Activities for Criminal Masterminds

[kingpinnius]

I discovered Star Traders last week, upgraded to Elite the other day and am totally hooked... it takes me back to the BBS days of Trade Wars 2002. Awesome game Cory, and I love how open you are to incorporating user feedback so far.

One thing I would love to see is more varied options for playing on the dark side. In games like these I love being evil, but I find that due to my vile reputation with numerous factions, I can't hit up an Exchange to save my life. Thusly I run out of Water-Fuel, crew goes nuts, end of game.

A few possible ideas for criminality:

- The ability to rob Exchanges. Success could be based on a stats check (tactics, stealth, perhaps?) and if you fail, out comes the fleet.

- The ability to bribe your way into an Exchange or Palace, for the purposes of trade, theft, or fulfilling a contract. True, the faction hates me, but surely there is some unscrupulous fellow about who could be paid to look the other way? The bribes could be pretty hefty to maintain balance.

- Kidnapping missions. If there is a war going on between syndicates, perhaps high-value targets could bring in high values indeed.

Love the game so far and am looking forward future updates!

[RushSecond]

1) Sounds about 100x more risky than just finding ships in space, capturing them, and taking their water fuel.

2) I believe Cory is working on adding such bribes.

3) There already are capture contracts, but of course why would factions give you such information if they hate you?

Also, don't forget you can simply buy water fuel at independent planets.

[slayernz]

I do like the possibility of taking hostage ships/captains and ransoming them to their respective factions.

Also, it would be great to see some contract/missions that target the nobility of a planet - capture/kidnap the prince of planet x, then fly back to planet Y (or meet another ship in deep space) for your reward.

[darkmonk]

The idea of an attack on an exchange would be pretty cool. Sure it'd be far more dangerous, and give you a massive negative rep, but imagine the supplies you could get away with?

[oldalchemist]

What's the biggest hold in the game? 125 + mods? Raiding an exchange seems like biting off more than you can chew.

[Cory Trese]

The Factions use fleets of home-made Skiffs, Atmo-Runners and small inter-system freighters.

Shortages are not fun for the citizens and they depend on enterprising Faction merchants to supply the goods.

I also believe that a "Unit" of Cargo is a pretty large amount.

[ryan]

Still would be fun to raid... Give pirates even more fun

[oldalchemist]

You know what would be nice? Shortages and Surpluses listed separately from other rumors.

[brent]

As far as I can tell, the largest cargo hold would be:

+150 Flagship Carrier
+7 Cargo Pod
+7 Cargo Pod
+12 Cargo Vault
+10 Cargo Pod
+8 Cargo Pod

194 Cargo

I know because I own one! I named it Fatboy.

Most exchanges I go to do not have 194 units in them. Robbing an exchange would be cool.

It could give a MASSIVE faction bonus to the robber of any opposing factions to the owner of the exchange. A good way to redeem yourself if you are too far gone to buy yourself a pardon.

Of course you'd also take a massive negative hit as well. It could be a way to quickly get that "all factions -150" Darkhearted Bastard award.

[oldalchemist]

I was just looking at the spreadsheet and it looks like the Frontier Freighter starts with a hold of 180. You might have to get yourself a "Fatter Boy."

[brent]

Sweet! Fatman is on the list now!

But I trend towards liking guns too, hmmm.