In Summary: Right now, the contracts system is a hindrance. I suggest allowing players to create contracts by entering a correctly encoded String.
For example: a CONTC command, so you could execute CONTC ContractTitle-ContractDescription-BUY-H2O-500-ICA-20-HRT-5-FileFolders to immediately create a BUY contract draft with the name ContractTitle, with ContractDescription, pre-filled to buy 500 H2O @ 20ICA/u at HRT from FileFolders. Then, all the player would have to do is hit Send.
The currently implemented contract system was clearly designed to be future proof to handle a much more complex feature set, however due to the fact that none of these features are currently implemented, the contract system is uncomfortably cumbersome for the simple contract templates we do have.
Obviously, a feature-complete contract system would be ideal, but dev-time is limited as it is, so instead we need a solution that conforms to a few restrictions:
- Requires minimal dev-time to implement
- Doesn’t conflict with current or future game features
- Doesn’t go afoul of the game’s automation TOS requirements (I.E. No asking for a contract API)
Of course, I am speaking as an outside without knowledge of how the game is programmed, but a command that decodes a string and pre-fills a contract draft should be the option that takes the least amount of time, as it should require no new graphical features, and only a small bit of code to translate it over for each contract type. It’s expansible, doesn’t conflict with existing game features, and allows external community tools and players to share contracts to other players quickly, without requiring API access. It doesn’t make any modifications to the existing Contracts system, meaning that no additional work would have to be done to implement the planned future features.
In the future, I intend to create some tools for my corporation that let us more easily coordinate regular logistical routes between our bases, and allowing my program to export multiple shipment contracts based on the remaining available space that player can just import directly into the game would be an immense boon. If it proves useful for my corporation, I intend to release it as a general community tool where we can share our ship itineraries and more effectively and efficiently ship materials.
Thank you for reading my ramble! This game is great and as a developer I understand the constraints preventing the small QoL issues from being reasonably fixed, I wanted to suggest the least obstructive solution I could think of!
Anyway, have a good timezone