Contracts and trading

[Bogatyr]

As-is, (in Oollite v1.76.1) cargo contracts don't make sense -- they're generated based on the station's current goods-for-sale, which gets pretty goofy if you only check them after you've just sold off your previous cargo and bought up what you would normally buy.

That part is fixed in trunk by cim. The contracts are now generated when entering the system, and not when visiting the contract screen.

The annoying thing about this is that if you just made a delivery that boosts your reputation from 6 to 7, you have to do an additional jump to get the top-reputation cargo offers. And there is the possibility that this "one extra" jump could lower your reputation back from 7 to 6! Catch-22.

[Switeck]

The annoying thing about this is that if you just made a delivery that boosts your reputation from 6 to 7, you have to do an additional jump to get the top-reputation cargo offers. And there is the possibility that this "one extra" jump could lower your reputation back from 7 to 6! Catch-22.

Save game before making that next jump. Losing 1 point of reputation at that point is probably about as expensive is having your shield booster equipment damaged.

Cargo Contracts in Oolite seem to be a means for freighter-type ships (Anacondas, Boas, Boa 2s, and Pythons...as well as some large OXP ships) to really utilize their large cargo capacity. However regular cargo contracts badly fail in that task and can at best be viewed only as a means to an end -- that end being to get precious metals contracts which can be >1000 times more profitable than regular contracts. Once the precious metals contracts start appearing, about the only reason to take a regular contract is to help keep your contract reputation high.

If you're near the left or right edge of the map, any randomly-picked destination is rather likely to be over 40 LY away.
There are real costs for doing cargo contracts even without considering opportunity costs. If a random contract is ~40 LY in distance, you might spend 100 credits on fuel alone. One maintenance overhaul will probably be needed either along the way or shortly afterwords to keep your ship reliable. Assuming a Python ship with ~50k credits worth of extra equipment, that cost is 2500 credits. Even if maintenance is only needed once every 5 contracts, that's still ~600 credits extra PER contract just to cover these costs. That can be "made up" by additional trading along the way and bounty hunting, but the latter can also increase how often maintenance is needed!

Because both the destination and the commodity are randomly picked, many contracts are discarded as unworkable.
If 3-6 contracts out of 10 are discarded as "unworkable"...the player has few cargo contract choices per system. Those few better be decent!

Even among "workable" contracts, the commodity chosen is likely to have little price difference between start and destination systems because the destination system may be a similar economic type (agriculture to agriculture or industrial to industrial).
The price difference for alloys, textiles, and minerals is only 0.4 credits per economy type...so going from a Rich Industrial to an Average Industrial only raises or lowers their price by ~0.4 credits on average. If 100 TC of these commodities are hauled between such systems, that's only a 40 credit average profit if based only on the average price differences. Going from a Rich Industrial to a Poor Agricultural (the largest possible change) only raises this to 2.8 credits. Even 280 credits profit for 100 TC is pathetic if you have to haul it 40 LY.

For there to be any potential profit at all, the selling price has to be more than the buying price...however for many commodities the average price differences between 2 systems are often less than the price variations at either system. This is the case for slaves, narcotics, furs, alloys, gold, platinum, and gemstones.

If by some unlikely chance, the destination system has a considerably higher commodity price than the starting system, the contract could be for only 30-50 TC or be nearby -- making the total profit for the contract <1000 credits.
Only the larger contracts (>100 TC/kg/g) consistently have over 2000 credits profit, most of those are too large for a Python or Boa to carry.

Your contract reputation neither increases the discount nor increases the share of the profit you get to keep, so other than precious metals contracts...they don't get "better" after you've done them for awhile.