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Re: Oops. I sold the cargo I was meant to deliver.

Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2012 9:27 pm
by Cmdr. Maegil
Frame wrote:
Cmdr. Maegil wrote:
I used to have a spotless reputation, but suddenly started to mysteriously miss long haul contracts - while still very far away... Eventually I got wise to the Save Anywhere bug that ate up time, but by then I was only doing opportunistic short hauls.?
save anywhere bug that ate up time. ?
AFAIK, docking should not take up time..
please explain!!!!
Cheers Frame..
Quick-docking takes time, and the save anywhere makes the player take off from a station and make several attempts to quick-dock at the main station to save (each eating up time). When you leave the station (either continuing the game or after reloading), you make yet more requests to dock at the OXP station... As a result, if I saved several times on a long haul, I ended up missing the deadline.

Re: Oops. I sold the cargo I was meant to deliver.

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:28 am
by Fatleaf
How difficult would it then be for Save anywhere to role the ships clock back the amount of time it uses up to save? But that is if it is consistent with each save.

Re: Oops. I sold the cargo I was meant to deliver.

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:35 am
by Eric Walch
Fatleaf wrote:
How difficult would it then be for Save anywhere to role the ships clock back the amount of time it uses up to save? But that is if it is consistent with each save.
Not possible. The only way a script can manipulate the clock is to add (positive) time to it. With a maximum of 30 days.

Cargo Contract Cruelty

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 10:16 am
by Switeck
Save Anywhere's docking sequence might be done quicker by carefully moving the player's ship directly into the docking port so it immediately docks.
But that's only going to reduce part of the time lost.
Each launch from station takes 10 minutes, so it's unavoidable to have increases in time from using Save Anywhere.
Since Save Anywhere is triggered from another station, there's the launch from that station, docking with the main station, saving, launching from the main station, and re-docking with the other station again. That currently uses up over 40 minutes not counting the few seconds burned up in the animations of launching/docking as well as at the docking menu and saving game.

Many cargo contracts only give you a small extra amount of time to reach the destination -- they're horribly contrived and often don't make sense, like taking computers or luxuries from a low tech agricultural world to a high tech industrial world.

In-universe, whoever is coming up with these contracts deserves to be gamed, scammed, robbed, and put out of business. You're paying up front for the cargo, going (typically) *WAY* out of your way to deliver it, passing through dangerous systems best avoided if you're looking to get rich quick(tm), often paid only about as well as if you just delivered similar cargo between rich industrial/poor agricultural system pairs, and all you earn beyond the dubious credit profit is a "reputation" that can randomly decay away with each jump. And when you're having to make 10+ system jumps on a 80+ LY cargo contract, you'll likely lose every bit of reputation gained! A side-effect of these long hauls is after each one your ship will need a maintenance overhaul or you'll be regularly saying hi to Thargoids in interstellar space and/or having fuel leaks drain your jump fuel tank dry. If both happens together and you don't have additional contingency plans, Press Space Commander! :evil:

If you include the hidden and opportunity costs of cargo contracts, the overwhelming majority of them are a big net loss.
I know how to rig the cargo contract system so I can take my pick out of ~10 destinations, increase each contract's profit, and make only gold/platinum/gem-stones cargo contracts offered once my reputation gets high enough...without using any OXPs or external game hacks. In short, even cheating like crazy doesn't make them crazy profitable.

Taking an illegal trade goods (contraband) cargo contract means every main station you dock with along the way will give you a gigantic bounty when you launch...but the profit from such is typically as bad or worse than regular cargo contracts. Maybe these "naughty" contracts are meant to be Schmuck Bait? :twisted:

Re: Oops. I sold the cargo I was meant to deliver.

Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2012 8:38 pm
by Frame
There is one misunderstanding here...

this is in no way "Quick Docking", this is a

Code: Select all

station.dockPlayer()
and there is no penalty upon docking.. There is however Penalty upon launching
each launching takes 10 min.

Only thing there is to do is to request thata launchPlayer(suppres timeloss:bool) where if true, time is not lost.

Cheers Frame...

Re: Oops. I sold the cargo I was meant to deliver.

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 11:26 am
by Micha
then you might as well request that ship.dock() / ship.launch() have a parameter to suppress the docking rings as well.. (although that might take a bit of fiddling)

Re: Oops. I sold the cargo I was meant to deliver.

Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2012 8:44 pm
by Switeck
Frame wrote:
this is in no way "Quick Docking"
My mistake. I guess you already use an instant dock method that doesn't use the same add-10-min rule (or code?) as "Quick Docking".

Launching delays should be based on whether there's NPC ships near the station waiting/wanting to dock, with 10 minutes being the maximum delay...and minimum delay possibly being only 1-5 minutes if nothing is around.

Re: Oops. I sold the cargo I was meant to deliver.

Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2012 5:59 pm
by Micha
The 10-minute-delay on launching includes getting your ship into the dock for take-off, clearing with launch-control, etc. etc.

Actually the question should be, why isn't there a short clock-adjustment when docking either?
And for loading/unloading cargo pods?
etc.

(Of course, for the purposes of save-anywhere-oxp, there needs be ways to circumvent these time-adjustments from JS..)