More missions that start ordinarily as jobs but become missions

bene-dictator commented 1 year ago

Problem Description

Something that would help new players especially is if more jobs led into stories and small mission chains. These would occur far rarer than if you went to the spaceport for a mission, but it would give the universe a bit more life.

The closest we get to these right now are a transport job that gives a dialogue box saying that your passengers that want to be discreet, and the mystery cube missions in Deep space.

Desired Solution

I have a couple of ideas:

Transport or courier missions that tell you to go to one place, but once you land on a planet to refuel, you're told that you've been given the wrong destination and you have to either go to the new destination (and get a a few more credits) or decline it.
Those fugitives I were talking about; it might have the mission fail if the player is scanned.
On the same line, the player might be given a cargo mission that looks fine but if you're scanned the Navy will hail you (in a dialogue box) that you've got illegal cargo on board. You'll be told to land at the nearest available planet to sort it out; the cargo might be taken away or it might just be a mistake by the Navy, and there'll be a conversation panel about some bureaucracy, which could give the player a better idea of how the Republic works.

Alternative Approaches

It's pretty specific, I don't see any alternative approaches.

Additional Context

No response

Zitchas commented 1 year ago

I think the fugitives do fail if you get scanned. At least, the ones with cargo do.

But in any case, this is a good idea, and those are good ideas for missions. Courier mini-strings were a staple of the EV franchise: They were a great first introduction to the player about becoming part of an organization and unlocking new jobs of increasing difficulty. It's a shame that we don't have any in ES yet, especially since we've got luxury quarters and support for other attributes that would let us do other interesting things.

Perhaps a transport mission string that starts off just being charter flights for some company that organizes VIP transports. After demonstrating their reliability, their contact tells them that if they install luxury quarters on their ship, she's got some clients lined up... Have a few tiers of missions, gradually escalating, each tier unlocking some better paying but more demanding jobs, eventually perhaps having missions that are basically tailored to someone flying a Star Queen.

They're great ways to learn the universe, learn the lore, and develop familiarity with the game, the setting, and the mechanisms. And tie the player more firmly into the story.

But yes. We need more small content. If anyone reading this happens to want to get involved in Endless Sky, this is the place to start: Writing short missions. Single missions, maybe pairs or trios. Stuff that adds flavor and interest, and ties into bits and pieces of the lore of the various worlds and organizations in human space.

https://github.com/endless-sky/endless-sky/wiki/CreatingMissions is the place to start for how to write a mission, but I'd go one step simpler: Play the game, find a mission that does the same thing you want to do, then go find it in the data files and just copy it. Use that as your template, and just change out all the names, dialog, and conversations to suit your new mission. It's how many of us got started doing it.

Hurleveur commented 1 year ago

I have this kind of thing in the Unfettered campaign, one of the main missions is a job and 3 side missions too

endless-sky / endless-sky