Smuggler Archive
Thread: Crafting spice VS smuggling spice.
Two possible scenarios i can think of. There are indubitantly many more ideas folks can come up with, but im merely pitting the current system we have now against a future system of combined ideas from the community.
a) Spice is crafted by smugglers, much as it is now. Strict rules for carrying contraband are in effect, and perhaps one of the only changes will be spice experimentation, and the other being the change in values of spices to compete with chef foods.
b) We acquire spice via dangerous and risky smuggling missions in which we have to evade or fight off patrolling npcs and rival gangs. You can generally get a smuggling mission off a crime boss, and rival crime bosses and their cronies will shoot on sight if they catch you waltzing on to their turf while on a mission for their enemies. Naturally, BHs can also be given the possibility of being able to track down smugglers on missions. Smugglers will only show up on BH mission terminals while engaging in actual smuggling. A time limit is set (of perhaps an hour) to track down and kill the smuggler. This is to prevent smugglers from simply aborting missions in order to shake off BHs on their tails. Benefits for killing a smuggler should be provided in direct correlation to the difficulty of the smuggler mission. The more difficult the mission of the smuggler, the higher the payout for the BH. To prevent exploitation by smugglers who just let themselves be killed over and over by their BH friends so as to rack up the cash, a penalty is slapped onto the smuggler for every time he dies to a BH whilst on a smuggling mission.
The actual smuggling mission would either involve smuggling spices for a crime boss, and then getting a cut of the goods, or simply smuggling and pushing the drugs in the market (to players) for the crime boss and having a certain % garnished from the sales price. This would keep smuggler prices constant. Once the mission is successfully completed, we get a nice stack of the spices to divide up and sell to the public at a profit, and our names are off the terminals. All we need to worry about now are the troopers. But then again, unlike the average non-smuggler...We have the innate ability of avoiding scans.
The value of spices either need to be changed, or they should have slightly increased duration. Additionally, you should be able to pop another drug right before the downer to prevent an episode of violent barfing. Once you're out of drugs, the downer inevitably hits. The addition of more types of spices which affect player skills as well would be invaluable. The difficulty of the mission is based on the quality of the spice. Rare spices which boost HAM, specials pool (to be explained shortly) and player skills will have a pretty impressive duration as well as sell for far more, however the difficulty of the mission is set to balance that out.
By way of example:
Normal spices = Regardless of your faction, Imperial troopers scattered about at every starport will attempt to frisk you for contraband and give you the choice of either giving up the smuggled goods, or putting up your dukes. It makes little sense to me how a colonel is able to get off scot-free with spices and illegal weapons on his person. The law applies to everyone equally, even if you're the president (unless its a corrupt system to begin with). The underworld skill can provide some leverage in this department, or you could just try to keep your distance from the troopers and sneak your way out. BHs can take out a bounty on your head. Spices acquired will directly affect HAM.
Quality spices = Rival gangs (npcs) open fire on sight. (The rival npcs will have to be placed en route or at specific choke points of the delivery mission itself). Imperials still frisk you and, depending on whether or not you fail the scan, either confiscate the contraband or attempt to take you down. BHs can, as usual, sniff you out. The reward = Spices which increase player skills for a set amount of time. An example = Spice with +pistol speed/accuracy/ranged defense, designed for pistoleers.
Elite spices = Upon acceptance of this mission, the smuggler is turned overt. Rival gangs, imperials, BHs, and about half of the galaxy will be all over you, so you had better be packing heat. (The difficulty can be scaled down by removing rival npcs from choke points you absolutely have to pass through in missions of lower difficulty). I recall reading somewhere that an idea for the combat balance was to add a 'specials' pool in addition to the HAM, and cause it to be depleted everytime the player utilises a special. This will prolly be a pool unrelated to the HAM, and will not cause an incap when depleted, but rather make the player incapable of performing a special until it regenerates. Spices acquired on this mission directly increase the stats of the specials pool, both in providing more specials before depletion and an augmented speed of regeneration.
Naturally, there arequite a few flaws in this rough layout, especially where the progression in mission difficulty is concerned, but heck, with a community as innovative as this, we'll hopefully have it spruced up in no time. We especially need to figure out why BHs would want to kill us to begin with, since they'd prolly think it wiser to lay off us so that they can buy our goods off the market. Neutral smugglers will also not be turned overt when smuggling elite spices, so we could use a workaround for that as well. Was just wondering which option most of you would vote for to ascertain if the majority prefers smuggling from npcs with risks, or crafting their own spices (and perhaps proceeding to smuggle it as well, but that would make the entire process more tedious and not worth the payout, hence the choice between the two.)
So whats it gonna be, folks? Crafting spices in home economics class, or exchanging bullets with hypocrticial BHs who get high off our spices themselves?
Message Edited by MujtahiD on 09-09-2004 09:51 AM
MujtahiD wrote:There are indubitantly many more ideas folks can come up with
A public service announcement from Kaern: Please people, if you're going to use a word in an attempt to sound intelligent, look it up in a dictionary to get the correct spelling. With so many online dictionaries, nobody can claim they don't have access to the tools necessary to spell words properly.
Now, if you had spelled an everyday word such as "ridiculous" incorrectly, I would not have taken the time to point out your mistake, but "indubitably" is not a common, everday word. For future reference, the word is spelled: indubitably.
