I've been thinking lately about rumors. They're an old feature, and there's a few tickets regarding them (mostly regarding making them hook into the mining system). But the problem with rumors is that they're rather inflexible. You have to code them into individual stations, and they tend to be hidden away so that most people don't see them.
This is a bit of an issue, because rumors and chance encounters can be a pretty useful RPG tool. In the vanilla game we do literally meet two out of three wingmen in a tavern. But right now you can't pick up quests or useful information. And I don't really have a firm suggestion for how to handle rumors effectively, but I've got some ideas and maybe with some public discussion we can work out something that might function?
So, here's what I was thinking:
Rumors are basically a different form of random encounter. This is useful, because a system that's used for rumors could also trigger other things if necessary....like a brand new quest. So while I say 'rumors' in this post, it's more like an encounter system that I'm imagining. It's just that most of those encounters involve you getting information of some sort, rather than a microsaur or whatever.
(That being said? Being able to buy a microsaur in a tavern would make perfect sense and be an excellent example of a non-rumor encounter)
Rumors and in-station encounters currently are hard-coded. They should instead (except for the essential ones: Eg. getting shot by Lord Mikho) be a set of lists of individual rumors, with each as their own entity (although not necessary an 'entity' in the sense of having a UNID assigned, although that might be useful).The rarity and attributes of each rumor, as well as what happens (more or less) should be set on the rumor (NOT the station) so that they can be used over and over without having to edit everything multiple times. They might also get divided into the situations in which they occur (so "tavern" encounters where you meet someone and talk with them VS "passing" encounters where you just overhear something as you walk around the station). This way you'd be able to get chatter about the centauri in Eridani (and their sudden demise) in the early game, and speculation about Admiral Decker's love life when you're hanging around on Carriers. Black markets would have bars (which would need to be added, of course) that might clue you in on Curator stations or Death Drug outposts.......or be talking about how the war is good/bad for business. Getting some context is important, and may be able to re-use systems that are eventually developed to make factions and stations turn up in appropriate places.
In-station encounters and rumors would happen at low rates while just moving around. So when you dock at a station you overhear someone talking about an arms cache in-system or a friendly station you haven't discovered, and it's marked on your map. When you go into a bar, restaurant, social area, or meeting area (such as you'd find on quite a lot of stations that give early-game missions) you will either receive useless banter (IE: Everything you get now that isn't a mission), a mission (if applicable), or a rumor of some sort. Rumors wouldn't always be true. For example, if you pay someone in a bar to give you some information they overheard from some shady-looking miners and then fly to the co-ordinates....it might be a rich deposit of ore with a bunch of outlaw miners nearby, it might be an empty asteroid with evidence of mining nearby, it could just be the wrong location, or it could be a trap by pirates. And meeting areas would need to be added to more stations, so that there's always the option to go and look for some.
And the list of standard rumors and encounters would have to be huge. Avoiding repeats, and allowing for one-off events and level progression means that there has to be a lot of variable content. This isn't a bad thing though....as since rumors are by their nature not entirely reliable it'd be a great place for community content and headcanon without messing around with the game lore. And a few choice bits of actual lore might be slipped in as well.
TL:DR version (only slightly better than the above):
So in the short version, rumors are listed in the XML, called by a random chance by dockscreens (possibly with specific settings on the station to work it), and then hook into either map data, flavor text (can make use of all that headcanon we've got on the forums and pour it into rumors), quests, or maybe even some rare trades.
Now, this concept isn't workable as it is. It's too convoluted and would take forever to make. But I'm hopeful that others with more programming smarts (and possibly a flowchart) might have their own ideas, and maybe we can come up with a useful concept for how to handle rumors. Certainly if we could it would make the game feel a lot more alive by adding some zest to stations. It would also make rumors more accessible if we can come up with a way to make them interesting, varied, randomised, and useful, and also throw them at the player so they know the system exists.
Edit: Slightly clarified things. Still a bit muddled, sorry.
