[INFO] Deploy Advert Drone

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 09:33

Deploy Advert Drone

All Pelador's drones: [ external image ]

"The Teladi have struck a partnership with Boron Drone engineers for their particular use".

Now with advertising earnings and bonus for station proximities.

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Overview:

With any ship equipped with:

Special Command Software
Best Selling Price Software

and has the following wares:

Freight Drone.
Teladianium x 100
Promotional Plates x 3

The ship can launch a drone that will fly to a chosen sector position and then on reaching its destination will convert to a navigational beacon from the drone.

To order a ship that is equipped to do so simply go to the command console of the ship as normal, select special, then you will see a new menu for drones, select this interface and then "Deploy Advert drone.". Its a fairly intuitive process after that. Select sector and position.

The advert beacon will gain credits every 5 minutes (game time) up to a limit of 1,000,000cr when the contract will expire. There is a bonus for setting them up in core sectors however then the contract has a limit of 5,000,000cr. New contracts are only issued to new beacons. The total earnings will be displayed on the beacon.

In V1.3 the earnings have been changed, not increased by any factor on a comparable basis but they will earn different amounts around the previous figures. Between 750 cr and 1250cr. Limits are unchanged.

Hints:

1) Placing them within 10km of a factory (NPC or Own) will earn a potential bonus if the price of the product is below average, i.e. buyers are wanted.

2) NPC factories give a better bonus.

3) Core sectors still have a better base rate.

4) There is some randomness to it.

Note: as the values are small I'm interpreting the money to come from corporation sponsorships and other information aswell as focusing sales to the cheapest wares so funds come from a universal slush fund so to speak. Let me know if player fabs should give a bonus as I have made them and wether they should pay for the bonus? (But as there is no rewards as yet, other than the cash generation it would only be a balancing act with player accounting so not worth doing. Easier just to make the bonus 0 for own fabs if one shouldnt be paid).

Enemies will attack Advert drones and beacons which dont have any gravidar sensor range but they do allow best buy/best sell information to be relayed.

In V2.0 there is now a trade command on the console (Relay Navigation Beacon) in the console to communicate with the beacon (or any navigation beacon you own) if the ship is within 25km. The ship will require the Trading System Extension for this.

The resulting communications will allow the ship to download specific software from equipment docks and headquarters as applicable if within 10 sectors and install it. You will of course still have to pay for the upgrade.

The software selection is limited as it represents the software that is obscure. This initiative by the various suppliers is an attempt to help improve sales. The current list includes:

Best Buy Locator
Best Sell Locator
Trade Command Software MKIII
Explorer Command Software
Carrier Command Software

As a bonus it ignores relational issues in the availability of these software items as you are plugging into a subspace datastream through the gates that the beacons can decode. The suppliers being more concerned about sales.

(Possible Teladi Lore/History/flavouring to follow)

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 09:34

Notification history

V1.0 21.02.2009 Beta
V1.1 21.02.2009 Beta: Now comes with advertising earnings
V1.2 21.02.2009 Beta: Advertising contracts changed to reflect sector type.
V1.3 24.02.2009 Beta: Advertising Earnings given small bonus increase. Limits unchanged.
V2.0 02.03.2009 beta: Navigation Beacons now allows download of selected software
----- 03.03.2009 Consolidated into main drones package

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 09:39

Thinking about upgrading them so that they run a periodic script that adds a few credits. Just thinking if its worth it for performance problems having scripts running that dont contribute much?

Another option is to add a certain amount of trade rank once deployed?

Thoughts?

Chavve84 · Post by **Chavve84** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 10:23

Thinking about upgrading them so that they run a periodic script that adds a few credits

Could u elaborate what u are thinking when they give u credits?

Another option is to add a certain amount of trade rank once deployed?

I am not sure really how the trade rank works (Only been picking on combat) But is it like while active, it boosts the rank to simulate that it's investigating the trade options in the system and thus giving u better prices?

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 10:31

Well its like an advertising beacon adding to trade chatter.

So it can either gain credits, which indicates the value associated with advertising as a small periodic addition. But this adds extra tasks running in the background.

Or it could just give a once time bonus of a fixed trade rank increase.

Or if those aren't sensible a once time cash bonus for doing it.

At the moment I'm leaning towards a once time cash bonus as it doesnt give a performance hit and looking through the functions I'm not sure you can readily adjust trade rank as yet or if it is best leaving those values alone for safety.

Chavve84 · Post by **Chavve84** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 10:46

If we don't look at the cpu load etc, a fee that was payed once in awhile for advertising products sounds really good. Combined with a minor trade rank increase. It's an extra handle for the trade peeps to use to capitalize everything hehe.

I got a diffrent idea for it, use it as a propaganda/rally beacon

It would attract the Pirates of the sector or Yaki in my case (they spawn)
and with the script bribe pilots, turn them into your fellow partners in crime xD

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 11:03

Another option would be to have a limited contract period for the advertising such that you gain a small periodic cash injection but after a certain period or iterations it would stop.

Considering that I would have to use ship tasks to be able to run this I'm thinking its best if those script resources are freed up even after a certain period. Or it could reasign the task after a certain number of interations and it could be continuous. But that still means one extra task running per beacon so doesnt help really.

Though I'm hoping that due to the limited availabilty of promotional plates that you tend to encounter will control overuse of these so it may not be much of an issue.

(Typing outloud, can you tell?)

Chavve84 · Post by **Chavve84** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 11:47

I do that too, when my thoughts are to intense I tend to say them and cause the people around me alot of confusion.

Was gonna add some wood to your thought engine but realized u went over my scenario.

All i can really add is a way around it is to pick it up when the contract expires and place it again to start a new one. But that sounds a bit boring hope u don't have to do that.

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 12:25

Now comes with advertising earnings. Details in main first post. Upgrade here.

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 12:55

Advertising earnings changed to reflect sector type, details in main post. Upgrade here.

semiliterate · Post by **semiliterate** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 20:39

is there any way to have a script alter the PERCIEVED costs of goods in your stations? ie, make it seem to NPCs as if your goods are slightly cheaper than they are?

um i know nothing about scripting but i think arrays are involved and i think this would involve creating two for your wares and having one used by NPCs to select buy opportunities and one used for actual trading.

sounds cpu-intensive but what do i know.

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 22:12

I'm unsure if stations have a "personality" above the value of buy/sell price in calculations for finding trades, I doubt not.

I would imagine that could mean having to alter core code I would guess to change NPC Trading behaviour. Which is something I obviously wont or likely can't do anyhow.

If stations do have personality settings that are adjustable then yes, homebasing the advert to a player station could be a potential flag to set for calculating adjustments. The honest answer is I dont know enough about fab trading parameters. But if someone could enlighten me I could consider adding an "incentive" feature.

What sort of reduction to perceived prices where you thinking if it is possible, fixed % per beacon with limits?

I'm also concerned about triggers as the fab would have to run a process to know if the beacon(s) still exist in case they get destroyed to remove its "influence" effects. Considering that they already likley run a number of tasks dynamically I dont know how feasible it would be to put a new one in. However if stations naturally update their personalities (assuming they have them to begin with) then it may not be an issue, but then you have to consider how effective having a beacon making changes will be then without it having to fire often or rapidly which would not be desirable to performance (again without altering core code).

semiliterate · Post by **semiliterate** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 23:06

i was thinking at most a couple of credits per ten or fifteen beacons, quite possibly with an increased cost; something that's only cost-effective when used for big, corporate advertising, making it a goal and a perk of trading rather than a method of making more money early on.

do NPC free traders use the same script as the unitraders, ie do they have a method to ignore stations, so that the effect of advertising can be simulated with a script based on number of beacons that periodically and temporarily forces a certain number of free traders (or possibly all traders near a beacon but that sounds like another one of these easier in theory than in practice suggestions) to ignore non-player fabs?

on reflection, it seems like it might be easier to just periodically, dependent on beacon coverage, create a random number of neutral freighters to come and buy some wares from your fabs.

these aren't demands, by the way. it's just that now i've got to thinking how to simulate advertising in the X universe. apart from anything else, i'm thinking a big cost for a reasonable network of coverage - the sort of advertising corporations get, not something that will be cost-effective for a player with just one fab somewhere.

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Sat, 21. Feb 09, 23:59

Interesting thought of the extra specific attention traders. Need to think of the pros and cons on that one and do some research into how they operate from spawning onwards. But if someone already has applied this kind of feature use elsewhere then perhaps a colaboration might be in order.

I've deliberatley used "KISS" engineering on the advert beacons to not add performance issues. Otherwise I would have shared rewards amongst beacons in sector and also made rewards associated to the number of non-enemy NPC stations in the sector or even worse number of ships to find the target audience so to speak. But all that is extra crunching for just calculating a small credit difference really, easier to tweak fixed values as an average balance than do all that extra "realism" crunching. Hope that makes sense.

Let me think about it.

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Mon, 23. Feb 09, 09:42

Now available as Cycrow spk file, link can be found in main first post.

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Tue, 24. Feb 09, 10:02

Advertising earnings changed. (Not significantly increased any). Details in main first post.

semiliterate · Post by **semiliterate** » Tue, 24. Feb 09, 10:51

oooh, masterstroke. i never thought of it that way around.

Hieronymos · Post by **Hieronymos** » Thu, 26. Feb 09, 01:22

Very clever script idea pelador! You don't happen to work in advertising in RL, do you?

pelador · Post by **pelador** » Thu, 26. Feb 09, 02:07

TY.

No, my background is a Software Computer Consultant and then Project Manager implementing Payroll/Personnel systems on legacy servers/systems for specific companies. Think I missed a calling?

Hieronymos · Post by **Hieronymos** » Fri, 27. Feb 09, 04:37

Some would say the heart of business is marketing.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[INFO] Deploy Advert Drone

[INFO] Deploy Advert Drone