Nova Mission.

[Thargoid]

The broadcast message is a good idea, but we'd have to penalise the player who bails out after reading it ('coward! how could you leave the system just like that!' etc..) which might not be everybody's cup of tea either...

Make it an official Galcop request, and they can then take a dim view of cowards who refuse it. Say for example player.bounty += 200?

[Kaks]

Screet: the last time I looked at the code the leak would indeed seal itself... That was a while ago, so I'm probably missing something!

Thargoid: sure! - at the moment when the mission starts there's no normal way to refuse it - though it can still be avoided with a bit of lateral thinking. We could beef up the 'coward' section along the lines you proposed, as long as everybody's happy about it... maybe not raising the bounty as much, +50 & a fine could be punishment enough...

[Thargoid]

+50 would put a clean commander to Fugitive for one witchspace jump, and then down to offender after that for a few further jumps. That was why I said +200, as they're then fugitive for 2-3 jumps and then go offender and on down (unless they use another means to reduce their criminal record).

I would say +50 is too small, you can get more than that for a mis-placed laser beam. And you are potentially condeming a ship-hold's worth of refugees to a trumble's fate...

[Kaks]

Hmmm, trumbles are cute, though!

[Disembodied]

I don't know about punishing the player through legal means ... I'd just have them accused of cowardice. It's a moral decision, really, to stay and help or turn and flee, not a legal one: I'd vote for moral punishment: a period of jeering and booing.

Maybe the reward could get beefed up a little bit, too, on the moral side of things at least: players successfully completing the Nova mission could get a medal or some sort of citation (the Silver Starburst, "For Courage in the Face of Unpredictable Solar Activity").

[Thargoid]

Or at the very least their cargo and passenger hauling reputations should get a boost or a massacre, depending on how willing they are to assist.

[Eric Walch]

I always saw it seal itself as soon fuel level dropped to zero. I think Screet is confused by a Assassination.oxp mission. There is one mission with a scripted fuel leak in it. But that leak is re-activated every 10 seconds by script to prevent the player scooping fuel at the sun (fuel pods didn't exists when this oxp was written).

On one side we want to stay as close to he original Elite, on the other side small modifications are allowed to compensate for other changes.

Besides the fuel-leak, other thinks already happen so the player knows this leak is a bit different. With all the new re-fueling stuff I think it would be wise to let the witchspace buoy send a distress message so the player knows he should dock. e.g. "Please help %I main station with its evacuation."

[Thargoid]

I've got a vague memory of the Spectrum version of Elite giving such a warming that the sun was going Nova when you arrived in the system (and the wireframe graphics going from white to red, although that may have been when the sun went kaboom).

[Disembodied]

I've got a vague memory of the Spectrum version of Elite giving such a warming that the sun was going Nova when you arrived in the system (and the wireframe graphics going from white to red, although that may have been when the sun went kaboom).

I spent my Spectrum Elite days using a black-and-white TV (an ancient 24" thing that took an age to warm up, and smelled not unlike the back of a bus), but something definitely happened to the screen in the Nova mission. I remember this quite distinctly, because of the unintended special extra sound effect I got when I launched from the station to find the sun in the process of going boom. As the sun's disc got bigger and bigger, so the screen got brighter and brighter. As the screen got brighter and brighter, the tubes in the back of the telly made a strange whooshing roaring sound that got louder as the sun got larger: sort of like "vvvwhhooooOOOOAAAAHHHHH...."

[ClymAngus]

Cool a game that can cause a house fire. Is there nothing Elite couldn't do?

[Screet]

Cool a game that can cause a house fire. Is there nothing Elite couldn't do?

Remind you to eat regularly

Screet

[another_commander]

I distinctly remember the message in the Spectrum version: "Mayday, Coriolis in danger". I think just this message - replacing Coriolis with Station - being transmitted from the station using commsMessage and a timer is all it takes to ensure that the player gets the hint that something is going terribly wrong.

[Eric Walch]

...all it takes to ensure that the player gets the hint that something is going terribly wrong.

I started scripting it up. Currently there is already a timer firing every 30 seconds during the mission. Easiest place was adding the text here so the w-buoy does its transmission every 30 seconds.

[Kaks]

It's probably safer to also send a message when the player exits witchspace!

Do we auto-eject the player from all non-main stations? We could have an explanation like 'This facility has been evacuated. Emergency services are available at the main %I station.' when we're spat out of the constore/factory/hoopy casino/etc...

Btw, I do like the concept of getting a big reputation boost if we save people, it sounds 'real'!

[Disembodied]

<muttley>medalmedalmedal!</muttley>