# Superbia Navis: Cargo Rework [Goodwheatley, Unapproved, WIP]

Cargo is probably in the worst place out of all the departments in SS14, and anyone who has the strength of will to repeatedly play Cargo Technician can attest to that. It used to be tied with Sci for the worst department to play in my eyes, but now with Emo's updates, Cargo is now firmly in last place. What's interesting about Cargo's current state is this; if the structure of its core gameplay loop has already been implemented, why is it so unfun to play?

### No Good Way To Earn Money
The only reliable source of income cargo has is salvage, and half the time they don't bring in anything to sell and just spend all their time building a shuttle. When cargo techs are resorting to selling vending machines and constantly printing wrenches for income, something has gone horribly wrong.
### Nothing Else To Do
Medical can help make chems or manage bodies during downtime, science can switch between subdepartments, security can go on patrol, and engineering can monitor the singulo or do building projects, but cargo has no side activity to do. They can't go and salvage because there's not enough hardsuits, and even if they could there's a point where there are so many salvage techs that not everyone gets to actually help loot the salvage pulled in. Cargo has to either delve into maintenance, greytide, or sit around the department waiting for an order...
### Which never comes because nobody ever orders anything
Besides the regular demands by engineering for AME fuel and the occasional request by the chef for a cow, nobody ever orders anything from Cargo because it's either already supplied on the station, or it's too much of a hassle to walk all the way over to the cargo desk, wait for a cargo tech to notice and come over, and tell him exactly what you want. And since all the money for orders comes out of cargo's budget, the requester doesn't ever have to pay anything, they'll usually just get it for free if they bother to ask. The Requests Console, Public Order Computer, wider selection of goods, and the economy (so people could actually pay for their orders) in SS13 helped solve this issue, but in the current state of SS14, Cargo doesn't have any meaningful way to get payment, or anything meaningful to buy.

### The Rework
There's never going to be an ideal way for cargo to constantly have orders coming in, since that not only requires handicapping all the other departments and gating their progression behind Cargo, but now Cargo has to have some way to produce a reliable source of income, and with other departments unable to contribute since they're waiting on Cargo for their materials we're back to Cargo stealing vending machines and selling them, except this time it's out of necessity. Having Cargo experience periods of intense uptime interspersed with downtime is a better solution in general, since then Cargo will still have periods where they're constantly working but still be able to take a break and interact with the station.

During the downtime phase, things are pretty much the same as they always are. Salvage does salvage, and Cargo takes the orders of anyone who wants something. But to get those orders to you, and to sell anything the station has made, you're going to have to brave the opening bell. This encourages players to submit their orders in groups so they don't get ignored while Cargo is in a frenzy, and deliver the stuff they want to sell ahead of time, which gives cargo a stockpile of goods to start trading with. By encouraging players to submit orders en masse, Cargo will have more to do in time periods where they're actively working as opposed to orders slowly trickling in throughout the round.

The new stuff:
- The space station is now obstensibly displayed on a map that shows all the other cargo depots in the sector. Shuttles can be assigned to any transit lanes between these depots to allow trade, and shuttles can have their trade routes modified to hit multiple depots before returning to base. You're also able to remotely instruct shuttles to buy goods at one depot and then sell them at the next, but they'll need to physically return to transfer profits, and if a shuttle is still at a depot when the market closes, and that depot isn't a designated transit hub, you have a high chance of losing it by the time the market opens again. And make sure the shuttles don't run out of fuel!
- The prices of goods is now influenced by the space market. At first you'll be mostly insulated from any sudden price shocks by CentCom, but as your operation expands their markups on goods can be circumvented through other depots, which each have their own stocks of goods and prices for them. What you buy from depots and sell to other depots will influence the market, and can have far reaching consequences depending on whether other depots were trading those goods.
- Cargo is able to now purchase more shuttles of different varieties, and more magnets that allow bigger and bigger salvages to be pulled in, which lets salvage be more productive while the cargo techs reset for the next opening bell. Each shuttle has different stats such as transit times, cargo capacity, fuel capacity, and reliability that influence how well they'll perform cargo runs.
- Traders can be contacted at each depot, which will periodically make you trade offers, offer to buy goods at markups, or sell you stuff at lower prices. As your reputation with a trader rises, they'll give you better deals, but only if you help them make a profit too.
- Don't forget, you're still an official subsidiary of Nanotrasen's Delivery Service, and they're not going to let you forget it. Delivery shuttles will arrive while the market is open with crates that need to be inspected, have their manifest verified, and then sent to their destination on the correct shuttle. You only have a limited amount of time to do this before any potential profit is eliminated, and if you send a crate with an incorrect manifest along you'll get penalized once the discrepancy is discovered.
- Some crates may not contain what they say they do, and if it's a Nanotrasen-brand crate you can identify the discrepancy in the manifest and fax it to CentCom for a cash bonus. If it isn't from Nanotrasen...caveat emptor.
- Random market events can happen that drastically shift the balance of the space market. It's in your best interest to keep some critical supplies on reserve in case a recession hits, but that wouldn't be profitable, right?
- You're not exclusively sending shuttles, and periodically shuttles will arrive to dock at Cargo, offload their goods, and pick up stuff for further travel. There can be as many as 4 shuttles jostling for docking position, and you'll need a competent shuttle controller or two to make sure your operation doesn't get handicapped by gridlock.
- Traders can sometimes make special requests that influence how the market may perform depending on how you respond, or can sometimes enter into direct competition with you.
- Urgent requests for goods can sometimes come in while the market is open that must be fulfilled within a limited time window to gain profit. The requested items are things that aren't usually found in cargo, pulling other departments into the frenzy to make money. (This is the replacement for bounties, they'll have a higher time limit of around 20 minutes before profit is lost but you'll get a sizeable cash bonus if the request is fulfilled before the market closes. Instead of having bounties passively come in where any crewmember can walk up to the console and claim a bounty to work on, Cargo will have to actively send out the requests for goods to the various departments.)
- The period you're open for market trading will last for 10 minutes, which can be extended depending on your depot's reputation, and the lights and TV screens on the walls of cargo will light up and play announcements while the market is open, allowing cargo techs to be informed of important changes to the market while they're working. Once the market closes, you'll have to wait 5 minutes before it can be opened again, so you have time to clean up the work floor for the next round and analyze the current market situation for maximum profit, and salvage has some downtime to use the magnet.
- While Nanotrasen's influence is powerful enough to completely halt the space market once you become closed, but illegal markets will still experience changes, albeit at a much slower rate.
- Cargo now has Forklifts (that you must obtain a certification for to be able to drive) that can rapidly load and unload up to 3 crates at once, and moves much faster than the Ripley.
- Cargo can eventually construct a black market uplink that lets them directly interface with traders working outside the law, and obtain goods not found anywhere else. However, if you trade too much on the black market NT's suspicion will be raised, and yuor shuttles could be subjected to cargo checks more frequently.
- If you emag the control computer, you'll now be able to contact Syndicate traders that not only offer superior prices and high-quality goods, but let you sign up for lucrative contracts that are only *slightly* illegal.
- If you're tired of having to pay absurd premiums for new cargo shuttles, why not have salvage build you one? Once they've constructed a functioning shuttle, the QM can designate the cargo storage area and send it off to an appraisal center for certification, and if it passes it will become a genuine cargo shuttle you can use. It's your choice whether you want NT or some other entity to appraise it, while NT appraisal does add some authority, appraising it somehwere else lets it slip through transit lanes undetected.
- If a cargo shuttle had a "tragic accident" while trying to dock at your port, you can break it down and resell the cargo. This will make the faction that owned the shuttle angry if you deliberately destroyed it, but there are ways to make it look like accidents.
- Tired of having to pay for everything? With some ship guns outfitted onto your shuttles, you can carry on the proud tradition of space piracy by ambushing cargo shuttles mid-transit. At sufficient tech levels, you can even send crew members along on the shuttle to help out with the heist.
- Sometimes exceptional offers will pop up in your feed, which can be triggered by exceptional reputation, massive profit, or unrelated factors. While what exactly you'll be getting may be vague, you have the chance to make a mssive profit if you take the risk.
- The screens around cargo will broadcast live news reports from around the sector and play music while the market is open. The news reports can sometimes have an impact on how the market performs, and as your depot's reputation grows, player-made reports can also influence the market. But if you just fill a report with buzzwords to influence the market, the ruse will eventually be discovered and you'll lose reputation.
- The high-intensity music that plays during open market will change dynamically depending on the current market trends and events, and what the depot is buying and selling. The reason for the high intensity is that otherwise cargo might be able to make "rational" and "informed" decisions that "fully take into account the current market trends".