About This File
Demanding Loans
In my opinion, the loans offered by Pelican Trust in vanilla XCL have three things that get in the way of them being as fun as they could be:
1.) Having 30 days to repay even the very small loans is way too much time. It both makes the loans too easy to repay, which kills the tension, and means that it takes forever to get to the compliance content if you actually want to see it. 30 in-game days can take hours of real-time gameplay, even if you're rushing through things.
2.) Meanwhile, the compliance penalties feel a bit overwhelming for larger loans. The number of partners you have to satisfy for a $5000 loan can definitely seem a bit tedious, after a while. It just doesn't quite seem worth it, given the relatively small value you get out of the $5000 once you're past first week or two in game.
3.) The largest loan offered is just a bit too small to feel satisfying. With the number of potential money sinks (pills, clothes, makeup, watches, nano nano upgrades, etc.) you can run through $5000 very quickly, and on the flip side, it becomes relatively easy to earn fairly large amounts at DynaPill once you're a few promotions in and understand the system.
So, I decided to throw together a quick modlet to make the flow of things a bit more interesting.
First of all, I added one additional level of loan you can take out once you unlock the more generous loan options, for $10000, which still feels like a reasonably useful amount even once you have more earning potential.
Also, the amount of time you have to repay a loan scales with the size of the loan. Pelican Trust will give you 3 days to repay a $250 loan, 5 days for a $500 loan, two weeks for a $2500 loan, three weeks for a $5000 loan, and a full month to repay a $10000 loan. Making an interest payment on your loan will similarly scale with the size of the loan. It should still be completely possible to repay your loans, but with the lower time to repay your loans, you might actually be forced to make interest payments to extend the deadline, or fail altogether if you make some particularly large purchases at the wrong time.Â
And if you should default on your loan, you'll face slightly reduced compliance penalties at the higher end. Still fun, with high enough requirements that you won't be getting out of your "repayment" immediately, but no longer quite so much that they feel like they're going to last forever. Instead of 25 partners after failing to repay a $2500 loan, you'll need to complete an encounter with 20 partners. Instead of 50 partners for a $5000 loan, you'll have to complete an encounter with 30 partners. And if you take out one of the new $10000 loans, you'll have to finish 40 free use encounters before you're released from the Compliance program.
Quick side note: This mod mostly works by setting the due date and other terms of the loans when you receive them, so it won't automatically update any existing loans you have taken out on an old save.
What's New in Version 1.2.0
Released
v.1.1.0
- Added a little compatibility tweak for Fresh Start, so that the starting loans/debts you can begin the game with have the same scaling for how quickly you'll need to repay them and the penalty from the Compliance program if you default.
v.1.2.0
- Fixed a bug in the compatibility passage for Fresh Start. (I set a string value in what should have been a numeric value. Whoops.)
- Added a passage that will correct the inappropriate string value to a numeric value.