Hauling Contracts - generated by Acquisition Contracts
I think hauling contracts should be for materials, and the collateral and reward are based on how much you carry to the destination. The more your ship can carry, the better your reward per trip.
Hauling contracts can be based on acquisition contracts, and the range that signal is sent out determines the time limit. If a station is trying to acquire something, then stations within that range with an abundance of that item should generate a hauling contract to transport them. If done this way, there would only need to be the acquisition contracts stored in the contracts database. When a player signs up for a hauling contract, they can choose how much to haul, up to one of the following amounts…
- The max requested by the destination.
- The max that can fit in the selected container.
- The max that the station has on hand.
- The max the player can afford to pay in collateral.
If the destination is requesting 20 large cargo containers worth of iron ingots, the ship has 8 empty large cargo containers, while the station has 6 large cargo containers of iron ingots, and the player can afford to pay the collateral to fill 7 large cargo containers full of iron ingots…. Then they would be able to accept the exact same request 6 times because the station only had that much available. Their ship would have 2 empty cargo containers left which the player could fill with a different hauling request. (It’d be nice if we could sort requests by distance, or even group by destination)
In addition, the collateral should be based on your reputation.
- 1500 rep = 50% material value. (They trust you won't steal it, so you only pay half-price)
- 1000 to 1499 = 80% material value.
- 500 to 999 = 95% material value.
- 0 to 499 = 100% material value.
- -499 to -1 = 110% material value.
- -1500 to -500 = 150% material value. (You're an enemy, so we assume you will steal it and we will make a nice profit as a result.)
And finally... the rep gain for success can remain 25 per successful trip. However the rep loss will be based on how much sc was lost. (with a minimum of 10 rep loss)
If the player failed the contract after stuffing 10k items worth 200sc each into their ship, and they were at 1500 rep, then without even taking the reward into consideration, the station lost 10k sc because the player only paid 50% for the entire load. If reputation drops by 1 for every 10 sc lost, then the player loses 1000 rep points. They’ll have to succeed 40 requests without fail to bring their reputation back up to 1500.
If a player with a rep of 600 fails 10k items worth 200sc each… the rep loss would only be 100, because they paid 95% collateral, thus the station only lost 1000sc… as a result it only takes 4 successful requests to gain back the lost rep.
TL;DR
- Station wants 65 million iron ingots.
- Station generates acquisition contract, paying 15% over market value for iron ingots.
- Tells all stations within 2000km that it wants 65 million ingots.
- Stations within 2000km (that have iron ingots) generate a hauling request. Time limit is set based on distance, so that if you traveled at 100m/s the entire distance, you would have 10 minutes to spare.
- Player accepts request multiple times until:
- ship has enough to fulfill the entire amount requested by the destination
- ship is full
- station runs out of ingots
- or player can no longer afford collateral payment,
- Player succeeds: Their collateral is returned, and they are paid 15% of the market value of the ingots. (essentially, since your collateral was returned, you paid nothing for the ingots. It’s the same profit you’d make if you just showed up with ingots and accepted the acquisition request.)
Station tells all other stations that the requested amount has reduced by however much the player has delivered. - Player Fails: Collateral is not returned. If you paid 100% collateral (or more), then you lose 10 rep points. If you paid less than 100% in collateral, then you lose 1 rep point for every 10sc the station lost because they trusted you.
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