Idea- casino ship or station.

Skeeter · Post by **Skeeter** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 15:38

Was wondering if u think maybe egosoft would make a casino in the game, either standard games or new scfi x ones where u play something and gave a chance to win credits.

I had thought either.

1. A casino ship cruise liner which wonders around a core system. You board it and go play and chat to other players playing or walking around for tips to win or missions possibly, unique ones like er a guy there wants to leave quick as he's in debt and casino is gonna kill him lol.

2. A casino in most stations, so landing on em gives u somit to do there like make money off ship.

Or 3. A dedicated casino/pleasure station. Unique made and looks with big neon signs and stuff. Think of those places like at las Vegas etc.

Do ur gambling there. Do dodgy deals. Work for casino boss dealing with non paying customers, trade with em with a goods like gaming machines commodity or something.

I mean if ego wants to walk now then there u go. Something fun while walking. Need to put some effort to add the mini games like poker and slots and roulette tho u can probably find open source code for those easily enough or do em urself. Then make the environment which should be lively with walking around Ppl, getting up and down in chairs at the games, good ambient sounds and maybe some catchy music that ud expect there.

If not for release then maybe after. As a £1-2 dlc.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 16:32

I think the inclusion of a couple of simple meta-games gambling games in connection with a "Casino Ship" would be neat. But, I wouldn't want them to focus anything elaborate around that. A simple casino station or casino ship one could dock at which would then allow one to open up a com-panel like window so one could play roulette, blackjack or slots would be "neat."

Anything more than that should be left for a plot/storymission, DLC adventures and the like, though.

Note: However, in this line of thinking, I think the player being able to construct a "Casino Station" would be awesome, though. A lot of players like playing on the more seedy side of the law. Pirates, hijackers, etc, are popular playstyles as well as running weed and booze complexes. The player being able to construct more "illegal" or "shady" types of complexes to support those playstyles is a natural evolution of what already exists.

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 17:22

Morkonan wrote:Note: However, in this line of thinking, I think the player being able to construct a "Casino Station" would be awesome, though. A lot of players like playing on the more seedy side of the law. Pirates, hijackers, etc, are popular playstyles as well as running weed and booze complexes. The player being able to construct more "illegal" or "shady" types of complexes to support those playstyles is a natural evolution of what already exists.

Interesting concept - and for a player who has perhaps chosen an underworld theme, building a casino (or illegal gambling den) could be made into a relevant station in that it could be a revenue generator (with lots of flavour!)

sd_jasper · Post by **sd_jasper** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 17:35

Cool idea, but there would need to be some sort of way to prevent players from "save/load" cheesing the system (like the Stock Exchange).

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 17:44

RAVEN.myst wrote:
Morkonan wrote:Note: However, in this line of thinking, I think the player being able to construct a "Casino Station" would be awesome, though. A lot of players like playing on the more seedy side of the law. Pirates, hijackers, etc, are popular playstyles as well as running weed and booze complexes. The player being able to construct more "illegal" or "shady" types of complexes to support those playstyles is a natural evolution of what already exists.
Interesting concept - and for a player who has perhaps chosen an underworld theme, building a casino (or illegal gambling den) could be made into a relevant station in that it could be a revenue generator (with lots of flavour!)

Anything that adds "flavour" to the player's gaming experience, especially those things that can further define a player's chosing roleplaying experience, is always a good thing.

So, a player with a high enough reputation with a Pirate faction could buy a "Casino" station. In fact, they could make a Casino Complex, governed by the same rules of legality as are currently defined in X3 for illicit goods stations, for instance.

It's no different, mechanically, from any other station. But, just calling it a "Casino" adds a huge amount of flavor to the player's experience. I wouldn't include "Brothels", just on principle, but they'd have the same sort of flavor value and have no mechanical differences than any other illegal stations.

To put it simply: This could be easily added by a modder. They could have their own station design or just relable a trade-station model. No mechanical changes necessary, really, but the roleplaying impact is huge. The value-added advantage of a simple "name" for something can't be understated. A "Hyper-Destructive Penetrator Assault Battleship" is of much more gameplay value than a "Fighting Ship 43."

Kitty · Post by **Kitty** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 19:59

Casino factory.
Consumes: Tourists, Space Fuel (Argon) or Space weed (Teladi).
Provides: cash, Junkies (or slaves, you choose).

Right ?

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 21:55

Even more flavor!

And, depending upon what pirate faction you buy it from, it produces extra credits or slaves you can sell... (A small percentage of tourists are given spiked drinks, robbed, beat over the head and sold into slavery.

It's done. If it isn't in the game, somebody will mod it in.

Note: This could tie into an entire "Entertainment and Tourism Industrialist" sort of theme, with Casinos, Circuses, Zoos and Amusement Parks as stations a player could buy, given they have the rep and cash or other pre-reqs to buy them.

Pilot name: Walt

Post by **Nanook** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 22:59

Morkonan wrote:...
And, depending upon what pirate faction you buy it from, it produces extra credits or slaves you can sell... (A small percentage of tourists are given spiked drinks, robbed, beat over the head and sold into slavery. ...

Bad idea. Once word gets out that people disappear at your casino, your customer base will dry up. Better to capture them while they're in transit to/from your casino. Blame it on the taxi pilot.

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Tue, 19. Sep 17, 23:01

Kitty wrote:Casino factory.
Consumes: Tourists, Space Fuel (Argon) or Space weed (Teladi).
Provides: cash, Junkies (or slaves, you choose).

Right ?

Assuming a Rebirth overall station paradigm, then the station specialist might be a Defense Officer as Chief of Security, with perhaps a few marines as bouncers to menace those naughty card-counters...

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 06:23

Nanook wrote:Bad idea. Once word gets out that people disappear at your casino, your customer base will dry up. Better to capture them while they're in transit to/from your casino. Blame it on the taxi pilot.

And, who's gonna tell 'em? If some random Split figures it out, is he going to warn the unsuspecting Boron who's running up to the blackjack table? Heck no, let the little squid figure it hisself!

One could, as is the nature with such stations, make it illegal in certain Core sectors. So, these may naturally be in more secluded, out-of-the-way, seedy areas of the galaxy, where "word of mouth" doesn't exist and people mind their own business... for health reasons.

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 13:38

Illegal gambling dens in our present world come with their own risks, and are considered by normal people as very dangerous - which is why such places are generally not frequented by those who can't take care of themselves (and those who do tend to end up as marks.) I don't think we're *necessarily* talking only about legitimate, "registered", glitzy Las Vegas-style casinos, here...

Crimsonraziel · Post by **Crimsonraziel** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 14:34

I like the idea of casinos, theater and similar stations. Not necessarily entertainment stations. Medical centers, research centers (not connected to the player research feature in X4), space markets or orbital tradestations that sell wares to private persons/citizens of a planet (basically wares slowly turn into credits).
They could serve as some kind of sink for overproduction, but they shouldn't produce anything.

If the player could build casinos (or anything mentioned above) and they would turn wares into money, we end up with complexes that are totally separated from the economy and directly turn resources into credits. We had self-sustaining complexes that produced high value goods in the past. But at least you had to sell them. Casinos in this case work the other way round, throw resources in, voilà, lots of credits.

To prevent that, casinos should produce nothing (and not generate money too) and because it would be pointless, the player should not be able to build such stations/modules. Therefore you could give those stations some "purpose" without having simulate that. It adds to immersion (people having fun in casinos, supplying planetary populations through orbital tradestations and so on) and it can have a stabilizing effect for the economy. Such stations obviusly should be limited in numbers. Let's say there are only one or two such stations per faction. Maybe one Taldi faction maintains a casino, another Teladi faction runs casino and a space market/bazaar and a third faction might have not a single station of that kind at all. If such a station gets destroyed, factions will build a new one over time, but they will never build more than the predefined number of a type of these stations (e.g. Teladi faction 1 will build and maintain only one casino at any given point and zero stations of the other types).
In order to not suck the life out of the economy, they should generally only pay low for wares sold to those stations as they should not become the primary outlet for commodities.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 16:22

Crimsonraziel wrote:...If the player could build casinos (or anything mentioned above) and they would turn wares into money, we end up with complexes that are totally separated from the economy and directly turn resources into credits. We had self-sustaining complexes that produced high value goods in the past. But at least you had to sell them. Casinos in this case work the other way round, throw resources in, voilà, lots of credits.

If they required something else, though, like "tourists", then their ability to generate revenue would be tied to something else other than stuffing them with resources.

I don't think they'd ever make it into a released game, but they could make it into someone's mod. So, it's worth discussing and fun, besides, so...

Option 1 - Bad Option: Player creates a Casino Complex in a remote lawless sector. Weed farm + Space Fuel + Casino Station = Raw Credit Generator = Player wins the game...

Option 2 - Good Option: Player creates a Casino in a remote lawless sector. It is a separate station and can not be combined into a self-contained complex. (Trade station type) They also create a small Weed and Space Fuel complex nearby, which they would have probably done anyway. Casinos are EXPENSIVE. They have steep Weed and Space Fuel requirements, so the player will have to restrict the production of their W+SF complex to being channeled directly to the Casino. (Closed docks, all product sent straight to the Casino.)

However, since there is going to be a somewhat expanded economic model, let's say it's possible to detect certain things, like economic health. If that is the case, then every so often, a healthy Core sector will generate a tourist ship, size depending upon economic health. Tourist ship generation is based on the number of player-owned Casinos and similar stations. Otherwise, the game generates one per cycle that will only ever go to a faction-owned station of that type.

One tourist ship docking at a player-owned casino will generate enough credits to offset the casino's operating costs for quite awhile, considering their relative rarity. As we know, at least in X3TC, the player has a huge impact on the game's economy and it simply will not grow and stabilize without the player's direct intervention.

If the player works hard to improve the economic stability/trade of sectors, especially core sectors, then they can expect enough tourist ships to be generated to support a small number of casino-type stations. These tourists will, of course, be subject to everything any other trader/taxi is subject to, like attacks by hostile forces, including pirates. Since player-owned casinos are likely in lawless sectors, these adventure-seeking tourists are even more vulnerable unless the player figures out a way to protect them without alienating themselves from various pirate factions, one of which could possibly control the sector the casino is in.

IE: Make it so that the player doesn't virtually write their own check anytime they want by setting up a Casino station, but relies largely on outside factors to provide the critical resource, tourists, to help generate cash.

PS - I never focused on Weed/Space Fuel for the simple reason that it was a guaranteed "get rich quick" scheme, like Nvidium mining. There's no reason things like this can't be more regulated, like Nvidium mining was originally intended. (The Taledi will only buy so much, unless you stuff a ship''s cargo hold full of the stuff and then sell the ship, which was an unintended consequence that was just left in the game because, sometimes, it's good to have a way to make a bunch of money. If they player has reached that stage anyway, there's no harm done.)

Seanchaidh · Post by **Seanchaidh** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 17:16

Services in general-- of which casinos are a borderline example, as they often end up seeming more like an anti-service-- are an underrepresented aspect of the X1-3 and XR economies.

If a few things happen, they could fit really well into an X economy, though. Need this essential ingredient:

Some kind of model for how much the service is in demand at a particular location. Could be as simple as how many population centers are connected to it or near it (and the more easily accessible your service is, the better).

If you've got that, then the rest falls into place, as producing a service is just like producing a good. You have inputs (labor, meatsteaks, etc.) and someone pays for the product.

A casino could be something like this:

You pay workers for maintenance and management of the machines, tables, and so on (possibly with food, though I'd like to see credit wages instead or possibly even better, a choice of currency vs in kind payment)
You(r patrons) consume food (possibly as a secondary good)
You(r patrons) consume space fuel (possibly as a secondary good, and if so, possibly with a rather large bonus to the immiseration of your patrons aka profit from their gambling)
You might consume a small amount of computer components or microchips for maintenance, while one of the construction materials for the module would be a larger amount of computer components.

And maybe you'd have a nice arboretum module to go next to it for more tourist attraction or whatever. Well, that's a nice casino like Circus Circus, anyway.

Crimsonraziel · Post by **Crimsonraziel** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 17:44

Morkonan wrote:If they required something else, though, like "tourists", then their ability to generate revenue would be tied to something else other than stuffing them with resources.

I don't think they'd ever make it into a released game, but they could make it into someone's mod. So, it's worth discussing and fun, besides, so...

Maybe you could abuse the "workforce" mechanism for casinos in some way. And as a mod, sure.

If Egosoft implemented such thing (as the OP suggested), it had to be more polished and I see a bad benefit/work ratio on the developer side. So i don't see it in the released game, too.

Morkonan · Post by **Morkonan** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 17:49

Seanchaidh wrote:Services in general-- of which casinos are a borderline example, as they often end up seeming more like an anti-service-- are an underrepresented aspect of the X1-3 and XR economies.

If a few things happen, they could fit really well into an X economy, though. Need this essential ingredient:

Some kind of model for how much the service is in demand at a particular location. Could be as simple as how many population centers are connected to it or near it (and the more easily accessible your service is, the better).

If you've got that, then the rest falls into place, as producing a service is just like producing a good. You have inputs (labor, meatsteaks, etc.) and someone pays for the product...

I'm all in favor of simplifying things that can be simplified. This is, I agree, one of those things. A simple "Services" model that isn't complex and doesn't cause too much processing overhead is a good idea. It's not part of the game's critical economic model, it's part of the game's illusion of being a living, breathing, thing. There's plenty of things that will be part of a complex economic model, but this doesn't have to be one of them.

So, anyone familiar with what a "booming economy" in X3 looks like knows that a sector will be full of stations and there will still be a supply of player Missions to construct more. It can often get to the point where the player is confounded, "How in the heck can they still want another factory xx here and where in the heck is it going to fit."

The same sectors that still have missions generated to construct stations and are above a certain threshold relative to their number of "starting stations" will generate a "demand" for "Services" flights. Sectors that are above a threshold relative to their starting station number will also generate a Services demand. Stations in Core sectors will, by default, have a minimum number of Service flights generated. (Takes care of Core, Outlying and growing/new sectors)

I'm sure there's already some model like this, since X games focus on these mechanics anyway. All we're doing is generating specialized trade ships that can dock with other stations, but have a preference for "Services" stations, either by default or on generation, just like any trader ship.

In essence, it's just like any other trade good. Every station could generate a small "need" for Services ships, but Service specific stations simply generate a multiplier, attracting such "traders" more frequently than others. When that need is filled, the demand goes down for a time and any Services ships in transit could then satisfy the need other stations may have. (Trade Stations, Headquaters, Government/admin stations, military outposts, etc)

Hook it into the same sort of economic model just as its own trade good and set certain stations with a higher demand/priority and the "magic" happens fairly easily, I would imagine.

Eventually, once its cargo is delivered, it's duplicated, reloaded, then taken back to the generating region/station/site and then "delivers" and despawns. I'm not sure on current "despawn" mechanics and ship generation of standard merchant ships, but it has to exist already.

In essence - It's just another trade good, but with a preference for the high demand represented by certain station types and economic development represented by sector/station growth and demand.

All in all - I'm sure these mechanics already exist, so Egosoft already has their mechanics set. (I think I recall reading some blurbs about how these sorts of ships are generated in X3.) There are "services" ships in X3TC already, all over the place, doing whatever they do. But, since the player could take advantage of this particular mechanic as a sort of trade good, then these "Tourists" or types of services ships would simply carry trade goods. They'd spawn based on whatever conditions exist for merchants and/or services ships, but carry specific sorts of trade goods that are consumed and generate revenue, perhaps when the ship departs.

Skeeter · Post by **Skeeter** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 19:57

No you wouldn't build a casino station or ship as that's not the point the point is to make money with playing casino games either in a 3d casino u can walk about in, as ego has put in walking now since xr, or play simple games on a pop up 2d window, kinda like the sector map graphic from older x games but instead of seeing dots and triangles and names u see a roulette wheel and names of players and stuff to play a game.

Basically to make a fun money making usage of walking on a station or in a large ship.

Post by **Nanook** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 21:43

Morkonan wrote:
Nanook wrote:Bad idea. Once word gets out that people disappear at your casino, your customer base will dry up. Better to capture them while they're in transit to/from your casino. Blame it on the taxi pilot.
And, who's gonna tell 'em? ...

Why, the loved ones left behind. Poor little Susie's dad just disappeared at a Split Casino. Just see what happens when she blogs it all over the Univernet!

RAVEN.myst · Post by **RAVEN.myst** » Wed, 20. Sep 17, 23:30

Nanook wrote:... Poor little Susie's dad just disappeared at a Split Casino. ...

So THAT's what happened to X's equivalent of Jimmy Hoffa! Mystery finally solved.

spankahontis · Post by **spankahontis** » Thu, 21. Sep 17, 00:04

I gave the idea of a Casino Ship, like an Orca sized ship reconstructed into a casino style ship some months ago.

Never got much of a response from it.
Best place for mini-games rather than in small-talks.
Be cool to see slot machines, lottery tickets, even black jack and roulette tables.

Morkonan wrote:All in all - I'm sure these mechanics already exist, so Egosoft already has their mechanics set. (I think I recall reading some blurbs about how these sorts of ships are generated in X3.) There are "services" ships in X3TC already, all over the place, doing whatever they do. But, since the player could take advantage of this particular mechanic as a sort of trade good, then these "Tourists" or types of services ships would simply carry trade goods. They'd spawn based on whatever conditions exist for merchants and/or services ships, but carry specific sorts of trade goods that are consumed and generate revenue, perhaps when the ship departs.

Be great if passenger and tourists were a trade commodity.

Reminds me of the old game Railroad Tycoon 2, the cities would receive basic resources if you connected them via railroad to cities that had those wares.
The bigger the city grew, the more passengers would appear wanting to go to a specific town of their choice.

Be a cool feature that providing a key station with the basics (food, water, clothes etc.) would create passengers.. But in order to utilize this new resource, you needed a module that specialized in incoming/outgoing traffic.. Like a bus station module.
It would be able to hold a limited number of S/M Class Passenger ships that would send passengers to another Zone/Sector/System, the greater the distance, the more credits you receive.

Rather than being the Taxi Driver, you can be the boss?

Morkonan wrote:Even more flavor!

And, depending upon what pirate faction you buy it from, it produces extra credits or slaves you can sell... (A small percentage of tourists are given spiked drinks, robbed, beat over the head and sold into slavery.

It's done. If it isn't in the game, somebody will mod it in.

You could have special missions, pirates looking for slaves, you would accept taxi missions, pick up the customer and send them to the ship/pirate station instead where they would kidnap the customer as their slave. Or to just transport a cargo hold full of slaves (Life Support Upgrade Needed) to it's destination with an increase in Police Activity scanning ships like in X3.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

Idea- casino ship or station.

Idea- casino ship or station.