Generic Missions - Ideas?

[Hole_in_Head]

Hi everyone,

Just starting to get my feet wet with modding, and felt like there could stand to be more variety for the generic missions you can pick up from station commanders.  Already working on a couple to start:
1) Eliminate a squad of pirates
2) Attack pirate base

Thinking of also grouping the mission types into the "type" of mission they are so we can choose to get something more suited to the style we're playing as (ex: I'm flying a small fighter, I don't want to get trade runs).

Wanted to ask the forum for ideas people have for different missions that I could try building, or ideas of how we pick up jobs in the first place.  Maybe after I get the hang of this more, I can build more robust missions that have several stages and branching paths.

Thanks!

[FlessenGreendart]

I like the sound of that, I'd like to see more advanced versions of existing quests.
Such as mine for ores other than glepsite, doing trade runs that take up all of your cargo space, and I'd like to see the rescue missions on a timer.

Maybe this would add in another use for those terminals you see at some stations 

[Hammish]

One thing I was interested in looking at but haven't gotten around to yet would be keying some of the more advanced quests to unlocked skills.  It should be possible to set an unlock on conversations that looks for skills (or more accurately, look at the current effects on a character), so you could have it so that someone who say has a ton of research done in the mining tree is offered the more advanced mining quests.

It'd also mean you could do really nifty things like keying certain quests to actual pieces of gear.  I always thought it'd be awesome to be able to do something along the lines of equipping a smuggling-style ship and having smuggler missions open up to you, as an example.  Again, should be possible, I just haven't had the time to work on the code.

[Hole_in_Head]

I like those ideas!  

I think first step I'll do is add a dialog choice to "choose" which list (thinking "combat", "mining", "transport" as choices) , and as long as it can be determined what skills or gear a player has, should be simple to either add or omit certain quests to the available pool. 

I have the first mission done for eliminating a squad of pirates, and along with that I've made it so you can request another job if you decline and you don't have to go to another station to get another to make it easier to test, but I kinda like not having to run around to get another job.  Once I have the other, I'll try experimenting on the idea of "advanced" jobs.

[Hammish]

I don't -think- it should be too difficult to check the skill levels if you're basing it on effects present.  The actual code for it should be just a small variation on what is used for existing checks for things like current energy and the like, though I don't know the exact syntax.  Looking forward to seeing more of these.

[Lurler]

It's actually really easy to do with effects that are given by skills.

Here's an example, it checks if the player has the skill that allows to see asteroid content.

Code Select Expand


    if (ship.GetFinalCacheValue(shipId, "see_asteroid_contents") > 0)
    {
        // console.Print("Sending asteroid contents");
        ship.SendAsteroidContents(shipId, asteroidId);
    }


And that one would allow you to check if the player has persuade effect.

Code Select Expand


var has_persuade_ability = ship.GetFinalCacheValue(PLAYER_SHIP, "persuade") > 0;


So, you really can do similar thing for any other effects that you are interested in. And not just from skills, but effects of the ship as well, all of that is stored in the same big cache.

[FlessenGreendart]

Cool!
So I'm guessing it's possible to call things like:

Code Select Expand


if (ship.GetFinalCacheValue(shipId, "cargo_capacity") > 0)

which would be brilliant for checking the players ability to do freight missions. And from that, I guess you could even check how many weapon hardpoints a ship has, as they are ID'ed numerically from 0

[Hammish]

Awesome, thank you for providing the syntax.

[Lurler]

FlessenGreendart, yes exactly.

Hammish, no problem. But it's all in the wiki though

[Hammish]

FlessenGreendart, yes exactly.

Hammish, no problem. But it's all in the wiki though

You should add a link to such along the top of the navpane in here, since I always forget about it when I get pulled away for a day or two and it doesn't seem to show up on searches.