Ongoing: Travelling Merchant, Balloons, Fultons, Horns, More courrier stuff, and other jangles.

[Ldip999]

About The Pull Request

PLANS to add balloon ordering to merchant.
For now, only really adds a new subclass, which is the travelling merchant, whose only form of income and requsition of goods is the balloon

How it works:
The travelling merchant starts with 6 categories they can choose from, both legal and less than legal, and 300 mammons worth of favours/clout. They gain 10 mammons worth of favours every minute, at a 5 minute interval. Other than that, they need to use fultons to airlift exports at designated positions.
They can buy stuff from all legal and illegal (gold & copperface) categories, for the base price (merchant pays 2x + tax), meaning cheaper.
To make up for things being cheaper, they have to go into dangerous places (ANY quest marker location in the BOG, COAST or DECAP that has clear vision to the sky can be picked, at which point the horn locks in and guides you to the point), and need to blow a horn.
The horn acts simmilarly as to the warden's horn, spawning several ambushes (1-5) that scale with the region's threat level.
When blown at the right spot, a chest drops, that contains everything that was ordered. In order to sell, one must get a chest (could be the same one that just dropped) to the balloon's meeting point, attach a fulton (orderable for 10 favours per 5 fultons), and then tap it with the horn, at which point the chest and it's contents get qdelled and sold for base price, which should make it more profitable than the stockpile and merchant's navigator.
This role has no innate way of getting mammons whatsoever, encouraging a playstyle revolving around barter economy, and engaging others to get what you want.
Currently, you get 6 categories. This is subject to change, as eventually I'll want to add a way to get more categories, and then I'll decrease the starting categories (3 is planned?) (Or not, depending on walance)
You can order a backup horn if you want, just in case you lose your current one, it is costly however.

Notable gear the travelling merchant spawns with:
Heavy leather jacket
Arq pistol (with bullets + powder)
Cane sword
Satchel & rucksack
Balloon drop signal horn
5 fultons
Lamp, rope, bomb (I think, it might be being put somewhere I cannot find it...)
Prefilled merchant coin pouch

LIMITATIONS that I'll address later ™️ :
Currently no way to remove stuff from the cart
Currently no way to get extra categories

PLANS:
For the travelling merchant: Contracts
For the towner merchant: Add the balloon supply system to them as well. Instead of passively gaining favour, the quest ledger would drop a voucher for each quest you turn in, as well as being able to sell stuff for favours. Prices will be the same as travelling, but your horn won't be dynamic and instead will be tied to you, so you can send out your goons to go fetch stuff while you rot in the shame box. Possibly an entire role (or subclass for the shophand) dedicated to being a courier.
For advents: Courier quest rework, instead of dropping packs and them disappearing when you turn in the quest, there will instead be little mailing boxes, so you can drop them independent of the area (currently manor areas are unaccessible for an example, so you cannot deliver packages for the keep unless they let you in), usually outside of where the area is, we'll see if we can map it in, these will preserve the items delivered even when the quest is turned in, and can only be accessible by the usual recipents. As well as more variety / options for packages' contents, including new difficulties for better payout and better contents.

Developer's checklist

• Try to modularize as much as possible.
• Mark the start and end of edits outside the caustic modular folder (if applicable) for changes made.

• Ensure that it compiles locally, and test new features (when applicable, please record if not!), or potential issues with related features.

Testing Evidence

Tested the travelling merchant on local.

Why It's Good For The Game

More interractive gameplay and reasons for people to group together. Gives an alternative to merchants' gameplay, who can work with the merchant and spice up their life a bit, or serve as competition. Lets mercantile characters do more than sit in the shame box.

Changelog

🆑
add: Travelling merchant
/:cl: