Bucky Seifert on 4/1/2025 at 07:12
So a random idea I had, we all know cash_bonus in dark.cfg can be used to give you extra money. Well, I thought, can you set it to a negative to have it take money away? And it turns out, indeed you can! So that gave me an idea for something I'll call the "Rent's due" challenge, if no one else has thought of it before, where you have to put in something like cash_bonus -500, or whatever value you want, so that it cuts into your operating expenses. It also forces you to get at least whatever amount that is for the mission.
I can't be the first one to think of this though, right?
fortuni on 4/1/2025 at 08:20
How would that work?
Say there is a total of 1500g available in the mission and you need to get 1200g to complete the mission on expert. If you put -1200 in your cash_bonus at the start, then the max you will achieve if you collect 100% of loot is 300g, so you won't be able to finish the mission.
The only reasonable tweak is to find out ow much loot is in the mission, subtract the loot objective on which ever difficulty your playing on, which would then mean you would be forced to find 100% of the loot to finish the mission. But we all know searching big maps for that last gold coin is more often of not a complete nightmare, so not for me thanks.
Galaer on 4/1/2025 at 11:06
Quote Posted by fortuni
How would that work?
Say there is a total of 1500g available in the mission and you need to get 1200g to complete the mission on expert. If you put -1200 in your cash_bonus at the start, then the max you will achieve if you collect 100% of loot is 300g, so you won't be able to finish the mission.
Say there is a total of 2000g available in the mission and you need to get 1200g to complete the mission on expert. If you put -200 in your cash_bonus at the start, then you will have 600g of leeway to finish the mission.
You just assume that challengers are unable to notice these glaring issues. But you just need to tweek some numbers.
fortuni on 4/1/2025 at 13:31
Ok I get it, a neat way of increasing the percentage of loot required to finish mission, but be careful not to make it impossible to finish mission.
Galaer on 4/1/2025 at 14:34
Of course there are a lot easier ways to do this challenge without editing any files - just require from yourself to get certain percentage of max loot.
downwinder on 4/1/2025 at 18:21
they have missions where the shop takes away loot you find when you buy gear in mission and you cant spend to much or you wont have enough for loot goal
R Soul on 4/1/2025 at 23:59
The cash bonus has nothing to do with mission completion. It's just an adjustment to what you can spend in the pre-mission shop, and the cash left over (including negative values) doesn't carry over into the mission itself.
Seems like a bit of a blunt instrument. Some FMs might only have a small amount of starting cash, and for a campaign it wouldn't make sense to have this debt for each mission (assuming each one starts with a shop rather than carrying over all items from the previous mission). It seems far easier to make this a choice just like we usually do with play-styles, so we can make sure it fits the context of the FM.
