Illegal Goods Tweak OXP

From Elite Wiki
Slaves container

Overview

Arriving at GalCop stations with illegal goods is now an offense (unlike the Vanilla game). You will be met on entry and offered the chance to do something about it. You can of course try and bribe the official.

Description

This OXP introduces interaction with GalCop Customs for players who dock at main stations (and some OXP stations if New Cargoes OXP is installed) with Narcotics, Firearms or Slaves in the hold. Players can ignore warnings, in which case a legal penalty is applied, but they can go on to sell the contraband on the open market. Alternatively they can voluntarily hand over contraband in which case a nominal reward is given; or attempt to bribe the customs officer to turn a blind eye (this could be risky - attempted bribery of a GalCop official can bring its own legal penalties).

Slaves that are handed over to GalCop Customs are rehabilitated by Amnesty InterGalactic before being released. There is a small chance that after handing over slaves the player may be contacted by an ex-slave who may offer an additional reward for their rescue. This will generally involve a trip to the ex-slave's home system to receive a financial reward, although there are a few surprises in the code. If you don't like surprises or are simply curious please see spoilers.txt included in this download for more information.

This OXP does not interfere with the treatment of scooped escape pods, although they do appear in the manifest as slaves. Oolite automatically removes rescued pilots from scooped escape pods from the manifest, and pays appropriate bounty/insurance payments before this OXP runs.

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Compatibility Information

News releases are made over GNN

Compatibility with New Cargoes OXP and its permit system. Contraband which is a New Cargoes Special Cargo is ignored by Illegal Goods Tweak if a valid New Cargoes permit is held. Otherwise it is treated in the same way as standard contraband. Also Illegal Goods Tweak will run on docking at certain OXP stations defined by New Cargoes OXP if installed (this option can be turned off).

Compatibility with HyperCargo OXP (1.07 or above) and Vortex OXP (1.23 or above) has also been updated to take into account New Cargoes and its permit system. Also fixed a bug affecting Vortex OXP users flying a Maelstrom.

This release introduces optional OXPconfig compatibility (version 2.0.9 or above), and also Library compatibility, as a method to set some options.

Options that can be set via OXPConfig or Library are (line numbers given for those who just wish to edit the script "illegal_goods_tweak.js"):

  • alwaysDetect (default true) (line 9) : if set to false a variable contraband detection rate is used, dependent on tech level and government type of the system. Low Tech Anarchies will have the lowest detection rate, High Tech Corporate States the highest. High Tech Anarchies and Low Tech Corporate States will fall somewhere in between. If not detected players carrying contraband still have an opportunity to voluntarily handover contraband for a small reward.
  • loggingEnabled (default false) (line 10) : if set to true enables some debug log messages.
  • ncOXPStations (default true) (line 11) : ignored unless New Cargoes OXP installed. If true customs are also active at certain OXP stations (defined via New Cargoes).

Why was this OXP made?

Vanilla Oolite follows Elite in that by default penalties are only applied when launching from a main station with contraband in the hold. There is no penalty for docking with a main station with illegal commodities in the hold.

In the original game this had the effect of making trade in such commodities illegal as the only place they could be bought was main stations. Oolite on the other hand can have many OXP additional dockable objects that are not main stations, some of which sell illegal items cheaply, in bulk, and with no penalty attached to launching with them from that dockable object (e.g. the Seedy Space Bars in the Random Hits OXP).

This allows for some very lucrative trading opportunities in illegal commodities from OXP dockables to main stations with no impact on the player's legal status. This OXP goes some way to redressing the balance and increasing the risks of this strategy.

Initially (with version 1 of this OXP) GalCop simply introduced penalties for docking with illegal substances. Following intense lobbying from Amnesty Intergalactic and various Bounty Hunter interest groups, GalCop agreed to give pilots the opportunity to hand over the goods to avoid penalties and for a small reward. Turning over slaves (who will be freed) rewards the player with a slight premium.

Change Log

This oxp originally came out in 2012.

2.2.6 (June 23rd, 2020)

  • Phkb Updated all commodity references to using current Oolite (post-v.1.80) naming conventions.
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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Thargoid for advice on the method to interact with another script/OXP's variables.

Thanks to Eric Walch for advice on avoiding conflicts with other OXPs, and Gimi for reporting the bug in version 1.2

Thanks to cim for making New Cargoes easy to interact with.

An additional acknowledgement can be found in spoilers.txt.

Thanks to all contributors to the thread on the Oolite BB for suggesting improvements to the original very basic idea.

Download Links

The newest version (for Oolive v.1.82 & newer) is available on the in-game Expansions Manager.

For Oolite 1.80: Download Illegal Goods Tweak.oxz v2.2.6 (downloaded 3662 times). Also mirrored on phkb's Box.

For Oolite 1.76/1.77: Version 1.7.3 (as an OXP) can still be found at box.com. Also mirrored on JazHaz's Box.

Discussion

Discussion topic can be found at Oolite BB

Update

Note that the illegal_goods.plist (and the commodities.plist) was replaced by the Trade-goods.plist in Oolite v.1.81 back in 2014/15. This led to problems with New Cargoes.

Links

Quick Facts

Config options available through 'Library'
Version Released License Features Category Author(s) Feedback
2.2.6 2020-06-23 CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 Mechanics Missions Mechanics OXPs‏‎ Capt. Murphy Oolite BB

Gameplay and Balance indicator

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