Player-made Ship Salesman

[whitehorn]

I was just thinking that it would be great to see player-made ships being flown across the galaxy by NPCs.

 

I play singer player, and it is a shame, I believe, that I am the only one who gets to fly beautiful ships. I thought that it would be a great idea to implement a Spaceship Dealership idea, or if that's too complicated, then sell individually founded ships to factions. Then, those ships are actually used in-galaxy. The more ships you sell, the better chance you get to see your ship flying about in space. You can make a business out of it and supply two factions going to war with each other. Sell them the same ships or unique ones, then watch who wins. How cool!

 

I love the game guys, and it is shaping up to be better than the X series. Keep it up!

[Shrooblord]

Sweet. I like this idea a lot.

 

I've seen "apply this plan to the ship" functions in the documentation, so there certainly is a way to build / edit ships to use a specific plan through code.

 

One issue that comes to mind for me: how do you determine whether the faction agrees with your ship design? What if the player tries to gimp the faction into buying a shoddy ship? Should the faction see through this ruse? Should they be able to be fooled? How? This could also lead to some interesting gameplay.

[DeathTech]

The plan code is in regards to the ship design.

[Kamo]

What an adorable idea !

I wonder if I would give them my usual designs, or modified designs with acceleration limited to 1 m/s/s (the engine would be slices of the normal ones and the rest converted into a cargo bay for aesthetic purpose, so firing once at them would disable them), so that smugglers could do their usual thing in peace 8). But if traders get them, they would slow the economy...

Sortartes as cargo vessels (the tiny hold might be as much as proc-generated haulers') instead of flimsy haulers would awfully deter pirate attacks, they would be killed by the police or the hauler's turrets before they destroy the hauler with their puny DPS ::). To say nothing of Mitsuhas, which have even more HP.

 

...But that idea could also bring a big difficulty increase, because one could be suddenly fighting ships of his own design, especially with the faction wars.

 

The salesman could also be used to sell Steam Workshop designs :D.

[Shrooblord]

I wonder if I would give them my usual designs, or modified designs with acceleration limited to 1 m/s/s (the engine would be slices of the normal ones and the rest converted into a cargo bay for aesthetic purpose, so firing once at them would disable them), so that smugglers could do their usual thing in peace 8)

Yeah this is kinda why I questioned how Factions would respond if you try to sell them something like this. xD

 

I feel like Factions would need to have some voice in the matter, i.e. you can't force a new design unto them, only if you provide them something with straightforward benefit to their current designs, or they really really like and trust you, and even then, only if there is at least some benefit to what they have currently. Maybe different Factions would want different things: designs with a lot of cargo vs. those with decent hull scores and/or Armour Blocks. That kinda stuff.