Oolite Bulletins

I would like to have bash at this but given that I've got no modelling or scripting experience would likely take me close to forever so I thought I'd throw the idea out there to see if anyone wants to take it on.

First part of the OXP would be to have a chance of encountering police on 'smuggler patrol' on the space lanes in the more lawful systems (maybe 10% chance in a multi-goverment, rising to 90% in a corporate state). When encountered by the player they would hail the player ordering him to come to a dead halt to allow for a close range 'deep scan' of his cargo.

If the player does not stop within a short time period, he will be hailed again, if the player still fails to halt the police will apply a bounty and attack the player.

If the player stops the police will approach and 'deep scan' the player. If no illegals on board all well and good. If there are the player is ordered to jettison the cargo (which is scooped by the police), and has to pay a fine based on the number/type of illegal goods in the hold when the player next docks at any galcop main station. Failure to pay the fine results in a criminal record being applied to the player.

If the player refuses to jettison the cargo the police will apply a bounty and attack the player.

2nd part is to add some new dockables to less lawful systems where illegal commodities can be purchased in bulk and cheap. These would be....

'Horticultural Research Units' - rather euphemistically named factories often found in Anarchy's or Feudal States generally close to the sun (often on the opposite side to the witch point), using intense solar power to cultivate vast amounts of tobacco, arcturan megaweed etc. Do have engines and are hyperspace capable so not always found in the same place/system. Will usually have a bounty attached and will be protected by a small fleet of sidewinders/kraits etc. Not visible on the Advanced Space Compass unless a HRU locator is fitted (similar to Rock Hermit Locator). Only the Horticultural Research Units sell the HRU locator. They may also have some legal sidelines in Luxuries and Liquors etc produced from other exotic plants grown on the Unit.

'Oogenic's Clone Factories' - engage in mass production of sterile cloned humanoid slaves. Again most likely to be found in less lawful systems - also produce cheap food, textiles and furs by cloning technologies.

And a third one that primarily sell firearms.......<creative thoughts fail me>...

Feel free to expand the bare bones and if any decent scriptors/modellers want to take ownership please feel free.

Some interesting ideas there. My concern with the smuggling patrol idea as it stands is that it would penalise a commander who scooped up their illegal cargo in-flight, something which I do quite regularly (a nice little bonus for dealing with the odious offenders who attack me).

Shipinspection? Hehe.
Try the Vector. Scoop a special pod, dock at system main station (or any other station with GalCop flag) and launch from the missionscreen. Maybe you are lucky (chance).

btw: I'm already playing with some extensions to this and probably the next version will do this under other conditions too, but it will stay in very specific contexts.

Mauiby de Fug wrote:

Some interesting ideas there. My concern with the smuggling patrol idea as it stands is that it would penalise a commander who scooped up their illegal cargo in-flight, something which I do quite regularly (a nice little bonus for dealing with the odious offenders who attack me).

Well if you are going to sell on such items them maybe that's a risk you take.....you can always jettison newly scooped illegals if you are a particularly law abiding citizen - otherwise try and sneak past the cops outside of the space lane. Alternatively the police may turn a blind eye if it's only a ton or two I suppose (more likely in less lawful systems?)

I'll take a look at the Vector Svengali.......

edit to add - which looks very interesting..installed..are the stumble across missions reliant on you flying the ship?

Capt. Murphy wrote:

Well if you are going to sell on such items them maybe that's a risk you take.....you can always jettison newly scooped illegals if you are a particularly law abiding citizen - otherwise try and sneak past the cops outside of the space lane. Alternatively the police may turn a blind eye if it's only a ton or two I suppose (more likely in less lawful systems?)

But Fire-arms, Narcotics and Slaves are NOT illegal items. You can carry and sell them quite legally. What you can't do (legally) is launch with any on board.
Take a slave as a good example. He may well want to be scooped and rescued. I could see him getting quite disappointed if he thinks he's been rescued, then you just dump him again!

I can see a variation of the idea: what about a system where liqueurs are illegal (prohibition!)? Or computers? Or furs?

The basic idea could become part of a storyline where one (or some) of the commodities would become illegal in a certain system or group of systems for some to-be-made-up reason. Not the regular police, but some agency with custom ships would demand to scan the player's cargo hold. You could become a blockade runner, trying to get the prohibited commodity into the system. Or you could just get caught in the affairs after scooping the left-overs of a previous (unsuccessful) blockade runner.

Commander McLane wrote:

I can see a variation of the idea: what about a system where liqueurs are illegal (prohibition!)? Or computers? Or furs?

I toyed with the idea once of seeing if I could make furs illegal in all planets with feline inhabitants, but I couldn't be bothered figuring it out. Course, this was before I first found the wiki javascript reference pages. It probably wouldn't seem so difficult now.

Capt. Murphy wrote:

edit to add - which looks very interesting..installed..are the stumble across missions reliant on you flying the ship?

No. The only requirement for the background mission is >300 kills and Snoopers2.1 and Cabal_Common_Library1.2. The standard 'mission' stuff (plus inspections) is triggered earlier, but don't take it so serious - it's a fun element.

This would also enable realistic embargo scenarios giving further opportunities for some interesting missions.

Smivs wrote:

Fire-arms, Narcotics and Slaves are NOT illegal items. You can carry and sell them quite legally. What you can't do (legally) is launch with any on board.
Take a slave as a good example. He may well want to be scooped and rescued. I could see him getting quite disappointed if he thinks he's been rescued, then you just dump him again!

Your post got me thinking about the legal system when applied to commodities. It's stuck me a weird since playing expanded Oolite, but not when I played Elite.

The original elite manual simply says that trading in illegal commodities will get you a record, and was presumably achieved by the same method, i.e. launching from a station with some in your hold got you in trouble. But in original elite as the only place you could buy illegal goods was a main station the implication to the player is that it's illegal to buy them. Buying and smuggling illegal goods for profit would get you a record which I think was B&B's intention. Not applying a record if you dock with a main station with illegal goods in the hold or sell illegal goods was I guess was a little bonus for players who had scooped illegal goods - as a player you could imagine the sale fee was galcop rewarding you for liberating the contraband from the evil pirates.

However in expanded Oolite the legal system is open to abuse because of new OXP dockables, some of which sell cheap illegals (Seedy Space Bars and Narcotics are the one I've been taking advantage of). It's far to easy to make shedloads of cash (upto 100credit per ton) buying Narcotics at a Seedy Space Bar and transporting them to the local main station or a main station in a neighbouring system with no implication for your legal status. This is was made me think of the inspections idea to make this a bit more tough/interesting. But maybe the legal system just needs a tweak to make docking at a main station with illegals give you a record (very easily done via OXP? - on event dock, check if main station, if so check manifest, and increase bounty by 2 for each ton of narcotics in the hold or 1 for each ton of firearms/slaves.) If you scoop illegals as a bounty hunter you just have to sell the proceeds elsewhere or given the liklihood that quantities will be small take the slight and temporary hit on your legal status which probably won't have much impact on your game play. It'll be folk like me traipsing into the station with 60 tons of Narcotics in the belly of a Python that will feel the resultant heat.

Well, slaves might include people who willingly entered indenture in return for some benefit or who have been indentured as a punishment for some criminal action. Some may have agreed to work for a certain number of years without the benefits of full citizenship during that time just to get off of some backwater planet somewhere or to make a new start when they couldn't afford to move on their own. Serfs also would count, I'd think.

Narcotics could be a blanket legal term for any sort of medical supplies including vaccines and etc, since there is no class in the Oolite or Elite merchandise for medical supplies.

Firearms.. Well, what sort of culture has *no* weapons when they have ships flying around with everything up to Q-bombs? How do people get all those furs with no weaponry? The animals commit suicide and skin themselves? What do they use in the civil wars mentioned as raging on some planets? Do they shoot rubber bands at each other or something? LOL

I usually think of it as GalCop keeping all such lucrative trade under their strict control. It is illegal for the player to trade in such contraband and the player is supposed to turn any they come across in as soon as they reach the next main station, for whatever price Galcop deigns to pay them. By controlling the trade of such items, Galcop can use it as a pressure point with the local governments, only giving them any if they "play ball" as they're told to.

Of course, being as my "characters" in the game are a Feudalist Bounty Hunter, and a Pirate/Privateer in the Anarchy systems, my "game in the head" views of Galcop may be less than charitable.

Praise Giles and pass the contraband.

Ganelon wrote:

I usually think of it as GalCop keeping all such lucrative trade under their strict control.

However, neither slaves nor firearms are the most lucrative commodities. Furs and Computers have bigger potential profit margins (=differences between low and high price). Alien items as well, but those can't be bought.

Nor did I say that they were the *most* lucrative. They aren't usually the worst either, though, and sometimes one runs across a very profitable situation.

Keeping everyone in furs, computers, luxuries and booze.. Such is the somewhat nonsensical life a trader leads in Oolite.

Ganelon wrote:

Keeping everyone in furs, computers, luxuries and booze.. Such is the somewhat nonsensical life a trader leads in Oolite.

I'd guess, though, that the essentials like food and textiles will be available on more or less each planet. So they won't need to be hauled over long distances. That's the staple foods and normal clothing. Rare delicacies and garments from obscure fabrics may fall under luxuries anyway.

The peculiar legal status of slaves, narcotics and firearms is, of course, a legacy of the original 32K game, so it does take a bit of "game in the head" to work it out. As Ganelon points out, there are many different possible definitions of "slaves" and "narcotics". Here on Earth there are wide variations from country to country regarding what constitutes an illegal drug, or an illegal weapon ... slavery is, on paper at least, pretty much nailed, although even here there are wide differences between e.g. the legal ability of parents to control and dispose of their offspring, for example. I don't think we can assume that the Co-operative would be able to enforce blanket definitions across 2000+ planets and who knows how many species, with their own administrations and legal systems. Regarding them as "controlled" commodities is best, in my opinion.

What might be possible is to combine a smuggling OXP with, say, Planetfall: make planetary landings possible, but illegal (you'd have to do it outside the aegis, or you'd get bounty points). When you land on a planet, at a smuggler's den, you get access to potentially much more lucrative markets, for some goods at least – especially in the controlled commodities. There could be a chance though that sometimes there would be a raid, and you could either launch immediately and have to run past a fleet of Vipers in orbit, or pay a fine (low-order systems would be pretty cheap, and more of a bribe than a fine; in high-order systems a fine could be very expensive indeed). Smugglers' dens, of course, might not have the best hygiene: there could be the occasional chance of picking up a pest or two in the cargo hold as well ...