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After a career of cargo contracting, which earned me a lot of money, I leant from this forum, that the transport of parcels and passengers might also reward you with some more action. So I invested into that business. I had quite a few successful deliveries of both parcels and passengers. Yet there are still contracts that are not offered to me - more experienced player needed.

This obviously takes much longer than to get a reputation for cargo transport? I'm deadly, if that is an issue...

Also... The parcel business does not seem to yield much money, does it? Reading Codys tales of assasinations, I thought, risking my life to deliver some top secret documents must be paid well at least. But the prices offered are nothing compared to what a 2000kg gemstone contract would pay.

How much does a 2000kg gemstone contract pay? I've never run any cargo (or passenger) contracts, you see.

You have to build up three separate reputations for cargo, parcels and passengers. Try the Display Reputation OXP if you want to see how you're doing. I was dangerous when I started with contracts, so that's probably not an issue. I have never done cargo contracts, so I can't say if building up a cargo reputation is really faster, but it seems to be exactly the same with parcels and passengers.

The maximum pay seems to be somewhere between 15.000 and 20 000 Cr (as far as I can say) if the parcel or passenger is "interesting" enough and if the distance is very long (I mostly start contract runs in a corner of the galactic chart because you won't find the really good offers somewhere in the center ). But you'll need a good reputation to get a well paying contract. And you'll need a well armed ship...

I use a butchered version of Display Reputation, and it's worth noting it has 8 (or 9) ranks, but as I understand it, the game itself now has a more subtle system, so it's only a rough guide. As for rewards, the most I've seen for one parcel was over 40k (plus an early-delivery bonus of over 60%). I believe they can reach six-figures (in theory).

Ok, then I'll have to keep looking for the really big one! On the other hand, I've already accumulated more money than I'll ever need...

Look for parcels and passengers going a long distance and ending up in isolated politically unstable systems - that's where the really big money is. But there are some runs you won't get offered until you're Elite, I think.

Deliveries with a tight time frame are also usually fairly profitable, but you need to be really sure you can deliver or your reputation suffers. A couple of delays for repairs can really cause problems. The up-side of long distance runs is that there is usually some slack in the time, if you can make good time most of the way there's time to stop for an overhaul or something.

And you can accept additional (usually less paid) contracts during the run. Carrying only one parcel or passenger over a longer distance is rarely profitable if you consider repair and maintenance bills.

Cody wrote:

How much does a 2000kg gemstone contract pay? I've never run any cargo (or passenger) contracts, you see.

If it were based only on the price differences between the best buying and selling systems for gems, that's about 8 Cr/g profit before the crazy profit boost that cargo contracts sometimes give.

Since gems are sold in grams rather than kilograms, 2000g is about 20,000-40,000 Cr profit -- it can get nuts if you have even more gems.

Largest cargo contract I've seen was 6240kg Platinum which cost 541,880 Cr to get and paid 270,860 Cr profit. So 86.8 Cr cost and 43.4 Cr profit for each kg Platinum. Insane really...regular max profit for Platinum is <20 Cr/kg.

I made a Cargo Contracts Mod, but it is currently broken due to market changes in Oolite v1.82.

Thanks Folks! Then it's obviously luck, patience and more contract Reputation what I need.

From good Cargo contracts I often get around 20-40.000Cr, sometimes more. You get the gold/platinum business after only 5 or so successful deliveries, fairly quick, as far as I recall. For the Parcel Business after 10 or so, I'm still below 1000Cr offers. Well I am currently in the Center of the galaxy, I'll try to move outwards to the Corners.

So, did I understand that right? Which contracts you can take (whether it's a cargo-, parcel- or passenger-contract) (how many are greyed out) depends on your fighting ranking and not on the individual contract reputation.
And the higher your reputation in a certain business it, the more profitable are they, right?

ocz wrote:

So, did I understand that right? Which contracts you can take (whether it's a cargo-, parcel- or passenger-contract) (how many are greyed out) depends on your fighting ranking and not on the individual contract reputation.

As for parcel contracts it depends on both. Cargo contracts do not depend on the elite skill. Both seem to also depend on how many contracts you failed completely, especially lately. The ones delivered too late or with insufficient amount but still unloaded in the case of cargo are forgiven it seems.
Beware of accepting gold/platinum contracts with more than 500kg. They need TC and those can be destroyed even if you are never hit onto the hull by jumping errors. The 6000g or more gemstone ones from one corner of the galaxy to another one are perfect - gemstones are safe. Such a contract can yield 100000 profit. That's how to make the money for buying a Caduceus etc.

Anonymissimus wrote:

ocz wrote:

So, did I understand that right? Which contracts you can take (whether it's a cargo-, parcel- or passenger-contract) (how many are greyed out) depends on your fighting ranking and not on the individual contract reputation.

As for parcel contracts it depends on both. Cargo contracts do not depend on the elite skill. Both seem to also depend on how many contracts you failed completely, especially lately. The ones delivered too late or with insufficient amount but still unloaded in the case of cargo are forgiven it seems.
Beware of accepting gold/platinum contracts with more than 500kg. They need TC and those can be destroyed even if you are never hit onto the hull by jumping errors. The 6000g or more gemstone ones from one corner of the galaxy to another one are perfect - gemstones are safe. Such a contract can yield 100000 profit. That's how to make the money for buying a Caduceus etc.

I'd argue that by the time you can afford the really profitable contracts you aren't really doing it for the money, that's just a way of keeping score. All that's going to happen if I lost say 500kg of platinum is that I either forfeit the contract and lose a little reputation or have to scramble to find enough platinum to replace it - the easy way is to take another contract, use platinum from that to make the original delivery, and keep buying more and taking on contracts until I have enough to make all contracted deliveries.

ffutures wrote:

I'd argue that by the time you can afford the really profitable contracts you aren't really doing it for the money, [...]

Well... Maybe, maybe not. I did the Standard milk runs only until I could equip my Cobby properly. Then I went into the killing Business, completely ignoring the bank account. When I did some random hits missions, I noticed a nice ship, which is currently still unaffordable for me (was that imperial courier? don't remember).
The contract work offers a new method of fun, cargo is for Money only, parcels and passengers can be both Money and fun and maybe, after a while I'll be able to purchase that new ship.
Only if I am to find out that the really profitable contracts need ELITE status, I would agree to your statement.

ffutures wrote:

All that's going to happen if I lost say 500kg of platinum is that I either forfeit the contract and lose a little reputation or have to scramble to find enough platinum to replace it - the easy way is to take another contract, use platinum from that to make the original delivery, and keep buying more and taking on contracts until I have enough to make all contracted deliveries.

Problem is, if your current ship has only little cargo space, you cannot choose to violate the contract as you cannot rebuilt the reputation. Unless you can afford a ship with more cargo space or you still have several other contracts still running which will allow you to regain the reputation afterwards. I successfully did the ladder, but accepting follow-up contracts just to be able to complete previous ones gets you into a plain annoying series of contracts you only take because of this, docking with every rock hermit and such just to find the gold/platinum. So I strongly recommend to never take gold/platinum contracts if it requires carrying an amount of gold/platinum that cannot be replaced relatively quickly. Say, 700kg means you'll have to rebuy 201kg, which can be done on a single contract run when docking everywhere.

ffutures wrote:

I'd argue that by the time you can afford the really profitable contracts you aren't really doing it for the money,

I don't agree. When I'm finally buying a fighter ship, I have something like several 100k credits, a rather poorly equipped cobra 3 (or other starting ship but with cargo space) and maybe 10-20 kills. The more money you already have, the more the cargo contracts let you make. It's basically exponential growth, maybe 30-50% additional money for each cargo contract run. So I avoid equipment that costs more than a few 1000 credits.

I haven't played the transporter aspect in years, but reading about it has put me in mind to give it another go.

Which one is likely to get me into the most trouble?
I'm thinking either parcels or people? Maybe both?
Are there particular contracts I should look for?