Making in-flight trades with merchants?

[athios]

(Sorry if this has been suggested already. I did look through three pages of wishlists though)

It would be very nice if you could dock your ship with friendly merchants to buy some of their Water-fuel and luxury goods. They would cost you more than at an Exchange of course.

The reason I'm requesting this is as an aid to ships that have smaller cargo holds (and therefore must carry less Water-fuel) but need to travel long distances for contracts/commerce. I found that running out of fuel was a very common problem in the early stage (especially at higher difficulties) when you are stuck with a crappier ship and don't have credits to upgrade yet.


Btw, thank you for such a wonderful game! I am really enjoying the complexity and intricacy of the small details. I have been playing obsessively for a couple weeks now (much to the chagrin of my wife, haha), and am currently an Insane Zealot, who also happens to be a pan-galactic Star Hero Dedicate (a new award idea there? Ultra-Big Tent? Wink wink). Just reached Lv50 and somewhat tired of contract running, so thinking of getting into the Alien Hunting business...

Looking forward to your future updates!

Cheers,

Athios

[slayernz]

Hey Athios,
Welcome to the forum! Glad you love the game, it's nice to see you doing so well in Insane!

Definitely has been a request for a while now. Also, trading of rumors with space captains is on the list too.

For trading with merchants though - depending on your inclination, you could just (cough) board/attack them and (cough cough) "borrow" their goods. I do a lot of borrowing from Steel Song whenever I get the chance. In fact, some times, I give THEM something (before blowing their ship up).

[starfixer]

The "exchange rumor" thing I'm neutral about. But I like this idea of trading with other ships. Maybe you'd need rep, permit, or rank to trade with certain ships, depending on the AI/Enemy Type, and also every one in a while when you encounter a ship, that ship could request cargo from YOU, and you could sell it to them.

It would be depending on the cargo on the enemy ship though. If the enemy has 5 units of water, I wouldn't expect them to sell it ALL to me.

[Jamozk Ekhiss]

I think this is a good idea - with Merchant ships it'd make them more than just easy targets for pirates. Maybe if your faction rep is high enough, you could get supplies off smugglers too, but that's not a definite thought.

[starfixer]

Merchants you just need to not have an overwhelminly negative rep
MOs and BHs you need rank (and maybe rep?)

I don't know about smugglers and merchants. Maybe you need high rank/rep?

It should be vice-versa too. Other ships should once in a while request certain good from you which you could sell them.

[athios]

slayernz
Yes, I did do a lot of "borrowing" in the beginning, haha... although I found it quite perplexing how a lot of ships (in the middle of a red zone with no urban planets nearby) actually don't carry many supplies, sometimes with less than 2 Water-Fuel/LuxuryGoods. From the gameworld perspective, how do those ships survive? Nonstop mutinies?

starfixer
Yeah, that pretty much what I was thinking. The Merchants would have to serious trust you to allow you to dock, especially with no authorities around to save them if something goes wrong.
I'm not sure it makes sense for Military Officers or Bounty Hunters to be trading, since it's not their primary occupation. Maybe Smugglers could trade only with fellow smugglers though? Kinda like backalley deals, haha...

[starfixer]

You know how when you get looted, SOME of your fuel isn't looted? Same thing vice-versa. When they surrender, they'll never offer you ALL their goods. As you lv up, yo'll find ships with more suplies not because they carry more supplies, but your moe experienced to know where they hide secret cargo stashes, how to negociate, be intimidating. That's my take on that issue.

[shallowthought]

They never take all your fuel, but they take EVERYTHING else, even when it's more than they can fit in their hold.

[starfixer]

Sept 20, 2012 6:42:07 GMT -5 shallowthought said:

They never take all your fuel, but they take EVERYTHING else, even when it's more than they can fit in their hold.

Glitch?

And the question was why the enemy never shows much water fuel.

[starfixer]

Just a thought: Maybe merchants could sell more liscenced goods, smugglers illegal goods? That's currently how their cargos are currently

[Cory Trese]

Sept 20, 2012 8:54:35 GMT -5 starfixer said:

Sept 20, 2012 6:42:07 GMT -5 shallowthought said:

They never take all your fuel, but they take EVERYTHING else, even when it's more than they can fit in their hold.

Glitch?

And the question was why the enemy never shows much water fuel.

Currently the issue with Cargo removal from the Captain cannot be fixed.

Assume that the pirates jettison the cargo during the looting process.

The cargo system takes into account the size of the ship, Crew, distance from Faction space to determine W/F level.

It also uses dice so it's random and people notice when the dice roll low and don't when the dice roll high. That's how dice are

[Cory Trese]

I like the idea of in-game space trading between Captains, however, I suspect that this will be a ST2 feature and not added to ST1.

The cargo buy-sell system is based on the Economy simulation interface and other ships don't support an economy interface, therefore it would take a major re-write of ship cargo code and a ton of balancing work. Not something that's really available in terms of time, I'm afraid due to day job workload and the ST2 roadmap.

So, I really like the idea, plan on implementing it in a future game ...

[crackshotcerberus]

Maybe have the prices for trading relate to the closest planet of that faction with a markup depending on the distance to it. Just a thought.