Hi,

This reminds me "hand-coded missions" from FFE.

It´s possible to do this type of mission in Pioneer!?

At the moment there are few kind of missions. I hope that in the future there will be more variety and factions characterizations, in order to create situations like the ones I described.

Also, the only interaction with other charachters that we have now, is trough the bbs. I'd like to see more kind of comunications, also in space (taking into account the distances as in scenario 1 and 2).

This things will make the player feel that the galaxy is more "alive". It's true that space is mostly empty, but when you encounter some human installation, or some object, they could feel unique and characterized, not only by their aspect, but also by the way they react and interact with you. This could also hide a bit of repetitiveness caused by the small number of models of bases and spaceships, which we have now. They could have the same aspect, but they could "feel" different. 🙂

If you ask, the kind of activity that pioneer players enjoy the most, is exploration. This is, maybe, because pioneer have a fantastic engine that creates lots of variety in combinations of systems and planets. If we could have the same variety and combinations in missions or the ways in which we can interact with the "objects" or the generated characters that we find, then we would have, not only stories about visited places, but also stories about missions, situations, persons, ships encountered, and so on...

I don't know how it's organized at the moment, but I think that a good way could be that every object (spaceship, starport, planet, asteroid, system, faction) have various properties that could say if planet is under quarantine, the asteroid a pirate cove, the asteroid in quarantine, the system under embargo, the starport occupied by militias/rebels/pirates, that ship marked as clean/offender/fugitive, that starport hosts an illegal emporium, etc... From those properties, the "mission generator" can take the information he needs to build some different missions. The variety of missions will come from all the possible combination of that different properties.

I don't know how pioneer works under the hood. Maybe it's exactly as i described. 🙂

EDIT: fixed some typos, and added more considerations.

I like this ideas, might need to do some thinking about the mechanisms involved behind them though.

I like this ideas, might need to do some thinking about the mechanisms involved behind them though.

I don't know how things are organized, now. But, if the idea of a list of properties of every object in space from which other parts of the game (missions, or characters, for example) could draw informations is good, it will be necessary to decide how to organize that data, possibly in a flexible way. For example, one that tells me how to access this object, if it's a planet, city or station (freely, always forbidden, needs a permit, needs to be a citizen of that system...) (is there a difference between stations and ships? are stations treated as big stationary ships? i think about big ships in which I could dock. generation ships, or ships like the ones in the Culture series) , or another that's a list of the political forces that rules that place, with the percentage of influece, so you can have different chances to be contacted by different factions (local government, foreign governments, rebels, free people, free comunities, etc) (this could be nice even for big spaceships with crews... I think about possible amutinations... :D), and so on. All of this properties, generated like the rest of the galaxy, so that they will be persistent.

When all this data will be available, even the IA of the NPC could use them. For example, the queue formed outside Benito's Platform in scenario 3, caused by excessive bureaucracy. The majority of the ships that tries to go to the planet, would be redirected to the space station, others could decide to go away and a very minor number could pick a fight with the police. This informations could or could not be explicitly disaplayed to the player. He could read that in this system are restrictions for landing and deduce that he will find queues, so it would be better to not accept cargo or taxi missions with too tight deadlines. Or he could not have that informations and presume this by his experience of other  systems ruled by authoritarian governments.

If we have lots of data, structured in a rational way, ready to be used, it will be a start for more complex things.

... just fantasizing 😉

Stations are separate things to ships, though ideally we'll eventually (one day, in a dim and distant future!) split off the idea of "docking" to be a component that things can have rather than being part of the station type then you could have your docking with ships etc.

We already store information about systems, that's the political information, crime and other things. It's spread about in various places. That's why I said it would take some thought and analysis of what you suggest to get a good understanding of the type of data required, if there's anything similar already, how to gather or generate the data etc.

Lets take:

 

For example, one that tells me how to access this object, if it's a planet, city or station (freely, always forbidden, needs a permit, needs to be a citizen of that system...)

That could just be part of a systems information and an enum, but then how would you get a permit or become a citizen without already having visited?

You'd need to add that information to the system, generate it based on the system seed, faction, politcs and resources.

Then you'd need to either communicate with the system from a neighbouring (nearby-ish) star system to request citizenship/permit.

We don't support that unless it's done with the bulletin boards at the moment.

So, to tackle that part a Lua script would need to sample the nearby space for systems with restrictions, and then offer adverts to buy permit for them on a per-faction/per-system basis, then store that information on the player about what permits they have.

When the player jumps into that system their would have to be a on-arrival hooked script to check that you have permission to be there and then handle those interactions - i.e: contacted by police/military(who we don't have yet) and allowed to stay, ordered to leave, etc.

I have a vague memory that there might already be an on system arrival hook/script that gets called... not sure, Brianetta would be the one to ask about that, I also know that we can store some data on the player from Lua itself btu again that's not an area I'm very familiar with.

Generating the initial system permissions based on factions, politics and other bits n' pieces is more my side and that shouldn't be too hard to hack in, at least in my opinion.

That would be one piece of data and a high level outline of how I'd try to tackle implementing it. Note that it's not exactly how I'd implement it, it's just how I'd think about the tasks that would go into what I'd investigate 😉

So each bit isn't too hard to think about, but it's thinking about all of those parts that takes a bit of effort, then investigating how they'd actually work, and then implementing them... that takes a lot of effort! 😀

Some of it like the refueling might be fairly simple to do with the existing Lua scripting, you could try stuff like cloning the existing tradeships script and having it generate ships without any fuel screaming for help.

Yeah, I like all of these scenario ideas 🙂

Andy

Stations are separate things to ships, though ideally we'll eventually (one day, in a dim and distant future!) split off the idea of "docking" to be a component that things can have rather than being part of the station type then you could have your docking with ships etc.

I think that Oolite could be an example of this. (I thought about Oolite when I asked about docking) 🙂

In Oolite, a station is treated like a kind of ship.

We already store information about systems, that's the political information, crime and other things. It's spread about in various places. That's why I said it would take some thought and analysis of what you suggest to get a good understanding of the type of data required, if there's anything similar already, how to gather or generate the data etc.

Yesss! I hoped and imagined, that this part of Pioneer was already organized in a rational and flexible way.  :yahoo:

 

Lets take:

That could just be part of a systems information and an enum, but then how would you get a permit or become a citizen without already having visited?

 

You'd need to add that information to the system, generate it based on the system seed, faction, politcs and resources.

Then you'd need to either communicate with the system from a neighbouring (nearby-ish) star system to request citizenship/permit.

Good question. 😀 When I thought about the scenario, I had assumed that there was only a single "forbidden planet" of the system, and always a place with free access where foreigners should go to obtain a permit.  But as you rightly say, there's no reason that can't exist systems in which all the sites are considered to be prohibited. Or only those of a certain type (only the planets... only the orbiting stations...)  Hence the long queues.

Maybe it could be done forcing a check that will ensure that at least one place with free access exists in the system. (I think that an orbiting station could be typical. Maybe a kind with many docking ports :biggrin: ) But I hope for a smarter method. If you start making "spacial cases" upon "special cases", you end up adding too much unmanageable complexity.

After all, there's nothing preventing the existence of entire systems completely closed from the outside. And then, the need to obtain, elsewere, a permit or anything else that can let you in.

We don't support that unless it's done with the bulletin boards at the moment.

I imagined to find permits, citizenship requests, or every other bureaucratic/political things, typically, in the "Contact local police" menu. At the moment, we have only this and the BBS (which, atm, is a long unordered list that doesn't have a hierarchical organization), but it could be nice to have more flexibility that allows to divide different kind of services/offers/missions/peoples to talk to, in different menus (better without the maze of menus you could find in Vega Strike, for example).

From the way you described it, it seems to me that Pioneer can function well as a complex system, in which many small simple parts can interact to let emerge more complex properties and behaviors. Just like in reality, in living organisms, and so on. In complex systems you don't plan every possible behavior of the system, but "simply" set the initial objects properties and some simple rules of interaction. If done right, should emerge many different behaviors and situations, all consistent within the system. Many of which you expected, and some other unexpected... but surprising. An example, is the famous John Conway's Game of Life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_Game_of_Life

Anyway, I must confine myself to speak of possibilities and theories, 'cause I'm not a developer. I studied as a developer and sysadmin, and ended working as sysadmin and studying cognitive science and philosophy... So, I'm a really non-practical person. :mail:

Thank you! I was hoping to tease the imaginations.  :victory:  :prankster:

Another scenario. This just happened to me playing Oolite. In my setup, I have lots of mods. Every mod brings it's own missions and situations. What happened involved, mainly, two mods: Anarchies (which brings some stations: Salvage Gang and Hacker Outpost in my story and, maybe, the corrupted cop) and Random Hits (which brings bounty hunters and their Space Bars where you could find works). The fines and attitude adjustments are core features.

This is an example of what could happen when different things combines toghether. 🙂

(Copy-paste from the Oolite forum)

I was very unlucky... It started when I scooped a GalMine Pod that popped out of a pirate Python that I had just blown up. Instantly, I became an offender... But I swear that my intention was to return it back! So I went to the nearest Space Bar. Silly me... I forgot that my nice bounty hunters fellows are quite intolerant versus people with an offender status, even if they are veteran hunters. I had to run away very quickly.

Ok - i thought - let's go to the main station, pay the fine and do some "attitude adjustment" to clean my status (I have a stash of latex gloves to clean the latrines ... When you live in your small spaceship, sometimes you need them).

I docked and an officer came to me. He asked for a bribe to clean my status. 10000Cr!! I shouted at him "Are you crazy?", and went away... Fatal error!!! He took revenge changing my status to Fugitive with a bounty of 350Cr... "Ok! Challenge accepted", i said. Saved the game and lauched. My new "mission" was clean my status.

I kept junping from system to system, sunskimming, running from police and military ships, fighting with those vile bounty hunters that one day are all "Yeah! Greeting commander. You are a great hunter. Take that gargleblaster!" and the other shoots you in the back.

Obviously, no main station allowed me to dock. I kept running, fighting and hiding. I searched for some Salvage Gang to buy a status cleaner. I found two of them, but without the item I needed. I even found an Hacker Viper that told me how ro reach the Hacker Outpost. I went there, docked... and instantly launched out while the outpost was blown to pieces by a stupid bounty hunter! Those people are crazy! I destroyed him... tried a couple more salvage gangs... No way...

I had to solve the problem with a "Kobayashi-Maru manouver" to the save file.

Damn! I knew that power always brings corruption, but I had never tried it on my skin.

And, speaking about docking queues...  :biggrin:

Here you can see an amount of annoyed captains waiting for their turn :O

[attachment=1979:oolite-383.png][attachment=1980:oolite-382.png]

Hacking missions

Just like scout missions, but with more risks. You have to sabotage/steal data from bulk ships/big ships/spaceports's computers.

Maybe you could need a special equipment, or just use the Radar Mapper like in scout missions. You have to go near your target, start the hacking process and wait. If you are far there's more lag, so the process will take more time. You could hire a hacker into you crew to speed up the process. There's a chance to be caught. In that case, you'll have to fight, or your ship could be counter-hacked (some equipment will be damaged).

More difficult mission are with moving targets (ships). You have to approach them and keep some distance while the process is working.

Another idea, from here http://pioneerspacesim.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=31&p=298#p294

Space motorsports

Speed or agility races in space with ad-hoc ships. Think about a race with very agile ships inside our newtonian enviroinment. There could be tracks delimited with rings in which you must pass (like I've seen somewhere else... can't remembere where) or slaloms... and to make it even more interesting, some track will pass near uninhabitated planets, gas giants or stars, so the pilot must consider the gravity and use it at it's advantage (slingshot!).

I think it could be a very nice and fun challenge.

There could be "missions" or a championship, a career.

It will even be a good flying practice.

Sounds quite like a mix between Verne's Tour de Monde and chess by mail. 🙂

Could be nice. With or without autopilot? Obligatory stages? Planets that you must visit? Or just the fastest from Start to Finish?

I think that one must document his progress with screenshots including the date.

What about a "Race" that tries to use the barest minimum of fuel? It would take forever... but doing a specific circuit by properly doing things like gravity slingshots, aerobraking and the like to save reaction mass. The autopilot is good at time optimized flight, better than any human... it isn't so good at small precise burns...

That's another good idea! To do so, I think we need an improved orbital view in which you can plan more precisely your path. More like Kerbal Space Program.

For example, I found quite easy to do a Hohmann transfer around a planet, but I never managed to do it around a star to pass from planet to planet.

Is there anyway to free the slaves?

Yes! With jettison!

But not liberate in any space station because you will be fined.   :devil:

didnt think of that,  im far enough away from sol were there is no problem jettison them at the port.

That's cruel! :O

There should be a way to free the slaves without selling them. Expecially in systems where slaves traffic is illegal.

I've been wondering how to do missions around that kind of thing, Abolitionist Liberations / Slaver Raids, Drug Busts / Smuggling Runs...

It was something I remember from a game back in the day that actually shocked and angered me... I was in a dogfight and won... the enemy ejected and because I was feeling chivalrous I picked him up with my scoop and flew back to the nearest base. Got attacked by the police for carrying slaves because I didn't realize that when you scooped a lifeboat it counted as a slave in the cargo hold...

Thought I was doing a rescue / arrest... got blasted by the Fuzz for my kindness...

Maybe there could be another option (crew dependant?) besides Jettison available if you are docked or have Passenger Cabins to transfer humans between the two (slaves from the hold become passengers, passengers moved to the hold become slaves). It would allow for Abolitionist Liberations and Slaving Raids with a single mechanism... as well as Rescues and Arrests for legal work...

If you are going to transport slaves do not forget to install the life support for the cargo bay.

If they forget, the smell will be unbearable.  :sclerosis:  :punish:

Jokes aside, I think it is sad to imagine on future year 3200, with old embarrassments of humanity.

well right now the only way to do it is to jettison the slaves, at a planet were slavery is legal.