Long Range Contracts.

[Okti]

I don't know if it is a bug or not. While I am doing Long Range Contracts with enough number of ordinary items, I am offered precious items like gold, gemstones and platinum. And I get those till I save the game.

But when the saved game is loaded, if a contract is saved with precious metals, you get the offer but you end up doing several more normal contracts, and then you are offered those again.

[Switeck]

Reputation decays (at a random rate that's checked on each jump) and you only get the precious metals contracts *IF* you have the absolute highest reputation.

Also, if the station has no precious metals for sale, it won't offer you any contracts for them. Temporarily sell your precious metals to the station, THEN check contracts.

[Commander McLane]

Also, if the station has no precious metals for sale, it won't offer you any contracts for them. Temporarily sell your precious metals to the station, THEN check contracts.

I wasn't aware of this relation. That's a precious hint for the contract business.

[Okti]

But it must not be expected the reputation drops a saved game with good reputation, instantly when loaded.

[Switeck]

Oh it might indeed be glitched up, but I need you to rule out those causes.
Because I've seen long stretches when there were no contracts at all.

[Commander McLane]

But it must not be expected the reputation drops a saved game with good reputation, instantly when loaded.

There is a random element of +/- 1 to your reputation. It is possible that reloading your game resets the random number. I don't know the details, though.

[Okti]

Ok, the plot the recreate this issue is,

Have some contracts till you get offered precious ones. At this point it may be an Idea to use my cheat lrs with jump planner bought to save time. And continue with that, you get a precious item contract most of the times. Then save the game and reload the saved game. You will find out you are not getting the precious metal contacts at all apart from the system had one in your saved game.

[Switeck]

Me? I practically game the cargo contracts. I once ended up with just over 40,000g of gems from contracts I knew were going to fail because I was getting them at ~5-10 credits per gram. Silly me forgot one little kicker: you can only sell up to 127 of anything to a single station.
But this was some time ago, back in v1.72-v1.74 days. New bugs associated with cargo contracts may have slipped in.

[Eric Walch]

I don't know if it is a bug or not. While I am doing Long Range Contracts with enough number of ordinary items, I am offered precious items like gold, gemstones and platinum. And I get those till I save the game.

But when the saved game is loaded, if a contract is saved with precious metals, you get the offer but you end up doing several more normal contracts, and then you are offered those again.

I never realised this, but what switeck writes is true and this is probably the inconsistency you are noticing.

For creating contracts Oolite generates a random number. This number stays the same as long as you stay in the system and is saved, so there is no randomness.
The other parameter for generating contracts is the presence of goods in the local and destination system. There must be plenty in the local and little in the target. Apparently are the results cached and I do not see the contract change mentioned by Switeck immediately, but when selling stuff, saving and loading, the contracts change.

So, I assumes you bought all the precious metals before saving. Then on loading, it was detected that this is a station without such metals, so there were no such contracts generated.

[Okti]

The most I got was 170 000 credits and if you look for other contracts on the way have more it is much better than the milk runs

[Okti]

I don't know if it is a bug or not. While I am doing Long Range Contracts with enough number of ordinary items, I am offered precious items like gold, gemstones and platinum. And I get those till I save the game.

But when the saved game is loaded, if a contract is saved with precious metals, you get the offer but you end up doing several more normal contracts, and then you are offered those again.

I never realised this, but what switeck writes is true and this is probably the inconsistency you are noticing.

For creating contracts Oolite generates a random number. This number stays the same as long as you stay in the system and is saved, so there is no randomness.
The other parameter for generating contracts is the presence of goods in the local and destination system. There must be plenty in the local and little in the target. Apparently are the results cached and I do not see the contract change mentioned by Switeck immediately, but when selling stuff, saving and loading, the contracts change.

So, I assumes you bought all the precious metals before saving. Then on loading, it was detected that this is a station without such metals, so there were no such contracts generated.

I think it may be looked at if there is a bug not restoring the contract reputation from a saved file.