Improving ganger "do you need anything?"

When he talked to other characters about it, 'everyone' seemed to know that on certain items, gangers will only pay a certain percentage. The only way to 'learn' that seems to be through experience / trial and error. That is great and all, but it isn't very realistic.

Generally when people do business with each other, they know how much they are going to make. That is how they decide whether or not they want to participate in the transaction.

I see two ways to address this with code. One, have a second level option that allows a player to ask an NPC how much they will pay for something. For example, the character asks, "Do you need anything?" and the NPC provides a list. Then the character could ask, "How much for ?" or something similar, "What is worth to you?" maybe. The other option is to adapt the container (table / shelf / etc) code. Currently when a character buys an item, it asks them if they really want to spend the chyen. The same thing could go for the NPC. "NPC is willing to give you $$$ for . Do you accept?"

What that is is something you can figure out yourself, especially if you go the gang route. I don't think there is anything wrong with the system aside from scavenger code caps but that's a different discussion :D

Thanks for the reply.

Did you consider alternative solutions to the stealing problem? For example, you could instantiate a list on the NPC. Once an NPC gets an item, that item is removed from the list. The NPC works through the list until it is empty, and only then does the list get recreated. With a long enough list, a sneaky player would have to steal a whole bunch of objects, and deal with the increased likelihood of getting caught.

Another option is to put a LastOwner attribute on it. If the ganger buys the object, they append their dbref to it. Then they just check, and if ganger.dbref = lastowner.dbref, they get angry and attack the swindler, or refuse the transaction, or whatever.

I'm not following how providing a huge negative payout is any more productive than a net 0 payout. For example, I found out that buying any of a certain type of object and selling them to a ganger nets 0 profit. My character now has no interest in selling the gangers any of those objects, unless he can find a source to get them less expensively.

On the other hand, my character bought a "new" object from a store and sold it to a ganger, and got a negative return. I am assuming that the object is new because it was a "Name Brand" object purchased from the "Name Brand" store. In that instance, the 'used' goods narrative / IC justification does not hold up.

One last observation. It does not make any sense for gangers to rip people off who are providing them with key objects that they need to fight their turf wars. I don't want to go into IC specifics about what those objects are, but suffice to say they are pretty essential to anyone making a living of dishing out violence on other people. If a gang gets a reputation of ripping off everyone who provides those objects to them, word is going to get out that they are extremely ungrateful to people who help them, and nobody is going to help them out. (Maybe that's an intentional IC consequence. But it seems to me more like an unintended consequence of trying to use code to deter a few people from abusing the system.)

Regarding alternatives to lower payouts, this was discussed in depth back when the change was made:

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/game-discussion/new-game-features/new-scavenger-code-111/