"Role-play oriented cargo" with an in-game additional perk purpose

[nOmnomnOm]

So from @Xoria 's thread here: http://discoverygc.com/forums/showthread.php?tid=136310
And also from the game called "Faster than light" and "Fractured Space", I got an idea for something that would be quite neat to do.

This idea would need to have a plugin for it or whatever dark magic the devs do.
The concept of the idea is to not only have some nice looking cargo with an info card on it that would help in your RP for other players to see but also provide the player with some perk for game-play when he has this commodity.

Let's say you want to have a medical unit commodity that Xoria was thinking of adding. For now as an idea, this will just be in honest terms just sitting on your cargo and will be useful for OTHERS to scan your ship and say "oh hey that is a medic crew. must be something to do with his/her RP!" .

But what if that medical unit did something else for your ship for game play.

For example... Lets say that all human cargo would now have a slow decay rate and this would be because of long exposures to disease, radiation, etc etc that could have your passengers slowly get sick and die off. BUT with a medical crew, you could have them alive permanently!

Now i know what you are thinking. Why should we add this idea if we can just not have this decay problem.
Well this idea only works when you have a lot of selection to choose from!

You could have things like: Engineer, Medic, Pilot, Gunman, etc. All these guys would have something that your ship could get buffed for.
And the trick here is that you can just have ONE of these guys added into a slot on your ship.

SO

Medic: Removes the decay rate of human cargo.

Pilot: Gives a boost perhaps faster cruise/thrust.

Navigator: Gives a boost to radar distance (and maybe can detect cloak if close enough?)

Engineer: Gives a boost to turn speed of the ship but scanning is lower.

Gunman: Gives a boost to gun damage but suffers in turn speed (or scanning).

There can also be a crew set for things like cloaking, jumping, speed of cruise, cargo size, armor boost etc.
Each one would have some sort of buff and maybe to make it balanced something else would be sacrificed.

This would make things a whole lot more interesting in terms of customizing your ship to what you want to do. Not only will this give the player the commodity they want to RP with but also give it a purpose for gameplay.
As you can see, since you can choose just one team it is like choosing a class to play as with it's own unique set up in buffs. Because there are so many options they then help to balance the perks against each other since if you can have one thing you cannot have something else.

I hope this explanation is sufficient to get some discussion going on. I understand this probably cannot be implemented into disco... or can it?

Let me know what you think.

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[E X O D I T E]

Exotic Entertainers and Casualties already decay, but the Casualties run is not profitable and the Exotic Entertainers are 50k across the board.

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[nOmnomnOm]

Exotic Entertainers and Casualties already decay, but the Casualties run is not profitable and the Exotic Entertainers are 50k across the board.

Yeah well I was the one that made those Entertainers and talked with Xoria about implementing it.
Entertainers are a whole different matter entirely. It was intended to be a Faction Perk actually but still waiting on that.

So you ask why it is 50k across the board and has decay rate?
Because you rent from AFC so it decays.
Because it is an RP commodity.
Because if a pirate steals it then they can sell it for a decent amount anywhere.

So yeah... i dont know about Casualties but please don't mix Exotic Entertainers into this conversation... it's kinda special on it's own and i dont expect the Medical buff to stop that decay rate.

[Arioch]

A fun idea, but the downside I see is that then PVP'ers are now targeting those with this RP cargo, for that boost in turn speed. It invites more possibility for people to destroy you to gain the benefit, without the RP.

I would say that instead of buffing some ship stat, that it does something that won't impact PVP'ing, but buffs something related to trading (as your examples gave) or something RP like. I like the medical equipment idea, and perhaps something to decrease the scan time on a Hyperspace scanner, or decreases the amount of time to cloak. Something that, as you said, is gameplay oriented, but doesn't pose a benefit to straight up PVP. Otherwise the RP cargo will no longer be for an RP element only.

I'll think some more too on what could be done as well - I'm a fan of the idea!

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[nOmnomnOm]

A fun idea, but the downside I see is that then PVP'ers are now targeting those with this RP cargo, for that boost in turn speed. It invites more possibility for people to destroy you to gain the benefit, without the RP.

I would say that instead of buffing some ship stat, that it does something that won't impact PVP'ing, but buffs something related to trading (as your examples gave) or something RP like. I like the medical equipment idea, and perhaps something to decrease the scan time on a Hyperspace scanner, or decreases the amount of time to cloak. Something that, as you said, is gameplay oriented, but doesn't pose a benefit to straight up PVP. Otherwise the RP cargo will no longer be for an RP element only.

I'll think some more too on what could be done as well - I'm a fan of the idea!

Just remember that what i am thinking is that the commodities wont stack. Maybe there would be a special slot for that actual commodity that upon death you would even lose and have to get back? dunno.

They dont stack and you can have a buff for just one of them. So... even for PvP... a player that has a better turn speed but less scanning could be leveled against a player that has better gun damage but less of something else... but think about also what happens when a trader wants to put these types of pvp buffs on his ship. He will therefore sacrifice the cargo perks he could have.

Also... the perks for pvp could be like 5-10% ? Maybe even adding a perk for core regeneration or core size. A reactor engineer for example.
If you think about it, the core would be buffed but you wont have a buff on turn speed. So it is going with the play style as well as your role play.

[Arioch]

Hmm very good point. At the same time, that 5-10% will be of note for a PVP/er.

Now, not to say PVPing is bad, or trying to min-max your stats for a better edge is bad. But the purpose of these commodities is first and foremost for RP.

Now, having a buff in engine core? That'd be a benefit for all, PVP or not. Or having it not classified as a commodity that is lost when you die. Perhaps have these as an equipment module of sorts?

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[nOmnomnOm]

Perhaps...
But initial idea is that there is some crew on your ship that would be working to buff that specific thing. Dunno

What makes this system work is that there needs to not be a "go-to' set-up. If you have a jump ship perk and it will only be used for jumping ships and the people wont want to use other perks rather than the jumping perk, then it is a dry perk to have.

But for example... if that jumping perk would be decrease your scanning radius... that would mean that you have a disadvantage to jump away from some threat until they are really near but you can jump faster. This make is so that the Jumper now has to decide if he wants Jumping faster or radar scanning as his perk.

Basically what I mean by all of this is that to have a balance in this the ship needs to have more than one option to consider and not only 1 option that is considered the best. They can ofc just not have a crew buff at all and fly like usual too.

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[E X O D I T E]

Would this be NPC-produced or PoB-produced?
The "crew" bit on PoBs would be a nightmare because, well, people do /setprice (absolutely last item number) 2000 200 200, so I will have at most 200 aboard a Core 1, unless we're going to pull a Cloak Disruptor and make it only available to Core 3s on up.
On NPC bases, it can become wicked expensive and not make sense, because the wide range of materials would be factored in, unless we're going to be pulling a "make tons of money mining" thing and make the prices straight-up nonsensical and/or uniform across the board.
Out of curiosity, why was the price quintupled?

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[nOmnomnOm]

Would this be NPC-produced or PoB-produced?
The "crew" bit on PoBs would be a nightmare because, well, people do /setprice (absolutely last item number) 2000 200 200, so I will have at most 200 aboard a Core 1, unless we're going to pull a Cloak Disruptor and make it only available to Core 3s on up.
On NPC bases, it can become wicked expensive and not make sense, because the wide range of materials would be factored in, unless we're going to be pulling a "make tons of money mining" thing and make the prices straight-up nonsensical and/or uniform across the board.
Out of curiosity, why was the price quintupled?

Not to be rude but what exactly are you referring to in your last question?

As for the first one... i think NPC produced with a price to reflect on the perk.

[E X O D I T E]

Not to be rude but what exactly are you referring to in your last question?

As for the first one... i think NPC produced with a price to reflect on the perk.

Exotic Entertainers were originally 10k on Newport. Now they're 50k.

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