# Routine Cargo Departmental Deliveries ## Abstract Cargo's mail feature has proven that cargo is much more engaging when moving around, and following the "deliveries" part of cargo gameplay. Mail is fun to pass around, deliver, and recieve. Unfortunately, outside of mail, Cargo is locked to a "reward before work" situation where the cargonians can order whatever they want right off the bat as their reward, but then is expected to do things to earn money back. They'll do it, sure, but only for themselves. The proposed solution is to add a system for each department to set up free orders every 10-15 minutes, for crates the department can benefit from. Cargo recieves money for taking the free crate delivery, and bringing it to the department. ## The Problem Cargo starts with a budget to spend on themselves, which lets them order their department rewards before doing anything. There is no inherent reward to delivering to other departments other than social expectations of filling the job, which means cargo will simply ignore deliveries and requests if there are more self-important things going on, since those deliveries both cost cargo and do not help cargo in any way ## Solution Each department's request console is upgraded. Instead of making requests, they are only able to see crates related to their department that helps the department. They can order one for free (so not out of anyone's wallet) and it will arrive at cargo. Cargo gets the price of the ordered crate for bringing it to the department that ordered it (via an area check, of which the crate will remain locked until satisfied, emitter cracking aside). Ordering a crate puts the console on a cooldown depending on the price of the crate ordered. The time ranges from 10 minutes at the lowest value, to capped at 20 minutes at 4x the default crate's price. the price in time follows a ease in out circular function, where the time increases slowly as the time goes up, but a lot in the middle. towards the higher end it slows down again. Cargo will start with far less money, but this is countered by the new source of income. Mail is in a great place, it won't be changed. Departments/people still order individually, but from cargo's consoles and out of cargo's budget like the system is now. While most of department orders will be from cargo and earn money FOR cargo, there has still been a level of non-departmental people requesting orders and the like. Cargo can decide which of those they want to fulfill, ideally they'll still have excess for this kind of thing. ## Goals * Promoting interaction. * I want to make sure that the cargo techs have to specifically get the crate to reach the INSIDE of the department, not just unlocking and sending payment when outside. This means the cargonians have to solve an access issue. * I want to prevent mailing the area-check crates via disposals, OR eliminate the cash reward of the crate if done that way. Mailing with disposals entirely removes the interaction or journey of delivering. It can stay around for emergency deliveries or important ones, but it can't come with the same cash reward that a cargo tech delivering crates has. * Promoting choice. * Having the free crate orders put on a high cooldown opens the option of departments having to pick which crate is best to order first, maybe to fill in something the department lacks, or to get better equipment for what is already there. There should be at least multiple reasonable first picks. * I want the orders two be split into TWO types: Supplies (medbay ordering blood, more medkits, etc) and side-content (Bees for botany). This lets people lock in side projects rfor the round and make each round more diverse. The supplies are nice for having cargo solve supply issues for other departments ## Side Projects to Support the Goal These are entirely optional and should definitely not be included in the main pull request, but they are great steps in the right direction of what i'm trying to achieve. ### Driven Mulebots Turning mulebots from their current state of automation into a vehicle would essentially be requiring someone to drive the mulebot at all times to deliver with it, which is good. Mulebots are outclassed heavily by disposals mailing, and they're still a non-interactive source of crates, which goes against the goal of promoting interaction. Perhaps the mulebots are turned into platforms for people or crates, and the platforms are chained together by a trolley-esque vehicle? ### Better departmental support crates The crates we have right now may not be wanted enough to be ordered, and cargo relies on the departments occasionally picking their free crate for income. As mentioned in the goals, departments should have at least a few picks for which crates they want to start with. ### Requests Board Right now there isn't a great way to see what's coming in beyond what cargo orders for themselves, This is equally what makes chef groceries way later than they should be, and without a way to see what cargo needs to do they will mismanage their task. ### Refactor chef groceries into this system. They don't order how departments do, but they should earn cargo money for delivering the groceries and they definitely should only unlock when reaching the kitchen.