jump takes only between a couple of minutes up to just under two days at the most. I think it should be possible to script a timer that really measures weeks, not jumps. I can offer to spend some thoughts upon it. I wanted to do that anyway for Equilibrium.oxp, but haven't yet reached that stage. As far as I can tell it just requires some variables as counters.

6) There seems to be an issue with the size of the docking bay. Sometimes I flew through the back wall and saw the antennas from beneath before the "docking rings" started to appear.

7) In the script.plist you have included everything into the outer condition "galaxy_number lessthan 8", which is just always true AFAIK (and I travelled from Galaxy 2 to Galaxy 1, doing the "very long way around"), so as a condition it doesn't seem to be needed at all. It can be deleted completely (together with the closing brackets). Also if "dockedStationName_string equal Black Monk Monastery" is true, then "status_string equal STATUS_DOCKED" has to be true as well, so it doesn't need to be queried.

8 ) The readme states that the monasteries "appear in Tech Level 10+ Systems", which I understand as 10 and above. But in fact they aren't scripted to appear in TL 10, only at 11 and more. That's because for scripting purposes all Oolite-counters start with 0, but in-game they appear as starting from 1. So what shall be a TL 10 on the screen has to be a TL 9 in the script. So if it shall be 10+, meaning >9, it needs to be greaterthan 8 in the script. Same goes for Government and Economy, and of course for Galaxy and Planetnumber. Therefore also the equivalent_tech_level of the station is higher than anything else in the Ooniverse (15 as compared to the usual 0--14 (and in the first four galaxies there are only four planets with 14 (=15 on the galactic map), one in Galaxy 1 and three in Galaxy 2)). BTW there is also an exception to the rule: If you make an item of equipment available at a certain TL (first number in equipment.plist) it will be the same number as you read on the map.