Cargo Technician

Cargo Department

Cargo Technician

Access: Cargo, External, Maintenance

Difficulty: Easy

Duties: Buy and deliver supplies, give the crew their mail, ~~declare independence~~

Subordinates: None

Guides: You're reading it already

Welcome to the fast-moving, bustling world of the Cargo Technician! Here, your primary job is to handle supplies and make sure that they get distributed amongst the rest of the station. You'll take orders from the crew, cash in item bounties, deliver mail, transport supplies to and from the Automated Trade Station (ATS), ~~steal and sell everything not bolted down,~~ and generally make sure the rest of the crew has everything they need to do their jobs. And gamble. That's probably why at least half of your co-workers are even here.

You share a department with your more adventurous sister role, the Salvage Specialist, and your boss, the Quartermaster (QM).

Housekeeping Procedures

Whoever last staffed your Cargo Bay left it a mess, and it needs to be readied so you can perform your duties.

The first thing you're gonna have to do is bring in the cargo shuttle, as it starts adrift in space at the beginning of the round. The salvagers are also going to want you to bring in their own adrift shuttle. If you don't feel confident in your piloting skill, you can always defer to the QM or the salvagers.

You'll also, depending on the station, have a slew of random crates of supplies and other trinkets. Use, save, distribute or sell them for extra money as you see fit, but you'll usually have to defer to the QM on what exactly counts as "junk".

Making Money

While individual crew members don't have their own checking accounts ~~yet~~, you're still gonna need cold, hard cash so you can buy supplies for the station. So, how do you make money?

The Appraisal Tool

In your pocket, you start with your best friend, the trusty appraisal tool. Simply click an object (or right-click and select "Appraise") while holding it in your hand, and it will faithfully read off the current market value of whatever it was you just scanned.

Additionally, any container (such as duffel bags, crates, or lockers) can be scanned to determine the total worth of both the container and the items contained inside it!

As a word of warning, DO NOT sell anything and everything you can lay your hands on. If you sell, say, emergency oxygen lockers or fire lockers and you aren't an antagonist, this falls under griefing, and you can be ahelped for it. Make sure what you're taking from the station is absolutely unimportant, under any given circumstance. There's more efficient and less destructive ways of making money anyways, such as...

Bounties

Cargo's main source of income is the cargo bounty console.

You'll be provided a list of 6 bounties to choose from. Print out a bounty manifest by clicking the "Print" for the bounty you want to fill, and get to whoever can provide you with the items you need! Just make sure to call out which bounty you're working on in the Supply radio (:u, or :h for your "home" channel), so the other cargo technicians can work on other bounties in parallel.

A surprising amount of the items you'll need for the bounties can be made by you! Most (if not all) stations come with an autolathe in the Cargo Bay, so remember to check both that and the craft menu (G by default).

But most of the time, you'll unfortunately have to co-operate with the greened-out, criminally negligent, or Italian to complete your bounties. If you're new to the game, this is great way to get yourself familiarized with not only the layout of the various stations, but also the processes and duties of the other departments.

Once you've collected your goods to be shipped off for profit, take (or craft) a crate (or any container you can attach paper to), put all the required items in the crate, attach the bounty manifest by clicking the crate with it in your hand, and then scan it with the appraisal tool. If you've done it right, you should see the message:

The device confirms that the bounty contained within is completed.

Now, you can drag the crate on to the cargo shuttle and leave it there for the next trip to the ATS.

For what to do once you decide to go to the ATS, see the section below.

Mail Delivery

Let's say, you're waiting for Botany or the Chef to be done with your bounty, and the other cargo technicians are doing the remaining bounties. Why not try your hand at delivering mail?

Find the mail room in your cargo department and power on the mail teleporter. Every so often, it'll spit out a bunch of envelopes and packages, addressed to random crew members. It's your job now to find those crew members and make sure they tap their ID or PDA to it to unlock the tamper-proof seal and give the Cargo department a small cash bonus. Just make sure not to damage the mail, as that will incur a cash penalty.

You may also have priority mail in the pile, which will give you more money on a successful delivery, but has an attached time limit that'll hit you with a larger penalty if you don't make it time.

You can also ignore bounties entirely and just focus on delivering mail, if you want. ~~Make sure to scream like a banshee and throw a temper tantrum when the random greytider with priority mail takes a second too long to open it.~~

It's important to note that not every station has a mail teleporter, but most stations do.

Inter-Departmental Collaboration

Sometimes, people will come to you with things to sell! Usually this will be Science, when they have artifacts they're done researching and don't need anymore. But the engineers might sell you their old tools once they upgrade, and once in a blue moon the Atmosian Wizard Cabal will grace you with a canister of some gas worth 5 figures or more!

Cargo Shuttle and the ATS

The Automated Trade Station (ATS) is the beating heart of the Cargo department, and the shuttle on which we fly there and back is it's veins and arteries. Anything Cargo buys shows up there, and anything you want to sell have to be flown out to it.

Piloting the Shuttle

To pilot the cargo shuttle, interact with the cargo shuttle console (not to be confused with the cargo shuttle COMPUTER, which is a remnant of the pre-ATS days and can be safely sold or disassembled).

Flying a shuttle might sound intimidating if you're a new player, but the controls are simple:

W/A/S/D to move the shuttle forward, left, right, and back respectively,
Q/E to rotate the shuttle left and right respectively,
Space to brake.

In order to dock with the station or another shuttle, move close, select the "DOCK" tab, line up the airlocks (the purple boxes), and click "View" on the airlock you want to dock, then click "Dock". You can then click "Undock" to release the shuttle and begin flying again. Be careful if the thing you're trying to dock to doesn't have a station anchor, like the main station or the ATS does.

Working the ATS

The ATS can be found as a satellite near the station, and contains two sets of selling pallets, buying pallets, and sale computers. The selling pallets are to the left of the sale computers, and can be identified by the arrows in the corners pointing inwards. Things you want to sell (including bounties) are unloaded out of the ATS and placed there. The buying pallets are to the right, and can be identified by the arrows in the corners pointing outwards. The supplies that Cargo buys appear here.

The sale computer shows the value of the items on the selling pallets and has two buttons, "Appraise" and "Sell". "Appraise" updates the displayed value if someone puts something new on the pallets while you're in the UI. Pressing the "Sell" button will remove all the items from the selling pallets and spit out a stack of spesos, your money. When a crate containing a valid bounty is sold on the ATS, that bounty is cashed out, rewarding you handsomely, and replacing it on the bounty console.

Once all the stuff to sell is gone, and all the bought supplies are loaded onto the shuttle, it's time to fly back to the Cargo Bay.

Requisition and Distribution

Once you have money, it's time to really start accepting orders.

People from all around the station will come to your front desk, asking for all sorts of supplies. This is where the cargo request computer comes in. On it, you'll see a catalog of items to purchase, and a window to approve or deny incoming orders. Some stations will also have a request computer on the public side of the front desk and people can put in orders that way. You need Cargo access to approve requests, so don't worry about greytiders draining your bank account.

To add money to the Cargo account, simply left-click on the console with spesos in your hand.

Strictly speaking, you require the Quartermaster's permission to approve any requests, though only the most roleban-bound QMs will lay in to you for most things. Just use common sense (i.e. the clown does NOT need SWAT gear), keep an eye on the money, and ask the QM for the marginal stuff and you'll be fine 99% of the time. The QM might require the crew to fill out paperwork to get approval, so make sure all their I's are crossed and T's are dotted. Or something.

Once the goods are in from the ATS, you can now make deliveries. All the station knowledge you learned fetching bounties and running mail should be coming in handy. Drag those crates to the people that need them. You can also call the recipient over the radio to pick up their stuff, but that doesn't always work.

Another thing you might want to know how to do is how to restock vending machines, since it'll usually be you doing that. It's a simple as opening the maintenance hatch with a screwdriver and inserting the restock box of the matching machine.

Vanity Purchases (a.k.a The Part Where You Gamble Your Life Savings Away)

So, you've done a couple ATS runs, the completed bounty count is in the double digits, the salvagers have been on top of mining materials, and no one has requested anything in a little while. Or none of that is true and you're a craven gambling addict. It's time to make some vanity purchases.

If you're responible (and the QM isn't undermining that) you're not going to want to make vanity purchases until you have a comfy financial buffer. Buying crates of random junk when the station is in dire straits is a very fast way to hear a funny bwoink sound. The continued fulfillment of supplies for the other departments is more important than your vanity purchases.

The most coveted and popular vanity purchase is the notorious "Grand Lottery $$$", costing 10,000 spesos. It'll always have a randomized amount of spesos and a gas canister, but it's mostly junk. You might enjoy some of the cosmetics or toys, though.

Antagonist Cargo Technician: CARGONIA FOREVER!!!

So, you rolled an antagonist? Pretty good place to do it.

First and foremost, you control the flow of goods. You can get just about anything you need for your nefarious plan, simply by buying it. However, you may first want to make sure the QM is out of the picture, the request computer is emagged, or the cargo comms server is disabled, or any/all of the above to suppress the automatic radio messages for your scandalous purchases.

You're also highly inconspicuous, all other things being equal. Cargo technicians rummaging around in maints isn't an uncommon sight, and you have a number of fantastic alibis to explain the absence from your home base.

The ATS is the ultimate place to kill any target or dispose of any evidence you might have. Need to round remove someone? Kill them on the ATS and sell their brain. Need an empty implanter gone? Chuck that thing in a crate and send it to the highest bidder. It is important to note that things worth nothing will only be sold when put in a crate.

You also have minimal difficulty getting people to the ATS, as you have the ultimate honeypot: GAMBA. Just because it's almost always unprofitable doesn't mean that spectators can't get that dopamine hit, plus, they like to take their pickings of the novelty junk in there, anyways.

If you're a thief or just more of a fraudster type, consider that QMs tend to be the most easily bribed out of all the heads of staff. A lobbying bundle from your uplink might just be all the permission you need to get away with your plans.

Need something you can't get yourself? Try editing a bounty manifest. They are just yellow pieces of paper, after all. Most people just think that the yellow paper means you're acting in good faith. Many don't even know you can edit them, and even fewer know the possible bounties by heart outside the Cargo Department. Try to get your hands on the QM's stamp for extra validity.

About Cargonia

The fantasy of Cargonia, breaking away from the Captain and his ~~shitsec~~ Security goons to form your own independent nation state, is a greatly tempting one for many a daydreaming techie. But unfortunately, it must stay a dream.

Forming Cargonia is extremely disruptive to a normal round, and that's not even considering that unions are very illegal in character. It's under the antagonist section because that's the only time you can. And even then, you really need permission from a higher authority. It's a good idea to treat it as something like a revolution-themed singuloose. Forming Cargonia is something you should not expect to happen, and not try to make happen.