Narcotics as precious metals

fizz · Post by **fizz** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:24 am

I know that's how things were in the old elite, but even when i traded on my c64 i found it quite strange. Counting narcotics tons at a time seems to me quite strange: I would find it a bit more plausible to have them counted in Kg like gold or platinum... this by the way would give the means to small fast ships to work as drug smugglers....

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:44 am

Actually, that's a fairly good point. Today drugs are generally measured in kilos too.

The street value of 1 metric tonne of peruvian marching powder would be about the value of a small planet!!

Wolfwood · Post by **Wolfwood** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 8:51 am

Good point, indeed. Can this be realised differently for the "strict Elite" and Oolite?

aegidian · Post by **aegidian** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 9:54 am

Rationalizifying:-

1. Oolite tons are not a unit of mass, but of capacity. Think "tuns not tonnes". This also explains how carrying 2750 kilos of Platinum in the cabin safe doesn't require extra cargo capacity.

2. Arcturan megaweed (and its variants), which are the chief narcotics traded, comes in large 1t bales.

3. That's the way elite did it.

Murgh · Post by **Murgh** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 10:11 am

that's rationalizm!
I buy it.

1 tun bales, is that what the Moray Medicos are carrying too?

aegidian · Post by **aegidian** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:15 am

Murgh wrote:
1 tun bales, is that what the Moray Medicos are carrying too?

Of course, the medicinal benefits are well known!

Lucidor · Post by **Lucidor** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 11:42 am

Maybe that would explain the crazy doctors mentioned before. :^j

fizz · Post by **fizz** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 12:54 pm

If we want to rationalize, i'm all for it... it's not for this that the game will be less fun, maybe the contrary (think atmosphere-like flying dynamics vs. full newtonian)... but I was also thinking to the consequence that having an illegal good in the "light unencumbering" category could help adding some playing styles to the game while smoothing a small crisp: it have already been modified to allow to by ships different from the original CMKIII, some of wich have a very light carrying capacity, so giving them the chance to do some significant smuggling in some limited markets would be fun, even as a kind of role-playing experience.... without needing any special coding, feature-adding and so on.

Frantic · Post by **Frantic** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 1:55 pm

Selezen wrote:
Actually, that's a fairly good point. Today drugs are generally measured in kilos too.

The street value of 1 metric tonne of peruvian marching powder would be about the value of a small planet!!

I can't say I ever bought a kilo of anything.

Selezen · Post by **Selezen** » Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:12 pm

If you had, I'd be shopping you for dealing.

It's shipped and packed by the kilo. It's sold on the street in fractions of a gram (gram, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth, or 'teenth').

Ah, the benefits of a university education...

Odo987 · Post by **Odo987** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 3:33 pm

Rationalizifying:-

4. Because it's illegal (on most worlds), it has to be disguised as something else. So you take a ton of textiles, then bury a kilogram of narcotics in the middle.

Think about the packaging-to-produce ratio for a person who swallows a balloon filled with cocaine to smuggle it through customs.

JensAyton · Post by **JensAyton** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 4:15 pm

And yet those space sniffer dognoids seem pretty good at sniffing it out.

EAGLE 5 · Post by **EAGLE 5** » Fri Apr 07, 2006 5:29 pm

Oh well I guess it makes sense being shot on sight for hauling around a few tons of the happy grass, rather then a dimebag of the stuff.

Arexack_Heretic · Post by **Arexack_Heretic** » Sat Apr 08, 2006 1:50 am

custom missions with {special cargo} could be easilly written by anybody with

1 inspiration
2 a texteditor
3 access to this board and the elite-wiki
4 lots of free time

as Fizz stated, no feature adding would be needed.
But: surely OXP-writing counts as special coding?

Making a special class of high value narc, traded in grammes would require a Giles intervention I suspect though.
(in OXP-lingo: method= addSpecialCargoType: [CargoName] [unit])

CWolf · Post by **CWolf** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 2:14 pm

Selezen wrote:
If you had, I'd be shopping you for dealing.

It's shipped and packed by the kilo. It's sold on the street in fractions of a gram (gram, half, quarter, eighth and sixteenth, or 'teenth').

Ah, the benefits of a university education...

Erm, streets round here (allegedly) work in grams OR they work in Imperial: Ounce, half (ounce), quarter (ounce), eighth (ounce), and occasionally "10s" (£10 worth, about a 16th of ounce) - this is with the herbal variety.

Anything else appears to be in grams. Or so a Rock Hermit told me...