Ship Costs

[Aeonic]

It just occurred to me that, assuming you were to rework the starting situation a bit, you could change things around by giving each ship an expense in the selection screen.

Suppose the player starts out with a solid, oh, 50k. They then have to choose their ship, which can cost anywhere from say 10k to 50k. The ships may come totally unequipped except for the necessities - armor, drive, reactor. Those are essentially what you're paying for when you purchase the ship. Better ships come with better standard equipment.

So when starting a new game, you have to decide whether you want to choose a cheap ship that may have some disadvantages and try to outfit it as best you can with what's available in the starting system - or you can go with an already outfitted, shiny new ship and little money left over to spend.

Some of the more expensive ships may result in more difficult starts, but they may have performance attributes that cheap ships won't be able to match later on, such as better maneuverability or cargo space (or maybe even nonCritical armor segments!). A huge unequipped freighter may be the same price as a top-of-the-line fighter, but in the long run you can do more with the freighter.

All you have to do to incorporate the cost is adjust the ship's startingCredits value to equal your starting money minus whatever the ship cost. So that's no big deal.

Doesn't really improve the balance situation any, but who cares all that much about balance anyway...

[Ttech]

Correct me if I'm wrong but thats kinda the way it works out in the game now.
You start out in the store and then you get your ship and you start from there remaining credits go to purchasing stuff.


But I'd think adding harder starts would be hard... Rewriting a lot of the stuff thats there now, but I can't say for sure.

[Arisaya]

Correct me if I'm wrong but thats kinda the way it works out in the game now.
You start out in the store and then you get your ship and you start from there remaining credits go to purchasing stuff.


But I'd think adding harder starts would be hard... Rewriting a lot of the stuff thats there now, but I can't say for sure.

harder starts is hard, simply since as you play along, that "hard start" very quickly desolves, and for everything but the sapphire, you can't really lower the $$ much lower.

[Ttech]

@ Wolfy: True. Just wondering, how long will it take you to reply to this?

[Arisaya]

@ Wolfy: True. Just wondering, how long will it take you to reply to this?

who, me or aeonic?

[Aeonic]

I wonder if its possible to start with negative money...

[Ttech]

@ Wolfy: True. Just wondering, how long will it take you to reply to this?

who, me or aeonic?

You. You always seem to be replying to my messages right after I send them.

I wonder if its possible to start with negative money...

Yes it is possible, but I was trying to see the maximum value of credits at the start of the game so its possible the negative was because the numbers were too big (at least that's my only explanation).

[Bobby]

negative money is possible, but not recommended. the buy and sell screens don't handle it as expected, letting you buy -x items and other weird stuff.

There is no viable debt system in the vanilla game, but would be an interesting mod for someone to make. hopefully allowing a way to buy fuel on credit would be included.

[Ttech]

negative money is possible, but not recommended. the buy and sell screens don't handle it as expected, letting you buy -x items and other weird stuff.

There is no viable debt system in the vanilla game, but would be an interesting mod for someone to make. hopefully allowing a way to buy fuel on credit would be included.

I'd say like trade one item for fuel, but that is already kind of what the game is like.