Smuggling posters are now random and NFSD gets rewarded for getting prints of posters and dead drops

[Shroomerian]

About the PR

The PR changes several things about the smuggling posters and their mechanics:

• Changed their activation rate down from a of 15-90 minutes range to a 5-10 minutes range and made the distance that the drop pod is spawned at smaller as well: 362ebec , 7670a6d, 3bcca71, d454abd

• Only 2 dead drop posters can be active at a time (have the verb to spawn the paper with the dead drop) as per the request of @whatston3: d454abd

lots of good stuff in here. With the whole '1 active per POI' deal, i was actually considering expanding this to be more of a sector-wide phenomenon in order to both A. Slow down the rate of the dead drops being used and B. Have it be 'available' more frequently to the players who do participate, so that they dont ever feel like they are just 'waiting'.

So, instead of a per-POI basis, you could theoretically re-write it so that there are only ever X amount active server-wide. In that way, we can mostly forego any kind of timer limit (probably still keep a short one to prevent spam/hyper abuse), while still gauranteeing it is 'available' at any given time, while also still providing the challenge of the players still having to venture out and search multiple locations/posters for wherever the next 'drop' may have activated from.

Thoughts on making it more a sector-wide "2 active at a time" limit?

• NFSD is now warned about the location of dead drops after 15 minutes have passed: 7670a6d

• NFSD get partial hints about the location of each POI, 1st time no hint, 2nd time they get fed two locations, one being fake and 3rd time it's the actual location: 3bcca71

• Made every poster on tinnia.yml, arena.yml and caseyscasino.yml roll for being a DeadDrop poster, this poster abundance is not an issue as only 1 can be active per POI: 7c80217 , 5f6b3f3

• NFSD detectives are now rewarded for scanning any used contraband posters with 3 FUC and any spawned dead drops with 6 FUC with a forensic scanner: 27dc7f6 , 470fd58, a47f678

• New guidebook paragraph in the Forensics entry detailing how to get prints of posters, Freelance now has a 1/3 chance of getting the smuggler's current ship ID after 15 minutes and lowered the chance of posters spawning back from 0.9 to 0.5: 3fee8c8

Why / Balance

Discord idea thread: https://discord.com/channels/1123826877245694004/1260704805282910321

Currently the dead drop system or "smuggling" is not worth doing for newer players, a lot of the profitability from them comes from the fact whether you know EXACTLY which posters to search on each of the main locations and whether you get lucky enough to be on the timer.

To be exact the bullet point reasons are:

• Non-intuitive to new players
• Bad profit per hour considering the 15-90 minute wait time and low amount of dead drop posters
• No additional incentive for NFSD to interact with the system other than selling off contraband crates
• Long boring wait time to get to the dead drops themselves
• Nobody except the smugglers can find the dead drop unless it's done on accident

How to test

To test the systems this is what I did:

• Change the Content.Server/_NF/Smuggling/Components/DeadDropComponent.cs CoolDowns to their suggested value in the comment above them
• Start up the server
• Admin ghost to Tinnia's or other POIs
• Check any posters with DD appended to their internal name at the end and see whether NFSD and Freelance (1/3 chance) radio sparks up
• Spawn Urist McHands, headset with NFSD and Freelance encryption keys, Detective PDA or higher (Warden, Sheriff, SR, etc.) and forensic scanner (you need to be inside an entity for the DeadDropSystem to add the verb to the poster, this was unchanged behaviour)
• Afterwards get prints of the activated poster with a Detective ID or higher access to ensure it gives 3 FUC, make sure it can't give multiple rewards per same poster and that it only works for people with Detective access or higher (it's done this way so detectives don't lose their ability when they get promoted to "Captain" after buying a ship)
• Get to the dead drop location by going into B->Ghost, and then Admin->Objects->Syndicate Supply Drop->Right Click->Follow
• Spawn Urist with all his gear again there
• Scan any object inside the dead drop and ensure that it gives 6 FUC and doesn't give more than that if you scan more objects.
• Try to spawn more than 5 dead drops and see if there's more than 5, the oldest one should disappear (dequeue)

Media

• I have added screenshots/videos to this PR showcasing its changes ingame, or this PR does not require an ingame showcase

Breaking changes

Changelog

🆑

• tweak: More object types can be used as dead drops (more than posters).
• add: Hints for dead drop locations spawn randomly at round start and mid-round through faxes.
• add: The detective now has a module for their forensic scanner that gives spesos & FUCs on scanning dead drops and pods.
• add: Adds smuggling guidebook entry with a better (NFSD-side) explanation of mechanics.
• add: Both pirates and NFSD may receive the location of a drop pod about 15 minutes after a smuggling note is taken.
• add: Compromising a dead drop (by scanning or unanchoring it) moves it to another random location.

[BluCottonCandy]

If possible I would love if it could alert pirates as well.
On freelance channel.
It's been talked about to have pirates and smugglers go at each other.
Feel like the 15 mins ping going to NFSD and pirates could be a great way to cause RP.
Maybe reward the pirates their coins for scanning the drop with some kind of pirate scanner?

[Shroomerian]

If possible I would love if it could alert pirates as well. On freelance channel. It's been talked about to have pirates and smugglers go at each other. Feel like the 15 mins ping going to NFSD and pirates could be a great way to cause RP. Maybe reward the pirates their coins for scanning the drop with some kind of pirate scanner?

Hey that would be a great idea, I am going to also probably make it so posters which are waiting for others to finish also reset their timer, because after some thinking I realized that posters would activate one after another if they were left untouched for far too long.

As for the scanner I don't know since I don't know how to make a different sprite, I could just grab the forensic one and change its colors to red or something, or I could just make it so pirates get rewards if they dock.

[BluCottonCandy]

If possible I would love if it could alert pirates as well. On freelance channel. It's been talked about to have pirates and smugglers go at each other. Feel like the 15 mins ping going to NFSD and pirates could be a great way to cause RP. Maybe reward the pirates their coins for scanning the drop with some kind of pirate scanner?

Do you think something like this sprite would work? I've basically just changed the colours of the terminal from blue to red and the plastic to wood similar to Pirate's ID

Definitely a neat idea!
Would be fine imo if someone felt so inclined they could resprite it to be a coconut or something lol

[Shroomerian]

I think that in the end it's better not to implement it even if it's a cool idea because it would make accidentally smuggling for pirates really easy, and as long as that's a rule I don't think that adding rewards for pirates to check out dead drops is that good of an idea.

[dvir001]

If you speed it up again this is going to force security again to only fight SMUGGG for the full shift and doing nothing else like it was before.

Also this should be added in some guidebook entry there isn't anything in game to tell you about the scan posters.

[Shroomerian]

If you speed it up again this is going to force security again to only fight SMUGGG for the full shift and doing nothing else like it was before.

Also this should be added in some guidebook entry there isn't anything in game to tell you about the scan posters.

Alright, I can probably get a guidebook entry in the forensics part, also what happened before? I didn't play back then.

[ray-boop]

Telling the NFSD the location of the pod is defeating the purpouse of smuggling imo. With that you just have a race with the nfsd who gets there first. Everything else looks cool.

[Shroomerian]

Telling the NFSD the location of the pod is defeating the purpouse of smuggling imo. With that you just have a race with the nfsd who gets there first. Everything else looks cool.

They get notified 15 minutes after, it's meant to be there so people don't collect smuggling papers without visiting each location first because if not NFSD would've got to it.

[github-actions]

RSI Diff Bot; head commit bcca650 merging into 0dd59b7
This PR makes changes to 1 or more RSIs. Here is a summary of all changes:

Resources/Textures/_NF/Objects/Devices/cartridge.rsi

State	Old	New	Status
contraband_forensics			Added

Resources/Textures/_NF/Objects/Devices/forensic_scanner.rsi

State	Old	New	Status
forensiccartridge			Added
forensicnew			Added

Edit: diff updated after bcca650

[whatston3]

Pulled in the changes, happy with the state of this. Would prefer a second set of eyes, but I do think it's alright.

Fixed remaining issues with printed vector precision, smuggling rewards should be marginally increased, pirates and NFSD should be getting messages (somewhat unreliably).

[Shroomerian]

Pulled in the changes, happy with the state of this. Would prefer a second set of eyes, but I do think it's alright.

Fixed remaining issues with printed vector precision, smuggling rewards should be marginally increased, pirates and NFSD should be getting messages (somewhat unreliably).

You are amazing! <3

The only thing left right now is to add the changes to Changelog in the comment above, no? Or is it not necessary at this point?

Tell me what to do and I'll try to finish it off so this can be pulled fully.

[whatston3]

The only thing left right now is to add the changes to Changelog in the comment above, no? Or is it not necessary at this point?

Tell me what to do and I'll try to finish it off so this can be pulled fully.

Gave the changelog an attempt - I think it's brief but descriptive enough. Feel free to make changes as you'd like.

Testing it for bugs and getting your thoughts would be great. Config's a bit all over the place to get shorter delays, but most of it can be set through server-side CVARs (run cvar ? for a list of them in the server terminal), and there's the message types to reduce the 15ish minute delay between dead drop and pod message.

I do think it's alright, but it's worth taking another look with fresher eyes.

[whatston3]

A few small changes:

• Tweaks to smuggling generation params at Dvir's request (seem reasonable to me)
• Fax events now send 1-2 faxes, happen at minimum 50 minutes apart down from 60.
• Ships cannot be sold with contraband crates on them (apart from pirate and syndicate shipyards) - also added the nuke, nuke disk, and mail teleporter to this set.
• Slightly fewer overall objects being generated, hints now contain 1-2 hints down from 2-4.
• 3-5 random hints generated at round start.

Again, I think we'll have to see how this plays out, but again, works well under test.

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[github-actions]

This pull request has conflicts, please resolve those before we can evaluate the pull request.

[whatston3]

Smuggling activity detected in your sector.