BFett wrote: How do you undock from a station when you are missing an engine or power supply?

you get dumped out the hangar.

In many similar games when you sell something at a shop you can re-buy it for the same price provided you haven't left the area first (effectively an undo button).

If you need an anti-stupidity mechanic, that's a fairly good one.

And how should that work for the AI?

How deals the AI with such "locked" wares?

What if the player is the location?
(When he controls the station)

Cornflakes_91 wrote:And how should that work for the AI?

How deals the AI with such "locked" wares?

Make it so all transactions occur when you leave? When you're in a station, your buying/selling stuff is merely "queued" (with everything kept track of as normal), and stuff is only actually transferred when you leave the station (and you cannot leave without the necessary equipment). Items you buy are "reserved" until you leave the station, items you sell become available once you leave.

Then, rather than re-buying your equipment, you're merely removing it from the list of "items to be sold". If you were relying on the money you get from it, you'll have to remove stuff from the list of "items to be bought" too (the equivalent of re-selling it at the same price).

This would apply to AI too, although the AI shouldn't be stupid enough to sell their engines without buying replacements.

Cornflakes_91 wrote:What if the player is the location?
(When he controls the station)

What is the station buying/selling?

DigitalDuck wrote:

Cornflakes_91 wrote:And how should that work for the AI?

How deals the AI with such "locked" wares?

Make it so all transactions occur when you leave? When you're in a station, your buying/selling stuff is merely "queued" (with everything kept track of as normal), and stuff is only actually transferred when you leave the station (and you cannot leave without the necessary equipment). Items you buy are "reserved" until you leave the station, items you sell become available once you leave.

Then, rather than re-buying your equipment, you're merely removing it from the list of "items to be sold". If you were relying on the money you get from it, you'll have to remove stuff from the list of "items to be bought" too (the equivalent of re-selling it at the same price).

This would apply to AI too, although the AI shouldn't be stupid enough to sell their engines without buying replacements.

would make daytrading on the same station a bit hard, though.

also, when whom leaves?
the seller? the buyer?

DigitalDuck wrote: What is the station buying/selling?

i was thinking of selling.

when the player cant actually leave the location, when do his trades get executed / the rebuy option removed?

Cornflakes_91 wrote:also, when whom leaves?
the seller? the buyer?

This is the key point. I'm thinking in terms of a character buying/selling from the station - it's not really doable with inter-character interaction.

So, er...

*runs*

We could think of stations as super markets. Prices wouldn't fluctuate when a good is purchased but could change over time (maybe once every game-play hour or longer). This would give the player a chance to experiment with the equipment and return it for the same price if it doesn't fulfill the player's needs. There could still be a market between individuals where prices change every transaction. This area of the market should have some warning associated with it so that players are aware that it can be a money sink (although the prices will likely be cheaper than at the station).

What if products had a "return policy" associated with them? An AI looking for more business might try and set up a really competitive return policy to attract customers, while keeping it short enough so that people don't buy it, use it, and then return it when done. This way, the risk of buying products from the arms dealer with a "no refunds policy" is suitably large, and the return policy mechanic forces the player to gauge how much time they are willing to give to AI to return stuff while still avoiding getting ripped off. A foil to this might be that "no refunds" type sellers might be less stringent with background checks, paperwork, and they might be a bit cheaper to boot. This provides a realistic system that dynamically produces black market like sellers as well as legitament sellers, while still allowing for constantly fluctuating prices AND anti-stupidity mechanics for players.

In keeping with customer satisfaction mechanics, you could also have "product ratings" in order to make decisions based on how the AI finds the "product". If the AI finds it useful, it gives a thumbs up. If not, thumbs down. That works with an LOD system, and would be fairly easy to calculate (how many ships item is installed on over how many items exist). If loads of AI use the Tungsten Shrapnel Launcher PDS MKII, and about the same number exist then you get a thumbs up. If nobody uses the Photon Cannon of Derp MkIV, and loads were made, customer satisfaction probably wasn't too high, and a thumbs down is given. Taking that with the stats of the weapon might help the player make better decisions about items, even if he or she isn't a spreadsheet warrior. Not to mention that the savvy player could boost a product's rating by convincing a private military or something to endorse the product and use it on their ships. Or drive down the rating by hacking the data and making it seem like many more were made than actually were. But that is rather off topic.

and how does that fix the player accidentally selling something?

What's wrong with accidentally selling something and getting paid for it? Besides, the issue of buying and selling items only really occurs at the beginning of a new game. Once the player has their first mining laser the issue of money becomes less of an issue and mistakes can be made.

Another semi-solution to combat this perception of a deadlock situation is rental ships. Ships that you can rent out that you have to pay for over time either to buy (rent-to-buy) or simply ongoing fee to rent. With this ship you can then earn enough money to buy the ship outright, buy another ship or at least get out of the deadlock situation you've found yourself in.

Or one would hope (and assume) that there is some form of loan mechanic in the game, if not there should be. Heck why not even let the player lend out money with x interest. You can even have a AI trait for unsavory types that might take out your loan and never pay you back, in which case you put a bounty on them to "acquire" but not destroy assets of theirs to cover the loan amount. Space repo men! New job opportunity in LT. Just sayin!

Honestly I don't think there should be an issue with deadlock situations. I also don't think there should be silly gamey mechanics to stop these situations from occuring. I do think there should be game mechanics to allow a person to not get in that situation in the first place. Meaning they can do it, but they're never literally stuck without a ship and without a means of "escape". Be this through loans or rental ships. Furthermore there shouldn't necessarily be anything against you taking out a loan and never repaying it, similar to how I described the AI "naughty" behaviour. Which would essentially translate into free money, however it would give you a severe reputation hit and likely get contracts against you. Thus creating the great circle of space life.

BFett wrote:What's wrong with accidentally selling something and getting paid for it? Besides, the issue of buying and selling items only really occurs at the beginning of a new game. Once the player has their first mining laser the issue of money becomes less of an issue and mistakes can be made.

Yeah, and people who are only in early game who encounter deadlocks tend to abandon the game where they got deadlocked and write bad reviews.

Bad reviews means less cash means less dev means less shiny things for us who dont abandon the game.

Its pure selfishness

A problem that only occurs under special circumstances is still a problem


The deadlock situation could be prevented from occuring at all with the system that josh outlined as the initiation of this thread.
Its not my favourite thing either, but i see what its trying to archieve and see that its probably the most elegant solution.


Maybe just straight up forbid uninstalling/selling the critical equipment from the ship the player is flying (or make an obnoxius warning inbetween that makes it really hard to do so accidentally) and only allow direct replacing.

For the initial issue of buying "unusable" ships, may have ships being constructed with basic functionality modules that come "for free" with the hull, and then have no restrictions on mounting.
(Would require some funtionality for recycling/scrapping )

Cornflakes_91 wrote:and how does that fix the player accidentally selling something?

... If you set up a refund they might give it back?

There comes a point where you have the final confirm button, and what's done is done. If you have a couple of well placed confirm buttons, and a way to turn them off, I don't see the problem. Also, you could keep track of your buyer's and sellers, and if you really wanted it back, you could hunt down the AI and try to buy it off of them, or just take it from them. I think not having a perpetual buyback system is a GOOD thing, as it forces the player to think about decisions and be careful. A confirm sale button would do a lot to assist, and maybe sales above 10,000 credits (some large number threshold or whatever) might have TWO confirm buttons.

I like the loan mechanic. Then you can be a space banker.

As to people writing bad reviews... this game doesn't seem to really be built around super casual gamers. A person, who after 30 minutes of playing the game gets into a deadlock, quits, and writes a bad review probably wouldn't buy a super deep space game in the first place. If anything, they would just try again. I imagine this playing almost like a roguelike in that when you die or quit, you roll a new character and try again. Or you could do it the Star Citizen way and have your new character be the inheritor of all your old character's stuff, if you wanted.

More to the point, LT probably won't delete all of your save games when you die or quit. You could always revert to a point before your deadlock. Not to mention that the more things you do to protect the player from deadlock, you also protect the AI from. And it would be very satisfying to take a super powerful executive, and slowly wear him/her down to the point where they don't even have a functional shuttle craft. Then, driven to desperation, you offer to pay his/her debts if they become your marketing supervisor.

If the AI is really inventive as I hope it is, then the deadlock issue might be solvable by having the AI hire people to mine or do construction when they hit rock bottom, providing a ship, basic tools, etc.