Oolite Bulletins

An unannounced improvement in v1.55 is a more profitable carrier market making bulk haulage a much more viable alternative career.

Do you ever hit f8 twice and use this option?

the feeling is that this feature is never an accessed option as long as you choose to fly a small maneuverable ship.

if this page occasionally could offer very small-bulk/high risk cargo (passengers?) that would be different.

how are the chances of opening up this side of the game to non-standard ports (Hermits, Carriers, other unorthodox anchorages)?

cheap gold?!

Like Cmdr.Murgh says I have always piloted a Cob3 so the big Haulage business has never snared me. But I would be interested in other courier activities especially illegal ones

jonnycuba wrote:

But I would be interested in other courier activities especially illegal ones

Yes, I've been mulling over ideas for what to do with the f4 key in-station.

Courier activites might be a part of an idea...

You need to have another option in the poll:

No, don't use it much, but would like to use it more.

As others have said, the cargo quantities have previously ruled out most ships. I shall look at it again in v 1.55.

I think it's a great feature of the game, as they are essentially "mini-missions".
However, the cash incentives should be greater to encourage players, particularly for long distance hauls. The premiums/profit ratio should be higher!

I often take passengers, and only occasionally do I leave them stranded in the wrong galaxy....

In the reference sheet pdf it says there's a key "?" which does "Locate destination system on galaxy chart for selected Passenger/Cargo contract"

I would like to know which item in keyconfig.plist is this function because the default binding doesn't work in my non-english keyb (the comm. log "-" and advanced compass "\" didn't work either and i had to change them)

try shift +

"shift +" doesn't work.

In my keyb "shift +" should give an "*" and "shift '" an "?" but none of them work, that's why i wanted to change the keybinding to a plain letter like "L", that worked the other times.

This is supposed to work in the F8-F8 list of missions right?

supposed to, yes.

while a cargo or passenger deal is selected, pressing the magic key will take you to starchart page and highlight the queried system.

too bad your keyboard is so different. I don't think it's one of the exposed customizable keys in the keyconfig.plist

To set that key to 'L' in AddOns/keyconfig.plist add the following:-

aegidian wrote:

To set that key to 'L' in AddOns/keyconfig.plist add the following:-

Code: Select all

<key>key_contract_info</key>
<integer>76</integer><!-- 'L' -->

Yay! Thanks!

Yay!

I was saying quite a long time ago it should be a bit more profitable.

As for the comments concerning the availability of cargo missions, it would be cool if the list filtered itself to your total cargo space. So un-expanded Cobra Mk III pilots would only see missions with cargoes up to 20t, and expanded Cobras would see missions up to 35t. You get the idea.

Of course what would be handy to go along with that is scrolling the list of available cargo missions...

Thus if you're in a big ship you'll see a whole load of missions, and might be able to find some small missions to do at the same time as a big mission.

... But is too similar to ordinary haulage to merit a separate mission screen IMHO as it stands. The courier idea sounds good to me and maybe the spawning of persistent dealers that you build a rep with... if you go back to them they come back to you. Nothing too complicated. But gives a reason to go back somewhere when you need to find some medical supplies to sort out another mission...
BTW what ever happened to medical supplies or were they not in the beeb version? (I can't remember that far back...)
E.

aegidian wrote:

Yes, I've been mulling over ideas for what to do with the f4 key in-station.

Courier activites might be a part of an idea...

I like the idea of an "Illegal Activities" or maybe "Black Market" tab under F4...

I would think that the missions that you get in here might include cargo that can only be offloaded at stations that have a Black Market" area.

Maybe a specific type of drug that has "Just been discovered" that needs to be delived or distributed to a certain group of people for tests.

After doing a few cargo carrier missions i've realized that the system "forgets" too quickly.

From looking at the code in erodeReputation, every about 16 jumps you'll lose some reputation, so that means you'll need to carry out a successful mission in less than 16 jumps to grow your reputation.

You can't grow a good reputation without a big ship. That's because:
- most missions will be unavailable to you due to cargo size
- some of the missions will require almost 16 jumps or more (i've seen some requiring 18)
- some missions will involve illegal goods but you want to keep a clean reputation.
- some planets don't have any cargo mission available at all

In all of these cases you'll have to jump to another system to get different missions, increasing the number of jumps between successful missions. Add to this that the missions that involve small cargo will pay you very little: probably you'll lose more money in ship maintenance that the amount you gain from these. Of course the profitable missions will come after you have a good reputation, but that's soo hard to get...

In contrast, ship size doesn't matter too much for passenger missions, since with 2-3 passenger berths (15 tons of cargo) you can raise your reputation easily doing several missions at once.

I think it would be a bit easier if there would be more than 5 cargo missions in each planet (maybe 10?), that would give more chances to get a "good" mission.