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#1
09-07-2010, 09:40 AM
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I'll be releasing the next version in a couple of weeks and this is what I plan to work on for it.
A few new missions, one for the campaign and a few others available whenever the player feels confident they can be completed without too much loss of life. I think a jailbreak mission for Luna would be nice, I don't feel right leaving him in the cell all game long  I've been thinking about an upgrade function for the cars, like in HLA where you can increase the armor and such, but without the "breakdown" function. I think I'll be using the base mechanic for it and have already removed the >10 reputation limit for his joining mission. I'm not sure yet if there is a limit on how many cars the game can have, every update requires a new car in the ini's. There are now 7 cars, and if I give them all at least 1 upgrade level it would mean 14. I might skip the BTR and FMVA1, they already have enough armor and trunk space, but the others could all use more armor. I'm also thinking of adding more speed to some, maybe increase the trunk capacity of the Ford, GAZ and Jeep at the expense of their speed. It would mean that I would go back to armor levels closer to vanilla and they would be vulnerable if they aren't upgraded, but that's the cost of progress I guess. I'm not sure what to do with the economics of capturing cities, I'm playing with the idea of adding a tax function for the Mayors. I think it's possible to add a loss of reputation if the tax is set too high, but I haven't really looked into it yet. And there's still the monthly payment issue. If we add a tax, it would be payed out in a monthly fashion and would not help much in the recruiting and maintaining of the milita. Maybe add a bonus when a city is first captured? But I have to work on in a bit when time permits, and due to all the testing needed, time is not abundant for that kind of tinkering. 
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#2
09-07-2010, 11:20 PM
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R@S,
Being able to upgrade vehicles sounds like a VERY cool idea. I like it a lot. I have no idea how the Hard Life Addon implemented "breakdowns," but even that sounds intriguing to me. "Improve" a vehicle too much in one way, such as by adding too much armor, and it eventually breaks down due to the suspension system not being suitably upgraded to handle the extra load (such as the constant breaking down of uparmored Humvees in the Iraq/Afghanistan occupations). One might have to first wisely upgrade one system before improving another. But I could see where all of this micro-management could get too cumbersome, yet if it was setup so that the potential negative consequences of adjusting a vehicle could be completely avoidable by simply never choosing to participate in any special enhancements, then it would be up to the Player as to whether or not he/she wanted to dip a toe into those waters. Players who are "into" this kind of thing would love it. I certainly would. The upgrades could start out more simply, and with fewer negative consequences, such as being able to swap out the standard engine for something more powerful, allowing a vehicle to travel faster and to carry more weight. The same concerns exist with the larger economics system tied into the towns and cities. Taxation and the like sure sounds interesting to me, but if I had a penny to gamble with, I'd wager that most of the community members would more greatly appreciate an increase in missions and campaigns, both in number and in depth (fleshing them out more, such as by adding on even more possible consequences for the choices one makes). That said, for those who enjoy the more free-form way of playing, expanding on the economy and its relationship to capturing/maintaining territories, would be right up their alley, as would opening up a universe of possibilities by adjusting their vehicles. Happily for me, I like it all. I'm just surmising what the other members may be more itching for. Like more entry zones and randomized enemy patrols (subtle hint, REALLY!).  Have to go. Studying to do.  Go microeconomics! 
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#3
09-12-2010, 08:55 AM
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The vehicle breakdown system in HLA adds the necessity of fuel and a chance that the car will stop working when traveling. There are several spare parts available, like new tires and exhaust pipes and what not. The player needs to refuel, change tires and stuff like that. Personally I never liked that system and that's why I chose not to do such a thing.
The new car upgrade script is complete and tested. You can upgrade the Ford, Willies, GAZ69 and Hummer 3 times each and the Ural, BTR and FMTV 1 time. The upgrade inreases armor, trunk capacity and speed. The tax system is almost done, I'm about to start testing it more thouroughly to check the balance. This is how it works, first you need to set it up with the banker, he'll be the one collecting it in an account at the bank. You'll get your taxes every day(I might change that to once every week), just withdraw the cash if you need it, or move it into your other account and get some interest rate. I might set it up so that the tax money gets added to the player automatically, to minimize micromanagement. Or I could let the player choose with a dialog option at the banker. There are 3 classes of towns and they pay a different amount of tax. Cities with civilians pay most, locations with special income pay middle and Bases with only guards pay least. You can only set the tax rate globally, you can't set a rate to an induvidual city. There are 3 levels, High Tax, Normal Tax and Low Tax, the High Tax rate decreases player reputation in the cites while the Low Tax rate increases it. After some testing I'll start adjusting the tax rates to find a good balance. Then it's time to start working on some new misssions.
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#4
09-12-2010, 01:24 PM
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Tax system, corruption, micromanagement...
R@S,
The vehicle upgrade system is done? Nice! I too would have to agree with you about changing flat tires, refueling, and whatnot as it was implemented in HLA. That level of micromanagement is usually very tedious. As is having to stop to feed oneself and one's comrades. There are very few games that can pull that off without it feeling like an absolute chore; STALKER being one of them. I think that one of the reasons why it works so well in STALKER is that one's traveling in an intermittent hostile environment. If a radioactive blowout occurs, and one's hungry at the time it happens, then there's a good chance that one's not going to make it in time to a sheltered area when the radiation starts really pouring out. In terms of handling taxes: I like that the taxes can be set at three different levels, and I appreciate the fact that different types of areas will generate different levels of revenue. Nice and sensible. While taxes may be collected daily, I too am leaning towards the notion that the newly generated funds are only made available to be used in the economy once a week. This could be justified by the accounting that needs to be done, the transference of funds, auctioning off of repossessed property for citizens who are delinquent in their taxes, etc. I have a mixed reaction in regards to whether or not the taxes are automatically added to the Player's own account. On one level, that would reduce micromanagement (one account versus two), but on the other, what if the Player desires to have the economies to be able to run rather autonomously, with only occasional direct interactions? In that case, having two accounts would be less micromanagement than having one. It might be interesting to add a level of realism to the tax system in this way: corruption. It would require the player to think through about "withdrawing" tax funds for his/her own direct personal usage. Yeah, taxpayers tend to look down on such behavior. Perhaps a dialogue tree could be setup with the bankers that whenever the Player decides to make a transfer from the public to the personal, he then has the option of giving the banker a bribe. Successful transfers will always be equated with giving the banker enough of a bribe that he'll go out of his way to use Goldman Sachs his accounting skills to cover up the fraud he's participating in. The bigger the bribe that one gives the banker, the more effort he'll put into keeping the corruption covered up; think Goldman Sachs-level of evilness here. The more money the Player wants to be transferred to his own account, the more money the Player will need to give the banker to do a good job covering up the unethical behavior. There should always be an element of chance of discovery whenever any portion of tax reserve is transferred to the Player's account. The more money that's pulled out of the system, the greater the odds of being discovered (remember though, that if the banker is given a large bribe that it reduces the chance of being detected by the masses because he's worked harder at hiding the corrupt act). I'd also make the inverse of this situation true. If the Player transfers money from his personal account into the tax reserves, then the Player can gain a higher reputation with the taxpayers. I'm assuming that a higher reputation not only results in cheaper prices from the sellers, but also in a higher morale from the security forces stationed there. These injections of the Player's funds would also further reduce the chances of being caught with tax related corruption later. It's amazing how many crimes go unpunished simply because the investigator can't believe that a certain "hero" would be capable of doing such a crime. Now should the Player's corruption be discovered, it would be interesting to have a consequence that's more severe than just a loss of reputation. If it's really bad, a group of rebellious civilian militia could appear that the Player would then have to contend with. As the situation worsens, the size and armament of these rebels would increase, till a tipping point is reached: not only would militia be present, but they would then invite an enemy-faction in to aide them in their open rebellion. Ambushes on the road would become more frequent, and so on and so forth. Couple the odds of this happening based on the tax rate in a region, and one could have a real powder keg of a situation. Getting caught in corruption's bad enough, but imagine how much worse it would be if taxes were high preceding and at the time of being caught! Yeah, it would be easier to recruit rebels as the insult to the people is worse. What I like about this taxation system is that it acts as more of an incentive for the Player to partake in the open sandbox elements of the game. A Player who may never have thought about conquering a region would certainly be tempted to do so now. Thoughtful tension. I like that! Keep up the good work. More exciting advancements are on the way, and I can't wait to get a crack at them! Last edited by Kyle; 09-12-2010 at 01:28 PM.
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#5
09-12-2010, 11:56 PM
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I've got a question about modding the mod and outsourcedconfig.
I remember that at some point it did nothing, and wasn't used, or at least some of the options in it were broken. I was wondering: if I modified the min/max time between random encounters will that actually work? I find that it if I'm bored and looking for a fight it takes too long for someone to pounce on me (or so they think). In addition to the question of "does that actually work", I was wondering if it required a new game, or if changes to the file affected saved games too.
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#6
09-13-2010, 07:39 PM
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Quote:
Quote:
The new tax system is complete and as I mentioned above I have started working on the random encounter code. When you encounter a bandit patrol 2 things can happen. You'll get ambushed or you could ambush them. The chance of you getting to ambush them is based on your camo skill. The higher camo skill your team has means you get to choose if you wanna fight or run. I think I'll try to add a "Can See Player Team" check when you ambush them and they wont go hostile until they see you or you shoot at them. On some maps this means that you'll have time to set up "real" ambushes with tripwires and choke points and still have time to find the higher ground Oh, and testers for the new tax system, fixed field radio, car upgrade script and some other new stuff are needed. Let me know if you have time.
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#7
09-13-2010, 09:05 PM
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Hi all. I'm in the BSM custom missions where you have to goto the old mines and kill the jingo's. After doing so I talk to the jingo seargent and the game always crashes when I follow him. It looks as if a cutscene is trying to load and then crashes. Anyone else have this or know of a fix? Thanks.
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