identify tech

[muffildy]

1) Stations should never sell things that are not identified - why would anyone buy something for say 100000 creds if they didnt even know what it did?
2) code to make things unknown should only be applied to items gotten as loot

[PM]

After St. K's, shops may carry unidentified transpace jumpdrives, which are easy to spot by those who know what to look for. By itself, it is useful for traveling to various systems quickly. It becomes a game breaker when combined with early Teraton fabricator hijinks (and a playership fast enough to outrun anything short of a Wind Slaver or Hornet).

Aside from the jumpdrive, I dislike buying unidentified items unless I can metagame an item's identity.

Unidentified items as loot makes sense though.

[shanejfilomena]

I like the buyer beware feature of the unknown items : it gives the entire explorer sense to the loot: but in stations, yes, they SHOULD know what they are selling......but to do this......mm..i think the station can set everything as known for the inventory without altering the description for the items " in the wild".

[alterecco]

Yes, it can be done. Stations would have to temporarily identify all their inventory, and then "unidentify" them again on exit.

[digdug]

1) Stations should never sell things that are not identified

it's a classic nethack style shop. Many RPGs use the same idea.
I would bring it further and have the weapons selling pre-randomly enahnced (with the enhancements not visible) and then only after buying it you can check if the weapon is +10% or -20%.

[Dedalo]

1) Stations should never sell things that are not identified - why would anyone buy something for say 100000 creds if they didnt even know what it did?
2) code to make things unknown should only be applied to items gotten as loot

Do not forget that stations will always try to get as much profit as possible from you.
By not showing what each item is, it's a way of doing it.

[Atarlost]

1) Stations should never sell things that are not identified - why would anyone buy something for say 100000 creds if they didnt even know what it did?
2) code to make things unknown should only be applied to items gotten as loot

Do not forget that stations will always try to get as much profit as possible from you.
By not showing what each item is, it's a way of doing it.

Actually, this is a way to ensure nothing will be purchased.

Nobody would buy anything from IKEA if they couldn't know whether they'd bought an end table or a bookcase until after they'd brought it home.

[shanejfilomena]

but if its an IKEA you can convert it by NOT reading the directions: i made a wonderful coffee cabinet with a sliding door for a show / waiting area that way once: i think the piece was originally for a stereo and not supposed to have those extra shelves.........oops...

[Dedalo]

Atarlost what you said is correct. Unless you're desperate to get something from them.
For what I know the player is desperate to get to the core, and therefore is desperate to get the best possible equipment. So it's not wrong to think that companies will try to make the most profit possible of it.
Or maybe it's too desperate to listen what the dealer has to say about guns, etc. (Especially when it would take a long time)

[Cirevam]

Something that I find unrealistic is that we can sell unidentified radioactive waste to shops, but once it's identified they won't buy it anymore. It's like no one in the universe knows what a barrel of this stuff looks like until a random pilgrim opens it up, splashes it on his ship, and deems it radioactive. It would be nice if shops would at least check to see what they are buying, but it is a good way to make a tiny bit of money after finding some uranium fuel.

[Schnobs]

I, too, like to have unidentified items.

However, ID'ing everything yourself is getting old pretty soon. It also means that you only really get to use things when you find them a second time.
Plus, what Cirevam said.

Possible Solutions that come to Mind:

• one-shot ID Roms
  "Book of Lore" Roms (ID everything up to level X)
  Specialist Merchants

The first two might be easier to do, but for gameplay purposes I'd prefer the latter -- some Backwater Station Merchant may not know what this thing does, but a Makayev Dealer really should recognize a Makayev Enhancer. He may charge a fee for telling you, though.

[Amariithynar]

Since a lot of things are -more- expensive when identified, not -less-, why does it make sense to not ID it to the person you're selling it to? Not only that, but when you know your market, you'd try to sell things they'd want- Not just go "Oh, yeah, it's a random barrel of X". Now, that's not to say there can't be unscrupulous merchants that sell a defective visual display ROM under the "unidentified" name of "visual display ROM" so you can't tell the two apart (unless both are being sold, but then you have to guess which is the right one). Really, stations have no reason to not have most of their merch unidentified. Alien weapons, or things that are just wonky and aren't within their realm of comprehension (halo gems, for example) being unidentified, sure. But general tech no.

[shanejfilomena]

Maybe we could ask for a compromise :

I know the descriptions are as specific yet vague as I think they can get : but maybe we are shooting into the wrong window:

I do not think Armor Dealers should sell Organic Acid or Degenerating Nanos : IF we go on that theory : everything they sell is safe regardless of content , but ( currently ) if you play with the barrels you risk loosing the effectiveness of your armor against something you might meet until you can get a different enhancement or new armor....

I think the more hazardous materials should be left out in the wild and not found sitting in a station because stations that sell bad stuff tend to go " BOOM " either from the player or the biggest collection of hostiles a player can drag to them ( Molotoks are easy to upset and drag to armor Dealers/ stations that endangered my ship with bad purchases: defective weapon Rom in a sea of Ares SandStorms.....heck NO!!)

[Atarlost]

That's still stupid from a commercial standpoint. Nethack shops are not something we need to emulate. There's a reason they're nethack shops and not roguelike shops. Other better balanced and more rational roguelikes have abandoned them and we should do likewise.

[PM]

I dislike Nethack shops and their shopkeepers so much that when I play Nethack and live long enough, all shopkeepers eventually die one way or another, beginning with Izchak.