Pirate Market

[Deadvickyart]

My suggestion for a new merchant with a real-time rotating stock.





Merchant is located: Space Diner, Public Market, Afterlife Bar & QM





Traders rotate every real life 15 minutes. They're not in sync with the other QM traders.



Trader stock is reliable and relatively powerful. Think of the stuff avaliable from the martian trader, or the flock trader, or even john's bus. This merchant should be a little more powerful than those, to justify their timegated avaliability. Not quite as powerful as a full QM trader, with their round-defining artifacts, though.




I made the sprites myself, and can make changes if people ask for them.

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Max Lawman's Surplus Outlet
"I always stock the best in security and ex-security gear."
Avaliable:    XX:00  -  XX:14

Buys:

5,000,000 Credits - Syndicate Revolver

90,000 Credits - Laser Gun
50,000 Credits - Phaser
10 Credits per kW - Power Cells

"We always need some of these. Any size will do."

Sells:

450,000 Credits - Airlock Breaching Hammer
200,000 Credits - Stun Baton

"Batteries not included."

50,000 Credits - Capsaicin Smoke Grenade

46,000 Credits - Security Backpack

9,000 Credits - Armor Vest

"Part of the security team uniform in Space Quebec."

7,000 Credits - Helmet

"Part of the security team uniform in Space Quebec."

4,500 Credits - SWAT Gloves

4,500 Credits - SWAT Gas Mask

2,800 Credits - Military Boots

2,000 Credits - Tactical Turtleneck

900 Credits - Handcuffs

600 Credits - Whistle

Subject 11's Vault of Value
Avaliable:    XX:15  -  XX:29

Buys:

1,600,000 Credits - Heisenbee (Cargo Only)

"RARE BEAST. MAKES HONEY. TASTY."
360,000 Credits - [name]'s Heart
360,000 Credits - [name]'s Liver
260,000 Credits - [name]'s Spleen
200,000 Credits - [name]'s Lung
200,000 Credits - [name]'s Kidney
"DELICIOUS MEAT. ON STATION. FIND, AND BE REWARDED."
100,000 Credits - Human Body (Cargo Only)
"I REQUIRE MEAT. HUMAN BEST."
30,000 Credits - Monkey Body (Cargo Only)
15,000 Credits - Chicken Nugget
10,000 Credits - Bee (Cargo Only)
10,000 Credits - Chicken (Cargo Only)
"ANIMAL. IS GOOD TOO."
10 Credits per Unit - Blood

Sells:

80,000 Credits - Poison Bottle (50u)
Valued at 80k per Telecrystal

10,000 Credits - Bottle of Triplepiss (100u)

10,000 Credits - Bottle of Glowing Slurry (100u)

900 Credits - Bottle of Synthetic Flesh (100u)

900 Credits - Bottle of Charcoal (100u)

900 Credits - [b]Bottle of Epinephrine (100u)
[/b]900 Credits - [b]Bottle of Miasma (100u)[/b]

450 Credits - Bottle of Plasma (100u)
450 Credits - Bottle of Radium (100u)
400 Credits - Chunk of Blob

Shady Jane's Back-Alley Deals

Avaliable:    XX:30  -  XX:44

Buys:

2,000,000 Credits - Head of Security's Beret

"There's a bunch of rich teenagers out there on Space Ferry 08, think it's cool to buy these berets and pretend to be syndicate super agents. Get me a legit one and I'll sell it on to them, split the profits with you."

220,000 Credits - [name]'s Butt
"Long story short, there's a price on that butt's head. Presumably it's attached to [name]. Please remove it before delivery."

200,000 Credits - Barrier
"The use of these minature holoprojectors is banned across most of space because of their potential as weapons. Some of my contacts are smugglers, and they'll pay huge amounts for them."

150,000 Credits - [random trinket]
"There's an estranged relative out there who will pay big bucks for this."

150,000 Credits - [random trinket]
"The space mafia wants to send a message. To someone."

80,000 Credits - Taser
"I need all the nonlethal weaponry I can get. Tasers, taser shotguns, taser SMGs or even wave guns. It's all for a friend, honest."

60,000 Credits - Hypospray

"There's a market for these. I can strip the ones I don't sell for parts."

10,000 Credits - Pipe Bomb
"Always useful, and always a top seller."

Sells:

XXX,XXX Credits - [random item]

High Value Pool*
XXX,XXX Credits - [random item]

Mid Value Pool*

XXX,XXX Credits - [random item]
Mid Value Pool*

400,000 Credits - Agent Card

120,000 Credits - Modified Hypospray
"There's a chip on these hyposprays that make them accept only pre-approved medicines. Lot of people don't like that, so I short out the chip so it doesn't flush out 'alternative medicine'. Accepts all liquids, guaranteed."

99,900 Credits - Modified Cyberliver
"This one has its prototype functions installed, and can heal you as it purges ethanol."
80,000 Credits - Modified Cyberappendix
"Jailbroken. Has a healing protocol installed, and a port to charge PDAs."

60,000 Credits - Modified Cyberspleen
"This spleen has its safety mechanisms disabled and a supercharged blood production gland. If you get this implanted, your blood pressure will spike and you will die. A surprising amount of people buy these."

80,000 Credits - Gamergy® Branded Cyberheart
"Bunch of these fell off the back of a space-van a while back on their way to a promotional event on Earth. Apparently they have extra ram, upgraded microcapillaries and rainbow LED lights."
85,000 Credits - Trick Cigarettes
80,000 Credits - Syndicate Mailman Suit

30,000 Credits - Floor Closet

9,900 Credits - Insulated Gloves

900 Credits - Mechanical Toolbox

300 Credits - Fire Extinguisher

200 Credits - Multitool

180 Credits - Gas Mask

140 Credits - Oil Can

60 Credits - [random colour] Jumpsuit

60 Credits - Balaclava

*High Value Pool:





500,000 - Old Hunting Riftle, Cursed Clown Mask



300,000 - Syndicate Device Analyzer, Stimulants, Rad Poison Crossbow





*Mid Value Pool:




240,000 Credits - Laser Rifle, Trick Revolver
180,000 Credits - Holographic Disguiser



120,000 Credits - Slip and Sign, Syndicate Omnitool


60,000 Credits - Voice Changer, Stealth Storage, Miniature Bible, Spy Sticker Kit

Mad Dealin' Maddy

"CHAMPION BELTHOLDER FIFTEEN SPACE-YEARS RUNNING, KID. JUST BECAUSE I'M INTO ANTIQUES, DOESN'T MEAN I CAN'T BEAT YOUR ASS IN THE RING"

Avaliable:    XX:45  -  XX:59

Buys:

10,000,000 Credits - Handmade Katana

1,600,000 Credits - Rusty Knife

1,600,000 Credits - Atomic Yo-Yo
900,000 Credits - Discount Dan's Golden Tickets
360,000 Credits - [name]'s [trinket]
360,000 Credits - [name]'s [trinket]
260,000 Credits - Bone Key
200,000 Credits - Authentic Moon Rocks

Sells:

5,000,000 Credits - Picture of a Monkey

Monkey comes with a random name and number.

2,000,000 Credits - Discount Dan's Golden Tickets

[Drewmajor11]

I think a lot of these are a bit unbalanced with how easy money is but the idea is really cool and the sprites are great.

[Waffleloffle]

not a dev but having azone items as something that people can Just Buy seems like it runs directly against the intent of having cool shit in azones in the first place

[Deadvickyart]

I think a lot of these are a bit unbalanced with how easy money is but the idea is really cool and the sprites are great.

Haven't priced anything but was thinking the high value items would be around 100k and the cheaper items around 5k each. Mainly this is stuff you can get from knowing your way around the debris field, it's just for people who'd rather make cash than explore for space treasure. Nothing here's really as powerful as the voltron or expensive pod parts anyway, even the poison bottles.

And I think the ease of making money is overstated, it's still a serious investment of time and effort to make large amounts of cash and it's fairly unrewarding for antagonists to do. Antagonist quartermasters already have the special ops crate, but it requires an emag which most antag types don't get (gang, changeling, vampire, etc) and only provides tools to very loudly and obviously murder people in the station. This is like a diet version of that avaliable to everyone.

not a dev but having azone items as something that people can Just Buy seems like it runs directly against the intent of having cool shit in azones in the first place

There's a lot of stuff in the adventure zones that is trivial to pick up and usually near the entrance, I was referring to buying things like the promotional shirts from the moon gift store or kitty litter from cat planet. It gives a financial reason to go adventuring more to those places, like we already have with the bounties on the obsidian crown and viking armour.

[DimWhat]

I am not very fond of being able to casually buy traitor gear in QM or enticing players to grief sec by making them want to permanently get rid of their baton/taser/revolver by selling it in QM. Though the art is quite good and the selling of solarium keys could be done well if handled like artifacts...

[Nidabutt]

I actually quite like this idea. Obviously a little tuning would be needed but the idea is very enticing. Cargo really needs more stuff added to it, since I tend to find it becomes very repetitive and bland after you've grinded 30 minutes for money and have kinda generic stuff available you could get on the station already for the most part. Adding RNG-based but really cool things you could potentially get from the traders would be a great idea, the RNG will help mitigate powergaming since it can't be done reliably. Goon has a pretty weak Cargonia which is a shame, it could use some love to make it more enjoyable to play and vary the fun things you can work towards from round-to-round.

[Danger Noodle]

I think these traders should be unlocked when you EMAG a cargo console so that it'd be more balanced and wouldn't incentivize non antags to do these things while keeping with the underground black market theme.

[Cal]

Huge no to encouraging people to harass Security more than they already do

[cyberTripping]

The aesthetics are rad (I particularly like the details in Dr Kill's portrait) but I'm not particularly convinced that many of these additions would add more than they detract, if implemented as suggested by the OP.

I could see It Who Stares being an interesting addition to the basic cargo trader rotation, maybe with a bit of tweaking, but I don't really like the vibes of a trader selling things you normally have to physically go out of your way to obtain (Maddy), and Dr Kill/Monty are hard sells for reasons I think other people have already said better than I could.

[Deadvickyart]

I am not very fond of being able to casually buy traitor gear in QM or enticing players to grief sec by making them want to permanently get rid of their baton/taser/revolver by selling it in QM. Though the art is quite good and the selling of solarium keys could be done well if handled like artifacts...

Huge no to encouraging people to harass Security more than they already do

It's a bit of an extreme example, and in most rounds I feel like security would get more out of it than they lose - holding bake sales to buy more armor vests, selling their batons in last ditch efforts to buy flamethrowers to deal with a hostile blob, and removing mechanics-made phasers and laser guns from the round entirely instead of locking them up in a back room forever. I'd actually argue that encouraging shitters to trade their I'll gotten weapons for cash is a better alternative to just having people steal batons and keeping them in their backpacks. If it gets out of hand my suggestion already has a solution, wait 30 minutes at most and order replacement sec gear in the back rooms of security. I'm not 100% on having batons be sold, but I think security needs an easy way to replenish one or two if they get raided. By revolver I meant the syndicate revolvers not the detective's one.



As to the power level of the items, I don't think whitelisting some of the lower cost items (I'm talking about objects like chameleon suits, duct tape and floor crates - not c sabres or bombs) and charging around 50k per telecrystal value would be excessively powerful. The most powerful way to use merchants would still be getting erebite floor tiles from Gragg or uranium/drug based hell poisons from the robot/hand in the diner bathroom, both of which are trivial to reach and incredibly cheap. The rules stop QMs from blowing up the station with erebite floor tiles every round.

I think these traders should be unlocked when you EMAG a cargo console so that it'd be more balanced and wouldn't incentivize non antags to do these things while keeping with the underground black market theme.

Heavily disagree on locking more content behind EMAGs or agent cards. Non traitor antags like gang or vampire should be allowed access to more fun stuff if they're willing to raise funds. EMAGs already get you plenty, anyway.



As for Maddy, haven't put a lot of thought into them. Haven't even done a sprite for them yet. I really do want them to buy adventure zone items though, adventurers should have a chance to sell their loot for cold hard cash. It's also a great way to advertise the loot that's out there. The only reason I see people get the viking armor is to sell it for the bounty in cargo. There could easily be bounties on whips, mars rover parts, or catmandu cats to encourage people to go on dangerous telesci adventures.

[Nidabutt]

I am not very fond of being able to casually buy traitor gear in QM or enticing players to grief sec by making them want to permanently get rid of their baton/taser/revolver by selling it in QM. Though the art is quite good and the selling of solarium keys could be done well if handled like artifacts...

Huge no to encouraging people to harass Security more than they already do

It's a bit of an extreme example, and in most rounds I feel like security would get more out of it than they lose - holding bake sales to buy more armor vests, selling their batons in last ditch efforts to buy flamethrowers to deal with a hostile blob, and removing mechanics-made phasers and laser guns from the round entirely instead of locking them up in a back room forever. I'd actually argue that encouraging shitters to trade their I'll gotten weapons for cash is a better alternative to just having people steal batons and keeping them in their backpacks. If it gets out of hand my suggestion already has a solution, wait 30 minutes at most and order replacement sec gear in the back rooms of security. I'm not 100% on having batons be sold, but I think security needs an easy way to replenish one or two if they get raided. By revolver I meant the syndicate revolvers not the detective's one.

As for Maddy, haven't put a lot of thought into them. Haven't even done a sprite for them yet. I really do want them to buy adventure zone items though, adventurers should have a chance to sell their loot for cold hard cash. It's also a great way to advertise the loot that's out there. The only reason I see people get the viking armor is to sell it for the bounty in cargo. There could easily be bounties on whips, mars rover parts, or catmandu cats to encourage people to go on dangerous telesci adventures.

Using telescience to generate money for the station instead of using it to powergame? Madness!

Jokes aside, I'd very much like to see that kind of thing. The more departments that are encouraged to work with cargo for benefits, the better. Cargo can provide every department with supplies so giving them something to offer cargo and encourage interaction is great.

I do however agree with the consensus that batons should not be part of the trading, whether that be selling or buying, for many reasons.

[Drewmajor11]

I am not very fond of being able to casually buy traitor gear in QM or enticing players to grief sec by making them want to permanently get rid of their baton/taser/revolver by selling it in QM. Though the art is quite good and the selling of solarium keys could be done well if handled like artifacts...

Huge no to encouraging people to harass Security more than they already do

It's a bit of an extreme example, and in most rounds I feel like security would get more out of it than they lose - holding bake sales to buy more armor vests, selling their batons in last ditch efforts to buy flamethrowers to deal with a hostile blob, and removing mechanics-made phasers and laser guns from the round entirely instead of locking them up in a back room forever. I'd actually argue that encouraging shitters to trade their I'll gotten weapons for cash is a better alternative to just having people steal batons and keeping them in their backpacks. If it gets out of hand my suggestion already has a solution, wait 30 minutes at most and order replacement sec gear in the back rooms of security. I'm not 100% on having batons be sold, but I think security needs an easy way to replenish one or two if they get raided. By revolver I meant the syndicate revolvers not the detective's one.

So in theory this would happen, in practice, it would be a rules issue and security would most likely become even more brutal about anyone taking their gear. Also on the earlier note, both 5k and 100k are super easy to get even with trader changes.

[Deadvickyart]

Using telescience to generate money for the station instead of using it to powergame? Madness!

Jokes aside, I'd very much like to see that kind of thing. The more departments that are encouraged to work with cargo for benefits, the better. Cargo can provide every department with supplies so giving them something to offer cargo and encourage interaction is great.

I do however agree with the consensus that batons should not be part of the trading, whether that be selling or buying, for many reasons.

For what it's worth, cargo can already purchase all of security's gear at any point with the cardlocked boxes (including armory gear) and open the crates with a pod or explosives, and a merchant in the diner already sells most of what the Security Surplus Store does except for the batons/riotshields/riot nades(although that merchant does have lethal equivalents). And they're avaliable at all times, the merchants in my suggestion are only around 25% of the time each.

Also I'd like to mention that one of the cargo traders already buys human brains with the implicit understanding that you're permanantly removing someone from the round to make money for the department, and engineering can do a similar thing with shoving people into the furnaces to power the PTL laser. Losing your batons and tasers because you slipped on a banana peel near some cash-hungry quartermasters is pretty mild in comparison.

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https://i.imgur.com/e9nyfWz.png

early draft of Mad Maddy's portrait. Going for a roided up space-wrestler look. Goon's wrestling lore is powerful but shamefully lacking on in-game representation.

[Danger Noodle]

"Armoury gear" in the case of cargo only extends to phasers (which are pretty trash) and flamethrowers/flare guns, all of these weapons are easy to get elsewhere and really aren't that impactful. I personally believe that the pricing of sec crates could be increased by quite a bit, especially the token crate. The merchant in the diner only sells you an armour vest+ for sec stuff so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.

I don't understand your second point, it looks like you're saying promoting grief is good and it isn't. Brains can be farmed from monkeys and other mobs like chickens so cargo almost never uses human brains. Forcing people into furnaces is only used by antags or validhunters and requires a lot of effort and planning for minimal gain and if you're saying this tells engis to force people into furnaces for more power it doesn't, not many people would look at a furnace and think "Oh I shove people into this." (hopefully) instead they would probably look at the crate of coal and think to put that inside and turn it on when the green light pops up.

The examples you detailed are both flawed and not on the same level, they require a lot of planning thought and a big time investment while your proposed cargo trader would see QMs grief sec, run to cargo and sell gear for a couple thousand which makes the officer's round way worse. Oh, and guess what? This just won't happen, batons are incredibly powerful and noone would sell them unless you scanned them with mechcomp and are mass producing them. This last point brings even questions into the mix as batons are pretty easy to fabricate and if you set the buy price to something like 5k or hell even 2k you have a really really really good infinite money making strat.

[Deadvickyart]

"Armoury gear" in the case of cargo only extends to phasers (which are pretty trash) and flamethrowers/flare guns, all of these weapons are easy to get elsewhere and really aren't that impactful. I personally believe that the pricing of sec crates could be increased by quite a bit, especially the token crate. The merchant in the diner only sells you an armour vest+ for sec stuff so I'm not sure what you're talking about there.

The experimental security crate has the a clock 180, better helmet, and a box each of frag and stun grenades, and sketchy d5 gets you pod-mounted shotguns and laser guns.

I don't understand your second point, it looks like you're saying promoting grief is good and it isn't. Brains can be farmed from monkeys and other mobs like chickens so cargo almost never uses human brains. Forcing people into furnaces is only used by antags or validhunters and requires a lot of effort and planning for minimal gain and if you're saying this tells engis to force people into furnaces for more power it doesn't, not many people would look at a furnace and think "Oh I shove people into this." (hopefully) instead they would probably look at the crate of coal and think to put that inside and turn it on when the green light pops up.

This is fine. Shoving someone into the furnaces as an antagonist engineer is a great in-character way to dispose of evidence and deepens strategy, being able to power the station purely through human corpses is a fun reward. Same with an antagonist running a disarming strategy or batman gimmick being able to sell their ill gotten gains for cold hard cash.

The examples you detailed are both flawed and not on the same level, they require a lot of planning thought and a big time investment while your proposed cargo trader would see QMs grief sec, run to cargo and sell gear for a couple thousand which makes the officer's round way worse.

Realistically quartermasters will ignore the baton bounty most rounds, like they do with budford's weed bounties. If this would really encourage players to grief, you'd see a significant amount of quartermasters breaking into botany and I just don't think that happens. Worrying about it happening to a much more well-defended department prior to even trialling the change seems a little over the top.

This just won't happen, batons are incredibly powerful and noone would sell them unless you scanned them with mechcomp and are mass producing them. This last point brings even questions into the mix as batons are pretty easy to fabricate and if you set the buy price to something like 5k or hell even 2k you have a really really really good infinite money making strat.

Good. If players want to spend time and effort gathering materials to mass-print weapons and sell them on the space darknet, they should be allowed to. This is pretend space money that does not exist round to round, they're not going to destabalise the national economy by gaming the markets.