Merchant: Gripes and balances

[ajstorey456]

I've played my first round as merchant today, and FUCK, is it a cool role. I love the mechanics of it, the idea, the roleplay opportunity, but it's a brand new job, so there's some issues! That's totally alright, but what's the point of it being new if my complaining doesn't fix things?

The loot you start off with is randomized, and you start on a separate station, which instantly reminded me of raider. I thought it was cool! Loading up the ship and such from the warehouse that's around the bend and down the hall is annoying, especially dragging the crates and sorting everything and blah blah; How about instead of down and around the bend, the warehouse is right across from the docking port? It's easier and it makes sense, and it's a minor thing that just makes everything that much better. Along with that, some parts of the warehouse aren't immediately accessible due to random junk that takes up a whole square, so is there a way we could give the place some more room for the elbows?

Speaking of bumping elbows, could the ship be about a square thicker on each side? There is no room to breathe in that place, and it's hard to move crates around and deal with customers piling up and etc etc, elbow space please.

The spawn is pretty neat and all, and I noticed the option to be a Vox salesman. That's cool! But why have the mirror without a plastic surgeon ready to go? I actually ahelped this, thinking there already was one and the admins obliged, thanks pratepresidenten and sleepy wolf for being so patient with me. People won't want characters that are merchants and only merchants, as it's a hassle to set for merchant only, go to lobby if not picked, then join round late so no chance of antag, yadda yadda. I suggest giving people the option to make their own merchant at the start of a round for variety of merchants and no connection to crew in case of extended and all that. A space merchant, just imo, shouldn't also be a crew member.

The communications computer to trade and buy and sell and all that is FUCKING DOPE! It was such a cool system and I had my fun playing with it. Of course, though, it was annoying at times. You gotta wait for certain merchants to appear for certain things, of course, and waiting all that time back at your base takes you out of the round for that long when people on station are just dying to get guns! Literally! They can't defend themselves! Having a little more control over a completely random system where 70% of the items have no real use to players would be cool, like requesting a type of merchant for certain goods so that you have a better chance of having what you need available. Something like that. (Not a gripe, but the human flesh merchant is so cool. I just wish I autotatored earlier into the round so I could have bought a honk mech.)

A cool thing to have in tandem with the communications thing is a PDA cartridge that corresponds to the class, so that you can monitor sales and who's available, maybe place orders from home, access the funds in the computer from the program, etc. Minor thing, but it'd be cool.

It seems that the merchant's biggest target is people with malintent to the station at the given time, and that's just no good. It advocates antagging without being an antag and IC the merchant is justified in selling whatever they want. I suggest rather than giving 40% useless science equipment, dufflebags, and gloves, give things that are a little more exotic that can actually help any given station. I noticed that there's a really high chance that kitchen supplies and various janitor supplies are put there, as well as toolboxes and goodies like that. How about instead of all the science malarky that science doesn't need, more tools, more fun clothing and costumes, all those goodies. Until that happens, the Merchant's biggest export will always be the void suit they're given at random and then weapons. People buy swords and guns because they're lunatics.

A big thing: Merchants are pretty OP. Merchants have no intrigue with the rest of the station, meaning if shit goes bad they can just dip. They have the most easy access to weapons save for traitor uplinks and it's legal too, as per directive 8. Speaking of traitor uplinks, a traitor merchant has access to anything he needs. Remember how you can buy 10k credits for 2 crystals? 1.2 mil credits means you can buy any fucking thing you want. Have fun with your streetsweepers, murderboners.

I wanna reiterate, I love the role, and you guys did a super good job at making it fun and cool to interact with, but there's this little bit of polishing to to. Sorry if this post is all jumbled, I'm just typing what I think as it comes. If you have more ideas or agree, feel free to add to the post, and let's make this merchant something cool and engaging rather than the Murderboner's Market.

[Butterrobber202]

The spawn is pretty neat and all, and I noticed the option to be a Vox salesman. That's cool! But why have the mirror without a plastic surgeon ready to go? I actually ahelped this, thinking there already was one and the admins obliged, thanks pratepresidenten and sleepy wolf for being so patient with me. People won't want characters that are merchants and only merchants, as it's a hassle to set for merchant only, go to lobby if not picked, then join round late so no chance of antag, yadda yadda. I suggest giving people the option to make their own merchant at the start of a round for variety of merchants and no connection to crew in case of extended and all that. A space merchant, just imo, shouldn't also be a crew member.

 

+1, we already deal with stationcreantags, let my outsourced Merchant be outsourced