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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer and trading

#16
Or just make it a trade secret. Only certain NPCs can have it. Granted, if we get into the realm of "only an NPC can have it" then that opens up quite a few possibilities (and quite a few negatives that other players will see/feel).
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer and trading

#17
Scanners should be another component thats upgradable if your willing to sacrifice other devices to get it.
everyone has a basic scanner for instance that would tell you the obvious 'theres a planet there and a star there and asteroids there' and point out things you know are there but include things you cant immediately see from looking in one direction.
now if your willing to spend some money to upgrade your sensors you could invest inn something that tracks fast moving targets better or something that would pick up rare minerals in asteroids or perhaps something that sniffs out those pesky 'spacial anomalies' you heard about. but if you upgrade your sensors they would obviously draw more power and that would mean other systems couldent be invested in as heavely. because of each ships finite resources (in this case the amount of power the generators can maintain) the level of tech your ships able to support is also limited. you want the top notch scanners weapons shields ect? then you need a massive wallet and be flying a titan class battle-carrier (or the equivelnt) but on smaller ships you have to specialize/prioritize whats important to you.

options and choices. think on it a bit. you dont need the latest and greatest scanner then dont get it and if your unworried someone scannign your ship and findign those relics you 'salvaged' then shield you smugglers compartments and pray they arnt looking to hard.
If I've rambled and gone off topic im sorry but i tend to be long winded as you might notice if you stumble across my other post XD. thanks for reading.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer and trading

#18
Honestly why not do something different with the scanners. Most space games go for the traditional click to scan contents which honestly I find pretty boring it's just excessive scanning.

How about this.

Ships can be equipped with a cargo jammer. This jammer is designed to simply desort the visibility of the cargo. However how distortion is controlled by a unique ID seed (Hopefully you can see where this is going).

Now if I want to see the contents of a ship that has such a cargo jammer I must have the seed to clear through the distortion. So now we could have any of the following as gameplay options.
  • Ship sells you the seed for a fee.
    You acquire a list of seeds of pirates/black market.
    You have a scanner that can try to brute force the seed (which would then start of the classic Uplink alarm chase sequence)
    You threaten the ship to give the seed.
Something like this could put more meaning into cargo scanning rather then the extremely binary process that exists in most space games.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer, trading, and scanning cargo

#20
I'd say we could have scanners that are really good at picking out what's in someone's hold, but have a really short range; some scanners that have a really long range, but only give generalized information like "metal" or "live cargo" or "gas tanks" (whereas the other kind could say "iron," "humans," and "nitrogen tanks"), and then have scanners that are sort of middle ground in that they'll give you specifics on some of the cargo at a middle range.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer and trading

#21
Gazz wrote:The realistic approach to the problem (as it is done nowadays by real pirates) is to bribe or blackmail someone and buy the information on where ships are and what cargo they carry.

That would allow for more NPC interaction which is a very weak point of many space games.
Why bother interacting with NPC when all they can tell you is stuff like where the north gate is? Lemme guess - it's kinda on the north end of the sector?

Any kind of gods eye view or too-good information is almost always the result of no design at all. Some coder implemented the RADAR somehow because one was required. Naturally accurate, as things are in code.
Game designers can't afford the luxury of thinking like coders because they have to create a believable world where things are far more fuzzy than binary.
So while scanner ranges can be quite long, they would be relative to the size of the target and the provided information (resolution) would also scale with range.
That's a lot more complex than simply showing everything but such is reality. =)
My god...you've just given me a brilliant idea for how to implement RADAR / proximity-related things in general with extreme performance :shock: !!!

Your little "game designers can't afford to think like coders" thing...made me start thinking about why I love being both, and why, sometimes, it's a big advantage to be both. And then you mentioned "create a believable world where things are far more fuzzy than binary." And then...THAT'S IT!!! Of course it's not fuzzy if you do it the expensive way...but it's very fuzzy if you do it the FAST WAY!!! Which, naturally, led me to think about proximity scanning and how it is very slow, n^2 naive or n log n with fancy data structures...but if you accept fuzziness rather than perfection, it's constant time amortized over some number of frames!!! Super fast!

Congratulations, Gazz, for solving a major technical challenge in LT. You've just hit on the most elegant radar mechanism ever, without even knowing it :ugeek:
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.” ~ Henry Ford
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer and trading

#22
StevoIRL wrote:Honestly why not do something different with the scanners. Most space games go for the traditional click to scan contents which honestly I find pretty boring it's just excessive scanning.

How about this.

Ships can be equipped with a cargo jammer. This jammer is designed to simply desort the visibility of the cargo. However how distortion is controlled by a unique ID seed (Hopefully you can see where this is going).

Now if I want to see the contents of a ship that has such a cargo jammer I must have the seed to clear through the distortion. So now we could have any of the following as gameplay options.
  • Ship sells you the seed for a fee.
    You acquire a list of seeds of pirates/black market.
    You have a scanner that can try to brute force the seed (which would then start of the classic Uplink alarm chase sequence)
    You threaten the ship to give the seed.
Something like this could put more meaning into cargo scanning rather then the extremely binary process that exists in most space games.
This.

I think scanning is important - if you want to be an information broker scanning high-value transports and selling tips to pirates is an important career option. I like the idea of scanners that can brute force the scramble code, and I like the idea that you could buy the code from someone. That actually makes for some very interesting game mechanics:
  1. You make a living by flying something fast and well shielded with a really meaty scanner to brute force the scrambling. Your quick reflexes and nimble flying allow you to scan promising targets before their weapons put a permanent stop to your scan; you sell the data you acquire at the nearest pirate hang out for a great fee and leave with no blood lost or taken... directly anyway.
  2. You make your living by quietly stabbing your friends in the back. You've taken the time to make the local factions think highly of you, but what they don't know is that your network of shadowy contacts are always able to sell you the scramble codes for their ships. You quietly fly by, ostensibly to send friendly greetings whilst quietly scanning their cargo. Some targets aren't worth the price you paid for the code, but others represent really juicy targets whose flight plans are worth a hundred times the price you paid for that scramble code... to the pirates who have been mysteriously successful here recently...
  3. Scramblers could be placed on hard points. If so, you can attack them directly (obviously not making any friends there). Once offline you can scan to decide if this fight is really worth the bother or not.
  4. A scanner might be able to work passively during combat anyway brute forcing any hostiles currently engaging you, allowing you a chance to identify which escort craft you has that really annoying AOE weapon you keep loosing hull to once you finish off the one you initially targeted.
  5. Scramblers and scanners can have varying strengths, giving more reasons to search out the PG worlds for the best equipment. People who hate scanners would be able to share seeds in which good scanners are harder to locate than good scramblers and those who like scanners can share seeds where the reverse is true.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer, trading, and scanning cargo

#23
While the idea of scanning is useful, I've always felt it far too simplistic and unrealistic in other games.

As mentioned, it should likely be the case that the accuracy is range dependent, but I'd suggest that even at close range it should be nowhere near 100% accurate even with the best scanners.

To really figure out what's in a ship needs some sort of physical inspection, albeit by robotic probes which can scamper round a cargo hold. This means the police/customs will demand you stop (or match velocity) so a probe can board, and similarly pirates and others won't be able to ascertain what's on board without such methods. It would bring back the idea of relying on spying, rumour and bar-room chat to find suitable ships to target. More reason to visit station-side bars. Intelligence rather than inaccurate scans, though the scans could add to the data. If you're following a transporter from an ore mine and the scanner says 50% chance of ore, then that's a good guess.

Related to that, I'd prefer to see that destroying ships is more likely to destroy the cargo, so piracy should depend on capturing ships intact - or at least their cargo bays. If cargo pods were made to be combat survivable, then so would be cargo ships.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer, trading, and scanning cargo

#24
Even in Freelancer, not every system you would find the police scanning your cargo and forcing you into dumping your cargo or fighting.

I'm assuming that in some systems they will be more locked down than others and maybe even force a 'checkpoint' in order to get to some worlds (like police checkpoints into certain countries or on certain highways) while for probably most systems, they don't care enough.

It almost sounds like people are expecting to get scanned at any and every inhabited 1st world system.
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Early Spring - 1055: Well, I made it to Boatmurdered, and my initial impressions can be set forth in three words: What. The. F*ck.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer and trading

#25
Gazz wrote: Game designers can't afford the luxury of thinking like coders because they have to create a believable world where things are far more fuzzy than binary.
So while scanner ranges can be quite long, they would be relative to the size of the target and the provided information (resolution) would also scale with range.
That's a lot more complex than simply showing everything but such is reality. =)
This reminds me of a problem I have with how X3 does the sector map. I'm a self employed shop owner, and I don't wait to broadcast the existance of my shop untill people are at my doorstep. I actively send out signals (in my case ads, flyers) to let people know I'm there. It doesn't make sense that when you enter a sector in X3, all factories are hiding themselves from you. If I had a factory, I'd be sending out an active signal containing my location and wares I have in stock. If i'd attract the wrong attention with that, I should be prepared (eg cops on speed dial or private security).

If I understand correctly, LT won't have sectors and will be fluid? But even so, merchants and factories should actively make themselves known to you as soon as they detect you. Not the other way around. Of course, reputation and faction standing should play a role here.


About cargo scanning...

I've always found the Star Trek way of scanning ships a bit far fetched. If there's a ray that passes through the hull and reacts in a certain way with certain materials so you can filter them, then why couldn't this same ray interact with some material and cause explosions? Aren't hulls supposed to not let special rays through?
Then what gameplay mechanics are there to get an idea what a freighter is hauling? Engine emissions are a good indication, as is the ship's trajectory. A huge slow-moving transporter with powerful engines running at 100% isn't empty. When this transporter is leaving from a mining operation, you get a good idea what kind of materials it's transporting.

Is there a way to detect stress on metal using sensors? Then that could give you a good idea which parts of a transporter are loaded more heavily than others.
With infrared the temperature of the ship can be mapped. Organic matter needs to be transporter at higher temperatures than metal. So this is also a factor that can be used. Extra hull plating or heat sinks could be installed to smuggle organics more easily.

Hacking the transporter's mainframe could get you its cargo manifest. Police could use the same scanning techniques and see if the manifest matches the emissions/projected mass of the ship. Pirates could mask themselves as police and try to fool the transporter.

Scanning ships to identify their external equipment seems logical. However, a distant scan should only identify visible equipment. Full identification would require less distance.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer, trading, and scanning cargo

#26
Damn so many good posts.

Sensors, Scanning and resolution should somehow be related.

Long range scanning gives some results, but the accuracy depends on equipment, range, etc. Higher grade scans requires more advanced (and expensive?) equipment.
Stealth and smuggling is the flipside.

How does one hide cargo, have hidden compartments, etc?
My idea is being able to apply some sort of nano particles to a container (or what the container materials are constructed of), thus lowering any given scanners resolution, and thus lowering the detection level (chance?) of finding the contraband in question.
Or applying both nano particles to the contraband and the cargo container makes the contraband virtually invisible, and thus unnoticed.
I like the idea of unscannable cargo holds, or fuzzy results.

I don't like the idea of flat chances to detect or evade anything. Should be based off equipment and whatnot.
Like an npc would have an automatic 5% chance to detect regardless of equipment. No no.

If you manage to research, develop, or use the stealth technology for hiding cargo, then props to you.
But the same applies to NPC's, they can research and enhance their ability to perform detection, get better equipment, etc.
Like an NPC authority might not be inclined to upgrade their detection, unless they are noticing high levels of contraband coming into the system. :think:
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer, trading, and scanning cargo

#27
I fully support the concept of shipping containers being the standard for haulers. I understand that the idea is not ideal for multiplayer games, but for a singleplayer game it makes massive sense to use.

Independence War 2 used the idea, and it was immensely satisfying to have a freighter release its containers.

Another concept lost on many/all space games that I would like to see.. Mass. If a freighter drops its heavy cargo, it should no longer be a prey class. Its now a lightly armed and armored tug that is massively overengined, and as such should be capable of out accelerating most things in the galaxy aside from small fighters/interceptors.
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Re: Mechanics of cargo transfer, trading, and scanning cargo

#29
Katorone wrote:I'm not sure if things still work that way with the Heisenberg drive. But ThymineC is the resident expert on that.
afaik its mass-dependent how fast you move
ThymineC wrote:As the game designer, I want to plausibly justify having different ships move in different ways, as this allows for trade-offs, balance and promotes variety.

Larger ships will tend to accelerate slower and have a lower top speed than smaller ships. Certain ships can be specialised to have particularly efficient Heisenberg drives, or to "leak" more for the benefit of allies. These all promote variety and diversity and the opportunity for balancing.
Last edited by Cornflakes_91 on Thu Jan 23, 2014 4:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

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