ID-Based Cargo Discounts

[Clarkie]

Excellent idea, it has my full support.

[Kal-el]

I think this is a great idea. Maybe it will take away the "powertrader" moniker also. It is frustrating when you take a commodity to RP and then there isn't anything to take from that stop to make any profit.

Everybody talks about this being an RP server, but the last I checked you cannot spend "RP". That is why people take the most profitable trade runs most of the time or all the time.

Great Idea!!!

[akka1000]

i like this idea.
so it basically means that a properly ID'ed, tagged trader, flying the proper house or corperation ship would get a bonus to certain commodities

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Come on, everyone!

Hark, the Bounty Hunters si-ing,
Death to all the pirate kings...

Goals: To be interviewed by Chris Hansen on Dateline NBC.

[Sprolf]

At the moment, I was talking specifically about IDs.
But yes, I was thinking ships could give a bonus, as I mentioned luxury liners and such.

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[sovereign]

Don't mean to rain on the parade, but there may be an issue. A lot of high buying locations (for example cardamine, artifacts, and wine on Manhattan) also sell the commodities- you'd normally never want to buy them there outside of RP purposes, and they mainly just tip you off "hey! take this here!". But there's a problem. Suppose the Outcast ID gets a bonus to cardamine sales. Not to mention that this may cause the side-effect of cardamine being more expensive to pick up (not necessarily by a noticeable amount here, but for some commodities- like nukes- it could be very problematic) but what's to stop someone with a normal trader ID from buying the (ludicrously expensive) cardamine from Manhattan, toss it over to their Outcast buddy in space, then have him sell it and split the profits? Other than the mass of lawfuls hanging around Manhattan, of course. However, there are other bases in which this would be far more achievable: things like a Synth Foods player with a load of paste near, say, Freeport 9, isn't terribly conspicuous to the casual observer passing by. It is, of course, an abuse of mechanics, but those things need to be taken into account before implementation.

Now, if Cannon's divine coding abilities could make this only work when the properly ID'd player bought the RP commodity from someplace its buying price is "green" and sold it to where its selling price is "green", then that would be immensely cool. However, that's about as likely as an FLHook plugin that identifies lolwutters and auto-bans them, figures out whether people intentionally F1'd/disconnected or had lightning strike their house, or turn Scrap Metal into Gold- wait, scratch that last one, it's pretty simple.

Figure out a way to prevent abuse and we can swamp Cannon with requests for it. But try not to have him spend his precious time figuring out what to aim for when he could be making the next /givecash.

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[Sprolf]

Don't mean to rain on the parade, but there may be an issue. A lot of high buying locations (for example cardamine, artifacts, and wine on Manhattan) also sell the commodities- you'd normally never want to buy them there outside of RP purposes, and they mainly just tip you off "hey! take this here!". But there's a problem. Suppose the Outcast ID gets a bonus to cardamine sales. Not to mention that this may cause the side-effect of cardamine being more expensive to pick up (not necessarily by a noticeable amount here, but for some commodities- like nukes- it could be very problematic) but what's to stop someone with a normal trader ID from buying the (ludicrously expensive) cardamine from Manhattan, toss it over to their Outcast buddy in space, then have him sell it and split the profits? Other than the mass of lawfuls hanging around Manhattan, of course. However, there are other bases in which this would be far more achievable: things like a Synth Foods player with a load of paste near, say, Freeport 9, isn't terribly conspicuous to the casual observer passing by. It is, of course, an abuse of mechanics, but those things need to be taken into account before implementation.

Now, if Cannon's divine coding abilities could make this only work when the properly ID'd player bought the RP commodity from someplace its buying price is "green" and sold it to where its selling price is "green", then that would be immensely cool. However, that's about as likely as an FLHook plugin that identifies lolwutters and auto-bans them, figures out whether people intentionally F1'd/disconnected or had lightning strike their house, or turn Scrap Metal into Gold- wait, scratch that last one, it's pretty simple.

Figure out a way to prevent abuse and we can swamp Cannon with requests for it. But try not to have him spend his precious time figuring out what to aim for when he could be making the next /givecash.

Outcasts would get, if they got a bonus at all, about a very small 10 or 5% just to make an already good commodity somewhat better.


Also, and much more importantly:
What I am talking about is not a price bonus. That would be prone to all sorts of abuse, you are correct.

What I'm referring to is a cargospace bonus.

You can carry more of a certain item.
Not sell it for more (although you make more when you carry more, obviously) but carry more.
This should make puny items (food, water, consumer goods, oxygen - the stuff that we should actually be shipping, not countless tons of software and tobacco) actually worthwhile to trade.

I can't really think of how cargospace might be abused, but then again, I'm not a devilishly inventive person when it comes to things like that. I still don't know how some commands can be abused...

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[sovereign]

Ooh. Now that's an interesting thought. Making, say, Daumann Heavy Construction IDs be able to pack ship hull panels more efficiently than your run of the mill bloke, doubling the profits off of it. I'd expect it to be a nightmare to code, though... and probably easier to balance if the relevant commodities went from 3 to 2 or some such- a bit harder to explain when the relevant commodity is, say, Synth Paste. If, however, it is possible to have things take up decimal amounts of cargo- this is quite a nice idea if it can be implemented. Colossal "if" there, though...

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[Weedalot]

i like this idea very much.

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♠ Because we can ♠

[reavengitair]

I likes.

Ya. I likes!

[Friday]

Been searching around - where does it specify the capacity of each commodity? I can see base price variations, but not a size variation?

EDIT: Found it in 'select_equip.ini'

The volume of a commodity is given as....volume!

These all look like default values - I dont know if they can be changed for individual players.

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