Post
Sat Oct 18, 2014 5:58 pm
#17
by Flatfingers
One possibility: when Josh showed off his new personality model, there was a "Lawless" trait. Presumably if one end of that spectrum is Lawless (anything goes), the other end would be Lawful (all behavior is subject to strict rules).
Josh also mentioned that colonies (and, I will guess, factions) can have their own personality trait vector.
Well, then, determining the legality of an action can be calculated by knowing what faction controls the space you're in, looking up their Lawful/Lawless trait value, and comparing that to each action you take within that space. For a Trade Item action, the legality would depend on the item being traded -- maybe every object gets a "Illegal" tag that can have a value from 0 - 100.
If you're landed at a colony with a Lawless value of 90 out of 100 (meaning it's highly Lawless), and you're observed buying or selling an object that is tagged as some form of contraband with an Illegal value of 70, the worst that might happen would be that you'd pay a small fine.
If you're docked at a space station owned by a faction with a Lawless value of 10 out of 100 (meaning it's highly Lawful), and you are seen buying or selling something tagged as contraband, you might get hit with a large fine, ejected from the space station, and marked as a wanted criminal. (Ditto for the other party to the transaction.)
Other actions would have their own Illegal tag values. Shooting a civilian ship might be a 70; pirating a ship might be 85; destroying a ship might be 90, all of course with special checks to see if you were defending yourself from an aggressor. (Well, except for that "piracy" one.)
Obviously this isn't a perfect solution as I've described it. It still depends on someone tagging every action type and object with an "Illegal" value. But at least it also factors in the lawfulness personality trait of the faction that controls the space where you are.
There's also an implied question of whether someone has to "see" you perform that action. Maybe trades in open space are up to the Lawless traits of both parties; maybe there's a way to mask some actions even if you're docked at a colony or space station.
At any rate, I offer this as a starting point for suggesting something better.