In an attempt to walk the line between realism and role-play facilitation, we're going to eliminate the need to constantly move commodities in order to earn a profit on an individual level. We're still going to have markets, but the access to them will be restricted (and I'll get into that later). In their stead, we will be moving to a contract-based freight system. Some contracts will be NPCed, others will be RPed, but we leave the choice up to the players. Let me outline below:
Ciprino is in desperate need of Dilithium. If he's at a space station, he can find out if there's someone available to hire to go purchase product for him and them bring it to him at a price. Once contact is made, they role-play about the price and details. A contract is made (using the code, so there's no misunderstandings), the hired player uses his ship and fuel and other overhead to go get the product for a guaranteed selling price. Hopefully, the hired player isn't alone in doing this, but once the contract is completed, the hired player gets paid, Ciprino has his Dilithium, and the reputation of the hired player rises slightly with Ciprino (who might tell others). If not, then obviously the negative result, will mar doing business with Ciprino in the future. Creates more role-play.
If players wish it, they can seek contracts from the cargomaster console on the station, and fulfill NPC contracts within certain time limits. There's no role-play involved, but that's at the discretion of the player who chooses to engage in the coded side of the commerce system. Using the contracts will fulfill certain necessities of the coded markets, however, since there are only going to be 2 per planet/station every week or so, once those are all gone, rp-based contracts will be the only ones left. This will force more players to create rp-based contracts, thereby creating more role-play in order to determine the details of the contract. Who knows? Someone might get lucky and be hired as a contractor regularly to ship items and earn more money. In turn, they may hire more people to help and there's more people to role-play with.
There are four different kinds of contracts:
* - Type I: Prime Contract: Large supplier, tight schedule.
* - Type II: Standard Contract: Standard supplier, easy schedule.
* - Type III: Undesirable Contract: Small supplier, tight schedule.
* - Type IV: Variable Contract: RP-ed supplier, RP-ed schedule.
Based on the types of contracts available, each one has the ability to raise or lower the reputation of the player. For each successful completion of a prime contract, the reputation goes up by one point. If they fail, it goes down by one. If they complete a standard contract, no rise in reputation, since they're just maintaining their reputation. The completion of a type three/undesirable might raise the reputation by as much as two or even three, but the negative side is equally as detrimental. A failure of any contract has damaging repercussions regardless of the type.
