Eugene Chin, on Sep 27 2004, 08:15 PM, said:

I remember reading through the descriptions for the "Angels of Vengeance" plug-in for Classic. This topic reminds me of my reaction to that.

It just seemed as if everybody was throwing money at you to do what they wanted; it made no sense that people desperate to protect their planet would run into the bar, literally begging for help and willing to pay whatever odd sums.

This prompted me to write up a reactionary piece; the very beginning of a string where the player gets drafted into military service.

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You are looking over what's available at the shipyard, when dozens of {bxxx "officers of the <military> come marching in" "the local military types bust in"} and begin harassing the dock master. At first you are curious, and go over to find out what's going on. It isn't long before you regret it.

"But I can't just let you take these ships!" the dock master cries.

"By the order of <leader>, sir, these ships have all been commandeered by the <military>. You can comply willingly, or we can force you." Some of the other soldiers begin accosting the other pilots and buyers.

"You!" one of them grabs you. "You fly? You pilot?" you nod. "Good. Come with me." You are practically dragged before a commander.

"{bxxy "<PN>?" He says upon seeing you "I've heard of you. "}The <enemy> are attacking," he says by way of introduction. "By order of <leader>, you've just been drafted into the service of the <military>. You will be expected to..."

Before he can continue, another officer comes running up. "Sir! Commodore Vorren tells us we've got a <decent capital ship> that we need a pilot for. He needs to know if you've got anyone."

The commander turns to you. "You have a ship?"

This could be an opportunity for you to con your way onto a decent capital ship. On the other hand, your thoughts turn to the <PSN>; if you don't secure her soon, in a crisis like this, you'll probably never see her again.

Accept: I have a ship. (Set: Hxxz.)

Reject: I'm available.
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I'm leaving a lot of proper nouns out of this text:

<military> : Think along the lines of the "United Nations Space Force Fleet", or the "People's Liberation Armada" to fill this gap.
<leader> : Elvis; cuz' only "The King" can demand this.
<decent capital ship> : A Corvette, or a Manticore. Probably somewhere in between.
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Very cool. I like the concept.

UE_Research & Development, on Sep 27 2004, 07:24 PM, said:

We definitely do. Come over to www.zhouj.net/Forum and tell us more about yourself if you're interested ;).
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will do

Even normal, non-mission runs may seem a bit unrealisitc. Like the Codehaven - Menin Bio-Weaps-run. with 6 Leviathans, you can deliver 24000 tons of bio-weaps on each run until you are multi-billionair. There should be a "stock overflow" or "no more needed" as an alternative to where the price for the commodity good is shown, so that you're not able to sell them...and have to go on Moash, and as they are all served, you should try to find another trade route, until the bio-weaps are all... "used".
In my opinion 24000 tons of bio-weaps are enough to blow up the whole galaxy
Same with the filling of your cargo-bays. Which juwelier has got 24000 tons of luxury goods in stock.

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havanaclubcup, on Sep 28 2004, 12:19 PM, said:

Even normal, non-mission runs may seem a bit unrealisitc. Like the Codehaven - Menin Bio-Weaps-run. with 6 Leviathans, you can deliver 24000 tons of bio-weaps on each run until you are multi-billionair. There should be a "stock overflow" or "no more needed" as an alternative to where the price for the commodity good is shown, so that you're not able to sell them...and have to go on Moash, and as they are all served, you should try to find another trade route, until the bio-weaps are all... "used".
In my opinion 24000 tons of bio-weaps are enough to blow up the whole galaxy
Same with the filling of your cargo-bays. Which juwelier has got 24000 tons of luxury goods in stock.

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If I'm not mistaken (I did check out a jünk resource), that would require not only a new engine feature but it would also be pretty hard to implement in the game, because it would also mean that you have to change that depending on the place, you have to change the quantity depending on the resource too

havanaclubcup, on Sep 28 2004, 04:19 AM, said:

Even normal, non-mission runs may seem a bit unrealisitc. Like the Codehaven - Menin Bio-Weaps-run. with 6 Leviathans, you can deliver 24000 tons of bio-weaps on each run until you are multi-billionair. There should be a "stock overflow" or "no more needed" as an alternative to where the price for the commodity good is shown, so that you're not able to sell them...and have to go on Moash, and as they are all served, you should try to find another trade route, until the bio-weaps are all... "used".
In my opinion 24000 tons of bio-weaps are enough to blow up the whole galaxy
Same with the filling of your cargo-bays. Which juwelier has got 24000 tons of luxury goods in stock.

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Indeed, for things like bio-weapons, there should be a limit somewhere, but unfortunately, there is no way of monitoring what the player buys in the commodity exchange. You could eliminate the ordinary exchange and do it all through missions, but that's just a pain that I don't want to deal with. I think the best solution, at least in that case, is well-thought out junks- who sells bioweapons to people just off the spaceways anyway? The way I'd do the bioweapons is to first have a mission or three where you meet the arms dealers, which sets an NCB that activates the junk. Also, a cron (or an invisible, timed mission) limits the amount of time you can buy or sell the weapons. Basically, move all you can as fast as you can and make yourself a profit. You could even stretch it out by using multiple junks. "Well, our buyers on Planet-A are stocked up, but now we have buyers on Planet-B, so start making runs over there." Use an otherwise identical junk and you'll look like a genius.

Now that I look it over, it's just a freeform cargo run! However, it has the distinct advantage of having variable profits- it's up to the player how much money they make.

But as far as the normal goods go, I don't see any problems. Remember, we're talking about entire planets here- and you're one dude. It may not seem like it but that's the case. Also, remember that luxury goods entails not just jewelry, but just about anything that would make life better or easier- furniture, CD players, stereos, exotic plants/animals, polo ponies, maybe even just a bunch of nice wood to build your mansion out of. It would be very easy to fill up on that kind of stuff.

Well, finally, the more I play, the more I think that it makes no sense to search for illogical things in EVN, because you won't be finished until years. There is too much. It's only a game, made like the makers wanted it to be, and we should be gratefull about the fact we can make plug-ins. It's the same for every game. Or have you ever seen a house built only with lobster and gold? The problem is this bio-weaps makes this game more unbalanced. Also the fact that you may have upgrades and all sort of stuff, but even Sigma-ships don't have Sigma-upgrades, that makes it even more unbalanced.
For this, I think that instead of making ship variants, they should give every ship a random outfitting, so you never know against what kind of ship you are fighting. So the starbridge i.e. would have random outfits in a specific ID-range until he has no more free Mass. So I know, if I was once able to disable a Mod-Starbridge, I can't be sure to do it twice. I know, I know, that would probably mean to change the EVN-engine eather. Just an Idea for the Ambrosia-Team.
no, no, I'm very satisfied with this game, sure, believe me! Great job!

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