ST: INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR CHALLENGE Discussion Thread

[slayernz]

Hey everyone, please use this thread to share your thoughts, progress, hints, tips, and red herrings on this month's challenge, which is the Independent Contractor challenge.

The link to the challenge is here

[fallen]

Blasted to the social streams!

[athios]

The challenge sounds interesting, but also somewhat horrific to contemplate, considering that I normally reject 80-90% of contracts... :S

Would we actually only take on one contract at a time? If you take more than one, and they happen to be short time-limit and in opposite directions, you may be automatically screwed.

It is good that you factor in amount of credits into the score. If you keep your Rank low and don't buy permits, you can get easier contracts. On the flip side, the pay for those won't be as high. Lots of potential for different strategies and balancing acts here, I think.

[athios]

Confounding factor you should account for in the score calculations: Annuled contracts (i.e. cargo exposed from search) are not counted as Failed or Expired in the character Score Summary. However, they do show up as Accepted.

To keep people from exploiting this, instead of the penalty being Fails/Rejects/Expires x -1000, it should simply be (Accepted - Completed) x -1000.

[slayernz]

I thought that contracts where cargo was confiscated counted as failure. This is a bug if that's not the case. Nonetheless, I don't mind, for the sake of this challenge, that we don't take into account confiscated cargo, because I'm expecting you not to let yourself be boarded very often.

Also - it's up to you if you want to take one contract at a time or if you want to risk multiple contracts. Starting out, you often get contracts that are pretty close by - and once you get going, you get contracts with hefty numbers of weeks before expiry. I'm personally going to try and take a couple of contracts at a time. I'll be checking time to expire for each contract though.

[slayernz]

Fenikso, because of you, I've clarified the rules ... you can play the challenge at multiple levels, and each one counts as a game in the challenge. That is, if you start and finish a game in Master level, you can start a new one at Guildmaster (or Apprentice) level as well, and have two entries in the mix.

As per the rules, if you start a challenge on a particular level and complete it (through success or failure), any subsequent game in that challenge level doesn't get counted as your challenge score.

[johndramey]

Nice idea with the "all competing on the same field" move slayernz, I think that's the best way to do these because it lets everyone compare scores. I'm in for sure, can't wait to try my hand at this. I think my purpose-built Tempus Fugit should be perfect for this challenge, but we'll see.

[slayernz]

Funny, I almost always start with the Vae ... it's not necessarily the best ship out there, but for me it's pretty well rounded all the same.

[johndramey]

I like the Tempus Fugit for less combat oriented captains. I can kit that bad boy out to be a high stealth delivery vehicle easily and, if I play my cards right, could carry me to the end of the challenge.

[slayernz]

Ooo you'll have ultimate bragging rights if you can complete the challenge in your starting ship!!!

[athios]

Aug 8, 2013 16:24:43 GMT -5 slayernz said:

I thought that contracts where cargo was confiscated counted as failure. This is a bug if that's not the case. Nonetheless, I don't mind, for the sake of this challenge, that we don't take into account confiscated cargo, because I'm expecting you not to let yourself be boarded very often.

I deliberately started a new captain to test this before posting. The contract is added to Accepted, but once confiscated is no longer tracked, and not counted as fail.

I brought it up because people can deliberately surrender to a patrol ship if they think the target is too far away or they don't have enough time left.

[slayernz]

Cool - don't you get -RP for losing cargo? Otherwise, it's an exploit that I have no control over, and maybe you've pissed the faction off too much and you end up executed for your troubles

[athios]

LOL

Rep you can always fix with some creds in the right hands. I meant people would do it to avoid the -1000 score penalty.

[slayernz]

Challenge starts in 2 days (I always end up working on US time anyway) ... can't wait to see how everyone goes!

[johndramey]

So, by my calculation we can start today, correct? Woohoo!