Would it be possible to make a banking system? Say the player could buy a savings bond for say, 10,000 credits. A rank bit would give the player an interest payment of 500 credits a day. This would prevent pirates from stealing all your money.

But the problem is, outfits seem to sell for half their purchase price. Is there a bit somewhere that can make the outfit sell for full price?

Anyone think a savings bond is a good idea, or not, or what?

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I think you should be able to achieve this by setting a mission to become active upon buying the bond and the mission is set to in end in say 3 months and when the mission ends it pays you back all of your money, you could even get complicated by making the bond outfit disappear when you buy it and replace it with a sell bond which works out to be equal to the amount of money they still have of yours, this could be done by several missions that activate one after the other every month changing the amount this outfit pays out. But to be honest i don't really see the point as if a pirate it robbing you they hardly steal anything unless your hideously rich, and if your so bothered just exit and reopen your pilot file.

What would be useful is ship insurance for people who play on strict play... you may keep your money but what if you just bought ... lets say a new Manticore and it leaves you with 100,000 credits spare, if you die you loose around 10 million credits. Creating an insurance outfit that is different for each ship that allows you for a high but reasonable price to insure your ship. Maybe a monthly charge and have a 'don't pay for 3 months' deal where you get no initial charge for 3 months and then they bulk charge you the bill and if you cant afford it you set of a mission where bounty hunters track you down and kill you. That would be quite fun, you would be desperately trying to make up enough money to pay for your insurance just like real life hey maybe you could make it so they just repossess your ship till you have enough money to pay... being as you would make a separate outfit for each ship type this would be very possible but time consuming. You wouldn't have to make it for each ship, just expensive ones. And no insurance for pirate ships of course.

A more sensible scheme would be a special organization that can hire you to do missions for them and insure your ship for you as they send you on dangerous missions like kill these pirates here etc. If your ship blows up and you retrieve the insurance money you could set of missions where you've got to earn back the money for the insurance otherwise you become bounty. All the missions would have time limits and it would make for a very interesting game paying back debt if you blow your ship up.

I'm liking these ideas. If you find a way to actually do them, make 'em!

I'll try to work something out along these lines if I get the time.

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(url="http://"http://www.wheenit.com/monkey-robot/")Monkey-Robot(/url)

Actually, the insurance shouldn't require different outfits for different ships. Set the price to be dependent on the player's ship's mass (this is obviously an imperfect solution, but it does eliminate the necessity for having a couple of dozen insurance outfits). When the player buys the insurance, the outfit starts a silent mission which has a time limit equal to the term of the insurance and which fails on disable/destroy and sets a bit when it fails. That bit enables another mission which can appear anywhere with 100% chance. That mission's offer text is the insurance company paying you off. The mission can't be refused and auto-aborts, and pays on auto-abort. NOTE that the insurance outfit should, in this order, automatically fail the insurance mission, disable the failed control bit, then start the insurance mission. That will ensure that no bad juju happens if the player renews his insurance before the current insurance expires.

Purchasing the insurance also enables a control bit which a crön is watching. The crön has a preholdoff value of three months (a year, whatever. A time period somewhat less than the term of the insurance). Once that time period elapses, the crön triggers a silent mission which gives the player a warning (when he lands at a planet) that his insurance is almost up.

--Nathan

After posting, I realized that that process leaves a hole: if the insurance expires and thus, the insurance mission fails, the next time the player lands they will be paid off. So, a second crön is needed. The second crön is activated by the insurance outfit as well, and does its thing either on the day the insurance mission expires, or one day before (it depends on how Nova times these things). That crön aborts the insurance mission before the mission can expire. Thus, the insurance will expire without paying off, just as it should.

(again)

--Nathan

Great ideas for the insurance stuff, but what about savings bonds? I like the idea of interest for the bond. But I need to know if the selling price for an item can be changed. Otherwise it's going to be very complicated to impliment.

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This bar is dedicated to a little-known action-star in the twentieth century, which was nearly two millennia ago. The mere act of ordering a beer elicits a series of bizarre squawks and somersaults from any of the bar staff, and a multitude of bottles which are switched at brain-numbing speeds before being poured into your glass. Welcome to Jackie's.

Quote

Originally posted by Musapi:
**Would it be possible to make a banking system? Say the player could buy a savings bond for say, 10,000 credits. A rank bit would give the player an interest payment of 500 credits a day. This would prevent pirates from stealing all your money.

But the problem is, outfits seem to sell for half their purchase price. Is there a bit somewhere that can make the outfit sell for full price?
**

The rank system would work well. Implement multiple ranks so that you can sell multiple values of bond.
To make bonds work, for each bond value you will require a rank, a crön, two auto-aborting missions, and one non-auto-aborting mission. One of the auto-aborting missions pays (bond purchase price) - (bond sell value) and the other pays (bond sell value). I'll call them "greater" and "lesser," respectively.

Have the bond outfit activate the rank, activate the crön with an appropriate preholdoff value, and activate the non-aborting mission. The rank pays the interest, then when the crön starts, it deactivates the rank, disposes of the bond, and aborts the mission. The mission's OnAbort set expressions activate both auto-aborting missions, thereby paying the player the full value of the bond. If the bond is sold, its OnSell expressions cause the non-aborting mission to fail. That mission's OnFail field activates only the "greater" mission, thereby refunding the player the full value of the bond.

The problem with this implementation is that (from looking at my debuglog file) it seems that a crön can have more than one iteration of itself active simultaneously. Therefore, if the player sells their bond and buys another, identical bond before the first bond's crön has terminated, then when the initial crön does its thing the player's new bond will be affected. Buying multiple bonds probably wouldn't work either, because I don't think that multiple iterations of the same rank may be active simultaneously.

--Nathan (AKA The CrönMaster)

There is a way to change the selling price of an outfit (although there will be problems with ranks that have outfit price discounts, and this will not work for prices proportional to the ship's mass, or any other ways the outfit's price could be variable).

Make the outfit's OnSell start an auto-aborting mission that deducts the other half of the outfit's cost from the player's cash using the PayVal value range -50000 and down.

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