Discussion: Smuggling for a Governor

[Grey Roger]

At present, smuggling for a governor is basically the same as regular smuggling, except that the governor gives you a document which is effectively a "Get Out of Jail Free" card in case you're caught by the coastguard.

Unless @Levis has any other plans which are likely to be implemented any time soon, I've some ideas of my own for this.

The governor provides a cargo for you, so you don't need to go away and look for something to smuggle. If you have a governor's cargo, that's all you'll be able to sell to the next group of smugglers on this island. Or maybe you can sell all your own contraband at the same time, but you won't want to, because when you report back to the governor, you have to hand over all the money given to you by the smugglers. So either way, if you have anything of your own to smuggle, you'll want to do it separately from the governor's job. The governor's document will no longer cover you for your own illicit activities!

So you report back to the governor, hand over all the proceeds from smuggling his cargo, and get a small percentage of it back as your reward. There's no effect on reputation or national status, and no effect on what the smugglers think of you either (unless they saw you show your document to the coastguard).

But you have another choice. After doing the deal with the smugglers, you can arrest them yourself. The governor will give you a bigger share of the money, you do get a small reputation and national status boost, and your standing with the smugglers goes down slightly. They don't know exactly what happened because you didn't leave any survivors, but they know something went wrong with your deal. If it happens frequently then they'll eventually hate you - every deal you make seems to go sour, so you're evidently not their friend!

If you fail to complete the mission in a certain time, the governor concludes that you've absconded with either his cargo or the money. You lose your LoM on bad terms and become hostile to that nation.


If people like this idea - and if I can get it to work as planned - then one possible future extension would be to arrest the agent in the tavern. That will earn you an even bigger share of the profit, a bigger boost to your national standing, and instant hostility from the smugglers. And, of course, smuggling in this town will no longer be possible. But in due time, a new agent will take over (actually the same character but with a new name and face, the same way the merchant who hires you to escort him is always the same game character). If one smuggling gang has been smashed, a new one will form, because there's always someone trying to make a fast doubloon...

Any comments?

 

[DavyJack]

...If people like this idea - and if I can get it to work as planned - then one possible future extension would be to arrest the agent in the tavern. That will earn you an even bigger share of the profit, a bigger boost to your national standing, and instant hostility from the smugglers. And, of course, smuggling in this town will no longer be possible. But in due time, a new agent will take over (actually the same character but with a new name and face, the same way the merchant who hires you to escort him is always the same game character). If one smuggling gang has been smashed, a new one will form, because there's always someone trying to make a fast doubloon...

Any comments?

Question. When a new smuggler appears, are you able to deal with him then or provided you've improved your relations with the smuggling community? Besides that, it sounds awesome!

 

[Grey Roger]

You'd need to pay to improve your relations with the smuggling community if you want to smuggle again anywhere! That, of course, would include the replacement agent.

 

[DavyJack]

You'd need to pay to improve your relations with the smuggling community if you want to smuggle again anywhere! That, of course, would include the replacement agent.

That's perfect! And yes, talking and bribing some lawyers or whatever they're called to improve relations with the smugglers right? And I also recall a tavern owner or someone at random taverns and even someone inside a random big a** villa that does the talking when it comes to relationships but yes, that is an awesome modification for smuggling. Makes smuggling more fun!

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Really nice ideas @Grey Roger!

It definitely will make smuggling for governor's a much much better experience.

Go for it, in my opinion.

 

[Grey Roger]

That's perfect! And yes, talking and bribing some lawyers or whatever they're called to improve relations with the smugglers right? And I also recall a tavern owner or someone at random taverns and even someone inside a random big a** villa that does the talking when it comes to relationships but yes, that is an awesome modification for smuggling. Makes smuggling more fun!

You don't pay diplomats to improve relations with the smugglers. If the smugglers have decided that they hate you, then when you talk to the smuggler agent in the tavern to try to set up a deal for smuggling goods, he'll tell you that the guild doesn't like you any more but they'll forgive you if you pay them, i.e. him, a load of money.

There are also random captains who offer to improve your national relation if you agree to sell them your contraband at reduced price. That's not related to smuggling for a governor.

What the governor wants is for you to infiltrate the smuggler gang, then report back to him. So what I'm doing will be more in line with that. There won't be much effect on normal smuggling, except that you will no longer be able to use the governor's document as a free pass to smuggle your own contraband. Either you're working for him, using his cargo and giving him the money from selling it; or you're working for yourself, smuggling your own cargo, keeping the money and taking your chances with the coastguard. You can do both, just not at the same time.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sounds to me like that makes a lot of sense.

 

[DavyJack]

Sounds good.

You don't pay diplomats to improve relations with the smugglers. If the smugglers have decided that they hate you, then when you talk to the smuggler agent in the tavern to try to set up a deal for smuggling goods, he'll tell you that the guild doesn't like you any more but they'll forgive you if you pay them, i.e. him, a load of money....

Yes! That's also what I meant, just by paying someone relevant or one of them that will smooth things out again. Paying the agent in the tavern himself will make things easier too than tracking and going to someone else.

 

[Grey Roger]

I've got this working, though not extended to arresting the agent in the tavern.

So, you want to help the governor catch some smugglers? Then he provides you with some random cargo which is contraband locally. You are warned that you need to complete the job fairly quickly:

(In fact, you have a month. This should be plenty of time since you don't need to leave the island - just set up the deal in the tavern, do the deal on a beach elsewhere on the same island, then get back to town and report to the governor.)

On the beach:

Replacing the normal option to doublecross the smugglers, you now have the choice to arrest them. The result is pretty much the same; you'll fight them and keep the cargo.

You can choose to just do the deal and then report back to the governor:

Your reward is 10% of the value of the cargo. If the cargo was very low value, you get a minimum of 2500 regardless.

Or perhaps you were brave enough to take on the smugglers yourself:

You take the smugglers' money and keep the cargo. That cargo belongs to the governor and he wants it back as well as the money! But your reward is much higher, 50% of the value of the cargo instead of 10%. Also, you get a slight boost to your rating with the nation if you just do the deal, and a bigger boost if you arrest the smugglers.

Perhaps you're tempted to try to keep the money or cargo for yourself? Perhaps you already spent the money or sold the cargo? Bad move:


If you're smart, you'll repay the money in time:


But if you take too long to complete the mission, or if you fail to return the cargo or money in time, you lose your Letter of Marque and the nation turns hostile - you fought the law and the law won.

 

[The Nameless Pirate]

Nice @Grey Roger!!!

 

[Grey Roger]

If you want to try it out yourself, all the necessary files are in here. Either continue an existing game, get a Letter of Marque if you don't already have one, then talk to the governor who sold it to you; or start a new FreePlay as a corsair and visit the nearest governor. (If you're starting a new game as a corsair, don't pick Pirate because the Pirate boss doesn't do smuggling missions, and don't pick British because you start in Speightstown where there is no governor.)

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Sounds like you've been hard at work, @Grey Roger!

 

[Grey Roger]

I'm testing another bit of tweaking to smuggling in general and smuggling for a governor in particular. It started when I found case "Smuggler Paid for relation" in "quests_side.c", which sets attribute "pchar.quest.smuggling_guild.times_payed" to 0 if it doesn't already exist, then adds 1 to it each time you pay the agent to get back in the smugglers' good graces. As far as I can see, this attribute is never checked anywhere else.

So my first tweak is to "Smuggler Agent_dialog.c", which will now charge you 10% extra for each time you've previously paid. Cumulatively. The penalty fee will be multiplied by 1.1^<number of times paid>.

The next tweak is to "Smuggler_OnShore_dialog.c", which at present only drops your relation to smugglers by 10 if you're working for a governor and choose to arrest them, the idea being that if you kill them all, there are no witnesses so the other smugglers don't know what you did. Except perhaps they do - maybe there's a spy hiding nearby who isn't part of the gang doing the deal, or maybe someone saw you go into the governor's residence. So the base penalty will be 20, reduced by your "Sneak" skill and also reduced if you have the "Advanced Smuggling" perk - you're getting good at making sure nobody knows what you're up to. But the penalty is increased if that "smuggling_guild.times_payed" attribute is set - now they know you're dodgy, they're keeping an eye on you. The net result is that if you don't upset the smugglers, that relation drop is pretty small, and if you mix governor smuggling with regular smuggling then they never get suspicious and you can keep on doing it. Mess up just once and you'll be paying extra forever! (You can even smuggle patriotically - work for the governor when in a town belonging to a nation from whom you have a LoM, then smuggle to a hostile nation to damage their economy and maybe pick up a prize or two if the coastguard ships show up.)

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Ooooh, that sounds like you did some GOOD thinking into these things, @Grey Roger!
Verrry cool.

But...

So my first tweak is to "Smuggler Agent_dialog.c", which will now charge you 10% extra for each time you've previously paid. Cumulatively. The penalty fee will be multiplied by 1.1^<number of times paid>.

Are you actively trying to prevent the players from smuggling.
Or are the smugglers always inevitably just plain GREEDY?

 

[Grey Roger]

Are you actively trying to prevent the players from smuggling.
Or are the smugglers always inevitably just plain GREEDY?

No, but they're not stupid. If their people keep turning up dead round about the time you're supposed to be making a deal with them, the rest of the gang will eventually get suspicious. Then they charge you a fee to repair your status with them. If you've learned your lesson and behave yourself, you won't get charged again. If you keep betraying them, they'll get their revenge on your purse, and that's when that increasing fee kicks in.

Part of the mechanism is, and has been for a long time, that if you stick to the deal and don't betray the shore gang, the smugglers' opinion of you goes up. The more they like you, the better price you get for your goods. It also means that if you sometimes work for the governor and sometimes work for yourself, then their opinion of you goes down and up. Provided you keep the balance right, they never get suspicious and you don't have to pay to remove their block on you.

Compare to the way it is at the moment, where you can arrest a smuggling gang, your status with the smugglers falls enough, they charge you a small fee, you pay it, then you do it again, pay the same small fee again, and so on...

The other comparison is that, under the assumption that you didn't leave any witnesses so nobody saw what you did, you only lose 10% status with the smugglers for arresting them. By comparison, if you're not arresting them but you double-cross them and kill them after taking their money and without handing over the cargo, you lose 35%. The new system for smuggling for a governor can go up to 35% loss (you have very poor "Sneak" skill and you've already upset the smugglers enough to have to pay them). Or it can go down to 5% loss (you have good "Sneak" skill, you have "Advanced Smuggling", and you've never had to pay for upsetting the smugglers).

 

[Pieter Boelen]

No, but they're not stupid. If their people keep turning up dead round about the time you're supposed to be making a deal with them, the rest of the gang will eventually get suspicious. Then they charge you a fee to repair your status with them. If you've learned your lesson and behave yourself, you won't get charged again. If you keep betraying them, they'll get their revenge on your purse, and that's when that increasing fee kicks in.

AH!
I misunderstood that bit.
But now that you explain it, that makes perfect sense.

Part of the mechanism is, and has been for a long time, that if you stick to the deal and don't betray the shore gang, the smugglers' opinion of you goes up. The more they like you, the better price you get for your goods. It also means that if you sometimes work for the governor and sometimes work for yourself, then their opinion of you goes down and up. Provided you keep the balance right, they never get suspicious and you don't have to pay to remove their block on you.

I like that!
Balancing acts are tight.

Compare to the way it is at the moment, where you can arrest a smuggling gang, your status with the smugglers falls enough, they charge you a small fee, you pay it, then you do it again, pay the same small fee again, and so on...

Indeed that's not right.

The other comparison is that, under the assumption that you didn't leave any witnesses so nobody saw what you did, you only lose 10% status with the smugglers for arresting them. By comparison, if you're not arresting them but you double-cross them and kill them after taking their money and without handing over the cargo, you lose 35%. The new system for smuggling for a governor can go up to 35% loss (you have very poor "Sneak" skill and you've already upset the smugglers enough to have to pay them). Or it can go down to 5% loss (you have good "Sneak" skill, you have "Advanced Smuggling", and you've never had to pay for upsetting the smugglers).

Sounds like you've made quite the nice improvement there.