Olympia PBEM

16.3: Operating a ferry

There are several commands useful for operating a commercial ferry:

fee

Sets the fee passengers will be charged

board

Passengers use this to pay their fee and board a ferry

unload

Unload passengers once the destination is reached

ferry

Signals passengers waiting in port that they may board

The captain of a ferry must issue `fee gold' command to set a fee which will be charged to passengers wishing to board his ship. The fee is expressed as how many gold pieces per 100 weight of the passenger's stack will be charged.

For instance, if the captain wanted to charge 1/2 gold per unit weight of the passengers stack, he would issue `fee 50'. (a 50 gold fee for every 100 weight).

The fee is a property of the captain, not the ship.

A character may clear the fee with the `fee 0' order. If no fee is set, then the ship is not considered to be operating as a ferry, and characters are may not use the board order to enter the ship.

Passengers issue `board ship' to board a ferry. The order will fail if the ship is not present, or if it is not operating as a ferry (the captain of the ship has no fee set). board will cause the character to pay the captain the required boarding fee, then move the character's stack onto the ship.

The captain shouldn't issue an admit order to let characters on board who will be paying to take the ferry. Otherwise they could board the ship with move instead of board, bypassing the ferry fee.