A potential problem occurred to me while working on EV Firefly today. Most of my planets have landing fees. If the player runs out of money, they're pretty much screwed.
Well, that's fine as far as it goes. But I was wondering if there might be some way to trigger a mission of some kind if the player does run out of money, maybe some kind of Loan Shark thing. I can't think of a way to do it offhand, any ideas?
Rather than introduce a loan shark, why not make some missions offered from ships that don't require landing? Refueling ships, perhaps? Performing repairs? Adding in a loan shark would mean either another mission later to repay the loan shark or a combat mission later to kill the loan shark so you don't have to pay him. Well, if you want to make it realistic, anyway.
Besides, you'd have to land to get the 'loan shark' mission. However, having to go back and kill them at a random and extremely inconvenient time during a string would be a good effect, like they were working for the enemy or something.
Yes.
Nope, the landing fee still applies even with a mission. And that means if you're out of credits, it won't let you complete the mission.
Now, a few ships may be willing to refuel you for free which could let you limp around a bit, but I'd like some kind of better solution than that. Is there any way to query how much money the player has?
QUOTE (Lindley @ Nov 6 2010, 06:13 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
Now, a few ships may be willing to refuel you for free which could let you limp around a bit...
No, I meant the player could refuel some ships in order to make enough money to land again. Of course, in this case, it would probably be best of the player had access to some way of regenerating fuel, too, or refueling a ship could strand them somewhere or the player might use up all their fuel getting somewhere and not be able to refuel anyone. That's why I also suggested missions where the player is paid to assist in repairs on another vessel. No fuel is spent, the player just has to go dock with them and get paid.
This post has been edited by DarthKev : 07 November 2010 - 02:51 AM
Can't you just set it to take a specific percent of your credits? Therefore, if you have none, it should let you land.
QUOTE (Qaanol @ Nov 7 2010, 02:27 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
There is a way to query whether the player has a least X credits, where X is a constant you decide on, yes. See Edwards’s Teacup TC.
I'm aware I can make a 100% mission which only shows up if the player has enough money. But does that help if the player can't even land on a planet? And can I make said mission only show up if the player does not have enough money somehow?
Make a mission that shows up if the player has enough money. Have the mission invisible, and make it auto-aborting and set a bit. Make it so the mission starts automatically unless that bit is set.
Make a cron that runs every day, checks if the bit is set. If the bit is set, unset it. If the bit is not set, trigger a second mission which will be the "give player money" mission. The "give player money" mission unsets the "has money" bit so the "do you have money?" mission can run again.
Something like that. Note that this will cause problems if the player loses money in space, has no fuel to jump (triggering the check-money mission and cron), and cannot land without paying a fee that he can't pay.\
This may work well in concurrence with the "make time pass in space" method of incrementing the clock without landing or jumping.
This post has been edited by LNSU : 08 November 2010 - 11:51 AM
You could incorporate into the string some salary that you are getting and give the player a salary.
You could incorporate into the string some salary that you are getting and give the player a salary.
Why did it double post like that?
It occurs to me that there is a simple solution to this, something I saw in Plug-in Pack v18. Simply put, the player could purchase 'Bank Accounts' basically giving them a small amount of money every time they advance time in the game, making sure that players never wind up so broke they cannot land, now, these Accounts wouldn't be free, but they would only be a few thousand credits, the credits spent representing the base deposit into the bank account, and the money returned should be something on the order to 3-5% of the amount spent, giving a way that they would always have at least enough to land on planets with low landing fees.
QUOTE (Spartan Jai @ Nov 8 2010, 09:29 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>
You could incorporate into the string some salary that you are getting and give the player a salary.
I could, except that the player is working for a company that takes a fixed number of credits per day in exchange for the use of a ship and making missions available to the player. So the per-day money change is actually negative.
The bank account idea is interesting, though, that's worth thinking about.
