In the departmental economy design document , the flow of the old cargo system was criticized for having too much friction due to its many steps required between a player wanting to order something, and the reception of the player’s order.
As described in the design document, here is the old workflow of cargo that departmental economies were meant to slim down :
1 : Player walks to cargo
2: Player finds a tech and tells them what they want
3: Tech thinks and argues about whether they should get it
4:Tech actually gets permission to use those funds and orders it; if they even have the funds to spare
5:Tech goes with cargo to trade station, retrieves the goods, and brings it back
6:Tech alerts the original player about the product in question, or delivers
it
7:Player has the thing they wanted
The departmental budget’s previous implementation. with instant internal approval, reduced the work flow as mentioned in the design document to :
1: Player goes to the departmental console and purchases something their department needs
2: Cargo techs notice the new purchase; prepare to go grab it from the trade station
3:Techs retrieve it from the trade station and deliver it to the department that ordered it
4:Player has the thing they wanted
This system seemed to have encountered pushback in the Delta-V community. As I do not play there, I will only comment on what others have said.
The criticism can be focused to the reduction in cargo’s duties, as they no longer need to proactively order other department’s goods, and the subsequent reduction in cargo’s authority and opportunities for conflict that the original cargo system presented.
Based on these criticism, the acquisition slips model of cargo seemed to have been developed. Now the work flow looks like this :
1: Player goes to the departmental console and prints a slip for their goods.
2 : Player walks to cargo
3: Player finds a tech and tells them what they want, passing them the slip
4: Tech thinks and argues about whether they should get it
5:Tech actually gives permission to use other department’s funds and orders it
6:Tech goes with cargo to trade station, retrieves the goods, and brings it back
7:Tech alerts the original player about the product in question, or delivers
it
8 :Player has the thing they wanted
This work flow seems to revert the cargo model to the pre - departmental budget era, creating more friction between players and their orders. From an outside perspective, this seems like a contradiction to the core design of departmental budgets. Not only is the possibility for a player to never receive their order increases, but cargo now acquires spending authority over all other budgets, seemingly rendering them pointless, as giving cargo 100% of the funds would actually make this work flow exactly like to original cargo model and reduce friction once again.
Whilst I understand to want for more friction and authority for cargo, these seems to be directly opposed to the want of departmental budgets to reduce friction.
Have I missed some important detail or misunderstood something ? How can cargo’s core gameplay be influenced so much with opposing design goals in so little time ?