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Maybe a BAD smuggler with some NICE contraband!

  • Marrend
  • 06/23/2015 03:02 PM
  • 2896 views
I'm not quite sure what triggered it, but, I was working on the "rumors" file when a thought occurred to me: Contraband isn't really that illegal. Right now, there's no "penalty" for shipping it. It's just like any other good on the market right now. Since encounters activate after a system-jump, would it not make sense to include a Conditional Branch (or four?), that checks too see if contraband is in the player's cargo bay, and initiate an encounter with police/local militia/the Confederation/what-have-you?

I'm not quite sure what kinds of properties the police would have. Actually, I may want to revise the properties of rebels and mercenaries to make them slightly fairer, but still a threat to deal with.

As for the "rumors" file, itself, the plan is still to fill it with 50% game-tips, 50% flavor-text, 50% complete junk, and 100% random. I have yet to write entries under the "flavor-text" category, but, I'm trying not to worry too much about it at the moment.

Posts

Pages: 1
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
As a side-effect, if contraband is going to have an additional cost of "get attacked after each jump", their prices might go up in order to reflect the additional risk-reward ratio involved.

*Edit: Note that CARGO missions do not "roll" contraband for the type of good that can be shipped.

*Edit2: Also note that CARGO missions don't actually take any space, or have an item slot associated to them anymore. So, if players have contraband at all, they specifically have to buy it.
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
Since encounters activate after a system-jump, would it not make sense to include a Conditional Branch (or four?), that checks too see if contraband is in the player's cargo bay, and initiate an encounter with police/local militia/the Confederation/what-have-you?


Heck yes! Illegal smuggling is the s#$t!~

I mean... don't search my bags, please, sir.

As for the "rumors" file, itself, the plan is still to fill it with 50% game-tips, 50% flavor-text, 50% complete junk, and 100% random.


I would prefer not to get total junk. Only the good stuff, sir!

But yeah, these are totally rad ideas.
nhubi
Liberté, égalité, fraternité
11099
Ah any good smuggler has hidden shielded compartments for the transportation of contraband, cigarettes, alcohol, aspiring Jedi Knights....
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
I'm somewhat concerned about what the interaction is if a player is on a mission, and is carrying contraband. Granted, I haven't actually coded the police-processing yet, but, I do not want to have players fight two battles in a row when entering a new area. To say nothing about fighting two enemies simultaneously. In most cases, I've found that fighting just one enemy is bad enough!

Then again, I envisioned the encounters with police to be with the other random encounters, and mission-encounters always take priority over those. So, I could be worrying about nothing! YAAAAAAAY!

*Edit: Star Wars, nhubi? Not that I don't appreciate the reference, but, I was referencing 0:31 to 0:41.

*Edit2, @Cash: So, what you're saying is that you prefer your test-build to be skewed toward against rolling the "junk" rumors? 'kay.

Which somehow reminds me that I haven't set anybody up as official testers yet?

*Edit3: Initial tests of the police event seem to function! Hooray for Conditional Branches, and the new "contraband_detected" function!

This still brings me to the question of how bad-ass these guys are, or, rather, should be. The answer probably lies between the rank 1 equipment and rank 2 equipment (assuming the initial difficulty of the game). Though, given that the middle-ground is where rebels and mercenaries currently get some of their numbers from, the numbers have to be skewed more towards the rank 1 set.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Testing the police event was kinda weird at first, since there's only two pirate planets in the game to get contraband from. Well, players can acquire contraband from pleasure planets, but, it's certainly not the most profitable thing to do! Also, I may have accidentally wrote the "contraband_detected" function to only look at the first item in the carried-items list, despite the intent to loop until an item of contraband is found, or until the end of the list, whichever comes first. I believe that minor point has been fixed.

There is a minor credit reward given to players after destroying a pirate, mercenary, or rebel ship. Destroying police-ships have no similar reward. On one hand, it doesn't make a lot of sense in my head to grant a credit reward for destroying police/militia/confederation/whatever, as they are most probably the entity that is paying for the destruction of pirates/mercs/rebels. On the other, it just doesn't quite sit right with me to have a type of enemy that grants no reward when the others do.

Outside of this thought-process going towards inserting police (or whatever) into the random mission generator as mission-givers, I would like to hear a few thoughts on granting a credit reward for the destruction of police-ships.
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
This sounds ballin', Marrend. Whenever you're ready to give me another build to test, I can give you feedback on that if you'd like. (But perhaps more selfishly I'd just like to try it out of curiosity :P)
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
Hrm. I wasn't really planning on handing out another build until I had rumors fleshed out more, and generally being in the game. Though, it might behoove me to include a few, and disable plot advancement via random missions until the plot-rumor-events are ready to go be tested.

*Edit: That later test would be the more-accurate-to-the-final-product build to test. Of course, if one's curiosity is insatiable, I may be persuaded to send out an earlier build.

*Edit2: Oh, crap. Graphics. Er.... yeah, later!
CashmereCat
Self-proclaimed Puzzle Snob
11638
You just take your time, I'm just being overly eager. I really like the system that you've got, that's why. If at any point you feel at a loss what to do next, you can send it to me then.
Marrend
Guardian of the Description Thread
21781
So, I was doing some rumors, and came up with something so bad, that putting in a secret message (ie, regular text placed between square brackets) is the only way I would be okay with having others "see" it.

You have been forewarned.


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