Question to the community: when do you ever want to take the cargo reward from a mission?
Today's tweak to cargo rewards has drawn attention to the fact that sometimes the cargo reward is terrible. Here's an example I screenshotted an hour ago:
Oh joy, Limpets. It's a shame that this station offers Restock, so I could buy as many Limpets as I want here. Hell, if you gave me Materials I could synthesize limpets even if there wasn't Restock.
However, there are some mission rewards that offer valuable cargo! But wait, it's worse than you think:
This cargo in Option 2 isn't being offered to me at a discount - I'm effectively 'buying' it at Galactic Average. This is bad on two fronts:
1) If I want cargo for trade purposes, I should keep the CR and just buy more Reactive Armour at this station for a lower price.
2) If I just want credits, picking Option 2 and selling the cargo off at this station is less money than Option 1.
In either case, Option 2 sucks.
There's only a couple edge cases there you want the cargo rewards:
a) You need to unlock Marco Qwent and the reward on offer. This is a one-off, and to be frank, nobody likes Marco Qwent for it. In fact, he's one of the most hated engineers because of this unlock. Marco being obnoxious does not justify keeping this system.
b) You want the specific cargo given out to complete a mission (e.g. get Bromellite, use Bromellite to easily complete another mission). This has just been removed to avoid another form of exploit and shouldn't still be happening. In fact, it's another reason not to keep handing out cargo as a payment.
c) You want to boost the influence of the Controlling Faction by trading in their market; so this gives you some freebie to boost influence. However, "Extra Influence" can be another reward that has not been rewarded because "Cargo" has displaced it. If this is a mission from the Controlling Faction then I'd rather pick some INF+++++ reward. If this isn't from the controlling faction I'm trying to boost, I shouldn't be doing this mission!
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TLDR: Cargo Rewards should be removed entirely. There's no reason to ever pick them, they're displacing something better, and many ships simply can't accept them.
Footnote: this problem has predated 3.0, but it was less immediately obvious as there was no "choice" on rewards. It was, however, quite annoying to be denied a mission because (for example) your warship lacked cargo storage space.
Today's tweak to cargo rewards has drawn attention to the fact that sometimes the cargo reward is terrible. Here's an example I screenshotted an hour ago:
Oh joy, Limpets. It's a shame that this station offers Restock, so I could buy as many Limpets as I want here. Hell, if you gave me Materials I could synthesize limpets even if there wasn't Restock.
However, there are some mission rewards that offer valuable cargo! But wait, it's worse than you think:
This cargo in Option 2 isn't being offered to me at a discount - I'm effectively 'buying' it at Galactic Average. This is bad on two fronts:
1) If I want cargo for trade purposes, I should keep the CR and just buy more Reactive Armour at this station for a lower price.
2) If I just want credits, picking Option 2 and selling the cargo off at this station is less money than Option 1.
In either case, Option 2 sucks.
There's only a couple edge cases there you want the cargo rewards:
a) You need to unlock Marco Qwent and the reward on offer. This is a one-off, and to be frank, nobody likes Marco Qwent for it. In fact, he's one of the most hated engineers because of this unlock. Marco being obnoxious does not justify keeping this system.
b) You want the specific cargo given out to complete a mission (e.g. get Bromellite, use Bromellite to easily complete another mission). This has just been removed to avoid another form of exploit and shouldn't still be happening. In fact, it's another reason not to keep handing out cargo as a payment.
c) You want to boost the influence of the Controlling Faction by trading in their market; so this gives you some freebie to boost influence. However, "Extra Influence" can be another reward that has not been rewarded because "Cargo" has displaced it. If this is a mission from the Controlling Faction then I'd rather pick some INF+++++ reward. If this isn't from the controlling faction I'm trying to boost, I shouldn't be doing this mission!
------
TLDR: Cargo Rewards should be removed entirely. There's no reason to ever pick them, they're displacing something better, and many ships simply can't accept them.
Footnote: this problem has predated 3.0, but it was less immediately obvious as there was no "choice" on rewards. It was, however, quite annoying to be denied a mission because (for example) your warship lacked cargo storage space.
