Refugee center dialogue project

[I-am-Erk]

I am creating this as an Issue for the purposes of organizing what I need to do and adding it to the 0.E project, with the hopes of getting my bum in gear and finishing most of this off for 0.E

In the process, I am dearly hoping to recruit some other people to work on refugee center dialogue.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
The refugee center is one of the first and therefore most important NPC contact points for the game, and for the forseeable future is likely to be the start point of much of the factional interactions. I have been working hard on it for a while but there is still a ton to do.

Describe the solution you'd like
There are several major groups of characters in the refugee center.

1. The beggars: these are a collection of friends stuck in the lobby of the center. They are too frightened to leave, but not doing well there.

• Implement beggars
• Add the option to give the beggars food
• Add a questline to recruit all four beggars besides Dino Dave
• Add a questline to help Dino Dave get enough cardboard to complete his secret project

2. The surface refugees: these are a sort of second class citizen among the free merchants, suitable to be taken into the center but not able to fit downstairs. They live a terrified life on the surface.

• Add all the characters to the map with stub dialogue (I have to check if I've got them all, I think some are still missing
• Add backstory dialogue to all the characters
• Jenny Forcette: Complete a questline where she adds pneumatic turrets around the base
• The Borichenkos: Complete a questline where you help Boris and Stan deal with the loss of their son
• Fatima Al Jadir: Complete a questline where Fatima and the Borichenkos work together to build a wall of junk vehicles around the center
• The Singhs: Complete a questline where you help the Singhs build a nondenominational chapel for the other refugees
• Alonso Latour: Add the ability to purchase Alonso's affections in return for condoms
• Draco Dune: Add the ability to bring Draco a guitar and have him and John Clemens start a little band
• Rhyzaea Johnny: Once the zombie infestation is cleared, add a questline to get Rhyzaea setting up a counselling office in the empty section of the center
• Vanessa Toby: Add the ability to buy a haircut from Vanessa
• Dialogue and quests for the Nunez family, Uyen Tran, and Aleesha Seward pending.

3. Free Merchant representatives

• Add dialogue to free merchant representatives discussing the beggar situation and the refugees upstairs. Make sure it updates to the current situation.

4. Old Guard representative

• Add brief dialogue discussing the situation with the beggars
• Add some small talk options about the state of the world, gated to game time

5. Guards

• Improve the Old Guard / Free Merchants quest to find a mole. Make it necessary to talk to the beggars and refugees about what they've seen and collect clues. Make it possible to accuse the wrong person. Make it possible to select the right person and, instead of killing them, use them as a contact to get in touch with the Hell's Raiders.

Additional context
I am not married to any of the Refugee plots, but I would like to finish the beggars myself. If anyone wants to help me with the Refugees, drop me a comment and we can discuss what to do.

I do not expect to complete this entire project for 0.E but I would like to get the beggars done and all the refugees in at least.

[alexanderbk1]

Hello

There was a proffesional writter voulnteering a week ago in reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/cataclysmdda/comments/bmm71a/professional_writer_looking_to_help/

I hope I'll be able to contribute myself to the game some day, but I have no programming knowloedge and english is not my first languaje.

[I-am-Erk]

I've contacted them. With any luck they'll get back... so far I'm zero for four on writer volunteers actually following through on offers to contribute.

[faefux]

I've taken a little on at the moment but if you're still not getting anyone following through in a couple of weeks time feel free to message me on the forums, @I-am-Erk

[Mooses2k]

@I-am-Erk I'm game. Just give me direction.

[I-am-Erk]

@I-am-Erk I'm game. Just give me direction.

Easiest thing is to contact me by DM on discord, but otherwise a good starting point would be to pick someone in the refugee center that you find interesting and start writing dialogue for them in a PR. Just let me know so we don't conflict. Draco Dune already exists in game, and would be a pretty good starting one: I planned to give him a quest to help him get a guitar to play music for the other refugees. In my notes he's a pleasant, laid back guy who is doing his best to take this all in stride. He might also trade you some Merch (free merchant money) for marijuana once per week.

[PatrikLundell]

Not sure if this is the right thread for it, but I did have several problems with the beggars plot (0.E2 stable), and think there are some adjustments that can be made to make it clearer what you're supposed to do.

• I hadn't set up a camp when I talked to them (I'd intended to recruit at least a second NPC before I did), and apparently having one is a prerequisite for finishing the quest line, but nowhere is that indicated. I'd suggest having the hairy one indicate the need for a camp (something along the line of "I can live on the road, but my friends need a stable camp to live in" if you don't have one, and have the PC say "come with me" if he doesn't have one, prompting the above, or "I've got a camp where we can be based if you come with me" if he does).

• A "mushroom sample" is totally unclear to a new player, for the mushroom lady action. At that point in the game I'd seen fungi and turned tail. It should be more clear that it's the matter of regular butchery rather than some special item drop. It can also be mentioned that this action did not enter into the quest log (on par with "trade offers").

• It's fairly unpleasant to offer food to one of the beggars only to find that the whole stack was taken, resulting in a potentially both hungry and thirsty trip home to the base (camp or otherwise).

• In the same vein, it's not intiutive that you'd have to offer food again after sorting out Dino Dave AND have a camp to further the dialog with the other beggars if you started without and have tried to give them food again on earlier cardboard delivery visits.

• I don't believe the "help Dino Dave first" requirement was ever given to me from one of the others, presumably because I didn't have a camp.

• Recruiting the beggars to a fresh camp seems to be a rather painful experience (I backed out and reverted to an earlier save point after succeeding), as they use up a large number of calories daily, while half of what they can forage (and much that you can get) has to be processed through cooking to actually be dumped into camp calories, and they can't cook (and have next to no skills, so most of them can't even assist in batch cooking). I haven't got any idea of how to ensure the PC has a sizeable calorie buffer when recruiting them, though.

• The quest to get an electrical motor for the resident (Jenny Forcette(?)) was rather misleading about where to find those motors. Every electrical two wheel vehicle I've seen so far have had the small version (while I've found the medium one in the automatic street sweepers).

• If the mole quest is implemented, I'd recommend not requiring the beggars as mandatory participants, as they may be gone from the center when the quest is given. If it's present in 0.E2 stable it seems to be "blocked" behind one of the two quests that are for locations further away than my character has moved (kill bandits and investigate lost caravan), while I'm capable of recruiting the beggars.

Draco Drune's quest worked out OK, although I was puzzled that his grass retrieval activity wasn't noted as a quest. I've since realized the latter was because it's more of a trade option (like flour for bread, and sell stuff in demand to the merchants). It wouldn't hurt to have trade offers noted as a separate trade offers tab on the mission screen, though.

Edit:

• Prozac quest: The quest says you're supposed to bring 6 bottles of Prozac, but when I did only 6 pills were taken (a bottle is contains 15 pills). Also, if I remember correctly, the tips provided by the quest giver suggested looking for them in peoples homes. However, since receiving the quest I've never found them in homes. 1 was a random zombie drop and the 3 others were found in doctor's offices. The two found before that may well have come from a doctor's office as well.

Edit 2:

• The mole quest was indeed beyond one of the kill quests. The description talks about sweet talking to get the job done, but even when I managed to get the mole to reveal himself I was unable to report back and had to aggravate and kill him, which goes contrary to the description. The quest was possible to perform without getting anything useful out of any of the residents (the beggars, except Dino Dave, were recruited a season before daring to take on the kill missions).

• Boris Borishenko seems to be bugged. Every time I try to talk to him I have to point out that the center needs a carpenter and he tells me to return "later". Returning weeks later still results in the same dialog. For whatever reason, I didn't manage to get him through this dialog the first time until after the back room had been cleared out, so it might be that a trigger never gets triggered because of the order in which the events happened.

• The Tacoma farm (which is an extension of the refugee center) has a quest for knife spears (if I remember correctly). However, the description is obsolete as the desired item is actually the primitive version (which, according to forumites, used to be the only one).

[PaulBlay]

My issue report got shot down and closed #46092 but I still believe that the dialogue for the Free Merchants Broker in the Refugee Center is unintuitive and that something (not necessarily my first suggestion) should be done to make things clearer regarding his bulk buy needs.

[I-am-Erk]

That's not really part of this sub-project, it's a fairly minor tweak to an already written NPC. Feel free to clarify his dialogue to help show which option is about what he wants.

[slitherrr]

I have two small bug reports for this dialog. First is that Boris doesn't actually explain what he wants in the "Ash's Laptop" quest (note the dialog history):

The second is that Jenny Forcette has an inescapable dialog bug when you have more of the skill she teaches than she can teach (going to guess either fabrication or electronics). It will only present options for "Ok, teach me!" and "I can't learn anything from you" (paraphrased), with no option to leave the tree and leaving a force-quit as the only way out.

[PatrikLundell]

Not sure if I should continue this thread or open a new issue, but here are some issues as of 0.F stable:

• Dino Dave's mid-sized cardboard box quest: Those used to be found containing e.g. toilet paper, but now those are wrapped in either paper or plastic. The only place I've found that size boxes is in a recycling center (and not enough of them, so it seems I have to find another). It seems other changes have made the quest rather hard to complete.
• Boris Borichenko's "tools" quest: He vaguely asks for tools and give about 3 examples of saws, of which I don't think 2 exist int the game. The quest text just talks about bringing tools, providing no clue as to what's actually needed (I believe it turned out a single circular saw was sufficient: there are [at least] two versions of those, and the electric one that didn't call itself electric worked: I didn't have to try the other one, so I don't know if that one works as well).
• Boris' second quest: Still as slitherrr reports in the post above. Note that the quest log actually gives some clue as to what "it" is.
• Alonso's (first?) quest: Once the quest has been taken, you can't talk to him again until it has been completed (I assume: I haven't done that), as doing that only gives you the options to "complete" the quest one way or another. The first problem is that there usually is a first dialog level where you can talk about the quest or talk about other things, which, as a minimum, is to just say goodbye.
  The second issue is that the quest is somehow considered completed, even though I don't have the "special pants" or anything that might be considered equivalent, so the quest evaluation logic seems broken.

Edit:
(Minor editing of the above for clarification).

• Refugee center quest "Find 6 bottles of Prozac for Uyen Tran..." has issues. Firstly, brand names have been removed, so "Prozac" is now "antidepressant". Secondly, it seems the spawn rate of the drug has been reduced considerably. I've cleared a hospital and a mid sized town, but still only have 5 tablets of it (I've got plenty of antibiotics of various kinds, antifungals, multi-vitamins, cough syrup, etc.).

Edit 2:

• (Alonso's quest is actually even more broken: Once I've actually found the pants (one of two, in that location), my response is now restricted to no, although other dialog options appear). - Reason found (see below), but the editing options above does not contain strike over.
  OK, I've looked at the JSON file, and it turns out he's looking for ordinary leather pants, which was the best leg armor my character had at the time, and so those were worn (I've since upgraded to MC pants). However, the pants lying on the floor in the shop were fur and leather hotpants, while there were leather pants in crates in the back (although I can't rule out there might have been regular leather pants on the floor as well). I'd suggest swapping the target to fur hotpants, as those are both weird and unlikely to be worn by any PC. The issue that you can't engage in regular dialog until you've resolved the quest when carrying/wearing a matching item still remains, however.
• The Boris cleanup mission provides a weird response of "Well, thanks anyway." even when characters asked to help agreed, which is odd. I'd expect that line to be reserved for rejections, with something like "Thanks for your help! I'm sure Boris will appreciate it."

Edit 3:

• Dana's dialog is broken somehow. The only option boils down to "Hi, but I have to go". I believe I've tried to talk to her about clearing of the back room (for Boris), but don't remember is I did get the same non option or if she rejected the request. I haven't been able to talk to her at all (I think), apart from that, even after suggesting to her husband that Tacoma might be a good place for them. In 0.E2 stable I did get dialogs from her, but my current character doesn't have a base camp started (remember her rejecting a move there, apart from baking related dialogs).
• I've done Jenny Forcette's quest line up to and including finding the book. That's probably unrelated to the problem I get when asking about her background and ask for training, where I get "grab some tools"->I've got nothing to teach you->ending up asking for other training, with only Electronics Soldering (or something similar) available apart from backing out from that menu, only to drop me back to the previous one, whose only option is to "continue" on to the same training menu I just left. It was possible to get out of the loop by selecting the 900$ proficiency training and then escape out of the payment item selection, though, but you should really be able to get out via dialog.