2019-04-16 TEU Shipments, Hand Craft, Bank Cash Flow, Ship Title

[Neils Iyssada]

TEU Shipments
Broker shipments were intended to be something players could carry. This was never completed.

Players can now pick up and deliver TEU shipments.

• To request TEU shipments, a button was added to the dialog for requesting things for sale.
  
• To unload TEU shipments, a button was added to the dialog for offering things for sale.
  

This mechanic may evolve based on actual game experience. At present, there is no cost to pick up a TEU shipment. The delivery fee is based on delivering the package at the estimated delivery time. The delivery fee increases if you are early and it decreases if you are late.

Tried this, the delivery fee was really awkward :
- When I picked it up it said 1.3M fee.
- It was reduced to 70k while I was still on the next sector (no waiting time, I plotted the course right after having picked it up).
- Final fee of ~40k (less than 5% of the initial fee) while I arrived really early (like 10:45 pm instead of 10:55 pm for a 1 sector distance).


What I can imagine to make it better :
- Add a "guarantee fee" paid by the ship when it accepts the shipment, in the case the cargo is lost or stolen. It's refunded to the ship if the shipment is delivered.
- Make shipments speed take WARP level patent of the empire into account.
- Base the shipment fee on the standard shipment delivery time, and make all increase / decrease on the fee revolve around it (exactly on time = no fee).
- Scale the fee with the estimated delivery time. If you travel more you gain more.
- Scale the fee with the spacecraft's WARP level ? It's to avoid fee abuse, but can generate more abuse (warp 2 pick up, transfer to a warp 9 and gain a lot more).
- Make physical cargo ships. IDK how to handle them without making broker shipments tedious for beginers (having to afford building/paying them vs having to not pay them but easily abusable). If it's viable then add an option to use a different ship design by default, or even having to select in a list of "cargo" ship designs when planning a shipment (selected by the empire). Should we be able to board into them ? It could be useful for player pirates, but again easily abusable if it's cheap to get them.