Suggestion & Brainstorm: Illegal Weapons

[PM]

@ Mr.Watson: Yes, that route is profitable. The problem is, unless Tempus Labs restocks illegals like everywhere else restocks ammo and few other items (does it?), there does not seem to be either enough dope to buy from BM and/or not enough markets to sell the dope to. I admit that I do not exploit that trade route (or several others) much. (Also, +50 cargo from smugglers hold is not enough - I usually play the Wolfen.) I tend to be more focused on combat.

That said, you do not need to buy Illegals from Black Market (and raise rank in the process) to profit greatly from Black Market. Black Market pays more for military items than other market, so they are useful for raising credits for a Hyperion reactor from the CW Fleet or the occasional level 9 or 10 weapon at Adventurer's stations. Background checks that scan only high criminal rank does not spot those who just use the BM for anything that does not involve buying illegals.


In my games, getting BM id from T31's is unreliable. Some games I get it, some I do not. For me, it is roughly 60/40 in favor of not getting BM id from T31s. As for Black Market luck gate, it is early enough that I trigger it early as possible and if I get the unlucky bust, I restart a new game. Black Market is a great place to sell military items to and profit from.

[Watch TV, Do Nothing]

Letting Tinkers buy illegal weapons and equipment (but not drugs, etc) could provide a guaranteed fallback path to getting a blackmarket ID. If the restaurant is a bust (or you're a new player and don't know about it), Tinkers could offer to sell you an (expensive) BM ID once you've traded XXXX credits' worth of illegals with them.

So you would have three paths to the black market economy- smuggler (restaurant), pirate (str8 up gank from T31), and scofflaw (buying and selling illegal weapons for your own use.)

The risk associated with the Tinkers could be that each illegal installation performed with them would carry a small risk of coinciding with a commonwealth raid that confiscates the item you're trying to install and shuts down that specific Tinker station's illegal equipment dock screen. It might also grant you a commonwealth justice "first strike" so that subsequent arrests for other crimes (say, piracy) would result in heavier penalties.

[JohnBWatson]

@ Mr.Watson: Yes, that route is profitable. The problem is, unless Tempus Labs restocks illegals like everywhere else restocks ammo and few other items (does it?), there does not seem to be either enough dope to buy from BM and/or not enough markets to sell the dope to. I admit that I do not exploit that trade route (or several others) much. (Also, +50 cargo from smugglers hold is not enough - I usually play the Wolfen.) I tend to be more focused on combat.

I do the same and typically have space to spare. I never trade damaged items or low tier resources, though, so that may be the difference.

That said, you do not need to buy Illegals from Black Market (and raise rank in the process) to profit greatly from Black Market. Black Market pays more for military items than other market, so they are useful for raising credits for a Hyperion reactor from the CW Fleet or the occasional level 9 or 10 weapon at Adventurer's stations. Background checks that scan only high criminal rank does not spot those who just use the BM for anything that does not involve buying illegals.

Assuming the first rank is treated as 1, there's still a 15% chance of ending the game upon making Colonel, and 5% upon joining based on my algorithm. That's a fairly significant risk, though not crippling. It'd be enough to make me think twice, at the very least.

In my games, getting BM id from T31's is unreliable. Some games I get it, some I do not. For me, it is roughly 60/40 in favor of not getting BM id from T31s. As for Black Market luck gate, it is early enough that I trigger it early as possible and if I get the unlucky bust, I restart a new game. Black Market is a great place to sell military items to and profit from.

Transcendence is a roguelike, so not everything should be optimal every run. The solution I see here is making alternatives to the Black Market, such as mining, more viable, not making easy Black Market membership a given for every playthrough. I've survived many games without the BM's cash, so it's certainly doable.

Tossing in a few illegal weapons that can be mounted without a station could make this dynamic more interesting, adding more possible combinations of decisions. There'd be the ability to get some advantages typically reserved for the Black Market without joining, but with less reliability. Using one in a way that gets their attention could also serve as an alternative means of getting membership.

[Atarlost]

Transcendence is a roguelike, so not everything should be optimal every run. The solution I see here is making alternatives to the Black Market, such as mining, more viable, not making easy Black Market membership a given for every playthrough. I've survived many games without the BM's cash, so it's certainly doable.

Tossing in a few illegal weapons that can be mounted without a station could make this dynamic more interesting, adding more possible combinations of decisions. There'd be the ability to get some advantages typically reserved for the Black Market without joining, but with less reliability. Using one in a way that gets their attention could also serve as an alternative means of getting membership.

Other roguelikes don't have restricted install. It's okay to not find a Morningstar. It's not okay to not be able to use one that you found. Unless maybe you're a wizard who can't use anything but staves and daggers or something silly like that, but there aren't wizards in Transcendence.

I, too, prefer the BM being optional, but to me that means not having illegal weapons, or if there are illegal weapons they should be illegal specifically so that the player can't use them like the overpowered stuff Weapons Extended puts on enemies at higher difficulty settings.

[PM]

If optimal features that require a luck gate occur early enough, it is optimal to restart the game if the luck gate fails and locks out a feature. I rather restart a game if I lose at the luck gate after wasting only an hour, than slog through the rest of the game at increased difficulty for a day or more. Similarly, if I play with EI500, I ruthlessly start-scum for targeting program.

Selling military items at Black Market is lucrative enough that I will get Black Market ID in every game. If I cannot get the ID, I consider the game lost and restart.

This is similar to the diving strategy in Angband, or start-scumming for favorable random spawns in various DoomRL challenges.

[JohnBWatson]

If optimal features that require a luck gate occur early enough, it is optimal to restart the game if the luck gate fails and locks out a feature. I rather restart a game if I lose at the luck gate after wasting only an hour, than slog through the rest of the game at increased difficulty for a day or more. Similarly, if I play with EI500, I ruthlessly start-scum for targeting program.

I certainly agree that that's a problem. One solution, as I see it, is to have most important randomized features further out, and include enough of them that the time taken to get the easiest game would make doing so not worthwhile. At present, there's only one real luck based switch like that(two for the EI500) and they both have clear optimal rolls.

Another, more broad solution that could fix this would be a 'luck' variable on galaxy generation that takes these things into account and tries to give the player a balanced game. An EI500 that gets a targeting ROM on the first roll will modify this value so that other generation rolls are less friendly, including more demonic spider - type enemies(like the Kobol), less desirable outcomes on similar things, and fewer friendly stations. If it's predetermined that the hotel encounter will end in failure, the variable will be modified in the opposite direction.

Effectively, whenever something is generated at the start of the game, a variable that affects future rolls will be modified accordingly.

[Atarlost]

Persistent negative luck feedback would wreck the game experience. You'd lose the sense of discovery that's key to roguelikes because your long term outcomes would cease to be random.

[JohnBWatson]

Persistent negative luck feedback would wreck the game experience. You'd lose the sense of discovery that's key to roguelikes because your long term outcomes would cease to be random.

Mathematically, it would come to a balance over time, as low luck would lead to outcomes that increase future luck. In effect, it would simply insure that difficulty is roughly balanced across games, making save scumming less desirable.

[Atarlost]

Persistent negative luck feedback would wreck the game experience. You'd lose the sense of discovery that's key to roguelikes because your long term outcomes would cease to be random.

Mathematically, it would come to a balance over time, as low luck would lead to outcomes that increase future luck.

That's precisely why it's not desirable. Future outcomes become weighted and that makes the game less interesting. The lure of a potential good run is a major part of what keeps people playing roguelikes.

[PM]

Allowing the player to use illegal weapons before St. K actually does mess up balance because at least very popular mod relied on illegal weapons not being useful before St. K.

Even excluding mods, standard game has waste cannon. A lucky player could get one in the first system, and a less lucky player can still make one at the Tinkers before St. K's sometimes. Normally, when player can install a waste cannon past St. K's, it is good solely for the radiation effect (which is very useful against Ferian miners and some enemies). Waste cannon would be very strong before St. K's because it has above average DPS for a level 4 blast weapon, and it is an excellent screen against incoming enemy fire.

That's precisely why it's not desirable. Future outcomes become weighted and that makes the game less interesting. The lure of a potential good run is a major part of what keeps people playing roguelikes.

I agree. I dislike rubber-band or dynamic difficulty.

[pixelfck]

The problem with that (which I've always hated and removed in my mods) is that the XM300 Reaper does exactly the same thing, and is milspec and militia-issue weaponry. It's only used by the sapiens and really should be a unique illegal missile....but it isn't.

Simple solution: replace the 'Military tag with the 'Illegal tag :-)

~Pixelfck

[Ishman]

Taking inspiration from classic sci-fi, an illegal modification to your ship's interior which shunts the exhaust plume from behind... to in front.

And as Jon's Law tells us... "Any interesting space drive is a weapon of mass destruction. It only matters how long you want to wait for maximum damage."

Mild collimation of the exhaust through some handwavium, and you've got a beam weapon derived from propulsion technology that has exhaust velocity sufficient to get something weighing hundreds of tons - at minimum - up to fractional C.

This is easily enough to sterilize planets.

This is not a nice modification.

Or the ship is using an Orion drive, in which case you can just attach some microsat thrusters on your Medusa-style nukes, instead of using them on your pusher plate and float em towards the enemy.

No one likes shaped charge nukes to the face.

[PM]

Translated to Transcendence, those would be underpowered weapon devices that do less damage than proper weapons. You can even say the plasma torch is one such weapon, and it is legal.

Maybe an Orion drive can be made Illegal because it is not practical in a fight and it would probably launch and detonate equivalent of flux MAG behind the ship. Then again, I do not think Orion drive would be a good idea because the AI cannot use it effectively, and there would be much better options by the time the player can install one.

Several devices that sound like they should be extremely powerful are merely standard attacks within the damage or gear treadmill. Positron weapons of all kinds are the worst offenders; they are devastating weapons of mass destruction in other settings, but here in Transcendence, they have no WMD rating. Positron weapons are yet another beam weapon to use in level 10-13 systems.

[Ishman]

You say that - but that entirely discounts how much energy is being converted to a weaponized format - even unto late game, none of the projected energy weapons soak more than a hundred or two megawatts of power draw. Compared to the dozens (some back of the napkin math shows that some of these ships have to have thrust that's actually in the petawatt range) of terrawatts necessary to thrust up these ships to fractional C in the time frames involved, that's absolutely nothing.

Most of the early weapons are actually throwing about very minimal amounts of energy - in an absolute sense. It might be better weaponized, but in sum total - it can't even blast apart a space rock.

[PM]

Transcendence is bound by gamist constructs that may or may not violate real-life physics or supernatural stuff.

Ships in Transcendence part 1 do not have terawatts of energy. At best they can scrounge one gigawatt, more or less. Given the level pattern of reactors in part 1, I doubt part 2 will have terawatt reactors either - level 20 reactor would likely be 500 GW. Part 2 should feature weapons of higher damage types, from positron/plasma to graviton/singularity, with maybe dark matter weapons as the pinnacle like antimatter is for part 1. Singularity sounds like black holes among other related things. That should have cosmic power requirements, but to Transcendence, it is another brick in the wall type on the treadmill that would probably require some GW to fire.

As for acceleration, it takes a Wolfen only 2 MW to accelerate to .25c. Other playerships need a Titan drive, and that takes 30 MW.

If the proposed weapons are scaled down to Transcendence scale, they would be either be yet another plasma cannon or novelties that are not very practical... maybe.

Thinking about Orion drive, if it is auto-installed to fire aft, it may work like blasters as used by Luminous drones. It could be Illegal if it is military-grade powerful but too difficult to use effectively by most. What would be more useful is something akin to the Spathi BUTT launcher from Star Control. That is, a missile launcher or tracking weapon that is always mounted to fire backwards. To make it more like Star Control, homing missiles from that weapon should be able to hit the source shortly after launch. Now that would be a reason to make the weapon illegal; that is, rear-firing missile launcher that fires powerful missiles but has a tendency to hit the user if used to attack targets in front of the user instead of behind.