Smuggler Archive
Thread: Revamp Discussion: Contraband/Missions PART 2 (Solutions)
SpinningCloud wrote:
Memnock,
I agree...which is why I logged back in here to post some concerns, right along the lines of what you mentioned.
I take it there will be a way for a Smuggler to discover he's had a bounty taken out on him? If not then there really needs
to be.
We expect that but Greenmarine hasn't told us what yet.
However, once I as a Smuggler see a bounty on me what's to prevent me from making my way to the most travel-expensive spot in the galaxy? Unless the BH reward is high enough to cover the most expensive travel then why would a BH pursue me other than for exp?
There is nothing stopping you from hiding out on Rori- but a lot of BHs don't care about the money as much as getting the job done (at least that is how it sounds to me when I read their forum). Even though I am sure they will get handsome rewards for completing a bounty, it might not matter much.
Now if you make BH rewards high enough to cover all possible travel costs then what is to prevent me (as Master I need no more exp) from teaming up with a BH and 'milking' the system. I rip off the entire cargo and my BH friend (or me on a second acct for that matter) grabs the bounty, I let him kill me and we both profit. I also have Master medic so it's no problem healing my wounds.
That's another thing we have been discussing- Some have mentioned timesinks as punishment- My idea here was: once a smuggler has been killed/caught/lost the package they are not allowed to perform illegal task for (X) amount of minutes.
That means:
No spice crafting/use
No slicing
All sliced equipment is locked in your inventory
Smuggling Terminals won't work for you etc. etc.
Seems like there are a few gaping holes that need to be considered.
And they are.
On one hand Smugglers NEED means for avoiding the BHs. On the other hand BHs shouldn't be required to spend more than the reward they'll get finding us. And furthermore you don't want Smugglers and BHs teaming up to milk the system.
Well put brother!
SpinningCloud wrote:
With sliced weapons and armor being banned goods I do NOT think confiscation is appropriate.
Many players litterally spend their entire savings on their armor and weapons then get them sliced. This is just WAY too much of a punishment. It basically erases a considerable amount of work the player would have gone through to acqjire certain items.
This IS entertainment. It's generally not a good idea to turn someones entertainment into a source of frustration.
Banned items have never been said to be confiscated. Not sure where you're reading this at all. Only highly illegal goods had the possibility of confiscation. Where did you even get this????
Duckfat wrote:
Ternque01 wrote:
How about this idea to resolve public sale on illegal contraband?
Remove illegal items from the public bazaar and normal player vendors. In their place put a special public bazaar in major city cantinas and special player vendors in player city cantinas/casinos. These would sell sliced gear and spices.
Also institue a rise in smuggler Infamy for slicing or trading spices in public. The exception would be in cantinas and other "shady" areas.
Don't ban public sale of illegal items, just drag it to where it belongs.
Overall, I do see implementing this ideas to be a pain in the butt, and I think the player base has alot of "time sinks" as it is. I think I might have to back up not implementing them. However, it would be nice that when aplayer goes to a cantina for a dance or music that they can pick up "a few essentials", lol.
Then what will happen to my unadvertised way out of the way black market vendors in my house?
It sounds like you will be the first the Empire catches when they recieve word of it. If I made crack, I would not sell it out of my house. I'd take it somewhere else to be sold. Do you have an out of the way cantina near you to put it in?
Also, when they make vendors merchant only, you might want to another place to sell from.
HOTDOG wrote:
That's another thing we have been discussing- Some have mentioned timesinks as punishment- My idea here was: once a smuggler has been killed/caught/lost the package they are not allowed to perform illegal task for (X) amount of minutes.
That means:
No spice crafting/use
No slicing
All sliced equipment is locked in your inventory
Smuggling Terminals won't work for you etc. etc.
My suggestion: No highly illegal (visibility raising)activities until your visibilty drops back to 0. (and when you are killed it is put at just below Bounty level, so no more bounties can be put on you either). This would probably take a significant amount of time, and thus also reward daring Smugglers who can avoid Bounty Hunters whilst taking advantage of those Visibility raising activities that pay oh so well.
So they could still craft and use regular spices, and do regular slices, but they can't do anything that would bring their visibilty up to Bounty levels until they go back to 0 and start over.
Vampirerobot wrote:
HOTDOG wrote:
That's another thing we have been discussing- Some have mentioned timesinks as punishment- My idea here was: once a smuggler has been killed/caught/lost the package they are not allowed to perform illegal task for (X) amount of minutes.
That means:
No spice crafting/use
No slicing
All sliced equipment is locked in your inventory
Smuggling Terminals won't work for you etc. etc.
My suggestion: No highly illegal (visibility raising)activities until your visibilty drops back to 0. (and when you are killed it is put at just below Bounty level, so no more bounties can be put on you either). This would probably take a significant amount of time, and thus also reward daring Smugglers who can avoid Bounty Hunters whilst taking advantage of those Visibility raising activities that pay oh so well.
So they could still craft and use regular spices, and do regular slices, but they can't do anything that would bring their visibilty up to Bounty levels until they go back to 0 and start over.
I am not in favor of this Idea. For people that only have time to play for a an hour or two per session, it would really suck(depending on the unkown amount of time it would take to lose that visibility). For those that do play alot it would not really make any sense either.. some mystical power takes away thier free-will so they can't do anything Illegal for X amount of time?
You may argue that the law has thier attention on that smuggler, and thathe is in some sort of 'probation'. But that would only mean that it wouldn't particularly be SMART to do Illegal Things.. so perhaps the punishment your looking for is a set amount of time after being killed by a BH, you gain more visibility per infraction, thus it is to the smugglers advantage to lay low for a while, as opposed to not having the option to dohis trade at all.
*edit*
I read up a bit further and discovered this was also intended to not allow Smuggler/BH team s to exploit the system, a simple answer is to not allow a BH to take a bounty forplayer's hehas collectedon for X days, ora set period when the smuggler would not appear in the Missions, and thats real time, not game time, becaue the Idea is to prevent exploiting, not to ecourage people to get killed so they got Xamount of game time hours of free criminal activity.
Message Edited by SBRD0C on 06-25-2004 01:25 PM
Message Edited by SpinningCloud on 06-25-2004 01:43 PM
Message Edited by SnowJoke on 03-14-2004 07:21 PM
_______________________________________
Snowjoke's idea was later ammended to offer not just spices, but other Contraband as well.
SBRD0C wrote:
Vampirerobot wrote:
My suggestion: No highly illegal (visibility raising)activities until your visibilty drops back to 0. (and when you are killed it is put at just below Bounty level, so no more bounties can be put on you either). This would probably take a significant amount of time, and thus also reward daring Smugglers who can avoid Bounty Hunters whilst taking advantage of those Visibility raising activities that pay oh so well.
So they could still craft and use regular spices, and do regular slices, but they can't do anything that would bring their visibilty up to Bounty levels until they go back to 0 and start over.
I am not in favor of this Idea. For people that only have time to play for a an hour or two per session, it would really suck(depending on the unkown amount of time it would take to lose that visibility). For those that do play alot it would not really make any sense either.. some mystical power takes away thier free-will so they can't do anything Illegal for X amount of time?
You may argue that the law has thier attention on that smuggler, and thathe is in some sort of 'probation'. But that would only mean that it wouldn't particularly be SMART to do Illegal Things.. so perhaps the punishment your looking for is a set amount of time after being killed by a BH, you gain more visibility per infraction, thus it is to the smugglers advantage to lay low for a while, as opposed to not having the option to dohis trade at all.
*edit*
I read up a bit further and discovered this was also intended to not allow Smuggler/BH team s to exploit the system, a simple answer is to not allow a BH to take a bounty forplayer's hehas collectedon for X days, ora set period when the smuggler would not appear in the Missions, and thats real time, not game time, becaue the Idea is to prevent exploiting, not to ecourage people to get killed so they got Xamount of game time hours of free criminal activity.
Message Edited by SBRD0C on 06-25-2004 01:25 PM
What I meant was that they couldn't undertake Critical Missions (or any other Critical activities) until their visibility returns to 0. The idea being that your good name is sullied because you failed/cheated your missions and were caught by a BH, and until you get back in good standing, nobody will hire you to do the Critical Missions. Like I said, you'd still be able to do the regular Smuggler stuff like Slicing and Spicing, and regular Missions. You just wouldn't be able to do the high-end Visibility-raising Critical stuff.
I don't see that as being unfair at all, since it's optional to begin with, and the only thing you lose by taking the option and failing is the ability to take the option again for a certain amount of time. In theory if you only play an hour or two per session, the result would be the same as if you played many hours at a time.
JTGAlpha wrote:
Okay....So Solo1441, one of the very best posters this community ever had...wanted me to post this for him (if one of you others already got it, my apologies). He stopped playing the game and can't post anymore...
SO...Words of Wisdom from Beyond the Grave:
1.) Smuggler accepts mission from Criminal Faction X. He is to take item Q from Tatooine to Naboo. The item is flagged as "moderately illegal" (we'll say it's a shipment of mid-level spice).
2.) Smuggler leaves Tatooine. As he is leaving, he is scanned for contraband. He makes his scan roll, and moves on to Naboo via starport (we're assuming this is all ground-based smuggling).
3.) Smuggler lands on Naboo via the starport. As he leaves the starport, he is scanned again. This time he fails the scan and receives whatever penalty applies to failing a moderately illegal scan.
Now, here's where things get interesting.
The people doing the scanning are NOT stormtroopers. Thus, you receive no GWC faction points for killing them (and farming is thereby discouraged). The people doing the scanning are the LOCAL security forces. Tatooine Militia, Royal Security Force, CorSec, FedDub, etc. Basically, the local cops -- the people you'd EXPECT to be enforcing the law. Remember, Governor Tarkin says "The regional Governors now have direct control of their systems." And fear of the Empire keeps them in check.
For general penalties, you could have a few different mechanisms, depending on the level. You could lose faction and/or pay a fine. Smugglers, by virtue of their fast talkign skills, could mitigate this loss (IE: take ONLY a faction hit, pay ONLY a fine, pay a reduced fine, etc.). Normal players (non-smugglers) wouldn't have the mitigation option. As you get hit with more and more penalties, you become more and more "notorious" on THAT particular planet, or where that particular security force operates. This can be tracked via faction points with the minor factions, or via a separate notoriety system. When you become too notorious, you will be attacked on sight by the PvE enemies. When you become MORE notorious than that, you get attacked by PvP BHs.
The cool part about this is that if you get too exposed on one planet, you can go and "lay low" on another planet. The adventure planets, with no local authorities, would become good hideout spots. Over time, your notoriety could dissipate, and you could balance the system so that low risk missions have low notoriety penalties, whereas high-risk missions have high notoriety. The smuggler's level of participation and choice of missions is their evidence of choice for PvP. If you actively do so many missions and take such big risks that you put yourself willingly in harm's way, you volunteer for PvP. If you play it safe and just do "slap on the wrist" missions you avoid PvP.
Do note, however, that the criminal or GCW faction that you steal from/blow a mission for may ALSO have its own reputation system, whereby you can have a bounty put on you. And finally, to add some REAL flavor, you could PAY OFF your bounties. Get nailed by CorSec one too many times? Go and pay your debt to society by dropping of a "political contribution" at the Fraternal Order of CorSec office. Your funds help buy blast-resistant armor, you know. Piss off Jabba too many times? Well, lucky you, Jabba's a business man. He'd rather have your money than your head usually. Just pay him the money and be done with it. This would offer another out to PvP. Personally, I'd ONLY allow the bribery thing at REALLY high levels of notoriety. IE: you'll only bribe when you absolutely have to and only to get a bounty off your back.
Anyway, this solves the whole faction farming issue, and maintains consequences for bad smuggling. Feel free to fire this on to GM if you guys want. It seems relevant to the Contraband Solutions thread (which I haven't read in full).
I'm hoping for something more involving for processes 1-3, but then I guess that they were just to set the scene for the main post(?)
I love the idea of having different notoriety for each different planet! it would bring in so much more immersion and ingame options!
[a large-eyed creature gives Luke a rough shove]
Dr. Evazan: [explaining] He doesn't like you.
Luke: I'm sorry.
Dr. Evazan: I don't like you either. You just watch yourself. We're wanted men. I have the death sentence on twelve systems.
Luke: I'll be careful.
Dr. Evazan: You'll be dead!
Obi-Wan: [intervening] This little one's not worth the effort. Now come, let me get you something.
[Dr. Evazan shoves Luke across the room and pulls out a blaster]
Bartender: No blasters! No blasters!
[In a flash, he and his alien companion Pomda Baba are on the floor with a slashed torso and a severed arm respectively]
As you can see, it really fits into Star Wars continuity aswell. GreenMarine, if you've read the above idea, please consider it fully 