Work in progress updates

Time for some updates on what I'm working on! This is kind of long, and I'm going to describe some work in progress in some detail. The order listed here is more or less the order I'm likely to finish and release them.

Simsco Canning Factory Update

First up, I'm putting together an update to the Simsco Canning Factory to fix a few minor bugs and try to complete the rest of the list of canned goods from Cottage Living. Watermelon Conserve, here we come (yuck, lol)!

Perfumery mod integration with Simsco Canning Factory

Back to the idea that lead to the whole Perfumery mod in the first place, I'm going to add some features to it to inject some recipes for cases of perfume bottles into the Simsco Canning Factory, to allow you to make a box of 6 bottles of perfume from 36 flowers.

I also have a couple of 'extra extra' type perfume recipes I didn't include in the first release, such as one made from Alien flowers only found on Sixam, and another made from Wolfsbane. I may try to finish up and add those as well.

Wholesale Contract features to Food & Beverage Supplier License mod

Next, I'm looking at an expansion to the Food & Beverage Supplier License mod. It would add larger-quantity, time-sensitive (and higher paying) production contracts, where you need to deliver a certain quantity of a thing within a time limit.

The 'production contracts' are going to be basically be a type of OddJob, though they will be kept separate from the built-in OddJobs.  Each contract-job would require you to come up with a relatively large quantity of 'something' (a type of produce, fish, fizzies, cupcakes, etc) within a limited amount of time, with premiums paid if you deliver it early. 

There will be some sort of 'contract marketplace' picker that lets you pick a contract to deliver something within a limited amount of time. In order to see a 'type of job' in the 'contract marketplace' (like for bakery, or tomato paste), you need to meet and form a relationship with a buyer for that type of item.

Here are the wholesale buyer categories I'm looking at:

• Bakery
• Food
• Fizzies 
• Hospitality/Spa (things like flower arrangements, wedding cakes and perfume)
• Retail/Industrial (upgrade parts, fabricated and robotic items)

So the idea is that in order to see contract jobs for Bakery products in your wholesale contract picker, you'll need to have a good relationship with a wholesale bakery buyer. 

How do you meet wholesale buyers? Trade Conventions! I'm thinking there could be something like a regular 'wholesalers bar night' where you could meet wholesale buyers and form supplier connections with them. Once you did that, contracts for that buyer would appear in your contract picker. 

Gameplay
1. Meet buyers for different types of products at a wholesaler event
2. Get them to agree to wholesale agreements
3. Accept wholesale contract Odd Jobs for those type of product via the contract marketplace
4. Deliver the stuff
5. Profit
6. Get more contracts

That's what I'm thinking about for it so far, anyway.

Ready Player Sim

I've mentioned (or at least hinted) before that the next 'big mod' I've been working on is a Cyberpunk-themed mod. I take the term 'cyberpunk' fairly broadly and tend to include near-term sci-fi as well. I'm getting a lot of inspiration from this page from the TV-Tropes site.  

These are some common cyberpunk tropes I'm adopting as I'm working on the mod:

• Technology becomes indistinguishable from magic (eg., things like personal teleportation or mind control devices)
• Cybernetic implants available that provide the player with different abilities
• The protagonist (eg, the player sim) has some sort of freelance courier/delivery career that brings them into contact with a wide range of interesting, and sometimes shady or mysterious, characters and groups. 
• Hacking will also be enhanced as a career option. I'd like to add several ways of making a living.
• There are factions working behind the scenes, from government agencies to criminal enterprises, and super-intelligent AI to mega-corporations

It's going to involve both missions gigs and quest gigs. The gigs will be high paying, some tech will be quite expensive and/or be difficult to acquire. You will be able to work multiple gigs at once for different factions/groups.

I'm adding some transportation network features in this mod, such as a bus networks to get you some hidden career lots like the police station, the science lab and the hospital, and a ferry boat that runs from the Brindleton docks to Selvadorada every night. This should help make the quests less tedious in general. It's also kind of cool to take the bus around San Myshuno instead of going to the Manage Worlds screen in between (unfortunately, it's sort of a rabbit-hole bus...there is no bus visible...yet).

I'm not going to stop everything else to work on this one, since that would mean that nobody would hear from me for a few months, lol. But it should go quicker than the Archaeology Kit 2 did, since I have fewer difficult coding problems, and mostly gameplay and narrative work to implement. 

I have a basic set of missions and a lot of gadgets already working, and just started in on implementing factions and the characters that go along with them.

Always open to suggestions! Thanks again for your support!