[Steel]

a bit more to add to your ideas though...

to do this properly you need to award points (money, whatever) based upon projects...  money would not generally be awarded by getting a kill...rather by accomplishing goals.  this can be a mission goal, or the culmination of several missions.  sometimes a per kill bonus would be awarded, but that woudl depend upon the contract.

you will also need a way to choose amongst the available missions or sets of missions...  i do not know if FS2 has this capability currently?

there will also need to be a viable economy model running to set prices for trade/stolen goods, products available at certain planets/stations, etc.  this could be avoided with a simple initial merc type campaign to start with (ala Strike Commander and F-16 Aggressor), but you still have to have ship and weapon upgrades, etc available...

[Stryke 9]

The economy system would need to be a massive addition, probably for later. Since at the moment you can't just dock up to the local Arcadia and buy a nice new set of Harps or a fuel pod for C7050, the money thing would probably be restricted to scripted encounters for now- points where you, say, talk to another pilot, and a y/n keypress determines the transaction. If you agree, a certain value is deducted from your cash, and you get information/access to a new weapon for the next mission.

In the end, that's probably as far as it will go. FreeSpace isn't particularly amenable to a trading game setup, and while it's technically possible given the current sexps and a budget system, it'd be a lot more work to set up some freeform universe than a simple linear campaign. Think FREDding fifty to two hundred missions, about half of which were in the same places as other ones, just with new friendlies/enemies and mission parameters. And it would STILL not be a fraction as good at it as a game that was made for this sort of thing.

[Nico]

btw: avoiding using a txt might be a good idea tho. at least make people have to put some effort to cheat...

[Stryke 9]

You'd most likely want to have it in the pilot code, not only because there's already an accomodation for the point system (and thus it's built for values that can be carried over, though I'm not sure if it ever directly applies to the game), but because it has the most to do directly with the pilot.

Of course, it would be easy to "cheat" there, too, just by making a mission beforehand that awards the pilot a million units of money- it'd carry over into any new campaigns he played. But at that point, you've got a very determined cheater, and having it be a campaign data value won't help you, either, 'cos he could go and modify the values in that.

[karajorma]

Bah. You can cheat for anything you want in FS2 singleplayer. Just open up FRED and set the ship giving you trouble to 1%.

It would take me 1 minute to write a mission that I could play a few times and make admiral.

If someone wants to cheat, let them. Just do whatever is easiest and gives us the best working code. Don't let people cheating sway you in any direction in the slightest.

[KARMA]

probably the best way to maintain compatibility would be to make this optional, decided by designers for every/mission/campaign.
and probably some work on interface will also be needed (in case i may help)

[CP5670]

While we are on the topic of cheats, the ~-shift-k (destroy subsystem) command does not do anything, so it would be nice if that was fixed. Also, how about changing the initial www.freespace2.com to something shorter? bit annoying to type all that every time a mission is being tested for bugs...

On the original topic, this might be nice idea, but you would need special missions/campaigns designed to use this system; I don't think there are any pirate campaigns out there at the moment.

[KARMA]

well i was thinking about some sw campaigns where you are (like azzameen family) a smuggler or a pirate or a merc or a bountykiller, like han solo or boba fett, maybe with connection to the starwars main story (like xwa), but with many missions where you play not for glory but for your own businnes...this doesn't mean RPG game nor necessary an elite/privateer/freelancer game, simply a story with a different "style", and an economy system (simple or complex) may increase the overall involvment.
and obviously only future specifically studyed campaigns will benefit of this thing

[ZylonBane]

I'd just like to throw in my two quatloos that pilot files, IMHO, are evil, pointless, and do nothing other than confuse things. Freespace should have gone with a single savegame file like 99% of the other game out there. The whole "persistent pilot" concept should have been on the "Things NOT to steal from Wing Commander" list.

That being said, I think it would be great to be able to tag variables as persistent. Heck, make ALL variables persistent. Even if you used a thousand unique variables in your campaign, the savegame file would still be only a tiny fraction of the size of most FPS savegames.

[Galemp]

Originally posted by ZylonBane
I'd just like to throw in my two quatloos that pilot files, IMHO, are evil, pointless, and do nothing other than confuse things.  

Here, I'm going to violently disagree. I currently have two other people at different stages in the main campaign playing my copy of FS2, while I'm doing missions for the Port. If it were not for individual pilots, we'd be hopelessly muddled.

[ZylonBane]

If pilot info and campaign progress had been encapsulated into a single savegame slot, there would be no muddling at all.

The pilot configuration should have been reserved solely for multiplayer. In single-player your pilot pic and name are irrelevant. It's a lot of mess just to support the meaningless accumulation of rank across unrelated or repeated campaigns

[KARMA]

almost all space sims store pilot info, and many other games too, expecially those with multiple campaigns, like some rts for example (aoe, starcraft..)
for spacesims this is to let you have awards, stats etc, that make the game cooler, and that are present since the old xwing and wingcommander, and probably earlyer, and in fs2 case there is pxo too, and when game configuration is stored in pilot's files too, it make far easyer to have multiple players- each with his own key configuration- on same pc.
i don't see why you should cut it for singleplayer with so many advantages, considering expecially that you will need it for multiplayer...