Fractal Softworks Forum
Starsector => Suggestions => Topic started by: PreConceptor on February 29, 2020, 09:49:34 PM
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Patrol fleets order you to give up extra-legally acquired ships and commodities, even if not an illegal commodity and order you to pay a fine in addition to hitting your rep
Shiny new Heron fresh out the back alley bazaar? Confiscated
Supplies bought on *special* discount? Confiscated
Duty free fuel? Hand it over
Not friendly with the faction that caught you not paying your VAT? Pay a fine or die, scumbag
Truly terrible, I need it.
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Do not forget to give up half of your officer and all of yours marines to be
slaves prisoners.
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This would be an interesting addition for one of the governments if its supposed to be extra repressive. Gameplay wise, it makes the system a place where smuggling is both required to operate and more dangerous than usual: instead of a minor rep hit, the player loses assets! Add in disruptions due to corruption (maybe scripted?) and you have a perfect system to encourage small fleet smuggling with enhanced profits.
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It may make sense to tie this more into the individual(not faction) reputation system. For example if your best bud catches you with stuff they may be willing to let you go or reduce the penalty, but a particularly angry dude will cause countless problems out of sheer spite. Dunno if it should be a flat faction behavior, generally factions don't pick on their own, or at least they don't pick on their superiors.
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A punishing mechanic like that needs to have an up side to it, such as the confiscated ships being placed into an impound where they (along with other ships) can be retrieved.
All done through some kind of procedural mission generation.
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This would be an interesting addition for one of the governments if its supposed to be extra repressive. Gameplay wise, it makes the system a place where smuggling is both required to operate and more dangerous than usual: instead of a minor rep hit, the player loses assets! Add in disruptions due to corruption (maybe scripted?) and you have a perfect system to encourage small fleet smuggling with enhanced profits.
Agreed. There's not as much risk-reward with smuggling right now as I would expect.
Also, IDK if this is a bug, but I've never had authorities confiscate anything from me, including AI cores etc, even when I've been caught with them and taken the rep hit. I just don't even care about being caught by patrols since the rep hit is offset by an exploration or bounty mission.
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This would be an interesting addition for one of the governments if its supposed to be extra repressive. Gameplay wise, it makes the system a place where smuggling is both required to operate and more dangerous than usual: instead of a minor rep hit, the player loses assets! Add in disruptions due to corruption (maybe scripted?) and you have a perfect system to encourage small fleet smuggling with enhanced profits.
Agreed. There's not as much risk-reward with smuggling right now as I would expect.
Also, IDK if this is a bug, but I've never had authorities confiscate anything from me, including AI cores etc, even when I've been caught with them and taken the rep hit. I just don't even care about being caught by patrols since the rep hit is offset by an exploration or bounty mission.
did you happen to have any of those ships when you were caught by the patrol:
any Hound;
any Cerberus;
Mule(P);
Buffalo(P).
all of those ships have the shielded cargo holds hullmod, which makes x amount of cargo much harder to detect using the standard method, x being the sum of cargo from all the ships which have this hullmod in the fleet
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I'm pretty sure that if your reputation is high enough with a faction, they have a super low chance of doing anything to you if they catch you. I frequently trade on the black market with my transponder on (Usually buying ships, fuel and supplies and also nice weapons if I see them). The frequency of patrols stopping me is closely related to the suspicion level, if it is very high I will almost always get stopped, however, I'd say ~10% of the time that you get stopped, you lose a bit of rep and otherwise there are no consequences. I also never use any ships with shielded cargo holds. That's my subjective and memory-based experience though.
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I actually think this would cement the idea of repressive governments and a decaying Sector.
Tying it to Rep would create more meaningful choices, especially in that "neutral-to-inhospitable" range where they're not going to shoot on sight but they will make life difficult for you because you're not one of them. I don't have a problem being hostile with a faction (and I'll shoot my way out if I know the rep hit doesn't matter) but if I'm on the cusp, I have to choose between losing inventory items, ships, commodities, etc. vs. engaging them directly. Even if I think I can take the fleet in question, I have to weigh the overall pros and cons.
I also like the idea of repo'd ships being targets of opportunity, whether its your own ships or other ships that have been taken by that faction. As long as the system can't be gamed too hard, it could be fun getting your old ships back or having a guaranteed chance to recover a ship you want (all via procedural missions). Of course, you'd have to fight your way in/out but maybe there's little/no rep hit if you're recovering what's yours?
Also, I like the added benefit of having high rep with certain factions making you virtually immune to the confiscation. In fact, at very high rep you might get a perk mission that says "Hey, buddy old pal, we just 'acquired' this Eagle in the Corvus system. Head over to Jangala and so-and-so will give you a great deal on it." So, you may lose a ship or two over the course of the game by virtue of not playing nice with some factions but other factions may throw you a bone or two if you schmooze them enough.
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This would be an interesting addition for one of the governments if its supposed to be extra repressive. Gameplay wise, it makes the system a place where smuggling is both required to operate and more dangerous than usual: instead of a minor rep hit, the player loses assets! Add in disruptions due to corruption (maybe scripted?) and you have a perfect system to encourage small fleet smuggling with enhanced profits.
Agreed. There's not as much risk-reward with smuggling right now as I would expect.
Also, IDK if this is a bug, but I've never had authorities confiscate anything from me, including AI cores etc, even when I've been caught with them and taken the rep hit. I just don't even care about being caught by patrols since the rep hit is offset by an exploration or bounty mission.
did you happen to have any of those ships when you were caught by the patrol:
any Hound;
any Cerberus;
Mule(P);
Buffalo(P).
all of those ships have the shielded cargo holds hullmod, which makes x amount of cargo much harder to detect using the standard method, x being the sum of cargo from all the ships which have this hullmod in the fleet
Nah, but my 5 Paragons with quad tach lances and 10 Tempest + 5 Falcon (P) pursuit death squad might have given them nerves about causing a fuss.