Suggestion for Another Way to Increase Contact Influence

[resistor]

So I watched the next hour or so of the latest dev stream's recording past the point I had originally left, and I saw Cory seemed to be looking for ideas on ways to raise rep and influence with contacts that do not give missions or buy intel.

Here are my ideas...

1) Contact inf and rep rise when the player sells specific goods on the market. For example, selling Advanced Medicine could raise rep/inf with Chaesin Doctors, selling Weapon Components could raise rep/inf with Weapons Dealers, etc.

2) Contacts could offer a new kind of "Service" that does a skill test that, if successful raise rep/inf. Examples: Flight Academy Provost c contacts could ask Captains to help out with flight training with a Pilot skill test. Mechanic contacts could have a repair skill test. Merchants contacts could discuss economics with your crew and hobnob with the local business leaders with a Negotiation+Wisdom skill test.
Of course, there should be a limit to this "Service", as we don't want the player to be able to infinitely raise rep/inf in one visit. I'm thinking it should only be doable once every certain amount of weeks, and/or cost credits.

There's still another two hours of that stream I haven't watched yet. I might do it tomorrow...

[MintDragon]

Still spending some time thinking about it, but one mechanism I thought of would be that the contact's home planet needs SOMETHING. Could be 100 units of a permit 2, 3 or 4 item (Gas Processors for example) due to the ______________ (insert story here). Or patrolling the orbit to get rid of some pirates.... Or

I guess programmatically, it would be the equivalent of a mission for other types of contacts, but it would/could be more story driven through dialog. "you don't have enough rep with this contact. 'his planet-name' is desperate for RAW SPICE though, and if you could obtain over 100 units of it for the marketplace, it would really impress your contact'

Just an initial thought.

[fallen]

Thanks for the suggestions. This is still something we are noodling on how to polish it to perfect, so the additional input is helpful. Contact's without a direct way to influence their Rep/Influence are annoying and lackluster within the overall game.

MintDragon - that would be implemented as a Mission. Definitely not another game construct. Maybe some Contacts today we don't think of as mission-givers could give very specific missions along those lines -- but it would have to be Mission.

[MintDragon]

Jul 15, 2017 10:38:08 GMT -5 fallen said:

Thanks for the suggestions. This is still something we are noodling on how to polish it to perfect, so the additional input is helpful. Contact's without a direct way to influence their Rep/Influence are annoying and lackluster within the overall game.

MintDragon - that would be implemented as a Mission. Definitely not another game construct. Maybe some Contacts today we don't think of as mission-givers could give very specific missions along those lines -- but it would have to be Mission.

Yah... The only real difference I was imaging was that it would not necessarily have a time limit.

[grävling]

It might be neat if there was something like 'gossip with contact' you could do.

So say I want to raise rep with contact A.
I look at his influence, and see he is big friends with contact B, whom I also know.
I go visit Contact B, and gossip with him for a bit. He mentions that contact A is feeling a might pressured as he needs <lots of resource X> which are in short supply where he lives. So you go get a pile of resource X, and go visit contact A.
He says something along the lines of -- 'I hear you have resource X on board your ship. I have need of it and would like to buy it for XXX.' If you agree, everybody is happy, and your rep with A increases.

[fallen]

One angle I have been thinking a lot about is how Contact Traits (Spice Addict, Cult Leader, Traitor) could add behaviors that might let you get more Rep (Spice Addict clearly wants you to bring him copious amounts of Narcotic Spice).

Some Talents are helpful in this arena, and maybe we could press farther into that area -- Insider Trading allows you to increase Contact Rep by making good trades at the Black Market with his/her invitation. We could possibly add/modify Talents to allow your operations (trading at exchange, patrolling overhead) to have more direct impact on local, known contacts.

[Brutus Aurelius]

Jul 15, 2017 11:36:26 GMT -5 fallen said:

One angle I have been thinking a lot about is how Contact Traits (Spice Addict, Cult Leader, Traitor) could add behaviors that might let you get more Rep (Spice Addict clearly wants you to bring him copious amounts of Narcotic Spice).

Some Talents are helpful in this arena, and maybe we could press farther into that area -- Insider Trading allows you to increase Contact Rep by making good trades at the Black Market with his/her invitation. We could possibly add/modify Talents to allow your operations (trading at exchange, patrolling overhead) to have more direct impact on local, known contacts.

I like that. Maybe Military contacts want weapon and ship components sold to the local Starport, while Greedy contacts would want high value trades