Oolite Bulletins

So there I was happily picking up thousands of credits for doing some very nice precious stone jobs, when I stopped off to have a crack at Thargoids Aquatics mission (and very nice it was too). When I returned to the market I was somewhat surprised to find there were none to be taken up?! Now having jumped 15-20 systems I still cannot find one.

Is it done by reputation in some way? If so I only stopped very briefly to carry out the Aquatics mission? What could have happened?

You guessed correctly. Your reputation fades away with time. You will need to keep delivering contracts successfully if you want to keep the juicy deals coming.

even if I stopped very briefly? I did the last job, jumped a couple of planets to get the aquatics mission, which I completed quickly, and since then absolutely nothing. Not even a small job. Does you reputation really go down that quickly?!

You literally can't find a single cargo contract, of any kind? That shouldn't even be possible; although some planets don't offer contracts in my experience it should be impossible to make 15 jumps without finding a single one.

REMOVED

Having just last night been researching the entire reputation situation, I can tell you that you only get to see the plum jobs if your rep is at maximum, so even a small drop will prevent you from being offered the gemstone/gold/platinum contracts. However, even a bad rep shouldn't stop you from seeing at least some cargo jobs.

So something else seems to have gone wrong here...

The jobs are on the screen, but they are never ones that I can do. Not one single one in, like I say, 15-20 jumps now. I haven't changed anything recently, apart from adding the aquatics oxp. And some of the targeting oxps....

What ship are you flying? You didn't, perchance, trade down (or up) to a smaller-capacity ship after you started getting the lucrative gem/gold/platinum contracts did you?

If so, you would need to get something with at least 120 tons or more capacity again... alternatively, you could install the UPS-courier.oxp, and start doing courier runs, which you can do with a smaller cargo hold. It uses the same cargo-rep variable, so it will improve your reputation even if you can't currently do cargo runs. If I recall, it takes 3 courier jobs to equal 1 cargo job, but it would get you back to where you were being offered the high-paying jobs again..

As a bonus, when your rep is positive (it runs from -7 to +7) the UPS oxp will display your rep as a ranking (outstanding being the best) on the F5-F5 screen, so you will always know where you stand.

I'm in the standard (fully specced) cobra III, although I am hoping to change, hence why I was using the runs to save up! I have got UPS installed and according to the status I'm ranked at excellent.

I don't mind building the rep up again, but I dont seem to be given jobs that I can do. They are all for too much cargo for my ship.

A cobra isnt really large enough for most cargo contracts, so it will be hard to recover a reputation that you have lost.

The reputation drops over game time, which pretty much means jumps. You dont need to make a huge number of jumps before your reputation starts to drop, and of course, once it starts to drop, there are less missions you can do and so it gets harder and harder to find more, and so you will tend to drop reputation faster.

I'd imagine excellent is just below outstanding.. and your rep won't yet have dropped much, for sure, so if you can pick up some UPS missions you'd soon be back to outstanding and could resume your gem carrying....

The Cobra Mk-III is nice ship for class. But its limitations quickly become apparent when one tries to bid on cargo contracts.
To maximize cargo hauling opportunities, I suggest trading it in for a Boa Class Cruiser.

Do passenger contracts improve one's rating towards cargo contracts?
I seem to recall a thread of discussion about it and cannot remember if they did or didn't and if that was something that would be changed for the better.

In my last couple of runs I picked up a 100,000 credits for a gem stone job I did. The cobra is fine for doing the credit rich gem-stone or gold runs, but yeah I agree, not too good for larger cargo.

To be honest I'm not quite sure how I got into doing the gem stone runs. I hadn't actually been doing any carriers runs really, but just thought one day "whats a quick way to suppliment the credit income?". So I had a look and noticed that there were some really credit rich runs to be had. In fact I think I started to do them, say if I was on my way to a random hits target, I would have a look and see if there was something that could be taken on the way.

Is it possible I just happened to look right after doing a package job for UPS or something?

I don't really want to get into carrying as a lifestyle as such, I'm more interested in the combat and missions. I just find it odd that after just a few jumps were I haven't done a run, I now can't seem to pick up any of any size.

dalek501 wrote:

Is it possible I just happened to look right after doing a package job for UPS or something?

Yes, I'd say it's very possible that it happened that way...

dalek501 wrote:

I don't really want to get into carrying as a lifestyle as such, I'm more interested in the combat and missions. I just find it odd that after just a few jumps were I haven't done a run, I now can't seem to pick up any of any size.

From what I recall during my reading up on the topic, every jump (even while you're in the middle of a cargo run) there is a small chance (it was 3% I think, but may have changed, there was some debate on that subject) that your rep will drop a little. So it's entirely possible that you were unlucky and had your rep drop a point, preventing you from getting any of the really good jobs. The fact that you haven't been able to get any at all since then is likely a combination of bad luck and the size of your cargo-hold.

I suspect that your best chance to get your rep back to 'outstanding' would be some UPS jobs.

Ah, ok. I think I'd better just keep trying. Thanks for the help.