Should we have to dock to get contracts?

[DarK Rogue]

I think we shouldn't have to dock to get contracts. We should just have to buy a piece of equipment that allows us to transmit our want to do a contract from long range. This equipment will charge a slight amount (based on reputation in system and overall reputation, military or civilian), then will give us the contract options.

[Zenith]

I'm not sure it's feasible, but Vice is the best one to tell you. It just seems to me that contracts are very much station based, and differ from station to station.

[Ravenfeeder]

I proposed that ages ago in Legends, no-one was interested.

[ShoHashi]

I like the idea of being able to get contracts without docking using a piece of equipment. That would give you one other thing to think about when fitting your ship with equipment. "Let me see, should I fit this contract communicator in a slot, or is it more important for me to equip the mining beam? I can always still manually dock to pick up contracts."

-Sho

[Maarschalk]

I do not think it is feasable. And docking at Stations to get information is good practice. Contracts are very sector and Station specific and dependant. If you could accept contracts remotely from any where how do you know which System or Planet you are doing the contract for since there are no contracts in empty sectors without Stations and being in the middle of nowhere would get confusing if you choose a contract remotely and a player who is already in that sector and want's to accept that contract that you already remotely accepted that person is screwed trying to get that contract. And there are contracts that are time critical......

[DarK Rogue]

I mean you would get contracts from the station or city in the system, if there is one. If not, then you don't get any.

[Wasp89]

I've already made my case for why only being allowed to accept contracts at stations is better than being able to receive them on the wing. Perhaps as you move farther into the game, you will come to realize that after most combat missions you will end up refueling/repairing/reaming at a station anyways. And even if you can use deployables to refuel and repair, you still won't be able to replace those precious cm's without a visit to your local vendor. I'm not sure I would ever want to skip a visit to a station between difficult combat missions.

In the end, under optimal conditions, you can be in the docking bay of any space station within the range of your jump drive in under ten seconds. When it comes to docking on planets, you can do it in under 30 seconds, if you are precise with your nav point and know the right techniques for safe rapid rentry of an atmosphere. So it's never really a major inconvenience to have to dock at a station, unless its the docking fee you are worried about. Apart from that, any motivation for submitting a request to receive contracts on the wing boils down to pure laziness. As for docking fees, I still say that if you want to conduct business in a place where folks don't like you, you ought to get less profit for your troubles.

In case you couldn't tell, I voted yes.


Edit: I, unfortunately, am a king of laziness. I'm up at 5:00 in the morning working on a paper right now that I should have started last week. So anytime I'm forced to not be lazy is a good thing, even if it is while I'm being lazy and playing a video game. I think this is generally true for most men.


[Edited on 9-30-2010 by Wasp89]

[Sinbad]

I imagine that a pilot would normally find contracts by meeting with various people in the station (as in Freelancer), so it wouldn't make sense to be able to do that over radio communication. Having said that there could be an option to accept some contracts remotely which could be of lower value. Another option could be to accept contracts from other AI pilots through the ship-to-ship trade console.

[gietek]

I'm strongly against it.

But wait a moment.... No... Let's do that, and then maybe Excalibur torpedos with 5 sec recharge time, 1 billion reward for cleaning an array, no hostile systems, hidden cargos on every planet, hiring a fleet out of nowhere, Yamato Gun that pops the enemies like a grape, cargo container increased from 5 to 1000 and let the asteroids be made of platinum only.

Would you like to simply stay in one place, press a button and let the game do everything for you?

Just click on the station, make sure your pitch is 0, jump and here you are. You don't even need to fly to it. How simple is that?

[Edited on 30-9-2010 by gietek]

[Dengar]

I'm with gietek here. Its all art of the function of being able to "fly".

Like being in a passenger aircraft that can pick up passengers without landing!!!

So its a big No. You must dock to get a contract.