for 3000

help?

I'm working on 3000 again (yay!), but I've hit a wall on a certain mission string...
(I apologize if I posted this already. If I did, it was a long time ago.)

My idea is that you are sent to collect taxes from a trader that's fallen behind- you're orders are to collect taxes or destroy them.

Most will pay, but I need it to play out where the government sends you to the system, where you hail the ship. Occasionally, they won't/can't pay, and you have so chase them down. More often they try to run, but occasionally a particularly brave trader will simply charge you guns blazing. (You're in a military intercepter- stock freighters are no match, but heavily upgraded and customized small to medium sized freighters have a chance against 1 or 2 interceptors and die quickly to a heavy fighter, gunboat, or more than 2 intercepters.)

Is there any way to make this work? (ie, make two missions point to the same ship?)

I also thought of assigning a pers to a system (that you are sent to) and have the pers offer the mission, but I plan on having a dozen or so of these missions- I'd much rather have their systems be random...

If anyone can think of a workaround, let me know. I thought of the first mission sending the player to a planet to look for the rogue captain. Then I could have the captain's interaction be the second mission and make it take place in a bar or shipyard...

I only want to do that if I have to.

What exactly do you want to occur in the case where the captain does pay? The best I can think of is, the player has to observe the special ship in flight, at which point (OnShipDone with goal Observe) a message appears (either at the bottom of the screen via Qxxx, or perhaps, in a dialog via autoaborting Sxxx mission (or better yet if it’s possible, can LoadCargoText be made to appear OnShipDone? If so use cargo type “Payment”) saying the captain agrees to pay. You don’t actually board your quarry, but maybe the payment was transferred wirelessly or via cargo drone.

On the other hand, if the captain does not pay, then you want the player to destroy the target. This of course requires ShipGoal to be Destroy.

So it looks to me like you need two (or more) missions. You can make them identical in all regards, particularly the offer texts would be the same, except one has ShipGoal: Destroy and no cargo, whereas the other has ShipGoal: Observe with zero tons of *Payment loaded OnShipDone. You can make other differences too if you want, like different düdes or AI behaviors or possible target systems if you like. But that’s how I’d do it. Two mutually exclusive missions, of which one or the other is offered at random.

QUOTE (Qaanol @ Nov 17 2010, 09:32 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What exactly do you want to occur in the case where the captain does pay? The best I can think of is, the player has to observe the special ship in flight, at which point (OnShipDone with goal Observe) a message appears (either at the bottom of the screen via Qxxx, or perhaps, in a dialog via autoaborting Sxxx mission (or better yet if it’s possible, can LoadCargoText be made to appear OnShipDone? If so use cargo type “Payment”) saying the captain agrees to pay. You don’t actually board your quarry, but maybe the payment was transferred wirelessly or via cargo drone.

On the other hand, if the captain does not pay, then you want the player to destroy the target. This of course requires ShipGoal to be Destroy.

So it looks to me like you need two (or more) missions. You can make them identical in all regards, particularly the offer texts would be the same, except one has ShipGoal: Destroy and no cargo, whereas the other has ShipGoal: Observe with zero tons of *Payment loaded OnShipDone. You can make other differences too if you want, like different düdes or AI behaviors or possible target systems if you like. But that’s how I’d do it. Two mutually exclusive missions, of which one or the other is offered at random.

I like that, and it would work well for the basic missions, where you confront them and they run, attack you, or pay...

One of the characters needs to beg for mercy though.

Is there any way to have a mission with "Destroy" shipgoal, but instead of a DUDE, have it point to a pers?
Then the pers (the pilot) can have it's own mission that aborts the original (Go find pilot) mission...

One of the catches is that it needs to appear that the pilot you're sent after makes a decision...

Mission 1- Go find the S.S. Buddha and hail it. The pilot didn't pay their taxes.. (Destroy ship mission)

You jump into the system, and hail the S.S. buddha as ordered, and the S.S. Buddha offers it's own mission which is hidden, but is where the pilot of the S.S. Buddha either says "Die!" "You'll never catch me!" (destroy missions) or "Here's your money. I'm sorry, please don't hurt me." (invisible mission, offers pay when you land.)

The catch that I'm running into, is that UROS is a fairly bloodthirsty government, and some people will enjoy playing the missions simply as go kill target ship missions (since they can get away with it) rather than hailing them like they're supposed to.

Looks like I'll need 2 missions offered at the beginning (1 destroy, 1 observe) and 1 more offered from the captain when you find him (randomly selected of 3.)

Am I way off?

This post has been edited by REDchigh : 18 November 2010 - 10:34 AM

Why does it need to be a përs? The method Qaanol suggested will work for that third mission, as well. I really don't see a need to use a përs resource for this. At any rate, you can't have a mission point to a përs. You can have a mission tell the player to go somewhere and make a përs that sits in that system, but the mission won't specifically point to the përs.

QUOTE (DarthKev @ Nov 18 2010, 05:31 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Why does it need to be a përs? The method Qaanol suggested will work for that third mission, as well. I really don't see a need to use a përs resource for this. At any rate, you can't have a mission point to a përs. You can have a mission tell the player to go somewhere and make a përs that sits in that system, but the mission won't specifically point to the përs.

Well I wanted the player to open a hail with the ship, and have the mission branch off from there.....

I had a workaround in my mind, where the first mission was an 'observe' mission, but which pointed to a random trader- not the target.
The mission would set a bit when it was accepted to make a pers (coded to always be in a specific system, but normally the bits wouldn't allow it to appear.)
Then you hail the pers, and the pers offers the real mission...

Is there any way to make a mission spontaneously pop up while you are flying and have the "accept" box come up?

If you want to use the përs method, what you described will work. However you’ll need a separate përs resource for each type of ship that might be a target. You can, however, get away with only the 2 missions you described.

First mission: offered normally, goal is to observe a generic trader. If successfully complete, gives no payment and has a description to the effect of, “What, you didn’t get the money or kill the target?” Also OnStart sets one particular bit, say b1, and randomly does or does not toggle the state of each of let’s say 3 other bits, b2 b3 and b4.

Each përs is set to appear if and only if b1 is set, AND some particular combination of the other bits, unique to that përs, is set. So with 3 bits you can have 8 përses. You’ll have to do a bit of cleverness if you want the target to appear in a random system, but it is possible.

All of the përses offer the same mission, which does whatever you want it to do as far as begging for mercy. If you wanted you could have some of the përses offer different missions, like secretly the player secretly helps the captain and gets drawn into a sidequest. For that matter, you could set it up so each përs has a random chance of offering several different missions, as long as the last one has 100% chance to be offered, so there will always be something.

Actually, with that setup, you could do away entirely with my previous suggestion. Now all the different possibilities, pay, fight, run, beg, bribe, offer to pay in gum, can be started at the përs. You still need one mission for each possible behavior, and one extra mission to start the whole thing off and set the random bits. If you want, you can make the random-bit mission randomly toggle even more bits, say 3 more, and those specify which of the (say missions are offered by the përs. Then all the latter missions can have 100% chance of being offered.

Oh also, when any of the second-round missions start, they Axxx the initial offer. Note that you do have an issue of the player possibly having the first-offered mission as the 16th active mission, so they might not be able to accept the përs-offered mission due to engine restrictions. There are ways around that, but probably it’s easiest to juts ignore it.

There’s still the issue of making each type of ship be able to appear in different target systems though, which may require many more përses, and a separate initial offer mission for each possible system. Although, you could also do away with the dummy ship, if you don’t want a red arrow on the map, and just tell the player the general area to find the target and make them go hunting.

Don't forget to set the përs ships to re-spawn, too. Otherwise, there's the possibility of the player getting the 'kill target' mission with all of them and running out of përs ships.

Now I'm thinking, what if I didn't set the first mission at all?

I could just make 15-20 pers that offer the mission, and each one you complete raises your reputation by a significant amount...

Then when it hits a high number it allows you to continue to the next mission string....

Or I could use combat... or both. hmm.

Would that get too annoying you think?