NPC Haul Your Cargo

[Gouanaco]

So far in Oolite with or without oxps you can be hired to haul cargo but you cant ever put out cargo deals for npcs and the more you pay etc the higher chance the cargo will get there...

This could even lead to end game content not just with cargo but with all professions... like forming your own faction of bounty hunters or cargo hauling. Just an idea/suggestion for end game players and a goal to reach etc.



Thought's? Suggestions?

[Diziet Sma]

Interesting concept..

Very interesting, even.

[Cpt]

Next you'll be building on the colonisation oxp prototype to make new system bases to trade to thus further expanding your empire!

[Smivs]

I think the problem with ideas like this is that they basically amount to free money. The auto-asteroid-mining idea of a while ago was similar - you outlay a bit of money, others(NPCs) do the work for you and you rake in the credits at the end.
The thing is you can only afford to do these things when you have a bit of spare cash but as most players find they have surplus cash once they are established they don't really need any more, so by the time you can do this you don't need to.
A better idea might be to have an OXP where you can trade big - you buy a few hundred TC of something, then hire an Anaconda or whatever to transport it for you and then it's your job to escort it and make sure it gets where you want it. Obviously to make this fun you would want to spawn a few extra pirates along the way...

[Gouanaco]

Yeh but it would be a cool way of making stacks of huge amounts of end-game cash... maybe there could be some really expensive stuff to buy... like if you make your own fleet then you would pay for all the ships if you made a cargo company it would cost alot to hire escorts or expanding your trading empire.

It wouldn't be cheap to construct a Station for yourself. would probably 1mill credits or more.. and then you would expand and build stations in every system so on and so forth

[Smivs]

Ha, yes but then you end up behind a desk running a business, not flying around having fun.

[Gouanaco]

Well i guess thats were managers comes in... have you ever played Mount & Blade: Warband.
You can own heaps of towns (known as fiefs) and also own kinda like shops/workshops that produce basically cash for you.

You can still roam around doing stuff while they just give you a amount of cash every week.

This could be possible.

Get money... spend money on get things.... the things get you more money.

It would be fun seeing one of your ships hauling cargo in a system you accept trade in.

You just sit back or Fly around while your money comes in. Instead of choosing who you want to haul your cargo you just let your manager decide for you... you just pick the parameters... like only skilled traders and within 5000cred - 6000cred payments only etc

[JazHaz]

The trouble with all these things are that they just make free money for you. And you haven't got anything to spend it all on. What's the point?

[Norby]

Sounds interesting, you can check escorting in  Hired Guns. I suggest to make some new missions first based on your ideas where you can narrow the availability and pay low (much lower) values to maintain the effort-payment balance with the existing money making possibilities. Better if the money is not the (only) goal but making things which record your name, etc.
Please think a bit more on the goals, but it is a good start to be an OXP maker in the course of time.

[Smivs]

The problem is not making money, but spending it, hence the discussion here. Once established, a player will always have more money coming in than going out unless they play an extreme style of game. So the problem is what to do with it, not how to get it.

[Gouanaco]

The problem is not making money, but spending it, hence the discussion here. Once established, a player will always have more money coming in than going out unless they play an extreme style of game. So the problem is what to do with it, not how to get it.

well... i did suggest that there be really expensive stuff like... buying your own station for 1mil credits... and if you wanted to expand you would want to buy/build a station in every system. Like the black monks have done. They have heaps of money so they build stations almost everywhere.


Then you would have to think about risking building your stations in dangerous systems and would you be able to hire enough Guards to guard your trading corporation.

[ZygoUgo]

Plus you could then have enough cash to hire, repair, and equip a group of mercenarys you can call on when entering witch-space and attempting to capture those thargoid outposts that keep advancing nearer. Not that the public know about those or that Gal-Navy losses mean their forces are dwindling and that private mercenary forces such as yourself (and others you may bump in to there) are the only hope of keeping the playing field level.
Whose to say that every corporate boss is sitting around on his/her/its millions sunning him/her/itself?
But don't tell the public I told you about that

[Diziet Sma]

well... i did suggest that there be really expensive stuff like... buying your own station for 1mil credits...

Heck.. there are ships that cost way more than that.. and the owners still struggle to find stuff to blow their money on..

Then you would have to think about risking building your stations in dangerous systems and would you be able to hire enough Guards to guard your trading corporation.

This sounds very much like some other proposals that have been made and discussed before.. the upshot is, no matter what you do, the point will come when you will just end up rolling in more $ than you know what to do with.. and you will be merely managing your Empire, instead of getting out there and having fun..

Of course, some folks might find being a manager to be fun.. but I couldn't think of anything more boring than laying about on unspendable piles of cash that took you little to no effort to "earn",

[Norby]

For sure you can balance the maintenance cost of the purchaseable stations including fees of hired guards against the constant (programmed) raids to eat up the whole profit or more - see venture capital.

Can be a good challenge if you have stations in far systems and you get messages about pirate groups started travel to attack one of them and you need to arrive in time to defend your investment. When you arrived into the penult system and you see you can not arrive in time then you can hire extremly costly guards to increase your odds or make the battle long enough to arrive - with some fantasy you can fabricate mission-like activities aroud this idea.

[cim]

Once established, a player will always have more money coming in than going out unless they play an extreme style of game. So the problem is what to do with it, not how to get it.

Well, arguably the problem is that while the ability to make money quickly rises as you progress through the game, your need to spend it remains pretty much constant (if not also decreasing)

Trading has to allow for relatively easy and reliable profits as it's about the only activity which can be successfully done in a factory-model Cobra III. Similarly the outgoings for a beginning player must be relatively low as they won't have any cash reserves if things go wrong.

The problem seems to me to be that the outgoings don't increase significantly as you get further in: your service costs remain virtually unchanged (and very low) until you get the "big 3" equipment items (two of which are from late-game missions anyway) - and even adding those three only about doubles the service cost. While equipment repair can be expensive, all the really expensive items can again pay for themselves in reduced damage taken. Meanwhile your income possibilities get bigger with every upgrade: everything, with the exception of mining, is even more profitable than standard trading, and many sources of income can be combined with each other fairly efficiently.