I just ran into the midgets from the Travel Agency in the jungle, and it filled me with nostalgia.

It also gave me an idea. What if those wonderfull catapults were to return... only this time, they only worked for Cigarettes!

If it cost 5 ciggies for a fling, the cost would still be high enough to encourage exploration, yet the island would be able to reclaim the flavour of this once cherished part of life on the Island.


And here's a kicker... what if you needed a Passport with a Visa stamp to use them?

You have to visit the council office to obtain the Visa Stamp, and can only travel to outposts you have stamps for.

Perhaps even a Hunter's lodge option to purchase a visa for your dwelling?

Maybe throw in a req charge, but make it a little less accurate? Find yourself in the jungle outside acehigh wien you were aiming for pleasantville? I think it would still be good fun, and flinging people into random parts of the island helps with exploration too. I'm notr sure what price would be a good deal though. It would have to be less than an average one-shot price, but high enough that people don't just use it all the time.

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You can toast them, but it's dark magic. - MotPax on hotdog buns.

Maybe throw in a random event that sends you somewhere completely different. (Also known as the oops my bad hee hee event) Think about it, you're trusting your life and limbs to a bunch of midgets with a catapult. They already have your money, cigs and/or organs, why should they be the best in their job? (Especially if they happen to be ill mannered and/or drunk at the time)

Chances are, everyone has played a game where they have to set the angle and power before firing a shot, and it tends to be a few rounds of trial and error (and bloody bloody death) before you get it right. For a catapult, a few degrees to the right is the difference between the Jungles of Acehigh and the Pointy Mountains of Death in Cyber City. And if there is not enough tension in the catapult, instead of enjoying a steak in Pleasantville, you're eating muck in the swamps around the lake outside Central.

(EDIT: also, the terrain you land on could determine on how much HP you lose from the trip. Landing in the water or a grassy plain (at an angle, of course.) is going to be a much softer landing than say the mentioned Pointy Mountains of Death.)

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I am the one hiding under your bed, teeth ground sharp and...WAIT! Come back! Don't call the cops!

The original Catapults had two options, First Class, or Budget Travel. What if first class got you to your intended destination most of the time, but budget travel had a 50% chance of landing you on some random map square?

From what I remember of the travel agencies; First class would get you to your destination and take off a couple hp whereas with budget travel, you would need to visit the hospital tent because it would take most of your hp away since according to the flavour text you would crash into a tree and then fall out of it.

The travel agencies... I remember that every time you used them, you always feel like rping that your character is screaming at the top of his lungs as he goes flying through the sky.

Chimental,
if you were in the business of launching people through the skies, you would work out the angles (there are two needed btw), rotational corrections of the Earth (assuming that we're not at the equator) and correcting for the wind before using it.
I saw the midgets basically having a book telling them what angles to launch it at so you don't have to worry about landing in AceHigh instead of PleasantVille.
The only thing you'd have to worry about is getting enough power out of the catapult. Assuming of course that the wind is either constant or not there at all.
Sorry I'm a physicist, so projectile motion is child's play for me.

Although it would be nice to have them back again, I hate having to trek down from CC to IC then back back to CC to work on my dwelling.

Being that some of the businesses can fill you with either Cake or Death, rent out hairy ladies of the evening that may rob you blind, and there's a franchise where all employees are named 'Mike', it is possible that you may not exactly need a license or a decree from MIT to operate heavy machinery.

And true, they may have a book, but why I do I keep hearing this midget voice in the back of my head saying,

'Book?! I don need no facki'n book! I'll piss inta the wind to figur out where it's blow'n. Ya load th' bastards in, and watch 'em fly.'

(Again, this is why I play a Mutant and never a Midget.)

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I am the one hiding under your bed, teeth ground sharp and...WAIT! Come back! Don't call the cops!

Midgets read?

Akogi - Midgets aren't physicists. A highly trained Midget is one that knows their four times table, and they'd generally keep quiet about it because most other Midgets would be deeply suspicious of such rampant intellectual snobbery.
As for rotational corrections of the Earth, they'd think that that was something that happened after you'd drunk too much cider.
I don't think that we can count on Midgets being too professional about this. They'd point you in roughly the right direction and let loose.

If yer lucky.

Yeah, they might just point you in A direction and pull the release. As someone said, they already have your req, ciggies and/or organs, I'm sure they don't have the business sense to think about "repeat customers"...

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Build a man a fire, he'll be warm for a night. Set a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.

It's because they know you'll come crawling back (literally) to them because your feet hurt and you don't want to make the trek from point A to point Q

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I am the one hiding under your bed, teeth ground sharp and...WAIT! Come back! Don't call the cops!

The Midgets didn't set up the Travel Agency, they just worked there. Nobody had been foolish enough to expect them to do physics or math; the catapults were carefully designed not to need any calculations on their part. All they ever did was stretch out the bungee cords and spin the elevation wheels to match up with pre-set crosshairs.

The cost was proportional to your level: cheap for first-levels, more expensive for fifteenth-levels. Going first-class was double the budget fare. If you went budget you'd arrive with 1% of your starting hit points, but never less than 1 hp. First class travel left you with more like 90% -- but again, never less than 1 hp. You soon learned that if you had multiple stops to make (with no fighting in between) such as a trading expedition,* you were better off going budget and not healing until your travel was done. If you then forgot and went off into the jungle with 1 hp... well, you had the comfort of knowing you were neither the first nor the last to make that mistake.

We are going to have other ways to travel soon.

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* Yes, there was trading back in those days, but not like it is now. Sometimes you had to hunt a very long time to find an eBoy's who would buy your coffee.

1st: Ah. Pre-set crosshairs. That makes a bit of sense. Even drunk midgets would be figure out how to fire a catapult like that most of the time.

2nd: As for the new transportation methods:
*crosses fingers*
Please let it be a Bulldozer. C'mooooon Bulldozer.

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I am the one hiding under your bed, teeth ground sharp and...WAIT! Come back! Don't call the cops!