First Finance OXP

First Finance lends you the money to buy your ship - and manages the loan

F5F5 (ship's manifest page)
Loan Synopsis

Overview

So, you've got yourself a ship, but how exactly did you get it? Maybe you took a loan to buy it before the game started. This OXP will create a loan debt you have to pay off, when you start a new game. Yupp. This OXP will make the game a bit harder, nothing else.

While in the Vanilla game & Classic Elite your Cobra Mk.3 is a free graduation gift worth 150,000₢ (and in Frontier it was a gift from your grandfather), real life does not always work like that!

This oxp creates the Lave First Finance Corp, which lent you the money to buy your ship. You have a choice of repayment terms (based on either time or dockings), and this oxp takes it from there. You can repay more, there are issues with late payments, etc., etc.

Initial Terms

Loan Management Screen

Operation

• The Initial Terms come up once you select New Commander at game start.
• The next repayment is shown on your F5F5 Ship's Manifest screen
• The Loan Management screen can be found when docked through the F4 screen (ship and system interfaces)

- select Loans Menu (under the Loans category).

• You can also check the small print on the loan contract!

Argument

I have been giving this whole "get rich quick" idea a little think.

Specifically, the idea that when you graduate from Lave Academy you get your ship for free.

1) Everything in this game costs money: equipment, new ships, fuel etc. Why would Lave Academy be free?

2) If Lave Academy is giving you a ship upon graduation, how is the Academy paying for the 150,000 credits for the ship? Unless that price of the ship is included in the tuition?

3) Unless you have a relative die and leave you a ship (like in Frontier), most people can't afford a ship. Most people can't even afford to borrow this much money.

For example, let's say the Academy costs 30,000 credits per year. Four years of study (like a naval academy) equals 120,000 credits PLUS 150,000 credits for a ship PLUS 100.00 credits for buying cargo. That's 270,100.00 credits.

That doesn't sound free to me...

Just because you don't see it, doesn't mean it doesn't have to be paid. (After all, you graduated, didn't you?)

4) What if someone can't afford that much? Then what can they do? What if they are just some blue-collar worker trying to make a living in space?

In the real world, people who drive large trucks (18 wheelers) have to pay for training, then buy a 120,000 dollar truck before they even start. Who is going to loan someone money to buy a ship to trade in space when they might get killed?


  
It doesn't sound like Lave Academy would be free. When was the last time someone gave you a free car, or house?
How would the average person trade in space?

As Dennis Miller used to say on his show "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong." Danam22315 (2011)

License

• License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
• Author: Ocz
• Version: 0.3.0 (but 0.2.0 in the Manifest.plist!)
• Oolite version: v.1.81

Version History

• Version 0.3.0 1/8/2016

Renamed form "Loan Repayment" to "First Finance"

Declared beta status

Added backgrounds to loan menus

Added a warning text to arrival report, if payment cycle ends soon.

Added info text to the manifest screen (F5F5).

Minor bugfixes

• Version 0.2.0 1/3/2016 (Loan Repayment downloaded 86 times)

Revised texts

Revised loan engagement menus

Some bugfixes

New save and load methods using JSON

Galactic Drive disabled.

• Version 0.1.0 12/31/2015 ("Loan Repayment")

Initial alpha release

Notes

• Honourable mentions:

My thanks go to:

phkb. His $padTextRight in "StationDockControl_Interface" from "Station Dock Control" OXP was a big help in improving the menu. I used a few very important lines of code in _formatLineToList.

Disembodied for proof-reading most texts.

Norby and Cody for pitching their name ideas, that led to the name of this OXP.

• Sidenote:

If it breaks and isn't repaired by me within quite some time, feel free the recreate a repaired version. (Please check beforehand, if somebody else already did this and his/her version isn't working at this point either. Give them credit too, when due!)

Download

• First Finance (downloaded 77 times)
• Loan Repayment (downloaded 86 times) not too sure about this one by Ocz as above

Links

• BB Thread: Beginning the game with a loan to pay off (2014)
• Author: Ocz
• Economics
• Black Monk Monastery - for taking out other loans

Gameplay and Balance Indicator

Start your game with a massive loan!