Trading as Independent

Tips, tactics, and general discussion for Evochron Legacy.
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Serverus
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Trading as Independent

Post by Serverus »

As an independent explorer I've been running up to many ships attempting to trade for information, but everyone denies my request. I swear I looked forever for more info on this, but all I found was a mention of temporarily changing your alliance. Is there a way to get to trading with more people while remaining Independent? Is this just a bug I'm experiencing?
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Re: Trading as Independent

Post by Vice »

You are likely just encountering 'moderate' threat level ships (all ALC and FDN ships are yellow or 'moderate'/'neutral' to IND) carrying cargo, which will be far less inclined to want to trade with or even open a trade line to a non-allied ship. To be independent is to be unbound to either of the two primary factions, which includes the trade benefits that go along with them. Military ships will reject trade requests with any ship as will capital class ships. So one of those conditions is likely applying. If you are interested in trade or requesting information with more ships directly, it is generally best to change your faction affiliation to the one you want more active ship-to-ship trades with (the faction in control of the space you are in at the time). This has the added benefit of also not requiring docking fees at those stations when you might want to store or sell items you might acquire from such ships. IND can trade, but the scope is much more limited and involves more buy-n-sell trade runs rather than ship-to-ship arrangements. Full trade benefits requires affiliation with one of the main factions. But as noted, you can change that with an existing profile as may be desired.
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Re: Trading as Independent

Post by Serverus »

Well at least the option's there. I don't really mind, it's good to learn more about these mechanics. Thanks!
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Re: Trading as Independent

Post by SolarWarden »

Anyone ever thought about the possibility of introducing Independent factioned AI ships to level the experience for pilots who prefer flying IND? I know I hate having to fly as ALC or FDN when I'm doing certain things in-game, but the AI interaction with IND players makes you more or less a ghost in the play environment. The two faction system gets very old very fast. I know there were more factions in Mercenary, and I can only assume that system wasn't carried over to Legacy for a reason. The faction system in Legacy seems to cause a lot of the issues and bugs players report. Just the other day I received a failed contract notification while out doing the task because someone of the same faction as me landed at the base I accepted it from and accepted a contract of their own.
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Re: Trading as Independent

Post by Vice »

The requested goal of IND was to be more 'off grid', detached from the faction conflicts and faction systems so as to operate as more independent pilots in the game (exactly more like a ghost in the play environment and less like a labelled and faction bound entity). Other factions could be a possibility, but then it goes back to the problems complained about with Mercenary (which you can read more about the hows, whats, and whys of the two faction system on the development page here: http://www.starwraith.com/evochronlegac ... opment.htm ). You can also read a bit of a summary of the design and purpose behind it in a response I posted here: http://www.starwraith.com/forum/viewtop ... em#p192017 And with more factions in play, an issue of new players unfamiliar with how to link or delink from contracts would be compounded and become worse.

Additionally though, the problem you describe doesn't really relate to how many factions there are, but how the contract linking system works.

In the example you provided, that would only happen if the following conditions were met:

- You accepted a contract with the other player already in the same sector as you (they aren't linked in if they come in later with a contract being active).
- The other player did not delink from the contract, so remained bound to it to be part of it. Then once failed, they grabbed another contract.
- The other player was aligned with the same faction and perhaps wasn't aware of factions linking for contracts in the same sector?

So the only remedies in that scenario currently available would be:

- Completing contracts in other sectors.
- Making sure any other players are aware you are there also and check with them if they want to join together or split up.
- Have the player(s) who do(es) not want to participate delink from the contract.

If it's too much to expect players to be able to manage auto-linking contracts in this regard (and manually unplugging from ones they don't want to be part of), then the only viable alternative would be to force/require manual linking into contracts. That has been proposed in the past (including by me), but has generally been shot down when discussed due to the preferred simplicity of automatically joining together when players are of the same faction combined with the requirement of being in the same sector. The idea of having to instruct new players to 'join the link by doing XYZ' rather than just 'show up in the same location I'm at' seemed to be an undesirable compromise.

That said though, it has been something I've thought about for quite a while and I could require an approval step for linking into contracts, even with something as simple as pressing F4 to link into it when an alert is displayed. It'd probably help to have pretty strong feedback support to make a change like that which has already been discounted in the past multiple times. However, I'm certainly still willing to entertain the idea as players may be interested. And I'll likely prototype some ideas to facilitate that kind of operation anyway and see how it might pan out in testing since the issue still seems to surface periodically in comments like yours above. Might be a practical and effective route to go at this point.
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Re: Trading as Independent

Post by Marvin »

I received a failed contract notification while out doing the task because someone of the same faction as me landed at the base I accepted it from and accepted a contract of their own.
That has always been a problem when the first contract requires you to return to the station before the contract is completed. If somebody else docks before the contract is completed, you get (depending on the contract) a failed contract.

A similar problem also crops up if the lead is either killed or drops off line while in the middle of the contract. If he is killed, that counts as a failure. If he drops off line, the contract goes into limbo and must be cancelled before another contract can be accepted.
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Re: Trading as Independent

Post by Vice »

Marvin wrote:A similar problem also crops up if the lead is either killed or drops off line while in the middle of the contract. If he is killed, that counts as a failure. If he drops off line, the contract goes into limbo and must be cancelled before another contract can be accepted.
That is also something I'm looking into and working on prototype systems for (that is, a -global- flight lead transfer structure for all contract objectives that automatically assigns the next client to the FL position if the original is destroyed). These (among other planned update goals) are major code revisions/additions and changes, so there will be a lot of testing time required to sort it all out and make sure it all works well.
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