So here are some of my idea's about smuggling after thinking about it a bit more:
Smuggling Quest for Govenor
I think this quest should only be done once (maybe per nation) and should only trigger if the smuggling state on the island is above a certain treshold.
The quest can only be done if you have a LOM for this nation.
Reoccuring Smuggling quest for govenor
There should be a land based quest where you try to hunt down the smugglers for the govenor. This could also increase your rank for the nation. This would be interesting for characters who specialized more in melee combat instead of naval combat. I think a quest like this should look a bit like:
- The governor says that there are smugglers on the island and he tasks you with finding them and getting rid of them and confiscate their wares.
- You will need to ask people in town to find out if they know anything. Persuading people to tell you anything will be judged on different skills and your rank.
- At one point you will find someone who will tell you where the smugglers are hiding and you can go there.
- You can now decided to fight the smugglers and take their goods. Or let them go and take their goods, or something more sneaky maybe
.
- Once you confiscated the goods you return to the governor to hand in the goods and get your reward.
That shouldn't be to hard to make but I think it would make going up the ranks a bit more interesting because you can choose to do this or the ship hunting quest.
Questbook entries
At the moment the Opium quest for the govenor and just finding opium conflict with each other. these should be split apart, so the first time you encounter opium you know what to do with it if you encounter it by accident but you dont have a quest in your questbook which can only be finished by returning it to the govenor.
The Opium Expansion
I would like to add a "little" quest after you've done some opium runs where another opium den can be opened somewhere on the caribbean. And you can get more buyers, so slowly you can get the whole caribbean addicted to opium if you want to
.
Also I would like to add a maximum production rate for the opium den(s), so the first opium quests aren't that hard, but once they start asking for more opium you might need to buy some at the opium den and then wait for a while before getting more (increasing the chance of getting caught). And this would also make another opium den usefull because you could sail to this other den for the rest of the order.
Interface improvements
The tradebook interface should show more info about the smuggling state etc, so I will see if I can improve this interface and maybe make a special "tab" inside the tradebook.
Penalty for getting caught for beginners
If you are a low level character and you are caught smuggling the penalty is the same as when you are a high character, but as a high level character you can just fight your way out while as a low level character you must hope to flee away. Which makes it nice, but maybe if you are smuggling "small" amounts there should be an option to just pay a fine and get over it. If you just found a few pieces of contraband on sea and want to sell these and get caught I'd recon just paying a fine would be a valid option. If this fine scales to the amount you are smuggling by the time you've got your hold full of stuff to smuggle you probably wont be able to pay this fine (I would sugest to have a cap on the fine, say if it's larger then 10000 or so it wont be an option anymore just incase people have way to much money to spend) so you will have to fight yourself out.
Also I would like to introduce the "oh shit scenario" for smuggling. At the moment the coastguard will either appear from sea or from land. If they appear from sea there will be a ship waiting for you, and if they appear from land there wont (don't know if people picked up on this already
). But the "oh shit scenario" would only trigger for island with a high smuggling state and if you are above a certain level. It will spawn guards from both sides, and also leave one or two to defend the exit while the rest go and chase you. This won't happen very often, but I think the moment this will happen and you are able to fight your way out it would feel so satisfying. Especially the first time it happens to you, that's why I call it the "oh shit scenario". It's not to discourage players to smuggle. It's to increase the risk to smuggle to islands with a high smuggling state. The return to smuggling to these islands would be very high, so the risk should be high too.
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Any comments?