Contraband

Baron Munchausen · #1 October 5th, 2003, 05:56 PM

In the default game they don't do anything special. Some mods are already in the works that include contraband that does have special benefits, though.

bor · #2 October 6th, 2003, 12:40 AM

The silly thing about it is that contraband isn't even worth very much. If it was worth a whole pile of money (at non pirate stations), you'd have to think twice before spacing it.

Also, I looked at some missions at a pirate commerce station... one of the missions was to take contraband to freeport station. Sort of a suicide mission really.

CW · #3 October 6th, 2003, 01:00 AM

I've noticed that you can actually buy contraband in the Pirate system in the demo. Do they do anything special or are they just simple trade commodities?

Fyron · #4 October 6th, 2003, 01:24 AM

Actually... in the full game, you get to become a member of the pirates at some point, and you can get contraband cargo run missions that pay piles of money.

Baron Munchausen · #5 October 6th, 2003, 07:28 PM

'Piles' of money? Only about twice what the standard cargo missions are worth. It ought to run as high as 10 times or more to my mind. How much is a ship full of cocaine worth compared to a ship full of coal or fertilizer? It's a lot more than double! The range of fees for contraband missions needs to be extended a bit for realism. At the higher difficulty levels of the game where there are lots of TCN ships patroling and waiting to attack you for carrying that contraband it would create some very high-stakes missions!

[ October 06, 2003, 18:29: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

Fyron · #6 October 7th, 2003, 05:55 AM

You can certainly pile 30,000 credits! (assuming you can get them in some form of hard currency

)

narf poit chez BOOM · #7 October 7th, 2003, 08:24 AM

hmm...what's soft currency?

Baron Munchausen · #8 October 7th, 2003, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by narf poit chez BOOM:
hmm...what's soft currency?

Technically, 'hard' currency is made of a precious metal, or at least backed by it in a vault somewhere. 'Soft' currency is what we use today... 'fiat' money with no fixed quantity of any precious commodity to stabilize it. Nothing but the word of the government (cough!) guarantees its value.

The sense in which Fyron is using it just means 'physical tokens' though. Something you can stack.

narf poit chez BOOM · #9 October 8th, 2003, 09:43 AM

cheese. you can stack cheese. which brings us to the merits of cheese versus gold.

gold: a shiny yellow color. 0 cheese: comes in shiny yellow and many other colors. 1

gold: a good conducter. 1 cheese: not sure. probably not a good conducter. 0

gold: very heavy and difficult to carry. 0 cheese: relitivily light. 1

gold: can only be gained by mining. 0 cheese: just leave some milk out for a while, then bake it. 1

gold: relitivily soft and workable, easily made into coins. 0.5 cheese: even more soft and pliable, perhaps to much. a pLastic bag contains it nicely, though. 0.5

gold: can be measured out to a standard weight. 1 cheese: comes in many different weights, value of different varieties would have to be determined by an independent panel. 0

gold: doesn't rust. 2 cheese: rots quickly. stocks would have to be replaced swiftly. 0

gold: cannot be eaten. no use in times of famine. 0 cheese: can be eaten. in times of famine, retains it's usefullness. 1.5

gold: 4.5
cheese: 5

and thus we see that cheese is 0.5 of a point better as a currency than gold.

oops. little error.

[ October 10, 2003, 01:23: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

DeadZone · #10 October 8th, 2003, 02:03 PM

LMAO

Perhaps you should do a mod where cheese is used instead of credits