Custom cargo

[Luomu]

Items are hardcoded at the moment, but missions would benefit from the ability to add quest specific items that actually show up in your cargo hold. I don't know what's easiest to implement, maybe a QUEST_ITEM equipment type and the ability to change its visible name from Lua. Or, add an additional inventory for Player's personal items which can contain these quest items, rewards, alien artifacts and other small non-cargo stuff.

[Brianetta]

I think the plan is to move away from hardcoded cargo and equipment in favour of something much more flexible.

[robn]

Its a plan, one I'm in favour of. I'd like to see fully scripted equipment and cargo. Most would be statically defined, but they'd all have potential for an update method or signal callback or something. I haven't thought much about what it means for commodity and equipment purchasing stuff, but my intent is to have the entire station (or other docked thing) fully script controlled, so I expect it'll all fall out from there. But lets get some ideas going!

[s20dan]

Id like to see varying prices from system to system not necesarilly based soley on supply and demand, but also on the quality of the goods in question, which would vary greatly depending on where you bought it from. Quality could be shown by colouring the text of said item green to red depending on how good it is, perhaps even alter the name slightly. EG: Planet A and B both provide wood due to their complex ecosystems, but Planet B has a variation of wood making it stronger and more valuable... Wood from planet B is highly sought after and harder to get but more proffitable to trade with.

And then the custom goods too... Planet X produces a drug which when consumed imprioves the human quality of life, it can only be created here ;) Sound familiar? Wars could be fought over these planets as they are highly valuable.

[robn]

This is starting to encroach slightly on John's pseudo-RTS economy stuff. I'm not sure that we can usefully consider commodity mechanics without considering the entire political/economic game. Is it time to go there? @tomm made some rumblings in IRC the other day about getting some clear design/direction down for this stuff, shall we hassle him? :)

[Brianetta]

We should at least ask him for a progress update. He's either working on it, or he isn't. (:

[tomm]

Commodities without gameplay differentiation are not very interesting, which is why I rejected the patches to add many more metal types, etc. There isn't much gameplay differentiation in Frontier, but there was:

• Some goods being illegal in different systems
• Radioactives and rubbish having negative value, making them waste goods
• Slaves and live animals -> fertilizer
• Hydrogen and military fuel as special fuel commodities

A 'special' commodity like some specific medicine or rare goods of some kind would be better implemented as items attached to certain missions, but currently the game engine doesn't support special items (except in an unintegrated way within lua - ie you couldn't jettison them like other items, etc)

I guess there is a need for unifying this. I don't want to expand stock market trading into many strange types though. It is better to restrict the high volume market to goods with general descriptions.

Regarding the gameplay differentiation of goods, we need to have a think about what would make sense and add to the game.

• Robots and hand weapons could be used as a boarding party. Playing as a pirate, you could shoot a target until its engines are damaged and it is immobile, and then send in the boarding party to take its goods. Slaves could also be used for this.

Without this kind of thing, lists of commodities are fairly flavourless spreadsheets of boredom.

I am thinking about game design, but I haven't written anything down. I will put some things to paper in the next week or so when my open university assignment is out of the way

[tomm]

When we implement mining there could be the concept that mining machines are self-assembling from the mining machinery commodity, and (with some sane limits) higher rates of mineral exploitation can be got from setting your mine up with more tonnes of mining machinery.

Maybe industrial machinery could be employed in similar units to process the ore on site and produce more valuable alloys from the raw ore.

Farm machinery on planets with life? It might be a fun thing to try, for the gamers with more sedentary inclinations.

[CreepyStepdad]

@Tomm or whoever:

Any updates?

[Brianetta]

Just linking #1719

[laarmen]

OK, I guess I can close that one now that #1719 is in.