Pioneer dev forum

I have recently a taxi mission and got attacked by pirates while being completely unarmed (had to strip down everything to increase the jump range), I did ask the client if there was any danger and he said No. So I thought "You piece of crap, you led me into a trap" which lead me to an idea why not have it incorporated into the game on regular bases, i.e. why not have passengers that would attempt to hijack your ship or lead you into a pirate ambush or if asked to deliver goods somewhere the client could have a tracking beacon hidden in the cargo.

The steps for implementing idea I see the following:

1. Add 1 more "Where are you from?" question to the dialog with a potential client
2. As each system has a different "lawlessness" modifier, obviously if a client comes from a system with high "lawlessness" modifier the risk factor would be higher.
3, High risk factor may result in one of the following:
a) Hijack attempt - controls stop responding, various screen text messages to simulate the combat on board, jettison the passenger to withing certain time limit otherwise game end, as a result you keep you ship, but don't get paid for the mission, maybe get some of the passenger's belongings to compensate, loose some xp as mission not completed.
b) Pirate ambush - Increase probability of pirates spawning on you. -Fight your way through or run away if you manage to do so.
c) Terrorist attack - A set of explosions on board effecting ship's performance and hull integrity - jettison the cargo withing certain time limit otherwise game end, again you keep your ship, but don't get paid for the mission, lose exp, as a result it could also generate a "Revenge"type of mission (variation of an assassination mission where you attempt to get back at the guy who bombed your ship.)

Draft dialog for the "Revenge" mission:
-I have heard you are looking for [Insert the name of the guy] for $$$$ I could let you know where he is hiding now
-Why should I trust you? - the tipper would reply that he is a very untrustworthy informer from such and such system (again "lawlessness" factor , the tipper could provide you with a mission that result in nothing or even lead you into a pirate ambush, so make sure you check the map and read the info on the system he/she is from)
-Agreed (pay the amount, to receive the info and start the mission)
-That lowlife piece of crap is not worth that much (attempt to bargain for a better price)
-Revenge is a dish better served cold - (reject the offer, but don't clear the mission from the mission list, it may become available at another station)
-The galaxy is large and the time is precious, that jackass is not worthy of my time (reject the offer and remove the mission from mission list completely to prevent it from spawning again at other stations).

Those kind of clients could event offer a higher reward for their missions in order to try to lure you into a trap.

Just some ideas I had, wish I was game coding savvy to have a go at trying to implement them.

Hi, and welcome to the forum!

I think the main problem at this point would be to get the player to realize that this is a feature and not a bug that pioneer suddenly stopped working for them. The mission would be more intuitive if, say, we could leave the cockpit and engage in person-to-person combat. However, we would need an army of coders to implement that, so please let's not pry open the Pandora's box of "walking on the ship".

I have ideas with similar difficulty, of implementing the Tribbles mission from the original Elite, where the Tribbles (called "Trumbles" in Elite) procreate and take all cargo space from the player, and the only way to get rid of them is to fly close to a star. Pioneer has enough in Lua for that to be possible to implement, but I don't think players would experience it as a feature, but more like a bug.

Just some ideas I had, wish I was game coding savvy to have a go at trying to implement them.

Lua is very easy, I'm no real programmer, but I find I can get all I want from it. Have a look at the wiki to get started, and ask any questions you have and we'll be happy to help. If you know what an "if statement" and a "for loop" is then you're basically good to go.

Hi Impaktor,

I am afraid you misunderstood me a bit as I am not sure why players would see it as a bug unless very poorly implemented? Of course if it was over in 2 seconds one would never know what happened. but if you stretch it over time with some messages being posted on screen player will get a chance to understand the situation.

for example something like a set of the following message

0 sec (event was triggered)
"Warning! Unauthorized passenger cryo-hibernation sleep interruption in passenger cabin 1 [Name of the Passenger]. Activating security protocol. Emergency lockdown initiated"

+15 sec
"Warning! Bulkhead 1 has been breached

+15 sec
"Warning! Cargo hold has been breached"

+15 sec
"Warning! Control bridge has been breached"

+15 sec
"Thank you for the ride commander. Your services no longer required. Please proceed to the airlock :)"

+5 sec
"Warning! Firearm detected...."

Game over


There's no real need for actual walking around the ship in person it could be simulated via text messages. I don't know if you ever had a chance to play Derek Smart's Battlecruiser series games, if not I'd recommend to give it a try, they had the early versions of it released for free http://www.3000ad.com/download/. The game game was full of bugs and some stuff in it was implemented in a very twisted way, however it did have a lot of good features in it.


There was a system called "Perscan" which was just a text table that showed the status of each crew member on board and there location which was updated in real time.



Therefore if you wanted to launch a fighter (you can fly a carrier in there), you would need to send them to the spacecraft, so if your pilot was taking a rest in his quarters and you gave him an order to use fighter one, the plilot will head to the fighter launch bay and his status and his location status will change something like that (I don't remember the exact status but it is not important) "pilots quarters" to "corridor 1", then "elevator 1" corridor 2" to "Launch deck" to Fighter bay and finally to "Fighter craft 1" and the fighter would be ready to launch at this point. So if you Space carrier was 1 km long and it took 10 minutes for a pilot to reach the fighter bay, you fighter will be ready to launch in 10 minutes. Same for the intruders on board they all where heading for the bridge or for a fighter or a shuttle bay, so if you forgot to turn off power let's say from the shuttle bay, there was a risk that they could make there and hijack a shuttle or a fighter loaded with your most expensive missiles. That was fun:

-Commander, we have intruders onboard!
-Shuttle launched!
-WTF?!!!

I went a bit off topic here, I'll try to get my head around lua scripting, as far as I understand most mission scripts are in the modules folder, if you look for my plan for the mission above how do you think, could it be done by editing existing and creating a couple of new lua files will be enough or will I have to get into compiling as well as this is another can of warms for me?

Yes, all missions are in the modules/ folder. Shortest is DonateToCranks, and the DeliverPackage is a "standard" mission. "Taxi" mission is almost identical to DeliverPackage in code, except you have passengers. I'd read the wiki on the mission system first/in parallel though.

You could have a go at adding code to Taxi module and see if perhaps for some chance there could be a hostile take over.

No compiling is needed for the missions, they're all in plain Lua scripts.

I am confused, as I understand pirates is typically an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. Since you mentioned with taxi (it would referring to land vehicle in which case carjack would be applicable since "Carjacking is the unlawful seizure of an automobile. It is also armed assault when the vehicle is occupied.


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impaktor wrote:Yes, all missions are in the modules/ folder. Shortest is DonateToCranks, and the DeliverPackage is a "standard" mission. "Taxi" mission is almost identical to DeliverPackage in code, except you have passengers. I'd read the wiki on the mission system first/in parallel though.

You could have a go at adding code to Taxi module and see if perhaps for some chance there could be a hostile take over.

No compiling is needed for the missions, they're all in plain Lua scripts.

Thanks a lot Impaktor, I am currently going through lua tutorials, can do "Hello world" already hopefully with this rate I'll be able to do "Hello the rest of the world" any time soon :)

OK, having done a done a couple of lua tutorials (youtube forever!!!) I decided to take look at the Delivery package script, amazing, to look at the scrip and understand which chunk of code is doing what, just a couple of days ago it all looked like a wall of text.

Anyway, my first and shaky attempt at playing with the script was to make the client character lie (which would eventually lead the player into pirates' ambush).

So I added a local variable client_liar = 1 (which is currently permanently =1 for test reasons, will be 0 by default) meaning that all characters are liars, but you can see what my idea is from the following code:

............
elseif ad.risk > 0.8 and ad.risk <= 1 then
if client_liar == 1 then
form:SetMessage(l.I_HIGHLY_DOUBT_IT)
else
form:SetMessage(l.THIS_IS_VERY_RISKY_YOU_WILL_ALMOST_CERTAINLY_RUN_INTO_RESISTANCE)
end
end
............

My next task for to do list is to add a bit more text to the mission dialog which would help to generate how "truthful" the character is and assist the player with evaluating if a player should trust the character:

1) Add the character's "planet of origin" to the mission description line (based on the same principle it generates mission target planet).

The plan is too create one more mission type in the future where player talks to another character at the station and buys a list of characters (or systems) to be aware of. So if the client is on that list it will assign some value to the variable client_liar.

b) Add "Why should I trust you?" question to the dialog. Which would prompt the player to talk to the people on station to verify the clients reputation.



If anyone wants to pick up on that idea and implement it feel free to use it, I am just learning lua which, knowing myself, may take anytime from a single weekend to eternity :-)