{UPDATED RELEASE}-Illegal Goods Tweak v1.7.3(30/5/12)

[Capt. Murphy]

Hi Potential Debris,

Welcome back to the forums and thanks for the comments. All good ideas, but potentially a nightmare to script. In my mind the custom's inspection is less of a physical thing but more of an automated scan by some high tech method as the player docks (or launches as the vanilla game engine applies penalties when launching with contraband). However there is a human element involved hence the chance of non-detection.

Thargoid's HyperCargo OXP more or less does what you want already.

Once you have bought the HyperCargo you can in certain systems (and with a non-clean legal status) upgrade to a hacked HyperCargo. This basically makes any contraband stored in the HyperCargo rather than the normal hold undetectable to the station contraband scanners on docking and on launching.

[Thargoid]

Or just buy a Vortex, which has multiple cargo bays and being an ex-military ship doesn't bother with things like telling the authorities what's in the ones that are in storage

[Arexack_Heretic]

Scooping an escapepod is no act of kindness!
The pod is perfectly able to get to the nearest station (excluding in witchspace), so it actually is illegal confinement.

[Capt. Murphy]

I dunno about that..... pods may be able to get to the station but I bet lots are scooped by nasty pirate types or even......gasp.....Thargoids and end up as slaves or research subjects. By picking them up and getting them to safety/justice you are doing them a favour in the long run.

[Thargoid]

Nah, the role you're looking for is "lunch"...

[Arexack_Heretic]

hehehe,

have some trumbles.


IIRC there is an OXP that expands on the pods and resque/capturing them
+ rewards/bounty etc

[Capt. Murphy]

Version 1.4 of Illegal Goods Tweak is released. First post updated with read me and download link.

Requires Oolite 1.75.1 or above -
General code tidy up with lessons learnt from making Escort Contracts OXP.
Reduced max delay between releasing slaves and being offered mission.
Fixed a small bug on withupdating mission variables on intergalactic jump.
Updated Hypercargo compatibility code and Vortex compatibility code in light of a bug that showed up in Vortex version 1.11. This release compatible with Vortex 1.12.

[SandJ]

Since slavery is still happening in the world today, it is probably reasonable to assume it would be not just legal, but legitimate trade, on many of the Oolite worlds.

However, assuming the slave trade is legal according to government type is too simple: a slave revolt would turn a planet into an anarchy and trading slaves there would be ... unwise. Equally, pinnacles of order, civilisation and learning included Imperial Rome, Carthage and many others that relied upon slavery in some form to function so there is no reason why a Tech 15 Democracy cannot have a slave trade.

Also:

Dictatorship Worlds
For those dictatorships with industrial resources, the authoritarian nature of government results in high levels of productivity that can rival the Corporate States: manufacturing is carried out on a massive scale in off-world AstroFactories and is supported by a state-sponsored programme of slavery.

[SandJ]

Scooping an escapepod is no act of kindness!
The pod is perfectly able to get to the nearest station (excluding in witchspace), so it actually is illegal confinement.

I think of an escape pod as being like the lunar lander: a tiny aluminium foil box where you jump in, get put into sim-sleep and nod off wondering whether you will ever wake again, or just become a smudge on an asteroid, or asphyxiate in your sleep because of a micro-meteorite, or burn up because the beacon-detector in the pod has locked onto the neutron sun's radio emissions, or be taken to the 'surface' of a gas giant, or starve to death, or get pulled into the orbit of an out-bound comet, or get locked into a Lagrange point of a planet to rot until the sun goes nova, or be just too near a massive body for the engine to counter its gravity well, or gently cooked by background microwave radiation, or irradiated by carcinogenic high-energy radiation, or rammed by some clumsy Jameson, or never wake up because your cheap 2nd hand ship came with a 2nd hand escape pod, or lock onto an inter-stellar generation ship and follow that, or scooped by an Autominer and processed like ore, or make it to 15 km of safety and be shot up by some Jameson testing out their shiny new mining laser, or ...

... or be woken with an Enoubian Rum 'n' Cocoa and a Beoninonian shrew steak in the hold of a nice snug Python by some friendly Commander and spend the rest of the journey sharing stories of derring-do and shagging each other senseless in the back cabin?


Seriously, for all the cargo pods you have rescued, how many have you ever seen enter the docking bay of a coriolis space station?

[SandJ]

Well we are playing Oolite not FFE - however I will definitely make it an option in the next release to run with a detection rate based on government type and tech level.

Ooh, an FFE trade-compatibility OXP would be good.

Will we get a religious planet where gems are illegal and you are paid to take them away?

[Commander McLane]

Seriously, for all the cargo pods you have rescued, how many have you ever seen enter the docking bay of a coriolis space station?

None, because they head for the planet surface, not the station.

[Wildeblood]

Seriously, for all the cargo pods you have rescued, how many have you ever seen enter the docking bay of a coriolis space station?

None, because they head for the planet surface, not the station.

I chased one down the other day while I was testing out CommonSense's numeric HUD for the first time, and it was almost to the planet. I got distracted by some ships shooting at me, and after that the escape pod was well down into the atmosphere. The closer it got to the surface, the more determined I was to catch it. I was watching the altitude bar get smaller and smaller. (The numeric HUD was new to me, so I completely forgot to check the altitude there, natch.) And smaller. The sky went from black to blue. The altitude bar was down to one pixel wide. I had finally managed to intercept the escape pod - it was somewhere close by but I'd lost sight of it - but I had to pull up or crash. I pulled up and there it was directly above me. We were so close there was no time for its collision avoidance to react - it fell straight into my scoop head first. I hit that W key and pointed my ship straight up and waited for the blue sky to turn black again.

Great Stuff!

If only I'd known where to look on the numeric HUD to see just how low the altitude was. Sigh.

[Disembodied]

I think of an escape pod as being like the lunar lander: a tiny aluminium foil box where you jump in, get put into sim-sleep and nod off wondering whether you will ever wake again ...

I can confirm that escape pods can have their problems ...

[Capt. Murphy]

Since slavery is still happening in the world today, it is probably reasonable to assume it would be not just legal, but legitimate trade, on many of the Oolite worlds.

However, assuming the slave trade is legal according to government type is too simple: a slave revolt would turn a planet into an anarchy and trading slaves there would be ... unwise. Equally, pinnacles of order, civilisation and learning included Imperial Rome, Carthage and many others that relied upon slavery in some form to function so there is no reason why a Tech 15 Democracy cannot have a slave trade.

Also:

Dictatorship Worlds
For those dictatorships with industrial resources, the authoritarian nature of government results in high levels of productivity that can rival the Corporate States: manufacturing is carried out on a massive scale in off-world AstroFactories and is supported by a state-sponsored programme of slavery.

My take on the illegality of these items is that individual Planetary Governments (or non governments in the case of Feudal States and Anarchies) may well have no problem with slavery, narcotics and firearms.

However Galcop do have an issue as they feel that trade in these items could lead to galactic instability and unrest. Although no Galcop president has had the gumption to ban trade entirely (hence these commodities can be bought and sold on main stations), they do apply legal penalties to pilots who launch from main stations (as per original Elite and vanilla Oolite) or dock with them (with this OXP) in an attempt to discourage this trade. The underlying premise being that main stations are operated by Galcop and the planetary authorities in a sometimes uneasy co-operation.

[Capt. Murphy]

Version 1.5 of this OXP is available to download.

Minor update to fix a couple of cosmetic bugs in the offering of the the little mini-missions post handling slaves over to Galcop and added code to avoid a mini-mission being offered to a post-nova system.

First post updated with read-me and download link.