Contracts and trading

[Mad Hollander]

Seems the trade is a bit disbalanced. I've spent about a week and bought Python, then Boa Cruiser and then Boa Cruiser with Naval Energy unit. I.e. today I've earned more then 200,000cr. Each of the ships that I had, I had upgraded with the top most units such as Military shield enhancement and etc.
When I buy the something in the Contracts section, usually it is possible to sell with a profit immidiately at the same planet. Moreover, there is no any sanctions on the contract expiration. I.e. I can sell the cargo from contract at the first appropriate planet and there are neither fine nor legal status changes for that.

The overall result is quite strange - I'm just Dangerous with about 600 kills and have got an Iron Ass on my Boa Cruiser with Naval Energy Unit.

P.S. Looks like the Rock Hermit locator is quite useless, because it is just wasting the time and money. To me, this device is actual for ships such as Asp or Fer de Lance.

[Ranthe]

When I buy the something in the Contracts section, usually it is possible to sell with a profit immidiately at the same planet. Moreover, there is no any sanctions on the contract expiration. I.e. I can sell the cargo from contract at the first appropriate planet and there are neither fine nor legal status changes for that.

True, but then you can't complete the contract at the destination unless you've got the quantity of goods specified - as I found out when I mistakenly sold several dozen tons of booze at one system then at the destination had to scrounge around the local systems to cobble together enough to fulfil the original contract in time.

I've no idea what happens if you fail to meet your contract though, apart from your haulage reputation dropping and (presumably) lesser value contracts being offered.

[Diziet Sma]

You're kind of missing the point in both cases, Mad Hollander.

If you actually continue to fulfil contracts up until you get a perfect reputation, you'll start getting contracts that are FAR more profitable than the ones you see offered now. You may even run at a loss on the early contracts, but that's not important, because the big money is in the gold and platinum contracts you'll be offered once your reputation is good enough.

If you break contracts, your reputation suffers, and you'll never get the really profitable contracts, which is a fitting punishment..


As for the Rock Hermit locator, it's far from useless, if you're specifically trying to find rock hermits. Especially the ones that aren't near the spacelanes.. they're not all placed where you'll just blunder into them anyway.. And yes, there are good (profitable) reasons for finding hermits at times..

[cim]

If you break contracts, your reputation suffers, and you'll never get the really profitable contracts, which is a fitting punishment..

True, but if you can get enough contracts to buy all the ship equipment there is, on one of the most expensive ships in the game, without actually defaulting on any of them and suffering the associated reputation loss until it's too late, and then suffering no further penalty, the system is probably broken. Sure, you're missing out on several further millions ... but it's not as if there's an in-game use for that money.

Passenger contracts are much more limited because you can't take the passenger's advance and then fail to deliver them - you very quickly run out of free cabins and have to actually default on the contracts before they'll give you any more.

The easiest solution is probably to disallow taking on contracts that sum to more than the capacity of your vessel, even if you might have free hold space at this time. That way you can default on two or three at most.

[Mad Hollander]

True, but if you can get enough contracts to buy all the ship equipment there is, on one of the most expensive ships in the game, without actually defaulting on any of them and suffering the associated reputation loss until it's too late, and then suffering no further penalty, the system is probably broken. Sure, you're missing out on several further millions ... but it's not as if there's an in-game use for that money.

Looks like reputation system works strange and there is no possbility to use the millions when you have the most expensive ship.

[Smivs]

Looks like reputation system works strange and there is no possbility to use the millions when you have the most expensive ship.

The reputation system is fine - as you deliver more contracts, your reputation increases and you are offered better and more profitable contracts. That is correct behaviour and is as it should be.
The money you earn though is a 'problem' as there are only so many ways you can spend it in-game. Of course if you extend your purchasing to OXP ships you can spend a fortune - several cost over 1 000 000 Cr. However the game does need more ways of spending money as it is far to easy to amass a fortune and find there is little to do with it.
Frankly the best way to spend your surplus is to engage in ever-more-deadly fire-fights and rack up some horrendous repair bills. Several of us often have repairs totalling tens of thousands of credits after a 'good' run.

[Eric Walch]

The easiest solution is probably to disallow taking on contracts that sum to more than the capacity of your vessel, even if you might have free hold space at this time. That way you can default on two or three at most.

Would it not be easier to lower the discount for commanders with a bad reputation?

The reason you can earn money by immediately selling it, is because you get a discount on the local prise. Making the discount dependent on low reputation will stop the advantage after a few times. ...... Not immediately, but at least when the contracts start to time out. When only looking at the cargo capacity, you prevent the legal way of selling the cargo immediately because you spot a system on your way, were you can expect to buy it back at a better price. And that way creating cargo room for more contracts. So, in my opinion it should be allowed to have more contracts running simultaneously that the size of your hold.

[Diziet Sma]

If you break contracts, your reputation suffers, and you'll never get the really profitable contracts, which is a fitting punishment..

True, but if you can get enough contracts to buy all the ship equipment there is, on one of the most expensive ships in the game, without actually defaulting on any of them and suffering the associated reputation loss until it's too late, and then suffering no further penalty, the system is probably broken. Sure, you're missing out on several further millions ... but it's not as if there's an in-game use for that money.

Is it my imagination, or are cargo contracts in trunk more expensive up-front? I noticed the new contracts screen describes the up-front costs as "insurance" against failure to deliver.. Because that strikes me as a possible solution.. make the cost high enough so you will always make a loss if you sell the cargo off, rather than fulfil the contract.

[Eric Walch]

Is it my imagination, or are cargo contracts in trunk more expensive up-front?

No, on the cargo contracts you pay only the actual station value for that commodity minus a discount. That means, you always earn on it when selling locally.
I don't think Cim changed anything in the logic. What he did though, was removing all the code from de Objective-C code and translate it to JS. That means in trunk, an oxp could manipulate or replace the trading code.

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Passenger contracts work different. There you get part of the payment in advance. I once tried to cheat by buying 2 passenger cabins for a Jameson, take 2 heavy passenger contacts that pay a bigger advance that the cost of the cabin, and never deliver the passengers. That way you have more money to spend at the start. But, at the end it showed that the missing 10 tons cargo room for the passengers cost more profit from missed trading, than the advance fee gives. Unless you deliver the passengers of cause, but those trips are to dangerous for a starting Jameson.

[cim]

The easiest solution is probably to disallow taking on contracts that sum to more than the capacity of your vessel, even if you might have free hold space at this time. That way you can default on two or three at most.

Would it not be easier to lower the discount for commanders with a bad reputation?

The thing is, you only get the bad reputation when you actually fail to deliver the contract. Diso to Leesti is ~2 hours. If you take and immediately sell in the market every contract available at each (at least, those that fit in a Python), bouncing back and forth between each one, you'll then have a lot of contracts outstanding by the time the first one actually expires. Sure, you won't be getting any more contracts for a long time at that point, as your reputation plummets to -7 and gets held there by the rest of your contracts timing out over the next couple of months, but you've already got the money by then.

Is it my imagination, or are cargo contracts in trunk more expensive up-front? I noticed the new contracts screen describes the up-front costs as "insurance" against failure to deliver.. Because that strikes me as a possible solution.. make the cost high enough so you will always make a loss if you sell the cargo off, rather than fulfil the contract.

They're not supposed (yet) to be any different in price for the same contract. (The trunk code does bias towards smaller contracts than 1.76, which have smaller bulk discounts, so that might explain it)

That's probably a nicer way to do it, though. I think if I double the up-front cost needed for the same profit, that should prevent this exploit except for Food (where it's not a big money-maker) and Narcotics (where leaving a station with 115 TC of Narcotics has its own problems)

[Diziet Sma]

That's probably a nicer way to do it, though. I think if I double the up-front cost needed for the same profit, that should prevent this exploit except for Food (where it's not a big money-maker) and Narcotics (where leaving a station with 115 TC of Narcotics has its own problems)

It could be explained away as cost of the goods, plus insurance..

[Switeck]

It's worth mentioning my Cargo Contract Cruelty link, as I've covered most points there already.

Many (if not most once you get a great reputation) cargo contracts should be less than ~20 Light Years distance. The reward for going past a couple 6-6.8 LY jumps has to be great enough to justify them, as too does delivering to a dangerous system. Cargo Contracts should represent both special shipments as well as regular heavy traffic. Demand would have to be extremely specialized and/or enormous to justify long-ranged hauls when other far-closer systems have similar commodities which can be delivered in far larger quantities.

Would it not be easier to lower the discount for commanders with a bad reputation?

Yes, traders with bad reputation should have to pay more for the contracts than normal, receive less payout on delivery, and see fewer short-ranged contracts (long-ranged ones are more desperate) -- cutting into their profit multiple ways. But they still have to have incentives to do cargo contracts, so the effects can be relatively small if the bad reputation is only a point or 2 below neutral.

Traders with good reputations should get the contracts for less credits up-front (than buying the cargo regularly would cost), better payout on delivery, and see predominately more short-ranged contracts rather than just more long-ranged contracts.
If your reputation is good enough, you should even see regular short routes (of 1-3 jumps) for heavily traded goods...like luxuries to an agricultural world and in the other direction liquors/wines to a rich industrial.

As-is, (in Oollite v1.76.1) cargo contracts don't make sense -- they're generated based on the station's current goods-for-sale, which gets pretty goofy if you only check them after you've just sold off your previous cargo and bought up what you would normally buy. With an Anaconda and cleaning the market out of "safe" items, you'd see cargo contracts only for slaves, narcotics, and firearms!

[Eric Walch]

As-is, (in Oollite v1.76.1) cargo contracts don't make sense -- they're generated based on the station's current goods-for-sale, which gets pretty goofy if you only check them after you've just sold off your previous cargo and bought up what you would normally buy.

That part is fixed in trunk by cim. The contracts are now generated when entering the system, and not when visiting the contract screen.

[Diziet Sma]

Many (if not most once you get a great reputation) cargo contracts should be less than ~20 Light Years distance. The reward for going past a couple 6-6.8 LY jumps has to be great enough to justify them, as too does delivering to a dangerous system. Cargo Contracts should represent both special shipments as well as regular heavy traffic. Demand would have to be extremely specialized and/or enormous to justify long-ranged hauls when other far-closer systems have similar commodities which can be delivered in far larger quantities.

When I see a contract for a long-haul job, I just assume it's a specialised commodity. After all, both Deep-fried Lavian Tree-grubs and recycled Soylent Green chips are classed as "food", but only one would be considered a delicacy..

[Switeck]

When I see a contract for a long-haul job, I just assume it's a specialised commodity. After all, both Deep-fried Lavian Tree-grubs and recycled Soylent Green chips are classed as "food", but only one would be considered a delicacy..

On the assumption that long range contracts are special deliveries instead of regular heavy traffic, one would expect a greater profit than regular trading for doing so. Now that the buying price for contracts is increased, the profit for delivery should be increased since you're taking a direct credit loss as well as a reputation loss for failed contracts.