Free Trade Zone

Free Trade Zone
Size (metres, W×H×L)	750 x 750 x 750
Manoeuvrability	Roll: 0.0 Pitch: 0.0
Rotating	Yes
Energy recharge rate	5
Armaments	None
Defenders	6
OXP or standard	OXP
Beacon	Z

Overview

The so-called "Free Trade Zones" exist in Multi-Government systems (TL7+). They are located within mined-out Rock Hermits, dragged beyond the witchpoint beacon, where various morally dyslexic ship captains can trade outside the official, GalCop-protected, network. There are some bargains to be found – as you might expect, given how most of the goods are acquired – but quantities are often low and there are often unscrupulous individuals in the area. It's really a buyer's market, unless you find it awkward to go near main stations. Fuel and basic equipment are available, at a premium. Their out-of-the-way location can make FTZs hard to find, but they are marked as "Z" on the Advanced Space Compass.

Free Trade Zones exist because of the highly complex legal nature of Multi-Government planets, their collective paranoia over perceived sovereignty infringements by GalCop, and their general inability to make collective decisions. Although FTZs are recognised as nation states by the planetary authorities, GalCop currently regard those who visit these stations as (minor) Offenders, and will garnish your legal status accordingly. As part of the deal with GalCop, the FTZs are obliged to provide information on all who enter and leave. Despite persistent GalCop requests, however, they still refuse to give details of those ships' cargo manifests, citing "commercial confidentiality".

New rules from GalCop have meant that FTZ's can, as an alternative to marking docking ships as offenders, pay GalCop a premium of 1000₢ for each ship that visits the station. As the governing bodies of the FTZ's are in no position to subsidise this expenditure, they have instead given the captains the option. When a ship docks, they will be asked what their preferred option is: accept the bounty increase, or pay the 1000₢.

Also, visitors to FTZ's will now need to request docking clearance, as a series of accidents in the docking tunnel have had a serious impact on prices.

NOT to be confused with the Trader Outpost (Oolite)/Trade Outpost which just function as normal dockable stations.

BGS

BGS enhances this OXP

Fiction

The asteroid "Stranglehold", in the story of the same name, is based on my idea of what FTZs are like - although Stranglehold itself is a very up-market version of the type. (Disembodied/Blaze O'Glory, 2016).

Download

• Downloadable through the in-game Expansions Manager or
• Download FTZ.oxz v0.31 (downloaded 2722 times).
  

(The previous version (0.15) can be downloaded at FTZ v0.15.oxp.zip(168.8KB) (version 0.15, updated 8 October 2010).

Version History

0.31

• Updates to shipdata to link into randomshipnames and Skilled NPC's (thanks to Rustum for the entries).
• Update the spawning mechanism to allow for games to be saved at FTZ's.

0.30

• Updated FTZ model to use the Griff shadered rock hermit.

0.22

• Frequent visitors to Free Trade Zones will now receive a discount on the fine amount.
• Increased destroyed station recreation wait period to 60 days.
• Added code to utilise Station Validator OXP, if installed.
• Tweaks to the market script to cater for non-core commodities.

0.21

• Converted model to be a variation of the new Rock Hermit.
• Added a customised docking tunnel texture for use by BGS.
• Turned on docking requests.
• Limited FTZ's to only appear in TL7 systems or higher.
• Converted plist-style script to Javascript.
• Updated the populator routine to use the new Oolite populator methods.
• Added routines to check if the FTZ was destroyed in a system, and only recreate the station after 30 days have passed.
• Updated the market script to use the new style.
• Added an option for commanders who dock at the station to either take the bounty increase, or pay a fine.

0.15:

• Changed "legalStatus_number" to "commanderLegalStatus_number" to conform with trunk changes. Docking with an FTZ once again *adds* 5 to your bounty, instead of *setting it* to 5 ...

0.14:

• Corrected error where FTZ escorts could get called up as ordinary escorts. Thanks to Eric Walch for the correction.

0.13:

• Pirates around the FTZ now carry some cargo.
• GalCop may, from time to time, put on a show of force in the vicinity of an FTZ -- cries of "restrictive trade practices" notwithstanding.

0.11:

• There is now an automatic 5-point fine to your legal record for visiting an FTZ (v0.1 just added 5 to your record if you were clean: now bad people get fined too). Thanks to Commander McLane on the Oolite BBS for the coding.

Credits

Free Trade Zones are created by Disembodied

Thanks to Commander_McLane on the Oolite BBS.

Corrected error where FTZ escorts could get called up as ordinary escorts. Thanks to Eric_Walch for the correction

Thanks to Disembodied for coming up with the original idea and OXP. Disembodied has very kindly allowed phkb to update and maintain it.

Discussion

You can find the discussion thread about the Free Trade Zone on the Oolite BB (2007) with an earlier discussion at Understanding commodities.plist (also 2007).

Copyright

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Version	Released	License	Features	Category	Author(s)	Feedback
0.31	2017-11-17	CC BY-NC-SA 3.0	Trading	Dockables OXPs	Disembodied, Griff, phkb	Oolite BB

Gameplay and Balance indicator