salvage

[peter]

What's the reason you don't get salvage in some missions?  E.g. On some corporate missions, is your employer keeping the spoils of war?

 I think you should get salvage for the following battles which currently don't give salvage:
- getting attacked the mecha from the slaver
- defeating the militia entering a town
- getting attacked by bandits trying to steal the medicine you're delivering
- protect the convoy.  you can come back for the pilotless mecha later.  Or is the road so busy that you couldn't really hide anything, and it would slow you down too much to take it with you?

 Even in an attack-the-base mission, you can pick up inventory equipment from all the downed mecha, but why can't you drag off an intact Savin?  Nothing is more annoying than only ever killing Savin pilots in non-salvage missions!

 Maybe in destroy the base missions, you should be able to drag off not-destroyed pilotless mecha if your team has mecha with hands with a total size greater than twice the size of any mecha you want to salvage.  Or something like that.  You obviously wouldn't have time to do any Tech Vulturing, though.

[SharkD]

Quoting: peter

protect the convoy. you can come back for the pilotless mecha later. Or is the road so busy that you couldn't really hide anything, and it would slow you down too much to take it with you?

Well, you're supposed to guard them all the way to their destination. Since GH doesn't have a persistant map, there's no going back for the goodies, later.

Even in an attack-the-base mission, you can pick up inventory equipment from all the downed mecha, but why can't you drag off an intact Savin? Nothing is more annoying than only ever killing Savin pilots in non-salvage missions!

Yeah, that is really annoying!

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: peter

- getting attacked the mecha from the slaver

I'm not sure. On the one hand, there's no real reason why this one shouldn't provide salvage. On the other hand, I decided that it shouldn't provide salvage because if it did that would somewhat offset the bad points of being attacked by slavers all the time. This is kind of a penalty encounter, after all.

Quoting: peter

- defeating the militia entering a town

No. The idea is that you're breaking through the defenses to sneak into town- going back to the same place would presumably just invite a (probably larger) attack.

Quoting: peter

- getting attacked by bandits trying to steal the medicine you're delivering

This one should also provide salvage.

Quoting: peter

- protect the convoy.

No. You're travelling with a convoy; you can't just stop and grab the salvage.

Many of the decisions as to whether an encounter should offer salvage or not were based on game balance reasons. Non-salvage missions typically pay better and may be easier to get than salvage missions.

[macksting]

I take it all the convoys are on time tables, as opposed to freelancing?
Kinda makes sense.

Hmm. That makes me wonder if it would be appropriate to have commodities trading in GearHead, but I don't think the game's shopping skills are set up well for it.

[Anticheese]

Its all possible, Just have a supply and demand grid (cheaper in some areas, more expensive in the others) along with merchants selling commodities and you have your trading.

It would be much easier to do it with missions though...

"Help! I need to deliver a cargo of x to y before z, If you could do this I would give you a 60% share of the profit!"

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: Anticheese

Its all possible, Just have a supply and demand grid (cheaper in some areas, more expensive in the others) along with merchants selling commodities and you have your trading.

There are a number of problems with commodity trading in GearHead- first of all, there's the issue of public transportation + delivery service. If the PC had enough money to invest sufficiently in commodities he'd be able to move about and make as much money as he wanted with very little risk. Even without public transport moving between friendly cities isn't dangerous, and doesn't consume any of the PC's resources.

[Anticheese]

Which is why the ticket vendor says: "Um, Sir...I don't think you are allowed to bring 14 tonnes of medical supplies on the bus"

But yeah, you make a good point - That would make it just too easy to make money.

[Joseph Hewitt]

"And what will you be checking on with? One 60-ton death robot... a 16-ton gauss cannon and 12 tons of incendiary missiles... Wait a minute, what's this? Ten tons of corn syrup? Sorry, you won't be able to bring that on board. New regulations."

[SharkD]

I was thinking of this earlier. Elite-style trading would be neat, even if the price tables were fixed.

I think you should have to transfer the goods yourself, though.

Also, a cargo vessel should be required to turn a real profit. Mecha would require a maximum cargo capacity--maybe a fixed number of hull points that can be distributed either to weapon hardpoints or to cargo space. Having a low PV could trigger more attacks from pirates.

[Anticheese]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

"And what will you be checking on with? One 60-ton death robot... a 16-ton gauss cannon and 12 tons of incendiary missiles... Wait a minute, what's this? Ten tons of corn syrup? Sorry, you won't be able to bring that on board. New regulations."

Touch

[Francisco Munoz]

It's not hard to desing SF:2 valuables (give them fudge and mass) and create bulk shops for it...
  A better way to do it it's just to create a scene template where a merchant ask you to get some containers from some other place.

[macksting]

That's it. My first character in GH2 will be a trucker.
One consideration on this is that, as a freelancer, your work is not particularly guaranteed. Businesses are pretty advanced in this setting, with their own military companies to guard their valuables.
However, some things are in short enough supply that, if bought and sold between the right bidders, might require a special arrangement due to risk of theft. Therefore, a character of lawful... or for that matter, sufficiently chaotic... reputation might just become a part of this, the former for those who are certain to deliver, the latter for those who shall be intimidated into cooperation in crime.

I guess.

You know, like trading stolen Mona Lisa's and such.