Improving drugs and the drug trade

[Roeleveld]

I seem to remember that at least some Rebirth stations had improved production if you supplied small amounts of optional or secondary wares, including medical supplies and drugs. So there is some precedent here.

OT, IRL, the world is [slowly] moving to be more tolerant of drugs, as studies continuously show that the popular “tough on drugs” approach to policing does more harm than much more nuanced approaches. Personally, I’ve never touched anything harder than alcohol. Speaking of, I know plenty of companies with a casual approach to alcohol, especially on business trips. It’s seen as a great way to build and improve business relationships.

The country mostly recognized for being tolerant on drugs (The Netherlands) is actually slowly moving away from that policy.

[DavidGW]

Alcohol is banned when operating machinery (and just look at what too much alcohol does to your body)
Nicotine is being banned more and more with the sale and use restricted in various countries
Caffeine has negative side-effects even when not used much
Tannine (Tea) is diluted sufficiently to make "abuse" deadly by the amount of water-intake that comes with it
Adrenaline is produced to quickly boost strength, but too much will cause issues with certain organs and when it wears off you get shock-symptoms

Going back to the topic:
In other words, none of these have a positive effect on production. If drug trade is "improved", I would expect a negative impact on production effeciency in affected stations/sectors.

Nicotine and caffeine have negative effects, but they also have positive effects. Obviously the small positive effects of nicotine are massively outweighed by the negative effects linked to the common methods of their consumption.

I’m not against drugs having a negative impact to station efficiency, as long as it is small, and the drug trade is profitable. It might give more purpose to policing your own stations if drugs have a negative effect. It could be interesting to have some positive effects too though, such as improved workforce increase rate, strategically offsetting lower productivity, and maybe a higher rate of medical supply use.

[DavidGW]

The country mostly recognized for being tolerant on drugs (The Netherlands) is actually slowly moving away from that policy.

I guess that somewhere between executing anyone caught with marijuana and open-slather everything is available no questions asked, there’s likely a happy medium

Fortunately as X4 is a game, where invisible people appear out of thin air who work for no money, some artistic licence can be taken with their behaviour. If it brings more depth, profits and strategic options to the game, I’m for it.

[grapedog]

No, simple experience.
Had a drug-using colleague once, when he started there he was clean and doing well.
Then he started using weed and had problems concentrating on the simplest tasks.

If you think using drugs will improve efficiency of the workforce ask yourself why there isn't any drug use promoted in big companies. There are countries where it would be easy to implement considering their regimes.
And in the US, the big companies would be lobbying in favour of drugs.

Going to work drunk or stoned is totally different than recreational use at home by responsible people. Also, none of that is in this game, and there is no reason to add addiction, interventions, or any of that crap.

He was sober at work, doing it recreationally.
But the effect was quite clear that his mental capacity was diminishing.

The drugs are already in the game, and if a player spends a good chunk of time widening the market, there is no reason there can't be other benefits to pay off the players time apent doing an activity, that can also have a positive effect on other mechanics, if the player invest the time.

That is the whole point of keeping any benefits small enough where people who don't like the mechanic or don't want to spend the time, can avoid it, and those that do want to spend the time see some benefit for time spent.

Exactly this, there are no positive benefits to drug use.
Read up on the opium wars the UK started in China. That was the UK looking for a new market to sell drugs to because they didn't want it domestically anymore due to the negative effects.
China, obviously, didn't want it either as it negatively affected their people.

But lets leave it at this as this is getting far too off-topic.

Lol, makes a factually incorrect statement, then says lets stop talking about it. Your personal anecdotal stories don't support an argument. Lets leave what everyone believes out of this.... and stick to game mechanics, and improving them.

In this case providing benefits to the player for time spent, recreational drugs availability increasing workforce recruitment. I've never been to space, but ive spent months at sea without port calls, and one of the best feelings in the world is that first beer(or drink), when you finally get back to land. Beibg in space, working on a space station, i would imagine is somewhat similar... and beer, or recratiinal drugs, even caffine and nicotine, are popular as hell, and can provide a sense of normalcy.

I feel bad for my workers because i understand a little but of what they must be going through.

[SwizzleStick86]

On my stations, my slaves..err ummm... "employees" are not allowed distractions..and they regularly get kicked out of the airlock from time to time in order to 'encourage' their coworkers...mwhahahahah!

I think having an added bonus would be good, but also added risk, like cause other factions to boycott your goods if found to be supplying your workers with drugs. And in regaurds to how drugs affect real world economy's... this is a video game..a space simulator. How can you expect true realism when we're playing a game set on space ships..if you wanted to be more 'realistic' then have machines with advanced technology producing all of your goods...don't need food, water, breaks, dont make mistakes. Take humans out of the picture..