I think I may have found something with some practical uses, but first let me tell you why I was experimenting...
I have always been a big fan of the trade system in CE, but at the same time I don't like the fact that it takes up Augment slots, especially when there are so many cool new augments in the CE. So a long time ago I suggested making the augments into "weapons" that can be placed in your cargo hold. One of the problems with this was that you would have to "equip" the weapons before going to a store in order to sell them which requires people to remember to do that every single time before they jump to a store and sometimes may not even be possible, if you just jumped away from a fight for example.
I think I may have found a way to fix this issue though... I've tested this out and it works seamlessly. Basically it's a way to allow a player to visit the store, BEFORE being given the option to trade their special goods. This could also be useful for a couple of different things, event wise. At the very least you've got to admit it was interesting. Basically it works kind of like this:
1.)Player jumps to a STORE
[Event designated STORE displays intro flavor text, using ship load="" a neutral dummy trade station is loaded}
2.)Player chooses Continue...
[The station is set to ship hostile="true"]
3.)The Store screen opens and can be used normally, players can equip and unequip items using the Sell screen
4.)When the Store screen is closed the trade screen immediately appears with the trade options to buy and sell, this used to happen before the Store opened.
[This is the important part: The ship which was set to hostile, immediately surrenders because the surrender conditions are set to min="22" max="22". The station is reset to hostile="false".]
5.)The trade system works exactly the same as before.
I hope that all makes sense.
Comments and concerns about changing trade goods into weapons instead of augments :
- First off let me say that I know Sleeper is VERY busy doing other things so he's probably not all that concerned with completely redoing the trade system. It's not really a necessity to go and redo the trade system. The Advanced Edition may also give us more opportunities to revamp the trade system, who knows. However, I would still like to hear some people's opinions on this.
- I know it would be weird to have to equip trade goods as weapons but they aren't augments either, just saying... It makes sense to put them in Cargo though.
- So far to me it seems like if you are going to be a trade ship you really have to commit. I have played through the game many times, but very rarely am I ever able to hold on to a trade good long enough to actually sell it for a reasonable profit before I find an augment to replace it.
- Now, I realize that trading is meant to be very profitable if you do it right, but still if you want to be a designated trading ship you can hold onto only 1 or 2 trade goods as stated above. And then you can not use any augments, which doesn't quite make sense to me.
- Changing the trade good to augments instead of weapons would make trade "easier" and therefore might unbalance the trading system so if this were done it would need to be rebalanced.
- Launching the trade screen after viewing the Store screen lets you assess whether it is worth it to trade your goods and let the Rebel Fleet catch up in order to get the, say 10 or 20, extra scrap you need to buy something you may want.
The problems with changing trade goods into weapons:
1.)The trade items would have to be "equipped" before going to a store in order to get the blue options to sell them (Not really an issue anymore if you made the trade screen appear after the store.)
2.)This also prevents them from being used for blue options in other random events (Like Pharmaceuticals in a Quarantine Sector) (IMO not really a big issue because there are currently only like 2-3 blue options for trade goods anyway)
3.)Any ship that didn't have a weapons system could not trade (May affect some custom ships maybe, who knows)
(Not many ships have this though and I'm sure it could be worked around too if necessary)
The benefits of changing trade goods into weapons:
1.)A LOT more room for trade goods in Cargo, a major boost for pirate or manufacturing ships
2.)Trade ships could still use 3 useful augments and still participate in trade
3.)A designated trade or manufacturing ship could have the necessary Cargo Teleporter & Manufacturing Augments and have room for more than 1 trade good
4.)The many generic trading goods that Sleeper wants to CE will actually be able to be carried without wasting augment slots
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On an unrelated note. I like the AI tips event when you converse when your AI, but normally it gives me useless info like what Door Control does. Do you think you could categorize the Tips into things like Systems, Hazards, Trade, Factions, etc... It would be cool to be able to search the AI's database for something specific you would like to know about.
Another idea I thought about when testing the store thing was a possibility of "re-rolling" the stores inventory. From what I tested trying to set something to /store when it is already a store crashes the game. However, it would still be possible to maybe choose to wait a while for more traders to come who might have other choices of weapons, drones, augments, or crew using events. Maybe for a bargain or maybe at a higher price.
Also, a couple of xml bugs I found..
events_ships.xml.append
<ship name="BS_CIV_TRADE_STATION" auto_blueprint="BS_STATIONS_CIV_TRADE">
<surrender chance="1.0" min="3" max="4">
This is the only ship event that says chance="1.0", everything else just leaves off the chance= entirely when it is a %100 chance. When I gave the station a 1.0 chance of surrender nothing happened, it didn't work, so i think you should just remove the chance= for this event.
events_pirate.xml.append
<eventList name="STORE_OUTLAW_TRAP_LIST">
<event>
<text load="STORE_OUTLAW_TRAP_TEXT_BOARDERS"/>
<boarders min="3" max="6" class="random"/>
</event>
<event>
<text load="STORE_OUTLAW_TRAP_TEXT_BOARDERS"/>
<boarders min="3" max="6" class="random"/>
<choice req="AE_ADV_EFFECTOR" hidden="true">
<text>Continue...</text>
I don't think this choice is supposed to have an Effector as a condition.
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SomeFederationPerson wrote:Can I have a little help pls? I tried getting captains edition, then the replica ship mod (be sure to check it out!) and the add on in that order but it didn't work and I could only get captains edition. Thx for the awesome mod btw!
All ship mods should be loaded after CE when using Slipstream. You can reorder the mods by dragging them. Check the front page for more details on mod order.