Paparazzi

[chuck_starchaser]

What do people here think of having Paparazzi as a faction?

In brief:
They'd never become "enemies", but they'd be a real annoyance, sometimes. They'd interfere with your missions, trying to snap pictures of the action. Sometimes they'd follow you everywhere, even through jump-points; and threaten the secrecy of some of your secret missions. There'd be a way to communicate with them to tell them to go away or face your fire; and they might be reluctant to do so, but after a bit of hull damage they'd see the light and get out of your face.
They'd say things like "Nice shot!", and "This picture is worth 1000 credits...".
And they'd fly super fast, small ships, with hardly a weapon on them.
Other things one might say to them is "Want to see some action? Just follow me."
In fighting kilrathi or retros, they'd be slightly helpful by drawing fire to themselves.

Rason d'etre:
Having this faction in the game would allow, later on, for them to be part of some of the plots. A Paparazzi might be willing to pay up to, say, 5k credits for a good story tip. But sometimes there may be better reasons than money to tip them.

Interface:
In the news computer, there could be at the bottom a "Send us a tip" notice. If you click on it you'd get a warning about bothering them without having a good tip, that it might give you a bad rep with them, and an are you sure? button. If you click yes, a message "meet me at the bar" appears, and when you go to the bar, there's a paparazzi guy at the second table.
The problem I see with this is that there would have to be additional text data for each mission, for what to say to the paparazzi, if you decide to get them involved.

However, this would solve another problem that's been pointed out: That it would seem everybody instantly knows your actions across the universe. With a media faction, you can control what's known and what isn't.

[chuck_starchaser]

I just thought of a possible way to solve the problem of having to have extra news tip text for every mission: News-worthy missions could have the said extra field. Then, at the computer, if one clicks on the active mission, there could be an extra item to the description: 'News worthiness':

1) For a mission lacking news-tip text field, it would default to say: "Unknown, probably none."
2) For standard bounty missions, it might say: "Story coverage probably worth 100 creds per ship destroyed... Would you like to share nav data of the mission with GNN?"
3) For missions having special text for news-tipping --i.e: dialogue text, it might say "Probably a news-worthy story: Would you like to set-up an interview with a GNN investigative reporter?" Clicking YES pops up a message " GNN reporter: Meet me at the bar... Make sure you're not being followed..."

Also, news-worthy missions should flash, or have a flashing icon next to them, so that the player doesn't have to click on every mission just to find out about its worthiness.

[chuck_starchaser]

By the way, paparazzi wouldn't follow you much at the beginning of the game; it would be proportional to your notoriety. But, they'd have a nasty habit of hanging around pirate bases and following contraband runners, increasing the chances of drawing militia attention. They might also be found hanging around militias. If militias find you with contraband, one way to get away without a record would be to destroy them all, but there's a catch:
If there's a paparazzi hanging around, after you destroy the last militia ship, the paparazzi will fly away (faster than your ship) and your actions will become known, and earn you the enmity of militias in a big way. The solution is to destroy or damage the paparazzi first so that it's no longer around when you fight the militias. Just a thought.
And it could be that one can become a bit of an amateur paparazzi. One could, say with Shift-P, take a photo, and then offer the photo to GNN. Having a good rapport with the paparazzi might also increase the chances of a paparazzi showing up at the bar and offering you a difficult reporting assignment, like sub-contracting to you; or request protection while he or she does the assignment.

[spiritplumber]

If you can figure out how to implement notoriety-based enemies (or friendlies), I'd like to use it for the occasional bounty hunter who is after you...

This is actually a pretty cute idea, and doing missions for GNN or TCN would be an interesting spicing up of the "patrol" mission (similar to the WC4 camera missions maybe), but it's a little too much work for now...

[mkruer]

I think that paparazzi just goes too much against the original ideals in WC, even more so if you plan on having then in the field of battle.

Remember the Confederation Controls the Press in the WC universe, look at all the other wing commander games, the press was always being told what to say, and they were never in the front line.

However one thing you could do instead of paparazzi, is to gain notoriety. This would be a little different then the standard engagement, were you would be called out, not unlike gunslinger movies where you have to fight or die. The more notoriety you gain the more people will call you out. Complete high profile missions you gain notoriety, loose high profile missions, you loses notoriety. This I think would be much more fitting of the WCU then paparazzi.

[ricree101]

Notoriety would be very interested if it was implemented correctly. I do like the whole "calling out" idea. Also, perhaps other ships could specifically come to your aid (perhaps even against a faction that they consider friendly) as long as you were both famous and at least neutral with their faction.


As far as implementation. Perhaps you could create a "faction" which would tend to go to a score of zero as time passed. In adition, some actions (such as failed missions) could give you a negative score. A negative would mean that you are an known as an object of ridicule amongst others, a positive means you are respected by others (enemies would consider you an exceptionally worthy opponent, friendlies would really like you), and scores approaching zero indicate that you are an unknown.

Once this faction is implimented, it would be a matter of creating scripts to generate events based on the notoriety faction rating.

Of course, since I don't know how scripting for vegastrike works I'm not sure how hard it would be to actually put in game. Just throwing out ideas.

[mkruer]

the reason why mentioned notoriety and not paparazziis because if you look at the previous Wing Commander games there were kilrathi that have a lot of notoriety and either called you out or you met them in combat. The idea of gaining notoriety to trigger additional "brilliant" AI bots would be a good idea.

[hellcatv]

(didn't realize this was the WC forum) seems a reasonable idea for Vega Strike tho
we need to make the news more managable as well as continuing to increase the imersion the Player has in the world affairs

[ricree101]

A fixer representing a news network might be a fun change of pace. I'm picturing a modification of the scan system mission. In a news mission you would be asked to "report and scan" something for the news network. For example, you may be asked to report on rumors of a large fleet massing several systems over. Once you got there, you have to get within a certain range of your objective. Once you do this (or maybe slightly before), they would object to your presence and turn hostile.

So the main difference between this and a normal scan mission is

1) Fewer, possibly only 1, target to scan.
2) You are much more outgunned and outmanned in a news mission than a scan misison
3) No killing is actually involved, you simply have to get in range and then survive.
4) Range would probably have to be closer than the current scan range

This would, in my opinion, provide an interesting change of pace in the game. They should also generate a report in the news feed, discussing whatever it was that you saw. Also, I'm thinking that they should be rareish, since they are supposed to be about reporting on significant events.

[chuck_starchaser]

Remember the Confederation Controls the Press in the WC universe, look at all the other wing commander games, the press was always being told what to say, and they were never in the front line.

Yes, yes, good point. However, societies in which the press is government controlled (I come from one) are usually controlling in some respects, but very free in other respects. The Confeds may keep tight control over how news are reported about the battlefront with the kilrathi, and maybe cautious about retro news reporting; but news about drug running, pirate and militia affairs might be very free and sensationalized. Also rumors, like the green egg, or Lynch family gossip.

WRT 'notoriety': It's come up in discussions before. I think this is a feature everybody wants but nobody knows quite how to implement, yet. We need to come up with a couple of lists: 1) A list of things tha affect notoriety. 2) A list of things notoriety affects. 3) Secondary effects of notoriety.

So, for a start:

1) Things that affect notoriety:

+ Success with a mission.
- Failing a mission.
++ Killing someone notorious
- - Being killed by... (no, just kidding)

2) Things that notoriety affects:

The kinds of missions you're offered.
How fast rumors about you spread (like or dislike moving from local to global score)

3) Secondary affects/effects:

Achieving something within reporting range of a GNN ship: If you just crossed a jump point and noticed there was a GNN ship there, and at the next jump point you meet a kilrathi calling you out, you might want to pretend you're escaping from the fight, and lure the kilrathi back to the jump point where the GNN ship is, so as to get coverage of your fight; --if you're after notoriety, that is.

Liking or disliking by any faction is only local if you have no notoriety. As your notoriety increases, local actions are rumored about, and their like or dislike spreads to other systems and eventually becomes global.

Just a start...

[chuck_starchaser]

Also, I'm thinking that they should be rareish, since they are supposed to be about reporting on significant events.

Indeed, moderation is key. In fact, with any game, I find a lot of depth is added when certain things are rare, or happen rarely. If we were to have paparazzi, they could not be as plentiful as pirates or kilrathis. Same goes for ships: Nice to have many, many varieties, but say a "vintage drayman" is something one should encounter perhaps once in a month of playing time. Otherwise, if everything is plentiful and equal, the game becomes psychologically 'flat'. Which is why I was suggesting, in another thread, that the trip from one sector to another should be long, lonely and arduous; not so much from presence of enemies, but perhaps by having very long stretches to fly through asteroid fields that deny the AUTO feature, fog, nebulas, and X-ray sources that deny your use of radar, maybe, so you have to get near a jump point before you even see it; --and there might be a book to read at Oxford with instructions on how to navigate these areas, like saying "fly 375,000 km in the direction of the spiral galaxy, to avoid the worst asteroid belt, then turn towards...", and so on. That way, there'd be many sectors, but they wouldn't "come easy": visiting another sector would be a bit of a major undertaking.