Progress

[Switeck]

Some time ago you mentioned a new system for the contracts (with danger levels and so on). Do you still plan to add that?

Parcels and passengers have that at the moment. Cargo contracts I haven't touched yet - I'm still thinking about the best way to approach them.

I have some ideas for this.

In an effort to make the entire reputation range seem larger, how about reducing the random bonus amount (that a local system currently "sees" you as) from 0 to +3 to -1 to +2, with both -1 and +2 being semi-rare. This would require a core code change and is beyond my ability atm.

I'm working on a method for cargo contracts that uses min/max price differences coupled with raised fees to avoid the player buying-for-below-current-market-cost. In-universe, it works by having 3rd parties on both ends storing the cargo and buying/selling at advantageous prices. The cargo had to be available and bought in the first place, so presumably they'd try to buy at a cheap price. I should have something to show for this within the month.

Currently this is only at the idea stage:
I have a novel workaround for large and long-distance contracts being almost a reputation loss due to time and opportunity costs -- make them into 2 half-sized contracts after you acquire them. You get paid half as much for each but each half gives 1 reputation point. If 1 reputation point decays away while doing the contract, you still come out ahead. If no reputation points are lost due to random decay while doing them, you end up boosting your reputation even quicker...but not as quick as doing multiple smaller, short-ranged contracts. It's the reward for suffering through long-range contracts in a slow freighter like an Anaconda.
I haven't worked out the actual code to do this, but it should be well within my ability to do.

[cim]

In an effort to make the entire reputation range seem larger, how about reducing the random bonus amount (that a local system currently "sees" you as) from 0 to +3 to -1 to +2, with both -1 and +2 being semi-rare. This would require a core code change and is beyond my ability atm.

For parcels and passengers the reputation range has been extended to +/-70 (which is then divided by ten for display), so that should definitely seem larger. The contracts requiring a high reputation then give a fair bit more profit than they did before, though. Contracts give additional reputation points dependent on their risk level, which is something I'd like to try introducing to cargo contracts as well.

I'm working on a method for cargo contracts that uses min/max price differences coupled with raised fees to avoid the player buying-for-below-current-market-cost. In-universe, it works by having 3rd parties on both ends storing the cargo and buying/selling at advantageous prices. The cargo had to be available and bought in the first place, so presumably they'd try to buy at a cheap price. I should have something to show for this within the month.

Interesting idea. I still think that the major balancing problem with the cargo contracts is the "do we expect the player to sell the cargo and buy some more en-route" question - which way are you going for on that?

[Disembodied]

I still think that the major balancing problem with the cargo contracts is the "do we expect the player to sell the cargo and buy some more en-route" question

Out of interest, does it take any game time to load and unload cargo? If it took X amount of time per TC, loading and unloading, might this effect how often a player, on a timed contract, can afford to swap their cargo around?

[Cody]

Out of interest, does it take any game time to load and unload cargo?

No, I don't believe it does - interesting idea.

[Tichy]

I still think that the major balancing problem with the cargo contracts is the "do we expect the player to sell the cargo and buy some more en-route" question

Out of interest, does it take any game time to load and unload cargo? If it took X amount of time per TC, loading and unloading, might this effect how often a player, on a timed contract, can afford to swap their cargo around?

I like that idea, but it shoud be done carefully to avoid that a player that does: let's fill my ship with computers... no, better leave 5 T free for the occasional loot... ok. sell the gold... oh, crap! I hit the wrong button and bought that instead. sell them all again... results in a lot of load and unload operations and one month of time spent

maybe one could do all his load and unload and then hit a "DO IT" button that calculates the minimum number of load/unload operations requred to do what he wanted.

[Disembodied]

I like that idea, but it shoud be done carefully to avoid that a player that does: let's fill my ship with computers... no, better leave 5 T free for the occasional loot... ok. sell the gold... oh, crap! I hit the wrong button and bougt that instead. sell them all again... results in a lot of load and unload operations and one month of time spent

maybe one could do all his load and unload and then hit a "DO IT" button that calculates the minimum number of load/unload operations requred to do what he wanted.

Yes, good point - maybe the way to do it would be to add on the game time when the player left the F8 (or F4) screen.

[Cody]

Hmm... if a player is making mistakes like that in the market, I reckon they should be time-penalised.

[Tichy]

Hmm... if a player is making mistakes like that in the market, I reckon they should be time-penalised.

I agree if he is conscious about what he's doing, but not if his error is caused by a misuse of the interface. I may press the wrong key and then undo my error. It would be frustrating to be penalized at every wrong keypress.

[Cody]

Either way, it could make loading and unloading an Anaconda very time-consuming.

[Disembodied]

Either way, it could make loading and unloading an Anaconda very time-consuming.

As it probably should ... I wonder again, if this might be a way of making different places feel different. A high-tech world could have relatively rapid loading and unloading, accompanied by efficient-sounding hums and buzzes; a low-tech world could take far longer, and have a lot more scraping, clanging and thumping noises.

[Thargoid]

That should be quite easy to do by OXP - we have triggers for cargo sale, purchase and screen changing to/from the marketplace screen and script access to adding time onto the game clock.

Just wish I had the real life time to do it...

[cim]

Definitely an interesting idea - and as Thargoid says, doable now by OXP if someone wants to try it out. I like making things cost time, since it's one of the few things even a well-established player can easily run short on: I'm currently nearing the end of a giant parcel delivery run across chart 2 from Laatre all the way up into the Qucedi bottleneck for the last few packages. I lost my military shield booster in a nasty fight on the way in to Gema ... I've passed through several suitably high-tech systems since and not had time to get it fixed without failing a deadline as a result.

In some ways it's a shame that courier jobs are the only career where the time limit actually matters - bounty hunting, piracy, normal trading, you can take as long as you like and it makes no difference. (I can think of ways to put "meet deadline for greatly improved profit" on all of them, but they feel better suited to OXPs at this stage)

[Cody]

... from Laatre all the way up into the Qucedi bottleneck for the last few packages. I lost my military shield booster in a nasty fight on the way in to Gema ...

A goodly run, is that... and I have fond memories of Gema. As you say, the time-factor could be an interesting element to introduce to other careers.

[Switeck]

I still think that the major balancing problem with the cargo contracts is the "do we expect the player to sell the cargo and buy some more en-route" question - which way are you going for on that?

For what I'm working on, a cargo contract's deposit will always be equal or greater than the station's current selling price times TC amount, so you can never start a contract and immediately resell the contract's cargo at the same station for a profit even at max reputation.
In the case of furs, the contract's destination payment may be 120 credits/TC. Good luck finding anywhere else that will buy furs for that value!

The commodities being bought and sold are fungible, and this is a good thing. If some get destroyed by combat en-route then you can hopefully buy replacements for them. It is a mini-game worth playing in its own right trying to juggle multiple cargo contracts at once, whether you are selling and re-buying the commodities or not.

I consider it a terrible loss from the game if "white collar piracy" is totally removed.
Might as well make regular piracy utterly unprofitable too while you're at it.

Out of interest, does it take any game time to load and unload cargo?

There is no need to increase the amount of time spent visiting each station for loading and unloading cargo. Each launch (in older versions of Oolite) took 10 minutes. Assuming cargo loads are "finalized" right before launch, even an Anaconda with its specialized high-speed loading equipment could unload and load all its cargo bay in less than 5 minutes of that. All the stations are highly automated to handle trade in the first place.

Big freighters are already penalized by the risks that faster, harder-to-hit ships can avoid. For the Boa 2 and Anaconda (the 2 native ships with the largest cargo capacity), only cargo contracts can quickly fill their cargo bay.
The risks involved in doing cargo contracts go up with each jump, but the profitability per TC x TIME (both realtime and gametime) not only cannot equally scale...it must go down past just a jump or 2...or payouts become silly nonsense.

[Disembodied]

In the case of furs, the contract's destination payment may be 120 credits/TC. Good luck finding anywhere else that will buy furs for that value!

But the player can sell the Furs en route for 80C/T, then buy them on the next planet for 60C/T, then sell them on the next for 75C/T, then buy them on the next for 55C/T, and then selling them at the final destination for 120C/T ... it makes the original cargo contract ("Take this load of Furs to that distant planet") seem a little strange, as well as adding a whole extra layer of profit for the player. It's not really "white collar piracy", because nobody is doing anything wrong: it's just the player taking advantage of the way the game handles the deal.

There is of course the issue you raise of how the player replaces damaged goods, which - if cargo contracts involved "special" (unique to the contract, and non-fungible) cargoes - would obviously be impossible. Perhaps it would be worth having two different types of contract: general and specific.

A general contract would be for the player to supply X TCs of Y standard commodity to planet Z by a specific time. It's up to the player to source the goods, at their own expense, but if the contract is fulfilled on time, they can get a guaranteed higher-than-usual selling price. For the duration of the contract, the game would have to set the stock of commodity Y in system Z to zero, so the player can't just go there, buy Y from the market and immediately sell it again. At the top end of the reputation scale, the player would have access to gems and precious metals contracts - which would still be profitable, and doable by smaller ships, but might not be quite so crazily profitable as they are at the moment.

A specific contract would involve the player receiving X TCs of a special, unique cargo, to take to planet Z by a specific time. Payment (and reputation gain/loss) would be dependent on time of arrival (you could be late, but still get paid - just minus a penalty clause), and on the amount of the cargo you eventually delivered. It's a dangerous universe, and there is the possibility that some items might get destroyed. If someone wants 100TC of some unique thing, and you only deliver 97TC, because 3 TCs got shot up en route, well, them's the breaks. You won't get paid quite as much, but presumably whoever ordered the goods was smart enough to pad their order a bit in case of breakages. It might be desirable to make these specific cargoes a form of a general commodity, so if the player can't (or doesn't want to) complete the contract, they can then sell them, although at a much lower price. To avoid the player accidentally selling their unique Edzaonian Lethal Water as bog-standard Liquor and Wines, it might be necessary for the player to manually cancel the contract, or for the contract to expire, to trigger a change of the cargo from special to general.

All the stations are highly automated to handle trade in the first place.

Hmm ... that's one assumption, and it's essentially saying, "All stations are the same, wherever you go" - which is definitely the feeling you get at the moment. Is this a good thing, though? Might it not be better - i.e. more fun - if visiting a station in a low-tech system was more noticeably different to visiting one in a high-tech system?