Oolite Bulletins

Hi all, after asking help I managed to writing a first version of my fist OXP, Life in the Frontier, and here I start an official development thread.

DESCRIPTION:
Players roleplay their game session, depending on the career they choose, and the events in-flight. Space stations, on the contrary, are still rather static (without considering OXPs) and act more like a transition between two flights.
So I thought to help stations offering more variety, giving the player the chance to move into the station, visit locations, solve random events, doing various activities and getting different missions.

HOW IT WORKS:
When the player is docked to a station, he will find on the F4 screen a new item that start the navigation phase: this means the commander exits the ship and goes into the hangar. The hangar screen shows a literal description for some of the stats about the commander. There are additional snippet of text for sickness or bad health etc.

Through the interface menu the commander can move across the station floors and areas. When moving in the station there will be a quick-info bar on top of the screen, so some data is always visible. Even during the navigation random snippet will be added to report of peculiar status conditions.

While the player visits the station there is a chance (20%) that something - a random event - will happen, as a sort of "intermission". These events have one or more choices, and they can have consequences on the commander.

CHANGELOG: DOWNLOAD:
Life on the Frontier OXP - v0.7.1 (8,35Mb) (25/02/2015)

WHAT'S NEXT
- More random events, more choices, variants and resolutions.
- More locations and services on the stations
- Chance of picking up missions of several different types.
- More interaction between the OXP and the player stats (sickness, health, legal stance and physical shape)
- Events that leave a flag to enable new events later in the game.

I hope you are interested to this idea, every suggestion is welcome, to tailor and balance the events to the Oolite universe and lore.

Sounds interesting! A player might see a large shipment of X arriving, resulting in a sudden price drop of that commodity (and increase in available quantity) on the station market. Or they might encounter a Shady Character who offers them a more-than-usually-dangerous-but-lucrative parcel or cargo contract ...

Slightly off-topic - although this might be the sort of opportunity the player could run into in the darker corners of certain stations - I wonder if it's possible to have smuggling runs, where what gets loaded into the player's ship as Textiles, say, turns into Narcotics on the first hyperjump (the ship's manifest has been temporarily spoofed, in other words) ... it would mean the player can avoid the legal penalty for launching with illegal goods, but they have to take it to a specific destination without docking anywhere on the way if they want to get paid for the delivery (and don't want a hit put out on them for failing to deliver the goods to the intended recipient).

excellent idea! Just what I was missing...

This may be expanding things a bit, but might it be possible to meet named contacts on specific stations? An event could be, the player sees a fight: a Harmless Slimy Rodent from Inleus is being attacked by two Humans. The player could choose to Ignore / Help the Humans / Help the Slimy Rodent / Summon the Constabulary. Joining in (on either side) might result in a fine for brawling on a station, but could also result in making a Contact on the station, and/or generating some kind of "consequences" later on. Depending on type, a Contact (the Harmless Slimy Rodent in this case) could provide various permanent on-station benefits ranging from cheaper goods (of a particular type - the Harmless Slimy Rodent might be a dealer in Liquor and Wines, say, or Minerals, or Machinery, etc.), to cheaper equipment (the Harmless Slimy Rodent is a mechanic), to a premium on parcel contracts (the HSR is a shipping agent), to just giving you a friendly welcome whenever you arrive at that station.

Disembodied wrote:

... the HSR is a shipping agent...

<grins> I kinda read that as Slimy HR!

Disembodied wrote:

A player might see a large shipment of X arriving, resulting in a sudden price drop of that commodity (and increase in available quantity) on the station market. Or they might encounter a Shady Character who offers them a more-than-usually-dangerous-but-lucrative parcel or cargo contract ...

Regarding the first idea, my main focus is when the player is on a space station, without interaction with external space: maybe in future, when I will be more confident with the scripting I will think about it. But I could generate an event so the player can meet someone that can give an hint of this type... I was already considering a merchant with wares obtained via "non-official channels" that offers a number of a random good to the player, but he has to buy the entire block.

I was thinking about generating contracts too.. because it can be used in many ways: ad example if someone wants to escape from a station (rebels from dicatorship, worker from communist, a CEO from police on a corporate system...), or from an individual (you meet a battered man/woman on the kill list of a pirate gang). The only requirement would be at least 1 free berth on ship. For the parcel is different, because I am afraid to do something too similar to the vanilla contracts. Let's see if something comes to my mind.

Ah, another thing on passenger contracts - that would works well with flags for extended events: you help the criminal CEO to escape the police, and automatically there is a random chance that in the future police could drag to HQ because they discovered the connection. Sometimes nothing happens, other times...

Disembodied wrote:

Slightly off-topic - although this might be the sort of opportunity the player could run into in the darker corners of certain stations - I wonder if it's possible to have smuggling runs, where what gets loaded into the player's ship as Textiles, say, turns into Narcotics on the first hyperjump (the ship's manifest has been temporarily spoofed, in other words) ... it would mean the player can avoid the legal penalty for launching with illegal goods, but they have to take it to a specific destination without docking anywhere on the way if they want to get paid for the delivery (and don't want a hit put out on them for failing to deliver the goods to the intended recipient).

I think this is a good addition, but I need to do a deep analysis of the entire structure of the event. I don't know if this can be done with normal cargo (I presume many, many checks), but I was reading about a "specialCargo" property, maybe that and a flag with the smuggle info can help? The next time you dock this special cargo would be transferred to the ship manifest and become "visible". This is only a basic concept, nothing more, and much less comparing to your idea, that is much more complex actually (for me at least, and I don't want to rush too many features together).

Disembodied wrote:

This may be expanding things a bit, but might it be possible to meet named contacts on specific stations? An event could be, the player sees a fight: a Harmless Slimy Rodent from Inleus is being attacked by two Humans. The player could choose to Ignore / Help the Humans / Help the Slimy Rodent / Summon the Constabulary. Joining in (on either side) might result in a fine for brawling on a station, but could also result in making a Contact on the station, and/or generating some kind of "consequences" later on. Depending on type, a Contact (the Harmless Slimy Rodent in this case) could provide various permanent on-station benefits ranging from cheaper goods (of a particular type - the Harmless Slimy Rodent might be a dealer in Liquor and Wines, say, or Minerals, or Machinery, etc.), to cheaper equipment (the Harmless Slimy Rodent is a mechanic), to a premium on parcel contracts (the HSR is a shipping agent), to just giving you a friendly welcome whenever you arrive at that station.

I think I will get to this level of complexity going forward with development. Brawls and fights as events are already considered (especially on Anarchy/pirate stations). For the random alien NPCs, frankly I don't know, I still have to dig into the scripting. I even don't know if is possible to set a temporary alteration in market prices, maybe we can go back to the merchant idea with discounted wares, or create a new "service", like the thieves on skyrim that allows you to pay (and it would be an expensive price) to reduce your bounty. But I don't put limit to creativity. As I already said, the more, the better!

BeeTLe BeTHLeHeM wrote:

Disembodied wrote:

A player might see a large shipment of X arriving, resulting in a sudden price drop of that commodity (and increase in available quantity) on the station market. Or they might encounter a Shady Character who offers them a more-than-usually-dangerous-but-lucrative parcel or cargo contract ...

Regarding the first idea, my main focus is when the player is on a space station, without interaction with external space: maybe in future, when I will be more confident with the scripting I will think about it.

For the first idea, I was thinking that the player could wander by the loading dock, and see the transports being unloaded, so it would be internal to the station - but as you say it would involve a temporary adjustment to the market price, and I don't know what's possible (and straightforward!) via scripting.

Keeping things simpler: the player has the option to stop for a drink and to regale the bar with tales of derring-do ... the player loses X amount of time but possibly gains a a Y increase to one aspect of their reputation. (This could maybe have a "Stay for another round!" button, where X just keeps on increasing by larger and larger amounts, but where Y runs the risk of diminishing after too many ....)

The player runs into a collector for a charity, for a randomly generated good cause ("Save the Usleian Tree Ant", etc.) - an opportunity to give away an amount of money, in return for a warm glow.

The player can visit a shrine to a random deity, and (if they like) make an offering - which may or may not have an effect (i.e. weighting a random die roll in the player's favour) at some unspecified time in the future. You wouldn't even need to code this last bit: just say you have, and let players' imaginations take care of the rest.

I come from a role-playing background and really like this idea. I hope that in amongst the shady deals there will be some police sting operations to keep people on their toes... For example, crates of "textiles" that turn back into narcotics at the moment of launch, not after the first jump. Or a con where they really are just textiles!

Good idea on the charity front - maybe the Trumble Protection League? Or more seriously, some sort of anti-slavery organisation that might ask a pilot to run a shipment of slaves to freedom? A few sinks for excessive fortunes would also be nice.

I'll give it a go over the next few days and let you know how it goes.

ffutures wrote:

Good idea on the charity front - maybe the Trumble Protection League?

Save the Star-Jellies - Ban Astromining! And a shipment of furs turning into trumbles would be kind of interesting as well. An old spacer asking for a last trip to witchspace/sun/orbit/rockhermit and back.

Tried this, my initial thought was that we don't really see the consequences of things much - for example, I give 100cr to an old spacer, does he do something useful with it or go out and get drunk?

One thought re the financial transactions. It might be amusing if occasionally more money went out than expected; for example, I give someone 10 credits, a few minutes later 500 disappear from my account because he somehow stole the access codes. Obviously you'd need to check that this wasn't a huge problem for the victim.

I've been a bit cautious about things like drug peddlars (if that's what he is) because I'm currently carrying 1100g or so of gemstones with tight delivery dates and really don't want any major delays, like 24 hours in the drunk tank or whatever. Once I've finished the cargo run I'll try more.

Later - forgot to say that I really like the atmosphere, though the "communists are always dank and dark" vibe seemed a bit stereotypical. Why not something like Sweden occasionally, socialist with Ikea in the corridors...

ffutures wrote:

Why not something like Sweden occasionally, socialist with Ikea in the corridors...

Transport exploding tins of rotting herring (Surströmming)

so Ikea's meat balls are made from Trumbles??? goes well with the ligonberry sauce...

Actually it would be Ookea, of course...

Another thought on this - one particular encounter ends up with someone giving you money for not doing much. I've had that particular encounter three times, and been given money twice. Can't help thinking that this one should either be a one-off event or sooner or later have very bad consequences, since it's way too easy to take advantage. E.g., you're not given money, you're slipped drugs or something that frames you as a terrorist.

A little intro...
I thank you for the answers and the ideas. I'll start saying that there's a new release with some additions and modifications. And I have posted a decent changelog and more info about the inner workings of the OXP. These past days I was sick from work so I had more time to devote to development, but from tomorrow I will get back to work... so I think I will read the thread from time to time, and I'll commit evenings to write code and debug, and in the weekends I'll release (if there is enough stuff) and answer with a long post here.

The actual long post (this) begins here:

Disembodied wrote:

Keeping things simpler: the player has the option to stop for a drink and to regale the bar with tales of derring-do ... the player loses X amount of time but possibly gains a a Y increase to one aspect of their reputation. (This could maybe have a "Stay for another round!" button, where X just keeps on increasing by larger and larger amounts, but where Y runs the risk of diminishing after too many ....)

Initially every event would "consume" a random time between 10-60 mimnutes, but it's currently disabled. I think I will get it back as an additional event property, so "long" events with multiple decisions will take more time.
And I was thinking also about reputation, or karma, or some variable that can give a sense to events that give "physically" nothing to the player. It would be interesting to know how to manage something like this, what sort of advantage could do to the player. But I have implemented single choice requirements, so I could use this data to show "special choices" (like the blue ones in FTL, if you know the game), that appears only if the player has a minimum value, and are especially lucrative.

EDIT: I have already changed idea about the event time property, see below.

Disembodied wrote:

The player runs into a collector for a charity, for a randomly generated good cause ("Save the Usleian Tree Ant", etc.) - an opportunity to give away an amount of money, in return for a warm glow.

I wanted to add this because I remembered the donations from Elite:Frontier. And I have implemented it, with a constant that get replaced by a random charity name: I've taken the ones written on this thread

Disembodied wrote:

The player can visit a shrine to a random deity, and (if they like) make an offering - which may or may not have an effect (i.e. weighting a random die roll in the player's favour) at some unspecified time in the future. You wouldn't even need to code this last bit: just say you have, and let players' imaginations take care of the rest.

Rather than deity, let's say a cult or space-religion or something like that. Even this could work as a boost for reputation (or bring a penalty for an evil-perceived cult? maybe depending on system governments). I'm not very convinced on twisting the die rolls, but I will think about that.

ffutures wrote:

I hope that in amongst the shady deals there will be some police sting operations to keep people on their toes... For example, crates of "textiles" that turn back into narcotics at the moment of launch, not after the first jump. Or a con where they really are just textiles!

Apart adding new events, I will insert existing events variants or more resolutions for the same event, so the same shady deal could work (at random) also as a police trap.
For the transforming wares, idea is very intriguing, as I already said I have to see if I can use the specialCargo property to make this easier to implement.

ffutures wrote:

Or more seriously, some sort of anti-slavery organisation that might ask a pilot to run a shipment of slaves to freedom? A few sinks for excessive fortunes would also be nice.

Good idea! Clandestine or official, with plans of evacuating slaves to system when they can find better works, or reunite with family.

And obviously, good things must be balanced with bad things.

Amah wrote:

And a shipment of furs turning into trumbles would be kind of interesting as well.

I DON'T DARE TO TOUCH TRUMBLES EVEN IN CODE! Jokes aside, it could be fun (as an extremely rare event) it seems to me that there isn't a write-method for trumbles, and I really can't blame the developer for this

ffutures wrote:

Tried this, my initial thought was that we don't really see the consequences of things much - for example, I give 100cr to an old spacer, does he do something useful with it or go out and get drunk?

This could be adjusted in the descriptions that close the events, at least as an hint of things to come. It would be fun to meet a certain character after some time, and see what's doing... another future idea.

ffutures wrote:

One thought re the financial transactions. It might be amusing if occasionally more money went out than expected; for example, I give someone 10 credits, a few minutes later 500 disappear from my account because he somehow stole the access codes. Obviously you'd need to check that this wasn't a huge problem for the victim.

Yes, it's a good idea that I will insert as variant for certain events (especially criminals ones). But even in this case, player will remain with a minimum amount of money, half the starting amount, or 100cr, I still don't know...

ffutures wrote:

I've been a bit cautious about things like drug peddlars (if that's what he is) because I'm currently carrying 1100g or so of gemstones with tight delivery dates and really don't want any major delays, like 24 hours in the drunk tank or whatever. Once I've finished the cargo run I'll try more.

As I was saying before, I want to implement a "timeSpent" event property... but reading your idea, I could implement a "choiceTime" property, so every decision could consume a different amount of time. Actually the drug peddler have not consequences (lost money apart), but this would be perfect: you drink and you're awake hours after with a severe headache.

ffutures wrote:

Later - forgot to say that I really like the atmosphere, though the "communists are always dank and dark" vibe seemed a bit stereotypical. Why not something like Sweden occasionally, socialist with Ikea in the corridors...

I agree, I should search for a certain architecture that can express the specific vibe and also be believable as a space station location. I accept suggestions for this, or even pictures.

ffutures wrote:

Another thought on this - one particular encounter ends up with someone giving you money for not doing much. I've had that particular encounter three times, and been given money twice. Can't help thinking that this one should either be a one-off event or sooner or later have very bad consequences, since it's way too easy to take advantage. E.g., you're not given money, you're slipped drugs or something that frames you as a terrorist.

That was the effect of a debug flag I disabled so you can see more events without leaving the station. In this new release I have enabled it again, so for every docking you will see only one event. And the consequences could be variants for the event resolutions, I will take note for all of them later.