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That's actually good, because it seems realistic to me that it might be destroyed in the explosion sometimes and scrap might survive sometimes.
That makes sense, I agree.
Some things are that 1. I can't get the ship to drop more than one piece of scrap
It doesn't work if you set ammo count higher than 1? That seems odd.
A third problem is that to arm the AI with scrap like this (if I'm not mistaken) the game gives the player one of the scrap metal outfit when the ship is bought. The only way that I can think of around this is to make a separate version of every ship in the game for the AI, but I'm not really keen on that idea.
Ouch. That didn't occur to me. Yes, having AI versions of all the ships is not exactly a practical solution.
I still can't get the scrap ships to start disabled. They won't fire any sort of short-ranged weapon that has short enough range to damage them but not the player. Equipping them with non-lethal bombs doesn't work, and neither does giving them weapons that destroy the parent ship when fired. The ships will not appear derelict if their AI and combat attributes are set to a specific government type that always starts disabled, because the government that they are listed as (whatever the parent ship was) always overrides those government properties. I think the only thing that might work is to see if there is a way to get the ships to release a "junk" resource, but I find that highly doubtful.
Otherwise, one could always just have pieces of scrap metal show up as derelict ships. It wouldn't be exceedingly difficult, and while the scrap wouldn't show up during battle, it would at least show up from time to time.
@shlimazel, on Nov 23 2008, 12:36 PM, said in New ways to make money:
That's in the govt resource, not the ship resource.
I tried Qaanol's method twice, and it didn't work. The target ship didn't drop the scrap. Here's more specifically what I did;
I made an outfit with both the 'scrap scoop' weapon and the mining scoop.
The scrap scoop weapon is a conventional fighter bay, but it doesn't show the ammo amount.
There is also a 'scrap' ammunition resource.
I set the 'scrap scoop' weapon to <scrap scoop>, 0, 3.
When destroyed, the target ship blew up real nice but didn't drop anything, in any form.
Make sure the outfit has the weapon as its first ModType. I tried it with X, 0, 1 before I posted, and I just tried it with X, 0, 3 and it works both ways.
@crusader-alpha, on Nov 23 2008, 01:45 PM, said in New ways to make money:
I got it to work just fine, but it only drops the scrap ship sometimes. That's actually good, because it seems realistic to me that it might be destroyed in the explosion sometimes and scrap might survive sometimes. Some things are that 1. I can't get the ship to drop more than one piece of scrap and 2. I can't get the scrap to be "derelict". I haven't yet tried giving the scrap ship a weapon that when fired does slightly more than 66% damage to itself (instant flak type weapon with small blast radius that damages parent ship) but that might work. A third problem is that to arm the AI with scrap like this (if I'm not mistaken) the game gives the player one of the scrap metal outfit when the ship is bought. The only way that I can think of around this is to make a separate version of every ship in the game for the AI, but I'm not really keen on that idea.
I'll keep experimenting.
Only drops sometimes, yes. Won't drop more than one, yes. Can't be derelict unless parent ship is too, yes. Won't fire its weapons until attacked, yes.
However, for your last issue, just give the ship Dxxx OnPurchase (and I suppose OnCapture as well) to remove the fighter from the player's version. The other option is to flag the weapon as "Can't fire unless KeyCarried is on board" and then just don't have any KeyCarried.
No, I just tried that again, and after annihilating some number of fightercraft I still don't see anything happening. I'm confused.
@shlimazel, on Nov 23 2008, 03:46 PM, said in New ways to make money:
Make sure the fighter is set as an escape-type ship.
Here's an idea I had once but never really have had the time to toy around with. Perhaps someone else can give it a go.
Why not pay your freighter pilots as you would be paid driving a freight truck nowadays; give them a salary? The Nova engine has a "credits per day" function that makes it easy to establish a regular cash flow, and perhaps freighter pilots could continue to receive pay so long as they remain employed by the company, also receiving additional commission from each mission they run - the regular pay you'd receive from each mission, or perhaps slightly less because they already receive daily pay. By implementing a series of company courier missions, each one with a certain crön bit assigned, you could set an "employment termination" deadline, that automatically fires the pilot and removes their daily pay if they haven't finished a mission in the space of a month or something. So long as the bit is flipped that says they are assigned to a certain company, they'll only receive missions from that particular company as well as the regular contracts for passenger delivery. Certain companies could operate in different regions of space; perhaps even shipping vastly different types of goods, which could in turn lead into certain story arcs.
For instance, this is an example of how it could play out:
The player accepts employment working for Consolidated Shipping Lines (CSL) from the mission BBS (listed perhaps as "Employment - CSL", among other employment contracts). This flips the CSL bit set that locks the player out of all other employment missions except for those associated with CSL, which then in turn become available (previously being hidden). The contract details explain how the player should continue to deliver their cargo to their member worlds and offices, receiving a daily pay rate sufficient to cover fuel costs and armaments, if necessary for the region. If no missions are accepted/completed within the space of X days, then the employment contract is automatically terminated, and pay will cease. Missions then default back to the regular set, and employment can be sought with a different company. However, we'll assume the player keeps this job for a while, delivering - let's say - medical supplies to outlying colonies. A higher-up in the company realizes the player's potential as a hard-working employee, and in a random event, tells the player that he/she now has the option to accept a promotion, requiring dedicated to more-demanding, possibly dangerous routes and missions. If accepted, the previous employment bit clears, and the lower-rung missions are taken away in favor of a new bit, which enables access to higher-tier profit options. The player then also receives additional monthly pay, and maybe stock options (new ships, outfits, etc). Now instead of just regular medicine runs, perhaps the player is put in charge of a team working to relieve a plague world of its dying population, necessitating time-constraining delivery missions or maybe routes through dangerous territory to enable such expediency. As usual, the self-renewing crön tag works as it normally does, and the player will lose his job if he doesn't perform a delivery in half a month, or whatever.
It's a big, wordy way of explaining a relatively simple idea (in theory), but it could make the Nova game a little more involving if you actually feel like you're something more important than being a freelance courier who occasionally ships stuff for United Shipping, or whatever they had in vanilla Nova.
There's nothing saying, either, that this employment strategy couldn't be used to align yourself with certain organizations such as local police, or even branches of the military, allowing better mission specialization among the smaller story arcs. For instance, a person gunning for the local police/peacekeepers could be hired to go and perform routine patrols rife with random encounters and/or even cataclysmic events that lead into one of the major story arcs, eventually maybe going off to work Black Ops and spy on enemy fortresses using a cloaking device, while another player may end up doing the same sorts of missions with brute force and fleet support.
Either way, that's my two bits.
@derakon, on Nov 20 2008, 08:32 AM, said in New ways to make money:
What happens if you load up on liquid fuel and then sell the tank? Would the fuel stay in your cargo hold but you wouldn't be able to sell it any more?
@crusader-alpha, on Nov 22 2008, 10:57 AM, said in New ways to make money:
Make the outfit unsellable, in that case.
That was indeed the idea. There is a specific ship class, the Rapier fuel transport, that can ship it. And that's it. Nothing else in the game can buy or sell the fuel.
An alternative to making the fuel tank unsellable would be to have the jünk set a contribute bit. Then either make a crön that fires whenever you have the jünk and don't have the outfit, so it requires the bit the jünk sets, and has !Oxxx availability, and does something like grant a bomb; or make the tank unsellable but make a second outfit called "Remove Fuel Tank".
That gets a little complicated, but works if you actually make two outfits with the same display weight, flagged so they can't both be available. One is "Remove Fuel Tank" and the other is "Can't Remove Fuel Tank". Set up their relative ID numbers so the former is unavailable when the latter is available, and give the latter the require bit of the jünk. Of course give both of them the availability of Oxxx.