Oolite Bulletins

I've been playing around with an enhancement to the core passenger contract system, called, err... Enhanced Passenger Contracts (I know, my naming skills are legendary), trying to add a bit of variety and interactivity to it. Essentially it's the standard passenger contracts but with extra bits added on. It's now to the point were it needs some testers to make sure I've found all the issues. You'll need the Bulletin Board System to make this work (at a minimum). Here's what I have so far:

1. Chatty passengers - Passengers will occasionally send the player some comms messages. Rather than spoil the effect, I'll just say messages will turn up for a variety of scenarios. If you're really interested, you can always read the descriptions.plist file!

2. Smooth riders - Some passengers will have a stipulation that they do not want a rough ride. Get involved in too much fighting, throw the ship around too much, and your final payment will be reduced by 50%.

3. Anti-government - Some passengers will have a stipulation that they do not want to dock at GalCop stations in systems with a particular government (eg Anarchies). If you do, the contract will be cancelled.

4. Xenophobic - Some passengers will have a stipulation that they do not want to dock at GalCop stations in systems where a particular species (eg Rodents) are the primary inhabitant. If you do, the contract will be cancelled.

5. Persona non grata - Some passengers will have a stipulation that they do not want to dock at GalCop stations in particular systems (eg Lave, Tionisla). If you do, the contract will be cancelled.

6. Bonus stops - Some passengers will offer a bonus amount if the player docks at GalCop stations in particular systems (eg Lave, Tionisla) before reaching the final destination.

7. Changing their minds - If you have the Broadcast Comms MFD available, passengers will sometimes change their minds. You might get a request from a passenger to take them to a different destination to the one you signed up for. You'll have the option of accepting the new destination (which comes with a bonus payment), or to keep the contract the way it was.

8. Something to hide - If you have the Bounty System installed, some passengers might have a stipulation that they do not want to be scanned by police or bounty hunters at any time during transit. If you get scanned, the final payment will be reduced by 75%.

9. Criminals - Again, if you have the Bounty System installed, passengers can have a bounty amount, and if police discover that bounty during a scan, you'll receive a small penalty to your own offender status. A menu item will be added to the mission details page after you have accepted a contract which will allow you to perform a Warrant check on the passenger (if their bounty is not already visible), but doing so will incur a penalty to the payment.

For contracts where the passenger has added extra clauses, the payment will have been increased over what the default payment would have been. I'm not showing the difference anywhere yet, as I'm not sure of the best way to communicate it (if at all). Let me know what you think would be good to know as a passenger transporter.

It'd be great to get some beta testers at work on this. I believe I've covered all the cross-OXP conflict issues, so (in theory) it should play nice with everything, but please let me know if you spot something unusual.

Let me know what you think, or if you find any bugs/inconsistencies/etc.

Download from the manager. Wiki page  here
You'll need the latest version (v1.6) of the Bulletin Board system.

Interesting, I'll give it a shot when I have power again. Generator kicked the bucket last night.

The one I've suggested before is the idea of damageable / loseable passengers. E.g., you get into a fight and there's a small chance the passenger gets killed or injured - if injured, you have a delay at the next station for medical treatment. Or a passenger goes missing from the ship while you're docked and you have to pay a ransom or reward or fine to get him back, with loss of time. Or a passenger goes missing from the ship - along with a valuable cargo or mail item! - and is never heard of again...

ffutures wrote:

The one I've suggested before is the idea of damageable / loseable passengers. E.g., you get into a fight and there's a small chance the passenger gets killed or injured - if injured, you have a delay at the next station for medical treatment. Or a passenger goes missing from the ship while you're docked and you have to pay a ransom or reward or fine to get him back, with loss of time. Or a passenger goes missing from the ship - along with a valuable cargo or mail item! - and is never heard of again...

Thanks for these, ffutures. The "damageable" passengers is a reasonably easy proposition. I like the idea of a passenger stealing parcels, although there will need to be some way for the player to know, ahead of time, that this passenger might try and steal the parcel, and even having some way to prevent it. So, when you take on a parcel, there is some clue in the parcel mission briefing that can link into the passenger mission briefing and reveal a sinister connection. This could even play out in other ways, where the passenger flees at a station, and leaves behind some sort of explosive device that breaks a pile of equipment items - revenge/payback for delivering a high-risk parcel.

The same goes for a passenger taking off with cargo, or stuff from your safe. What information can be given to the player to let them know this passenger is a potential thief, and how can they prevent a theft taking place? The fee for the contract should be much higher, to tempt the player to take the risk, but maybe some equipment can be purchased/installed that can lock down the cargo area from passenger berths, lock-in passenger berths that can't be opened from the inside, that sort of thing.

For the "passenger goes missing and needs to be found" idea, my feeling is that, at least from what I can see of a potential implementation, this would be a bit too random on its own. Just having a notice appear when you dock, saying a passenger has disappeared, with a menu option to track them down and/or pay ransom, would just be frustrating. There would need to be some clue the player could pick up that the passenger is about to disappear, or that he is likely to in particular circumstances, which gives the player the chance to avoid the situation. For instance, if the mission briefing stated that the passenger is fearful of lobsters, and you dock in a system inhabited by lobsters, there's a chance the player will panic and run away and hide somewhere.

My idea was originally that this would be most likely when the ship was docked for an extended period, e.g. if you docked for maintenance the passengers would have to spend some time "ashore" at the station to avoid health and safety risks, it's then that someone might go missing or try a little theft. The injury thing could maybe be combined with your "don't get into combat" thing - the passenger is physically frail for some reason, the reduced fee is actually the impact of medical costs.

Another possibility - the passenger announces he's going to switch to another ship and leaves, again if you have to spend some time on maintenance. Maybe this could be triggered by the time left to reach the destination being less than the travel time plus the time needed for maintenance plus a small percentage.

I've been using this for a while now and it occurred to me that one possible use for the extra passenger complexity might be to have medical ships serving a hospital station or some other medical facility (such as a planet-based hospital or a dedicated high-tech station or asteroid). Most of the passengers would be frail to some extent, so pilots would be discouraged from violent manoeuvres, all missions would be fairly urgent, and so forth. A typical mission might be something like this:

Carry 10 tons of medical supplies (machinery, or some sort of specialized cargo) to the station at system A. On the way there make two stops to pick up patients. Deliver the cargo, pick up another four patients, and take all of them to the hospital station in system B. Collect a cargo of medical drugs (narcotics) for delivery to system C, don't make any stops en route (e.g. scoop fueling all the way) because there hasn't been time to arrange all the necessary permits and you'll be treated as a drug smuggler. And so forth.

Does this seem remotely plausible?

If it isn't obvious, I'm a fan of the late James White's Sector General series of medical SF stories and novels, it'd be nice to have something like it in game.

I like this concept a lot, because it introduces some tension/narrative pressure, some characterization/worldbuilding/ambience, and some challenges.

Because the function is on the main script, not this (the mfd script):

worldScripts.EnhancedPassengerContracts.$declinePendingChange();

Milo wrote: ↑Mon Nov 07, 2022 1:15 am

Because the function is on the main script, not this (the mfd script):

Thanks for the report. I'll get an update out shortly.

No, really I will! Honest!

Version 0.4 has been released which fixes the JS referencing error.