Contracts and trading terminals are not sufficiently informative

Andrey Kleshchev shared this feedback 4 years ago
Submitted

Example:

I built trading and contracts terminals and got really confused.

Lets start from contracts:

  • Avaliable contracts: list was empty and claimed that there is no contracts avaliable. But does it mean that there are no contracts on this specific grid, in my faction or that I don't know contacts that brodcasted contracts to me?
  • Accepted contracts: It says "You do not have active contracts", so at least I know that it lists my contracts, but does it list contracts I personally accepted or whole faction? And does this list filters contracts specific to this grid or all of them as long as they are mine/faction's? It also doesn't give a hint how to get contracts from factions.
  • Administration: assuming I'm faction leader, does this list only contracts I created or faction contracts in general? Also creation date field might be usefull to see for how long contract remained inactive.
  • Administration->new contracts: Payment field can be guesed, duration is probably case by case basis (is it maximum time in case of hauling and repairs?) but what is collateral? How much contractee will be allowed to wreck contractor? Or how much contractor will compensate for damages to contractee's eqipment?
  • Administration->new contracts->types: Repair contract is probably the only one obvious. Search probably species around what to search, but it doesn't seem to specify what to search for. Is it searching for grids? Ores? Asteroids? Hauling - does it haul only grids? There seem to be no waypoints to set destination. Repair and Aquisition are more clear, but still will be usefull to have more info either as tooltips or text in free space. For example Hauling wants me to specify a grid, but what do it want the grid specified for? A place to unload resources? A place to load them? And how much should I pay to haul something from A to B? * and list seems rather small, I won't mind hiring someone to deal with pesky 'hidden pirate base' near me)
  • Aquisition needs ability to search trough the list - item list is way too long. And this does not specify how good will be delivered, are contractor expected to just sell items to station and this way contractor will get a bonus from the contract or will it be delivered specifically to this terminal?

Store terminal:

While not as bad, still can be improved. Specifically it took me a moment to realize that inventory list probably will show my ship if I dock something to connector, that current grid doesn't count (and I probabbly need to set up connector). And administration tab has same issue with long list. In case of filter-block long list is acceptable since you set it up once and can forget about it, but contracts/store seem like they will be used more frequently. Please consider using a copy of 'G' menu for this seletion.


P.S. Administration tab: Would be nice to be able to specify amount of space reserved for trading and see total volume consumed by goods set for sale and space needed for goods expected from trade.

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