Shortage of small cargo contracts

[ffutures]

This is why I'm using the Planet Express ship - not a lot of cargo space, and it is definitely NOT built for prolonged combat, but it's got legs and can outrun most ships even if it's out of fuel, provided they don't have injectors.

[Switeck]

A saner and more practical suggestion is just to make a few more small contracts available, for Cobra III-sized ships, and tone down the precious metals and gems contracts too.

I have a Cargo Contract Mod OXZ out for some time now that makes slightly more smaller contracts (30-35 tc) than the original and also sets the profitability of contracts based on in-game buying and selling price differences instead of using the hidden bonus multiplier that the original one uses. It also tries harder to find "better" contracts based on your reputation -- so fewer food/minerals ones that pay next-to-nothing at higher rep.

Regular contracts tend to be slightly more profitable than the original, but they're not free credits anymore than regular trading is.
Precious metals and gems contracts tend to be much lower profitability per kg/g carried and tend to be slightly smaller in quantity.
The highest precious contract profit possible is from platinum, which is 18 credits per kg for poor agri. to rich industrial. The original contracts had this exceeding 50 credits per kg!

The best regular contracts are still worth doing even when you start getting precious metals and gems contracts, if you have spare cargo capacity. There are sometimes 30-35 tc computer or fur contracts that pay ~1k credits profit.

[Disembodied]

Sounds interesting, Switeck! Would there be any mileage though in creating a "Tramp Steamer"-style OXP which makes numerous small contracts - 5TC and up - available, while cutting back on the amount of "loose cargo" available on the open market? Rather than players primarily earning money as buyers and sellers of goods, they'd mostly be selling their services as carriers: receiving a percentage of the fee up front, with the bulk on delivery. Late (and short-quantity - say, if 2TC of your 10TC load of Furs get totalled) deliveries pay progressively less. The sort of contracts that starting players with no reputation would be offered would be short range and not much time pressure - but wouldn't pay very much. Once reputations start to go up, the contracts on offer would include longer-range, higher-value and more urgent deliveries.

Earnings wouldn't be tied nearly so much to the actual value of the goods: the value of the delivery contract would be what was important. Someone might really, really need 8TC of alloys, pronto, and be prepared to pay a lot more for that delivery than they would for some random Luxuries which the player happened to bring along.

[Norby]

Someone might really, really need 8TC of alloys

I suggest to extend this idea and clear the available amount of the requested commodity on the destination station, which is the reason why the customer can not buy it from the local market. I suggest also to clear this on all stations in the system (system.stations).

[Disembodied]

Someone might really, really need 8TC of alloys

I suggest to extend this idea and clear the available amount of the requested commodity on the destination station, which is the reason why the customer can not buy it from the local market. I suggest also to clear this on all stations in the system (system.stations).

Makes sense, yes. Ideally it would be good if there was some way to give the player a quantity of a special brand of alloys, which couldn't be obtained anywhere else, but clearing the destination markets of the specific commodity for the duration of the contract would be a useful workaround.

[Switeck]

Sounds interesting, Switeck! Would there be any mileage though in creating a "Tramp Steamer"-style OXP which makes numerous small contracts - 5TC and up - available, while cutting back on the amount of "loose cargo" available on the open market?

It wouldn't be too much trouble to reduce the minimum cargo size to 5 TC or smaller in my mod.

Mod discussion here:
https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=13757

As for wildly profitable small contracts, I stuck with max profit amounts based on normal buying and selling prices both as a game balancing mechanism and to show that it could be done.

[ffutures]

The big disadvantage of the "small fast ship with passengers, parcels, and high value cargo" model has become apparent.

I started out with a basic Planet Express ship with a couple of passenger compartments and ran that until I had a good enough cargo reputation to start getting gem and precious metals contracts. Once I was being offered them I added more passenger spaces, until I was down to 15 tons cargo.

This went well for a while, then I managed to miss a delivery. And even though I then made three more deliveries successfully, my cargo reputation was no longer good enough to be offered more high-value cargoes. And I no longer had room for occasional low-value cargoes, there simply aren't any under 30 tons or so.

So I'm now getting rid of my remaining passengers so I can remove the cabins (but will keep a couple so my passenger reputation doesn't suffer) and just hope to find enough cargoes going the right way to get my reputation high again.

I'm beginning to think I should try a bigger ship if I can find one fast enough. Maybe the Boa Clipper, any other suggestions that don't involve seriously uber-powered ships?

[Switeck]

I used the Boa 2, which is overpowered (at least for its price at barely more than Boa 1)...but it's part of the core Oolite game.