/tg/Station 13

Sybil players (and a couple rounds of Bagil) have seen my trader events pop up from time to time. Normally they have an assortment of mostly harmless and moderately tame goods for sale to the crew and sometimes this ends up very profitable for the trader. In other times the trader starves because (thanks to nearly infinite lathes or the advanced hour of the round) the station really doesn't hurt for anything that it can't make in abundance. This lead me to wonder.

Presuming your typical roles (job and department) what sort of things would you be most interested in spending your otherwise unused credits on in the event a trader appears?

Cargo: It would be weird to guess what their bounty targets are and they're already one item fountain with a huge budget so maybe not much if its not unique?
Sci: Monkey cubes aren't as valuable as they once were (especially since the margin of error in xenobio is much more forgiving than it was before), do-dads for the experimentor maybe?, signalers and the like for robotics?
Med: Abductor tools, mining pens and laz injectors maybe?, titanium (because the lathe always needs it and mining often doesn't bring any back), extra roller beds/IV stands
Service: Fancy and unusual floor tiles, unusual food items?
Clown/Mime: air horns, weird floor tiles, spray cans, monkey cubes, hats/capes
Sec: Donuts, the ability to sell problem people to the trader (in alternative to the gulag)
Assistants: Probably a bit of weird case too. My instinct says glubs but I think they'd probably have some overlap with the clown/mime and be happy with hats/capes/toys/etc

Hit me with your best ideas, within reason obviously.
1) No guns or weapons of other sorts.
2) Probably no special/game altering items (Die of Fate, Gluttony's Blessing, Xeno Eggs)
3) No antag items (wizard spellbooks, magic wands, emags)

Cargo: A contract of wealth.

They always seem willing to lose the ability to revive in exchange for a 1 minute long, valuable item spawner. (Be it a gold bar, a diamond. Just random jewelry) Greedy Jerks.

Medical: Another Advanced First-Aid kit and An Experimental Surgery Disc. (The healing one hopefully.)

Science: Sell really expensive alien alloy. It's obtainable as a non-antag now.
Clown/Mime: Their healing drinks.
Sec: The elusive Prison Cube. For when you really need to put someone on Ice. Only one.
Assistant: More RP centered. But an official centcomm stamped and approved Petty Crime Voucher. Only usable once. Show it to sec, and they'll let you off. Just a written paper by an admin, that's been stamped by them with a centcomm official stamp. Not usable with major crimes.
Service: Strange Seeds, Chefs ingredient box. Like the one he gets at roundstart

These would all be items for when you're feeling generous. But would be very expensive, as in they'd probably require a rare item themselves to get. Like the captains antique gun, or Krav Magna gloves.

The E-gun pistols would make good security items to sell, they are not much stronger than normal e-guns and arent normally obtainable.

Combat Gloves are another item that people would want to buy, as they act as insulated gloves and fireproof gloves. Barring that Insulated gloves are always a good bet, even if they are obtainable via cargo.

Clothing items that are unobtainable in the clothing vendor or costume vendor would make for good items to sell for cheap.

Strange seeds would be a good item to sell, but dont give the trader any method of looking at the contents.

Other than that consider things that require a long time to get, such as xenobio slime products or techweb implants.

Keep in mind. What I'm looking for are things that you'd expect the trader to reasonably be selling to literally anyone who pays. They're not going to be super concerned about who is buying it beyond that they want to buy it and can pay for it. I added the department sections because I'm working out what items are best suited to market towards those different departments.

As above, weapons are right out. This is for the obvious reason that I'm not looking to create an antag that spawns with a cache of weapons and also not looking to give security a reason to go raiding the tradepost.

Sell blue slime potions. Miners will pay good credits for one of those, more so if xenobiology isn't working, or dumb as fuck.

Service: Uncommon food plants(blue cherries, vanilla), canned peaches, lizard tails, rare meats, cleaning grenades, Mr. Proper grenade, syndie soap, Ginbad's Blazaam bottle

Science: Strange reagent, golden capture devices. fugu glands, 10 sheets of rare golem metal(runed, brass, bone)

Clown: Bananium shield, moustache grenade, bananium sword, bananium, mk-honk combat shoes, combat clown shoes, slipocalypse

Engineering: Instant concrete grenades, rapid light placer

Greytide: Combat gloves, smoke grenade, Ninja Vanish grenade

Medical: Atropine autoinjectors, heart of freedom, shadow eyes, xeno eyes, felinid tail & ears

Bartender: Bottles of exotic juices (watermelon, banana, berry etc). Logistical support between botany and the bar is difficult sometimes, so a bartender might opt for the quick fix by purchasing it. Also, lizard tails for that exotic wine.

Cook: Bottles/bags of cooking reagents (i.e include cocoa powder, vanilla powder, red/blue jelly, soy sauce, hot sauce, cold sauce, ketchup). Seeds for vanilla pods, sweet potato, blue cherry and other exotic cooking plants would be quite useful for skeleton shifts where there are no botanists. Also, traitor cooks should be able to use codewords to buy a bottle of "secret spices", which is actually a cocktail of poisons that may or may not be lethal.

Botany: Seeds for lavaland plants, since the miners rarely bring those stationside. Ever had a cactus pizza? A box of seeds for the less often seen mutated plants (i.e. moonflower, lily/geranium, egg-plant, koibean) might be a tempting buy for some, even for non-botanists who want to fiddle around in the garden. For fun, you could throw in "exotic" farm animals, like red cows or purple chickens (kind of like the exotic corgis).

Head of Personnel: Boxes of medals. Why doesn't he have medals of his own yet?

Curator: Boxes of tea mugs or trays of cookies. Maybe even some wood and carpet for renovating the library, or some selected works of literature that aren't trash.

Chaplain: If you notice a Rastafarian chaplain, feel free to throw in some wood, grass and cannabis.

I'll stop by if I think of any more.

Space ninja masks, i know that they're antag gear but they're just reskinned gasmasks that look real good.

Boris wrote:Space ninja masks, i know that they're antag gear but they're just reskinned gasmasks that look real good.

Isn't all of the ninja-related stuff a buggy mess that nobody feels like messing with?

Can we get miner masks, and those orange oxygen tanks

I get a kick out of solving abandoned crates. A few of those wouldn't hurt since you can get some fun stuff like combustible lemon seeds while also having the chance to wiff and get... shorts.

cedarbridge wrote:

Boris wrote:Space ninja masks, i know that they're antag gear but they're just reskinned gasmasks that look real good.

Isn't all of the ninja-related stuff a buggy mess that nobody feels like messing with?

As far as i know space ninja code got unshitcoded a while back, and the mask itself has no real code attached to it as far as i can tell.

The first things that come to mind for me are:
- Clear PDA
- Reticence without any equipment (and they have to be clever enough to spot it in your inventory)
- Most if not all prizes from arcade machines (with the exception of the actual weapon)
- Canned Laughter (and bottle of nothing)
- Megaphone
- Floorpills, whole bottles of individual random ones.
- Multi-belt
- Welding Gas Mask
- pAI
- If the event happens early enough I bet some people would really enjoy trading for some tier 4 components
- Camera Obscura
- Insuls
- Cosmohonk Hardsuit
- Owl Hardsuit
- The advanced tools (drill, jaws of life, experimental welder)
- Pocket Fire Extinguisher
- Dura Thread Jumpsuit
- Any of the advanced beakers or syringes (bluespace, cryo, etc.)
- Junk for the E.X.P.E.R.I.Mentor would be great for this.
- Alien organs, I think I've seen Xeno organs but some shadowperson eyes and other rarer stuff like that would be neat.
- Various xenobio crossbreeds, examples being the stabilized pink that lets you move faster and stabilize people around you, the slime rebreather, sentience potion, bluespace radio potion
(Most xenobio crossbreeds would probably be alright, obviously some would be better off blacklisted)

It would be super neat if you could get the antag Curator's ghostly Magic 8-Ball (or maybe it's a regular Magic 8-Ball, buyer beware!)

Abductor tools are valuable to science since it unlocks several very useful techs.

Yakumo_Chen wrote:Abductor tools are valuable to science since it unlocks several very useful techs.

What's the starting science budget look like? I'm lothe to toss something into the pot that rare/valuable that can just get snatched at roundstart on the cheap.

cedarbridge wrote:Keep in mind. What I'm looking for are things that you'd expect the trader to reasonably be selling to literally anyone who pays. They're not going to be super concerned about who is buying it beyond that they want to buy it and can pay for it. I added the department sections because I'm working out what items are best suited to market towards those different departments.

As above, weapons are right out. This is for the obvious reason that I'm not looking to create an antag that spawns with a cache of weapons and also not looking to give security a reason to go raiding the tradepost.

Xenomorph egg. Haven't been playing for a long time but I want to see more Xenos since they are neat. Or is that too weapon-y?

Floipd wrote:

cedarbridge wrote:Keep in mind. What I'm looking for are things that you'd expect the trader to reasonably be selling to literally anyone who pays. They're not going to be super concerned about who is buying it beyond that they want to buy it and can pay for it. I added the department sections because I'm working out what items are best suited to market towards those different departments.

As above, weapons are right out. This is for the obvious reason that I'm not looking to create an antag that spawns with a cache of weapons and also not looking to give security a reason to go raiding the tradepost.

Xenomorph egg. Haven't been playing for a long time but I want to see more Xenos since they are neat. Or is that too weapon-y?

Considering they just removed the active eggs from the xeno ruin on lavaland I doubt they would risk it in an easier to get version

Floipd wrote:

cedarbridge wrote:Keep in mind. What I'm looking for are things that you'd expect the trader to reasonably be selling to literally anyone who pays. They're not going to be super concerned about who is buying it beyond that they want to buy it and can pay for it. I added the department sections because I'm working out what items are best suited to market towards those different departments.

As above, weapons are right out. This is for the obvious reason that I'm not looking to create an antag that spawns with a cache of weapons and also not looking to give security a reason to go raiding the tradepost.

Xenomorph egg. Haven't been playing for a long time but I want to see more Xenos since they are neat. Or is that too weapon-y?

Absolutely not happening.

One time I was a ninja when the trader event happened on Sybil.
Stole some of the Trader's credits by teleporting into the backroom then bought a cape with an American flag on it using the credits.
Good times.

I'd say most Lavaland Artifacts(besides a few) are pretty heavily wanted by some people in general, such as the Soulstone(which is pretty good since it helps get ghosts back into the round).

Chaplain's soulstone

A construct shell for said purposes.

A syringe or pill of the immortality chemical from wizard events(it kinda makes you immortal until it runs out).

A pill/chemical of revival.

Sentience potions for the commoners who want a loyal pet

A random abductor organ

Genetic mutation syringes

A rainbow extract

Taylork2 wrote:I'd most Lavaland Artifacts(besides a few) are pretty heavily wanted by some people in general, such as the Soulstone(which is pretty good since it helps get ghosts back into the round).

How do you use a soulstone to get a ghost as the shade and not a corpse again?

kill monky with it and press in hand to roll a ghost

You can use a soulstone on someone who's died in an emergency to get them back.
You can use a soulstone on someone's corpse who's disconnected/ghosted(there's often 5-20 in Medbay)
Use it on bodies on Lavaland/space ruins
Use it on some humanoid simple mobs
You can use it as a way to destroy a corpse but let that player keep playing as it changes their goals(and prevents them from using their old abilities/gear)

cedarbridge wrote:

Yakumo_Chen wrote:Abductor tools are valuable to science since it unlocks several very useful techs.

What's the starting science budget look like? I'm lothe to toss something into the pot that rare/valuable that can just get snatched at roundstart on the cheap.

I never consider trading for actual money a good idea, budget cards tend to have upwards of 20k by lategame. Abductor tools are a rare spawn mining only sometimes finds.

if I were RD I'd trade it for tele armor or something, though. Rare science stuff that's unique or very hard to obtain.

Yakumo_Chen wrote:

cedarbridge wrote:

Yakumo_Chen wrote:Abductor tools are valuable to science since it unlocks several very useful techs.

What's the starting science budget look like? I'm lothe to toss something into the pot that rare/valuable that can just get snatched at roundstart on the cheap.

I never consider trading for actual money a good idea, budget cards tend to have upwards of 20k by lategame. Abductor tools are a rare spawn mining only sometimes finds.

if I were RD I'd trade it for tele armor or something, though. Rare science stuff that's unique or very hard to obtain.

We've got a separate thread for discussing the problems with the current budget system. Budget cards, in general, make cash a bit too inflated to be worth anything. I honestly wish they just didn't exist. That said, the things I'm working with right now are structured around selling for cash to trade for replacement exotic tradegoods. That's not to say that barter is entirely out of the question, but the trader is ultimately cash-oriented.