How trade CGs are measured
- Thread starter CMDR Sophie Joanne
- Start date
While I see your point, let me show you the other side:
Friend parts a cutter outside, and I fly a Sidewinder with 2 cargo space, scoop up 2t, drop off. 100% cargo. repeat as needed for 350 "full cargo runs". Only 700t delivered.
Even if you do have a cutter, one might come in short vs people who can park a carrier at the door step and ferry over 10000t of goods in a few minutes or more, depending on the carrier and their owner.
I agree, it's not necessarily fair to those not flying a big ship. But it's a community goal, and all participants do get a share. Some get a bigger one, some a smaller one.
I did say "not so far that someone in a sidewinder with a cargo capacity of 4 can be in the top 10 (that would be unfair for the player who spent hours grinding to get the Cutter) ".
But how would you want to measure that?
The game doesn't check what fleet any player has in order to reward them with points.
Currently, the game only check how much cargo you have dropped off, regardless who you are and what you own. Pretty much like real life.
If you need to ferry a large amount of goods from A to B, you will reward the people rocking up with big trucks, not the person with a trailer or the 5yo with the little wheelbarrow. While the latter may look cute and his contribution is appreciated, it's just a drop in the ocean and doesn't make much of a dent in the whole goal.
"GalNot NEWSFLASH
Kevin the Docking Bay Controller has gone mad with the lasers and destroyed several ships and most of the landing pads at Random Station.
Pilots help needed.
3 Stages, first stage we only have small landing pads available, we need X deliveries of random stuff. If successful within the timeframe we can move onto the second stage and rebuild the Medium pads after which the final stage we will need X amount of random stuff to repair the Large pads.
If unsuccessful we estimate a 6 month delay to the landing pads being repaired whilst we mine salt to fix them'
That's an awesome idea!
A progressive CG. When are we getting this?
The simple solution is to diversify the goods needed and rarity.
Back when my group had a CG run by FD, we put a lot of thought into the goods requested, not just for RP reasons. IIRC we requested Pesticides, Battle Weapons, Personal Weapons and Nerve Agents. Besides wanting to give a "chemical weapons" research feel to the goal, we went for:
Obviously, pesticides were the go-to given they were the most readily available. What Trade CGs lack though is scaling of scarcity against contribution. You would quite easily find Nerve agents if you went a jump or two away in a 40+LY Asp, but you'd only come back with, what, 64t of nerve agents? Contrast against a single-jump T9 bringing back 600t of goods, why would you bother with Nerve Agents.... unless they were worth 10 times the contribution. The problem with doing Nerve Agents in a T9 is that you might go somewhere and only find 20-odd tonnes or so, but it's so much harder to get there.
And that's the way to make small ships count better; include goods that are better got with small, long range ships and are worth more in terms of contribution.
(And by extension, each material type should have a tier- level goal, with the total tier meeting the minimum... so if the same cg i described got nothing but pesticides, it'd not even hit tier 1 due to zero deliveries of the other types)
Back when my group had a CG run by FD, we put a lot of thought into the goods requested, not just for RP reasons. IIRC we requested Pesticides, Battle Weapons, Personal Weapons and Nerve Agents. Besides wanting to give a "chemical weapons" research feel to the goal, we went for:
- Pesticides; low profit margins, widely available in large quantities
- Battle Weapons, Personal Weapons; Reasonably available in good quantities, with better margins.
- Nerve Agents; Highly scarce (best supply I can find is =~ 1,000t), best profit margins.
Obviously, pesticides were the go-to given they were the most readily available. What Trade CGs lack though is scaling of scarcity against contribution. You would quite easily find Nerve agents if you went a jump or two away in a 40+LY Asp, but you'd only come back with, what, 64t of nerve agents? Contrast against a single-jump T9 bringing back 600t of goods, why would you bother with Nerve Agents.... unless they were worth 10 times the contribution. The problem with doing Nerve Agents in a T9 is that you might go somewhere and only find 20-odd tonnes or so, but it's so much harder to get there.
And that's the way to make small ships count better; include goods that are better got with small, long range ships and are worth more in terms of contribution.
(And by extension, each material type should have a tier- level goal, with the total tier meeting the minimum... so if the same cg i described got nothing but pesticides, it'd not even hit tier 1 due to zero deliveries of the other types)
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They did a good thing when they made a CG where some items counted more than others (i.e. explo CG where mapped worlds gave more contrib). Hopefully you could do that with a trade one without reinventing the wheel.
Thats how the Tea=Baggers started I think, the same principle anyway. I have nothing against the TB's, quite the opposite, but in my scenario they would be 1 jump away from the target system at least for the first week...I mean yes a Cobra can Tea Bag for Sideys etc but the idea is to try an encourage everyone to fly in system in a small ship....and preferably more people in Open coz its only a small ship and can only be interdicted by a small ship and best case scenario its one jump to a Tea Bagger for restock.
More fun. more 'action'. maybe even more amateur PVP as not totally outclassed.
I do like the 3 or 4 Tiers for different goods though, this is much more realistic.
And while top 75% only get the prize, in a CG where Tonnage is the goal and not profit, players will always gravitate towards the easier high tonnage regardless of profit.
However it will all require a lot of work from Frontier to even permit lock M & L & FCs, let alone the landing pads. So overall I think its a non-starter but maybe some time in the future becomes a 'maybe or the genesis of an idea that can be impolemented'.
I would like it if the trade CGs used a mechanic based around the one used for station repairs with different totals for each item required.
