Oolite Bulletins

After a fairly lucrative run, my GPG contracts seem to have dried up. I used to see a GPG contract at every other planet more or less, but not any more.

I took a break from contracts when I got my Cobra Courier 'cos I wanted to work on my combat rating (nearly competent ). Does the hiatus mean I will have to start again with [edit: less lucrative] commodities runs? Hope not.

I'm currently to be found in the unfashionable western end of G1....

Thanks for any advice / comments

Your reputation does die away over time. if you don't keep making the deliveries, people forget about you and you have to work your way back in again.

You might be able to improve your rep without having to haul 140 tons of ultracarrots ... offhand I can't remember but I have a feeling there are OXPs out there which offer reputation boosts for completing missions. UPS, possibly?

Please, not the ultracarrots again!!

Thanks for confirming my suspicions Disembodied... I will be making myself known to UPS.

Personally I'd like to see more lower-cargo runs offered as well - with reputation calculations being based on tonnage/light-year. That way a small run over many light-years or a large run over a short distance would be similar.

Basically I don't really want to trade in my Cobra to be able to participate in this aspect of the game. So far I've seen (and done) a single cargo-run under 35t which presumably has done squat all for my rep.

IIRC I think there was some discussion about letting passenger contracts feed into the reputation system. another_commander was working on a general improvement of the passenger contract system anyway: see this thread.

I found this in the UPS Courier readme, it's quite promising

Transport reputation

Couriers with a good reputation are more likely to get an offer for a new mission. For transporting documents you don't need a good reputation but you do need at least a good reputation to get parcel transport offers. The variable to keep track of the reputation is the same as used by Oolite itself for the build-in transport reputation. (F8/F8 screen) So you can also keep your reputation up by taking the internal transports. It is even advisable to regularly do some regular cargo transports. Just be aware that this reputation erodes with time, so need to accept offers to keep your reputation up. Your current reputation is also dependent on the system you are in and will be shown at the F5/F5 screen.
(this reputation dependent feature is introduced with UPS-Courier 1.5)

I also don't want to have to trade in my nippy Cobra (again) to buy a big bucket with which to start rebuilding my faded rep... looks like UPS is our answer.

I guess any courier who tried to take a peek at the documents they were couriering would take a big hit on rep... if they were found out....

I guess I really ought to read the readme's in more detail I knew UPS Courier had a reputation system but had simply assumed it was using its own.. still, it'd be nice to be able to do standard cargo contracts as well.

i read readme's - guess that's just the kinda guy I am....

my plan is to use UPS document contracts as a 'foot in the door' to the more interesting-sounding UPS parcels and missions, and also less space-hungry built-in standard cargo contracts should start popping up again after enough document contracts....

some built-in cargo contracts are more 'standard' than others, of course.

I may be able to afford that summer break on riedquat after all

Micha wrote:

I guess I really ought to read the readme's in more detail I knew UPS Courier had a reputation system but had simply assumed it was using its own.. still, it'd be nice to be able to do standard cargo contracts as well.

To be more precise: its a mix of both. For every 3 UPS point you get one oolite contract reputation point. The simple mission just gain 1 UPS point, (=1/3 oolite point) the more time consuming ones award more UPS points. Missions that you do not for the ups company (like the slave missions) gain no points. Mission refusal results in 1 negative UPS point.

This all increases your cargo contract reputation a bit, but you will never reach the highest values. For that you still need doing also the regular cargo contracts (on the F8/F8 screen). Still, all bits help to keep your reputation high.

The nice thing in UPS is that you now can see your real oolite contract reputation. It runs from -7 till +7. In UPS I gave all 7 positive values a different name, readable as mission info. While adding this feature I noticed it works a bit different that I initially thought:

When you look in your saved file, you find 3 contract-reputation entries: GOOD, BAD, UNKNOWN. The sum is always 7. GOOD and BAD lead of cause to positive and negative points. But, UNKNOWN is not zero but gives a random value between zero and the unknown value. So your rating will always be a bit higher that the GOOD rating but will be slightly different in different systems. Theoretical it could even happen that on one docking you get the highest rating with only 7 UNKNOWN points. So unknown is really unknown!

And as mentioned earlier, you reputation decays over time. On average every 30 jumps, a GOOD or BAD value changes into UNKNOWN. Reputations are not forever, you have to keep working on it.

thanks for the detailed explanation. that's one of the nice things about oolite - it's essentially straight forward to grasp, but once you get into it, there are all these nuances which enrich the whole experience.

With UPS I really appreciate now being able to see my courier rep on F5-F5. It's also interesting to see how missing one or two contracts is not the end of the world - I ditched a v small contract for the biggest platinum haul I have ever seen offered (ker-ching) and my rep only got tarnishd a bit - I went from excellent to outstanding, to dedicated.