Unstable Space Status Feb 02, 2007

We were trying to work in some kindof explorer career, but haven't made much progress. With all the new deadly, dangerous routes, and unknown systems, a career that actually paid for exploring them could be cool. Not sure how to make it work though. The information/spy activities that GRandpaTrout mentioned has kindof taking over or merged with an explorer career. Of course ideas on how to make traversing deadly/dangerous routes 'payable' (aside from the trading profits you should be able to get) would be welcome.

Possibly the same way that a merc career would work, but instead of killing ships, we would capsule jump, either dangerous and/or deadly LPoints. If we make it through, then it becomes payable. Kicked out and no cash, but the contract still stands. We just have to restart again or something. Maybe link it to a NPC ship or station for payment.

The key to the spy or explorer career is creating a new "data scan" object. These data scans get created by different events in the game, and then you can sell them to people who want that kind of scan. So if the player makes a deadly or dangerous jump, then they automatically get a data scan they can sell with that jump route. Only gets created once per route. And maybe pirates or universities will pay for the data scans of routes (or something like that).

Once the mechanism works, then it can be used for a whole bunch of activities. You can create a data scan by scanning a fleet, and sell the data scan to opposing navies. Or make a data scan of a pirate base and sell them to the police. Or have spies give out data scans that can be sold to the spies home station (making the player a paid courier). It creates an information economy essentially.

The reason for focusing on mercenary, is that we need combat scripts working. And we need to get the balance wrapped up. A mercenary career is something new that takes advantage of those requirements.

Part of the sale of data scans I assume would impact on faction standing? i.e. Pirates are not going to be too happy with you if you sell a scan of their base to the cops. Is there also a reputation angle to this? For example someone who is basically being an informant to who ever is paying isn't going to get a lot of trust by people in other dealings. This could for example impact the cost of gear as well as generally impacts on the faction standings. Just some ideas. But these concepts could help balance the profitability of the information selling angle.

Yeah, I think even a simple reputation hit for the sale would work well. Our current reputation system slowly restores to neutral. So if you are careful to sell only a little info, the faction can't figure out who is leaking the data. If you sell to much too fast, then they figure you out and go hostile. Pretty neat, and, best of all, no code change.