Oolite Bulletins

Venator Dha wrote:

A solution could be that, If some of the Pirates also had an assassin role as well, then they would attack couriers. This would be like someone hiring a local thug to stop the delivery of those incendiary Zero-G Cricket videos. A real assassin is for when I'm carrying sensitive materials.

Disembodied wrote:

Venator Dha wrote:

A solution could be that, If some of the Pirates also had an assassin role as well, then they would attack couriers. This would be like someone hiring a local thug to stop the delivery of those incendiary Zero-G Cricket videos. A real assassin is for when I'm carrying sensitive materials.

I think this is a good idea, myself: most "assassins" would just be local muscle. Getting an actual contract killer (or several) set on you should be a rare event, and something you've earned (perhaps linked to taking out some named personality?).

On the parcels contracts side, it might be worth having a few more short-distance, low-paying jobs on offer for beginners, just as a way of making an extra C*30 or C*40. Perhaps, too, there could be some low-volume bulk haulage available - someone needs a small number of TCs (1-5, say) of furniture shipped from A to B. If the base price was something like C*15 per canister per jump, that might be an attractive deal: it's lower than the top profit margins available, but not every jump is going to be from Rich Industrial to Poor Agricultural - and some of the payment might be up-front. The cargo would have to be unique, rather than generic (i.e. the player couldn't sell it en route, and then buy replacements), and there could be various penalties (including financial ones) for failure, and for partial delivery. It would add an element of shipping, rather than trading. The player might even be able to haggle, or bid for the contract.

Paradox wrote:

They should be a rare occurrence. I also think that it would be nice if a small percentage of those, actually warned you that it may be a hazardous contract, and paid you accordingly...

Thargoid wrote:

In the game already we have the bounty hunter role that is barely used for anything. Why do we need an assassin role at all? It's needless duplication and yet more stuff to support in a shipset.

Disembodied wrote:

most "assassins" would just be local muscle.

Venator Dha wrote:

Is this because carrying multiple packages/passengers stack the chance of attack?

Paradox wrote:

I also think that it would be nice if a small percentage of those, actually warned you that it may be a hazardous contract, and paid you accordingly...

cim wrote:

Making the assassins universally clean was probably a mistake - so long as they're below the policing threshold for the system, some of them could be offenders.

Disembodied wrote:

... - admittedly a high-paying (~C*400) delivery of court papers, which, as I suspected, drew a lot of hostile attention.

Making the assassins universally clean was probably a mistake - so long as they're below the policing threshold for the system, some of them could be offenders.

cim wrote:

No more support work than there being 7 different pirate roles in 1.80, though? Or am I misunderstanding?

Bounty hunters get a bit more use in 1.80 than they did in 1.77, at least. Certainly there may well be a lot of off-screen overlap between the assassins and hunters; putting that on-screen would need a bit of work on the bounty system, I think. The two need different AIs for now, though.

Making the assassins universally clean was probably a mistake - so long as they're below the policing threshold for the system, some of them could be offenders.

When it boils down to it I still don't see why we need both hunter and assassin. And given that there's supposed to be at least some form of police and government around, anything by way of organised assassins just completely jars with the whole game canon, at least for me. It would make more sense if there was some more military side of the game, but as that whole area has been completely pushed to OXP then that for me again would be where assassins if they have to be in place should be.

In terms of support, my meaning was both that suitable ships may well need to be set up for all of the different roles, but more so that if I'm writing a mission then the last thing I want is the annoyance of packs hanging around witchpoints to cope with if they happened to have something ongoing when the mission kicked off. There are a few OXPs who also have done that over time, and at least for me that very quickly results in either the OXP getting editted or removed to take that out. It's a real immersion breaker as the player seems to get picked out and on (at least in those OXP cases, it may or may not be the same in the assassin case).

And the focus on assassins vs couriers makes even less sense. If they must be there then either the Random Hits reasoning of revenge does work (where the "assassin" may or may not be a professional or could just be an associate or family member taking it upon themselves) or in some kind of corporate espionage and competition role (but even then it's more a role for a bounty hunter than an assassin).

But as others have said above it should be extremely rare, almost like a mini-mission to survive it. Certainly not just because a courier mission has been undertaken, except as a specific part of another mini-mission type scenario of getting it into a hostile system, like a smuggling run.

I know it's probably just me, but including things like assassins in the game frankly makes it less of a game that I want to play, as ambushes will quickly become annoyances rather than challenges.

PS I think we need another thread split here

Thargoid wrote:

When it boils down to it I still don't see why we need both hunter and assassin.

Thargoid wrote:

And given that there's supposed to be at least some form of police and government around, anything by way of organised assassins just completely jars with the whole game canon, at least for me.

Thargoid wrote:

but more so that if I'm writing a mission then the last thing I want is the annoyance of packs hanging around witchpoints to cope with if they happened to have something ongoing when the mission kicked off.

this.systemWillPopulate = function() {
  if (missionEventIsHappening()) {
    system.setPopulator("oolite-assassins",null);
    system.setPopulator("oolite-interceptors-witchpoint",null);
  }
}

Thargoid wrote:

But as others have said above it should be extremely rare, almost like a mini-mission to survive it. Certainly not just because a courier mission has been undertaken, except as a specific part of another mini-mission type scenario of getting it into a hostile system, like a smuggling run.

Thargoid wrote:

PS I think we need another thread split here

Disembodied wrote:

Perhaps, too, there could be some low-volume bulk haulage available - someone needs a small number of TCs (1-5, say) of furniture shipped from A to B. If the base price was something like C*15 per canister per jump,

Thargoid wrote:

if I'm writing a mission then the last thing I want is the annoyance of packs hanging around witchpoints to cope with if they happened to have something ongoing when the mission kicked off. There are a few OXPs who also have done that over time, and at least for me that very quickly results in either the OXP getting editted or removed to take that out. It's a real immersion breaker as the player seems to get picked out and on (at least in those OXP cases, it may or may not be the same in the assassin case).

And the focus on assassins vs couriers makes even less sense.
...
But as others have said above it should be extremely rare, almost like a mini-mission to survive it. Certainly not just because a courier mission has been undertaken, except as a specific part of another mini-mission type scenario of getting it into a hostile system, like a smuggling run.