[RELEASE] New Cargoes OXP (1.2.3 released 9 February 2013)

[cim]

One of the things that slightly disappointed me about the original Elite was that you couldn't really follow in the footsteps of the fictional traders. There's a bit in the Dark Wheel where Alex Ryder is at Xezaor looking for cargo, notices that Durassion ore is available at a good price, and might sell well at Lave. But it's a long journey, and the travel would be worthless if a better deposit was found. He decides it's too risky and looks elsewhere. Later fiction has continued much the same idea that your basic Agri-Ind pair of planets won't generally cover a trader's expenses, and so longer and riskier trade routes develop.

In Elite, though, you could only buy general Minerals. And even if Xezaor has minerals at a good price, there's probably somewhere much closer than Lave to sell them for profit. Oolite - while a little more flexible in the cargo department - has much the same limitations ... but is extensible enough to work around them.

So, introducing the New Cargoes OXP. Any cargo you can imagine - provided it can reasonably be described under one of the 14 generic headings of 1TC cargo - can be offered for sale at some main stations and some OXP stations, and be sold for profit at others. Market collapses and variation are included, so the trading involves a degree of risk. Any OXP can define cargo and other functionality for the New Cargoes framework

There are two releases now available - one for Oolite 1.76, and one for Oolite 1.77:
For 1.76, download New Cargoes 1.1.0
For 1.77, download New Cargoes 1.2.3

Documentation is now available on the wiki: [wiki]New_Cargoes[/wiki]

This adds over 90 fixed cargo types (all 1TC categories except Alien Items included) to the eight charts, based on the information in planetinfo, Famous Planets OXP, the Elite and Oolite manual, various bits of Oolite fiction, and a few other OXPs. Once you've listened to a bit of trader gossip, you may be able to start deducing where other trade routes might exist, too.

It also adds 20 dynamic cargo types to all galaxies. These are short-lived trade routes with higher profit than the regular ones. You'll need to buy the TraderNet subscription from the shipyard to have much chance at these.

Other options for lucrative deals can be found on the trade floor, including delivery contracts, auctions, and collectors of rare goods.

How to use it.
1) Start Oolite, and wait 10 seconds after loading your game for it to do first-time market initialisation (once you've saved and reloaded this is no longer needed)
2a) In 1.76, F8 F8 F8 (i.e. F8 from contract offers) in any main station will take you to the specialist goods market. Look at the offers, buy and sell cargo, visit the trade floor for special deals, and listen to the mostly-accurate gossip at the trade bar to find good trade routes.
2b) In 1.77, use F4 to get to the Interfaces screen, then select "Speciality Cargo Trading"
3) Take cargo from the place that sells it to the place that buys it for massive profits. (Massive profits not guaranteed)

The cargo will take up space in your hold as if it were normal generic cargo of that type - and you can sell it like that if you need the money, it can get blown up if your shields are breached, and you can dump it to shake off pirates. Similarly, if you scoop up cargo along your journey, there's a (small) chance that it will be special cargo.

Change log
1.2.3: Fix bug with fetch contract pricing and regional data load/save. Thanks to Solonar and Keeper for reports.
1.2.2: Fix serious bug with cargo being lost on launch. Thanks to Solonar for patient diagnostic work.
1.2.1: Fix bug preventing permits from being offered
1.2.0: Requires 1.77, moved access to interfaces screen, minor upgrades.
1.1.0: Various upgrades and bug fixes; removal of dependency on Snoopers.
1.0.6: Fix bugs with the handling of permits, Kiota stations, and open contracts found by Capt. Murphy, BuggyBY and XLA
1.0.5: Fix world script loading order bug found by Eric Walch
1.0.4: Fix open contract and Ore Processor bugs found by Wardy and BuggyBY
1.0.3: Fix for handling of legal controls at some OXP stations; additional API functions
1.0.2: Fix for permit plus misjump bug found by Capt. Murphy
1.0.1: Additional API function for HyperCargo compatibility.
1.0.0: Initial release

[maik]

great, added it to the WIP section of the [wiki]OXP List[/wiki]

[Gimi]

Brilliant cim, I like this.

Two things.
1. This would be brilliant with Snoopers integration for those time limited exclusive trading opportunities.
2. Given all the Elite/Oolite fiction out there, I would suggest that you try to mobilise some help from the forum in finding what goods should be on offer where and in what should sell at obscene prices and where. In some cases the system description gives us a lot of hints.

[ulaidian]

I've had a go of it, and I have found no problems what so ever.. it really does have the potential to be the 'thinking Jameson's' trade choice. A load more, different and random, types of cargo, and it'll be perfect.


Well done!

[submersible]

Tested very quickly . Works for me, are you covering other galaxies?

[cim]

Great. No bugs found is what I was hoping for. Hopefully it will stay that way!

As regards the future:
- A bit of testing shows that after you add about 2300 types of specific cargo {1,2}, the Javascript VM runs out of memory. That being the case, and wanting to leave room both for other OXPs to add their own cargoes and for other OXPs to do unrelated things that require a bit of memory allocation, I'm going to say that 512 cargoes is probably the limit for New Cargoes itself.
- Therefore, it's not going to be practical to add unique cargoes for every system. So "Lethal Brandy" rather than separate Cebetalaian and Rizalaian lethal brandy, for instance. (That still leaves space for an OXP mission to revolve around a particular consignment of Rizalaian lethal brandy, of course)
- Coverage of all eight galaxies is the aim. Galaxy 1 has the most source material, though, both in fiction and in-game materials, so seems a sensible place to start.
- For technical reasons, coverage should be roughly balanced across the generic trade goods. There is a known subtle bug in 0.0.1 caused by the only special goods being liquor/wines, which would be best avoided by having equal-ish numbers of each type.
- As Gimi says, there is a lot of source material and a lot of information in the planet descriptions (especially with the extended descriptions of Famous Planets) and so any assistance that people want to provide on collating trade goods and routes will be extremely welcome, and of course will be credited in the OXP. (For now, lacking any better ideas for organisation, just post your suggestions in this thread)
- Definitely room for Snoopers integration, though I don't want to step on the excellent BlOomberg Markets here.

A few questions regarding trade routes and profits, then:
A good Ind/Agri trading pair should make around 20Cr./TC on average just trading the expensive generic goods - Computers, Furs, Liquor, Luxuries or Machinery. (Now, of course, if you have a big trader like a Boa, you won't be getting that margin on your entire hold, but still) By taking specialist goods you're doing longer distances, with much less flexibility to sell elsewhere if the prices aren't good enough, and heading for specific planets so you have less opportunity to avoid dangerous systems if you have something like the Tortuga Expanse or Kob's Ladder to traverse.

While all these values are customisable per cargo, it's obviously going to save a lot of typing if the default values are sensible for most cargo already. So, first question: what sort of profit would you want to get on average for a longer route to make it worth doing?

Second question, especially relevant for the Python and Boa pilots - how much of a trade good would you need to be able to buy to make it worth shipping?

{1} Which sounds a lot, but is only barely enough for each planet to have one unique trade good. The Ooniverse is big...
{2} Looking at the Oolite source code, it seems the Javascript VM only has 8Mb allocated in the JS_NewRuntime call. If any developers are reading, out of curiosity is there any issue with increasing this in future Oolite versions, or is there a particular reason it's set to that level?

[ulaidian]

I'm still fairly green, so am still in G1.. I have the equipment to jump, but there is always a job to be done (you know how it is for us indies).
In regards to profit, personally, I will only sell for 10% more than I paid at a minimum..(this is what I decided in my fresh Cobby with the ink still wet on my license) obviously aiming for the 60c -> 100c computers etc.

I like this OXP, as it doesn't allow you to be complaicent.. you actually do have to think about what there is, where is good for it, and if it features in your agenda.

[pagroove]

This sounds good.

Maybe splitting up the normal goods in categories would help also:

For example:

Food in - Seafood, Bug food, Breads, rice, etc etc.
In that way and combined with planet names you can easily create lots of unique cargo's.

Agree with the snoopers suggestion for the extra randomness.

[cim]

0.1.0 is now ready - download link and first post updated.

Major changes (other than the complete change of available cargo):
- profitability of special cargo is significantly increased. On a good day and a favourable trade route, you should be able to earn roughly twice what you would have done by making the same number of jumps between a suitable Agri/Ind pair. I managed to sell the contents of my Cobra's hold for just over 13kCr profit.
- as a result, opportunistic trading of the occasional TC you pick up here and there can get you a very easy few hundred credits. That is, if you can find a buyer at all.
- several bugs with goods pricing and availability are fixed.

Next up will be short-lived trade routes - natural disasters, visiting dignitaries, interplanetary sports tournaments, etc. - announced through Snoopers and available in all eight galaxies.

[Lestradae]

Is it possible per JS to have special cargoes bigger than 1t - say, 100t etc.?

And, just a suggestion, what about 1kg of gems or 1t of gold or platinum as special cargo?

[cim]

Is it possible per JS to have special cargoes bigger than 1t - say, 100t etc.?

Not as far as I can tell. Cargo purchase and sales on the main market (and combat damage, dumping and scooping) are all at 1t a time and difficult or impossible to prevent.

And, just a suggestion, what about 1kg of gems or 1t of gold or platinum as special cargo?

At 20-80kCr. per unit, that would generally be a little impractical. But you can buy it as normal cargo, and I believe it will take up hold-space accordingly once you have enough of it.

[cim]

0.2.0 is now out - dynamic trade routes in all 8 galaxies, notified through Snoopers if the TraderNet subscription is purchased.

Also fixes a couple of pricing-related bugs (existing cargo prices will probably go down very slightly as a result, but the new dynamic routes should be compensation enough) and a very serious "intergalactic recession" bug which would, over time, have led to the collapse of all trade. Upgrading from 0.1.0 is therefore strongly recommended.

[pagroove]

Nice! Downloading

[cim]

Here's 0.3.0. (link in first post) Important changes:

• Galaxy 2 is now populated with trade routes.
• Significant efficiency improvements in some calculations, so you shouldn't get odd delays when entering/leaving witchspace any more.
• Adjustment to the way TraderNet works to make it less likely that you'll miss news.
• A new "trade floor" option on the F8 F8 F8 screen. At the moment, this will sometimes contain auctioneers.

Also various tweaks and bug fixes, most of which you probably won't notice or need to worry about.

There are currently two different auction rules to learn - six more are planned for later. Generally the auction will be for cargo the planet already sells, but there's a chance that you'll get something more interesting. There are also a few famous auctioneers who travel the galaxies selling large quantities of cargo.

Thanks to Disembodied for suggesting auctions.

Coming up later: more activity on the trade floor - more auction rules, people offering various sorts of trade contracts, collectors who are looking for rare goods not usually sold in Galcop space, etc. - as well as the regular trade routes for the other 6 charts (I've figured out a quicker way to generate most of the trade route information, so it shouldn't take quite so long to put together as the first 2 charts did)

As usual, bug reports, comments, suggestions, and tales of spectacular trading profits or losses are appreciated.

[Greyth]

Oh my word! Grabbing a download...