Some inspiration for the Devs

[Julio Montega]

Ahoy,
piracy is a dud.
All that we can do is steal cargo and sell it.
Numerous suggestions well written and with heart and mind in them have not been implemented.
Bounty board:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/279277-Galnet-player-bounty-board-UI-concept

Piracy conception:
https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/257956-Declare-Piracy-UI-concept

So here is a little Inspiration.

Void Destroyer 2, a single man project, can do what we need:
A Comms system to NPCs allowing to:
- insult, to provoke them to shoot at us,
- compliment, to maybe have the off chance to befriend them
- give payment, to stop pirates to attack you
- demand payment, as a pirate to get paid for leaving a ship alive (penalty on killing afterwards)
- demand cargo, to have the target drop stuff
- hire, to get an NPC wingman to assist you
- inform to collect bounty, otherwise attacking is a crime

Is that so hard to implement?
Piracy needs love and we most seldom get that,
focus on this system and evolve it to greatness,
to add to every other role and job in elite,
spicing up the 'verse and adding that long awaited
breath the universe should feature.

 

[TERMINATRIXXX]

Ahoy,
piracy is a dud.
All that we can do is steal cargo and sell it.
Numerous suggestions well written and with heart and mind in them have not been implemented.
So here is a little Inspiration.

Void Destroyer 2, a single man project, can do what we need:
A Comms system to NPCs allowing to:
- insult, to provoke them to shoot at us,
- compliment, to maybe have the off chance to befriend them
- give payment, to stop pirates to attack you
- demand payment, as a pirate to get paid for leaving a ship alive (penalty on killing afterwards)
- demand cargo, to have the target drop stuff
- hire, to get an NPC wingman to assist you
- inform to collect bounty, otherwise attacking is a crime

Is that so hard to implement?
Piracy needs love and we most seldom get that,
focus on this system and evolve it to greatness,
to add to every other role and job in elite,
spicing up the 'verse and adding that long awaited
breath the universe should feature.

Strange ideas.
Piracy works fine, interdict, request cargo, send drones anyway, kill target, mission done, move along. No further questions - 'old' school piracy - no parlez

 

[Julio Montega]

Strange ideas.
Piracy works fine, interdict, request cargo, send drones anyway, kill target, mission done, move along. No further questions - 'old' school piracy - no parlez

That is the problem there, piracy seems to be in the mind of most as just cargo grabbing.
Killing actually should impact piracy negatively, as can be seen by PvP piracy,
players who kill their target after transaction are less likely to be getting any cargo at all.
Infamy.

But piracy is so much more, demanding ransom for allowing a non cargo carrying ship to pass by peacefully etc.

 

[Comrade Error]

Yes..

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Is that so hard to implement?

Consider me a praiser by exception, and that I've singled this one sentence out as I agree with the rest of the post.

That having been said I suspect the answer to this question is very much a "Yes, it is!".

 

[Julio Montega]

Consider me a praiser by exception, and that I've singled this one sentence out as I agree with the rest of the post.

That having been said I suspect the answer to this question is very much a "Yes, it is!".

Can't be that hard to implement, if they create logic routines
for plotting Jumproutes which are affected by filters,
and set states to ejected cargo for limpets to ignore.

It is due time we get some form of interactivity with NPCs,
other than shooting them and having them explode, or bribery with jettisoned cargo.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Can't be that hard to implement, if they create logic routines
for plotting Jumproutes who are affected by Filters,
and set states to ejected cargo for limpets to ignore.

It is due time we get some form of interactivity with NPCs,
other than shooting them and having them explode, or bribery with jettisoned cargo.

Have you watched the latest livestream on missions showing how interconnected things are now in Elite? There's also the pretty good networking at AWS re-invent that the Elite Devs did.

In any case there's too many examples of games with terrible dialogue systems.
Fallout 4 got ripped to shreds for this despite being a pretty decent game, in fact many Bethesda ones did
Civilization strategy games, similar thing with responses being too predictable
Even Bioware, the company famed for it's story and depth and lore got into trouble for having the choices as too binary.

Simply put it's fairly easy to make a dialogue system, it's harder to make a good dialogue system which is believable. Then add in the complexity of an MMO and you have several questions and problems:

1) How do you implement the GUI, how many options do you give?
2) How do you make the choices easy to read and select in pitched high intensity combat?
3) How do you easily show which ship you are conversing with?
4) How do you clearly portray their reaction to your conversation?
5) How do you let the player know what kind of reaction to expect?
6) How do you choose what options are/arn't available, which do you add on player requests?
7) How do you deal with edge cases like getting a mission target to surrender which would make them an easy kill?

This all combines, GUI, scripting, AI, networking, coding, sound design, voice team and presumably a bunch more that would all need to discuss through together, have the scheduling open up and work correctly etc etc etc

Not sure if you've had chance to play Artemis Bridge simulator, that one does 1, 4 and 5 fairly well. There's a dedicated "communications" role for 1 person so 2 is eliminated but it suffers from 3, 6 and 7. Often I found myself wanting to say things I couldn't, talking to the wrong target. It also made certain situations laughably easy when you successfully taunt a ship or fleet of ships on the other side of a minefield they fly like lemmings into it. The "taunted" AI isn't smart enough so that when the first ship explodes the others alter height/direction to evade the field whereas the "standard" AI was..

Anyway, hopefully that shows a few things why it's not that easy. Personally I really want this in game, multicrew provides a good platform to add that to. I'm not knocking the idea in any way shape or form, just don't think it's as easy as you imagine, especially not in Elite.
Anyway, this is your thread and I don't want to derail it into "it's easy" -> "no it's not" -> "yes it is" so I'll bid you adieu. As above I do hope this is coming.

 

[Julio Montega]

1) How do you implement the GUI, how many options do you give?

How about showing the options as suggested in the previous suggestions in the text chat gui,
additionally have button press commands.

2) How do you make the choices easy to read and select in pitched high intensity combat?

The aim should be voiced NPCs, but info text in the info tab suffices as a start,
also button press commands.

3) How do you easily show which ship you are conversing with?

Flashing targetting reticule?

4) How do you clearly portray their reaction to your conversation?

Can be added later via voice or pop up avatar, text should be clear enough.

5) How do you let the player know what kind of reaction to expect?

Why let the player expect a reaction?
Make it tied to rank and add piracy ranks for starters,
tying the reaction to that.

6) How do you choose what options are/arn't available, which do you add on player requests?

All choices all time there, only available on NPCs not stations or else.

7) How do you deal with edge cases like getting a mission target to surrender which would make them an easy kill?

Edge cases can be flagged, and why should mission targets be immune to the interactions at all?
If you shoot them again, they turn up hostile and defend themselves.

Surely it is a lot of code,
but needed code.

As button commands are doable,
like FD showed tying SLF control to buttons,
we can have communications commands along that line too.

Feel free to give additional feedback,
a single person can hardly shape a system into a fit shape.

And yes i watched the stream,
still dislike the "it is too hard to implement sentiment".