Cargo Technician
Cargo Technician
Superiors: Quartermaster
Difficulty: Medium
Guides: [TBA]
Access: Cargo, External, Maintenance
Duties: Make money for the station. Order and distribute supplies.
Subordinates: None
Radio:* common
- sup
Cargo Technician is a job in the Cargo department.
A Cargo Technician's main responsibilities are to earn money for the station (by completing bounties, selling valuables, or delivering mail), use that money to order supplies, and distribute those supplies to the departments that need them. Although moving crates is a conceptually simple job, it's nonetheless an important one; whenever any department runs out of the resources they need to do their job, they will turn to Cargo for a resupply.
Remember that your job is to supply the whole station. If you elect to blow all of Cargo's budget on non-essentials (such as booze, toy guns, or mothroaches), then the other departments won't be able to get their jobs done. In extreme cases, not being able to buy critical supplies in an emergency (such as AME fuel during a catastrophic power failure or weapons and medical supplies during a hostile invasion) can ultimately cause the total collapse of the station.
Remember to use the Radio to coordinate with your fellow Cargo employees (e.g, to decide who is doing which bounties or keep track of the cargo shuttle's status), as well as other members of the crew (e.g, to ask if any departments like Science need a material delivery or if they can make bounty items for you).
Cargo Ordering Computer
You can use the ordering computer to put in the orders you want the shuttle to buy from other stations. When you open the UI you should see a vast list of crates you can order; anything from dice games to firearms. When someone at the front desk asks for something it's your job to input what they asked for into the computer, preferably under their name. You can click on anything from the list to view its description and price. Just below that is the quantity you are ordering and the name of the person who ordered it as well as the reason it's being ordered. After you input what you want and are ready to get the cargo shuttle to bring it in, you need to accept the order, which will deduct the funds from the cargo-wide bank account.
Once ordered, the crate will spawn at the off-station Automated Trade Station (ATS). You will need to use the Cargo Shuttle to get there.
Cargo Shuttle
The Cargo department has a shuttle, which is used to ferry crew and cargo to the Automated Trade Station where cargo can be retrieved or sold.
The shuttle is piloted via the Shuttle Console, located inside of the shuttle. Controls are:
- WASD to strafe forward, left, backwards and right,
- Q and E to spin left and right respectfully,
- Spacebar to brake. When in doubt, hold the brakes.
The docking tab is used for docking with ships/stations that also have docking airlocks. Once you have two docking airlocks face to face, right click the docking airlock and select the Dock button. If successful, the docks will both open and you will be attached to the other vessel.
The Automated Trade Station (ATS) exists in close proximity to the station. You will need to manually haul goods for appraisal & bounties to the ATS and drag anything for sale (bounty or otherwise) to the sales grid and sell them via the appraisal console. Goods you order will appear on the purchase grid likewise.
A recommended contingency is to relocate or rebuild the cargo ordering console to the ATS in the event of a power outage or critical damage to the cargo bay. NOTE that during an attack on the station by nuclear operatives or others, the ATS may be an early casualty in order to deprive the crew of arms and other key supplies.
Making Money
Bounties
A good way to start making some cash is the available Bounties that CentComm will recompense upon completion. To complete a bounty, simply put the sought-after items in a crate, left-click the crate with the printed bounty, then sell the crate at the ATS. Appraising the labeled crate with the Appraisal Tool will verify whether the crate will complete the bounty when sold.
Delivering Mail
The station periodically receives mail at the mail teleporter located in the Cargo department, addressed to certain crew members. Delivering this mail and having the recipient open their parcels will award the station a small amount of money per parcel.
Parcels come in small letters as well as larger packages that need two hands to hold. Multiple large packages can be carried via putting them in a closet or crate and dragging the crate.
Fragile parcels with red labels will be damaged when roughly handled (ex. by being thrown or dropped via slipping). Priority parcels with yellow labels will expire after a certain amount of time, deducting from their value when opened. Bomb parcels emit fun when opened.
Scavenging
As a Cargo Technician, you start with an Appraisal Tool 
. When you hold it in your hand you can left click on most things to find their value. Clicking an inventory will instead put the Appraisal Tool into the inventory, emptying your hand, so be careful.
With your Appraisal tool, you can investigate how to turn raw materials into profit. e.g. 1 steel (10 value) can be turned into other things for more value e.g. 1 steel for a Wrench worth 40. Beware though, automated factories are NOT approved by CentCom as they involve a lot of entity movement and can cause performance issues with little benefit to the station itself. Instead of automated factories for lots of small objects, consider creation of less more complicated/valuable objects e.g. via Construction. However, you may need to pull the objects onto the shuttle (or build them onto the shuttle and unanchor them). e.g. 2 steel can be used to create a Rack worth 150. With a Circuit Imprinter, you can also turn a tidy profit however ensure you aren't producing tonnes of little objects. Also, before you rush and sell all the vending machines, consider that each can be restocked from your department. If all the vending machines are empty and there are no Bartenders or Chefs you are letting down the station by not restocking the food and drink machines. Remember selling things of value to players like vending machines and chemical dispensers is against the Server Rules.
You can deconstruct most things on the station (but not all). For example closets cannot be deconstructed but chairs and machines can be. To deconstruct, you will typically need a screwdriver but sometimes a wrench, crowbar or wirecutters. Note that deconstructing most objects will greatly lessen the value. e.g. a chair may be worth 50 when pulled to the shuttle but deconstructed to 1 steel (worth 10).
Template:ImportantIf you're extremely low on cash, you can pester production departments (Hydroponics, Chef, Bartender and Chemistry) to make stuff to sell. Hydroponics can produce 4 aloe cream (100 per stack) per plant per cycle. Chef can produce breads / pizzas (cuttable at 50 per slice). These are produced simply with an infinite supply of free water (and power).
Whilst prices are in a state of flux, here are some guidelines
- A canister of Frezon (made by a Atmospheric Technician) is highly valuable
- Circuit boards are very valuable
- Racks are cheap yet valuable
- Plants, plant derivatives and some food are free to make
- Corpses are worth a lot (even mouse corpses are worth hundreds). Fresh and rotten corpses are both good. Cloneable humans are not advised to be sold but uncloneable human corpses are fair game.
- Musical Instruments are valuable
- Canisters / Fuel / Water tanks are highly valuable and are frequently found in maintenance corridors
Spending Money
Most of the time, you will be spending Cargo's budget on supplies that other departments specifically request (e.g, Medical asking for a ChemVend restock so they can make more medication). However, part of your job is to anticipate the station's needs and order important supplies in advance so that they're available immediately in case of an emergency. Remember: the request console might lose power, the cargo shuttle might be stolen, or the entire ATS might be attacked, so stockpile things before any of that happens!
You should generally start purchasing preemptive supplies once you have a decent cash surplus (more than around 20k or so) and no pressing requests from other departments. The following supplies are almost always useful to stockpile in advance:
- Basic materials (e.g glass, plastic, steel, plasma, plasteel)
- Antimatter containment jars
- Medical supplies (e.g ChemVend restocks, emergency advanced kits)
- Internals
- Food and water (e.g MREs, vending machine restocks)
- Weapons (note that, except during a stationwide emergency, you should give purchased weapons directly to Security so they can keep them in their armory)
Once you have a good stockpile of both cash and resources, feel free to spend some of Cargo's budget on fun toys for Cargo and for the rest of the station. Just remember to keep a good nest egg in case a sudden emergency strikes the station.
Useful trivia and tricks
- Empty crates can be built from the Craft menu (default key: G ) using 5 steel or 5 plastic. Crates can also be deconstructed using a screwdriver.
- When piloting the shuttle try not to hit any salvage the salvagers have brought in using their magnet. If you do, and a crewmember is on that wreck, their screen will spin and they may no longer know which way the station is.
- Do not hit the station at high speeds when using the shuttle as it will damage both the shuttle and station.
- Everything dead, natural and manmade can be sold, this means you can sell anything that is not useful to the station plus any junk that salvage keeps bringing in. Some objects will be worth 0 (e.g. tables).
- In the likely case that the Chef or Botanist asks you to have something delivered such as a cow or seeds consider asking if they'd like to help you make money by baking bread and pizza, growing excess plants, and giving you mouse corpses rather than cooking them.
- A more passionate Janitor may often come by to give you junk to sell, and if not it may not take much more than asking to get them to do so, remind them what is valuable to you.