[Request]Ability to specify license requirement overrides on a per-outfitter basis

[Zitchas]

Problem Description

There are situations when an outfit may be restricted by a license in one location, but not in another. For example, the Korath outfits that the Remnant eventually include in their outfitter will likely eventually have a Korath license restriction once the Exiles have an outfitter somewhere that the player may be able to visit. Likewise, there are plenty of opportunities for pirates or unfettered or other law-breakers in various factions to potentially sell stuff that the main source of which would prefer to remain restricted to licensed individuals.

Related Issue Links

• Smuggling stuff is a potentially related thing: Smuggling & pirate mission improvements #7018
• Removing licenses more generically: to remove licences #3907
• Some licenses were once overridable up until this commit, according to a comment by Tehhowch: 14de6d8

I'm pretty sure more relevant license stuff has been mentioned, but I can't find it at the moment.

Desired Solution

I would like a way to specify, in the header of the outfitter description, a way to specify that additional licenses are required and/or that existing license requirements are cleared (or combinations thereof) for outfits contained within that outfitter list but only when accessing those outfits through that outfitter.

outfitter "Name of outfitter list"
	licenses
		remove <all>, <specified license>
		add <specified license>
	... list of outfits

Alternative Approaches

1. Ability to specify in each outfit that it has different license requirements in a specified outfitter.
2. Create duplicate outfits for each outfitter with different license requirements. Ex. "Remnant Salvaged Small Heat Shunt"

Additional Context

This would be used immediately by the Remnant and Korath; and strong potential for several other storyline areas.

[warp-core]

If this is done, I think it would be better if any changes to normal licensing within the outfitter is set on a per outfit basis, as a child of each outfit entry.

[Zitchas]

So each outfit would have a sequence of sorts:

outfit "Korath Loot"
	license Korath
	outfitter "Remant Salvage"
		remove license Korath
		add license Remnant
	...

That sort of style of thing?

[warp-core]

No. In the outfitter definition, under each outfit entry.

outfitter "Whatever Basics"
	"Very Good Outfit"
		<license>

It may also be worth refactoring licenses to be their own class that Ships and Outfits have.

[Zitchas]

Not quite as streamlined, but I can see the utility of doing it that way. That would work.

[EjoThims]

I find Warp's proposed version much simpler to parse, personally.

For each outfitter this item appears in, specify what, if any, license is needed to purchase it from there.

[warp-core]

I can implement this (though, first, I think I'd like to make a special object for licenses) but maybe not until after the next release (we have enough PRs open, I have enough PRs open) unless Zitchas has specific plans to use it in 0.9.15?

[Zitchas]

That sounds good. This isn't an immediate 0.9.15 thing, unless this release takes a lot longer. It is mainly a preparatory capability for when we get license restrictions on Korath outfits and ships. Which I don't think is going to be a .15 thing unless this release takes a lot longer than it currently looks.

[Quantumshark]

I'd like the ability to do this on a specific basis (as in, specifically by outfit rather than just by outfitter), and I'd also like it to be extended to shipyards as well as outfitters.
What I specifically want to be able to do is have one specific ship sold in two outfitters, but have it require different licenses in each.

[ravenshining]

An alternative way of handling this could be with outfit variants, e.g. as in #5849 , which is another extremely useful potential feature. Along with the fix #9682 , and a way to remove attributes in variants, your outfitter could simply specify a variant with different licence requirements.

I asked about this issue on Discord and was told that handling licences in the outfitter rather than on a planet- or outfit- level would involve a lot more code? I honestly have no idea what that's about, but if it's handled with variants maybe that problem would be averted.