Best Before: Cargo Freshness

Cargo pay follows freshness. Cargo delivered fresh earns a bonus on top of its normal pay, cargo that took too long earns less, and cargo that spoiled earns the lowest pay. EARLY TEST VERSION. This is early work, checked in the game on a handful of saves. Expect rough edges and changes. Keep a backup of any save you play with it. HOW IT WORKS - When a cargo unit is delivered, the mod sets its pay before the game pays it: more for fresh cargo, less for slow or spoiled cargo. The game then shares that pay along the unit's trip as usual, so the change shows on every vehicle and line that carried it, as well as in your account. - Freshness is 100% when cargo is picked up and falls to 0% at its delivery limit, as the game sets it for your save: the same limit the cargo bar in a vehicle's window runs against. Cargo that waited in a warehouse is judged on its age with the warehouse pause taken off. - Only cargo is adjusted. Passenger income is not touched. CARGO FROM OTHER MODS - Expected to work, for example with the cargo of the Sugar Cane Industry mod (sugar cane, sugar, molasses, rum). The mod reads each cargo's own delivery time and price from the game's cargo list and has no list of cargo names, so a cargo that sets those the usual way is judged like the base game's, and its delivery time decides whether it counts as perishable. This has not been tried in the game yet. STALE CARGO WARNINGS - A line whose deliveries are mostly stale gets a "Stale Cargo" warning: a pop-up, an entry in the notification log, and an icon on the line in the Line & Vehicle Management window (click it to open the line). It is a Caution, not a fault: stale cargo costs pay, but nothing is broken. - A unit counts as stale when its freshness is below the "Warn on cargo below freshness percent" setting (default 10%), or when the game marks it spoiled. It counts for the line of its last leg. - The mod looks at the last 12 game months, once a month, so a line has to deliver mostly stale cargo for several months before it is warned, and run well for several months before the warning goes. - To hide the warnings, filter "Stale Cargo (Best Before)" out of the notification log, or untick "Show Stale Cargo warnings" in the settings to turn them off. THE DEFAULT CURVE - Freshness 40% and above: 120% of normal pay. - 40% down to 20%: falls in a straight line to normal pay. - 20% down to 0%: falls in a straight line to no pay. - Spoiled cargo: no pay. - Non-perishable cargo (everything but food, at the default delivery time): half the bonus, so 110% at most; below normal pay the curve is the same. NINE SETTINGS Set them under Mods, with the gear next to the mod, in New Game or in Load Game. The game keeps them in the save, so you can retune a save on any load. The percent sliders move in 5% steps. - Bonus pay multiplier for fresh cargo: 100% to 200% (default 120%). - Get full bonus down to freshness percent: 0% to 100% (default 40%). - Normal pay at freshness percent: 0% to 100% (default 20%). - Lowest pay below freshness percent: 0% to 100% (default 0%). - Pay multiplier for spoiled cargo: 0% to 100% (default 0%). - Warn on cargo below freshness percent: 0% to 25% (default 10%). For the Stale Cargo warning only; pay is not affected, and 0% counts only spoiled cargo. - Show Stale Cargo warnings: on or off (default on). Off takes down every warning shown and stops counting stale cargo. - Non-perishable cargo: Full bonus, Half bonus, No bonus or No effect (default Half bonus). How the mod pays cargo with a long delivery time: the whole curve, the curve with half its bonus, its penalties only, or normal game pay. Stale Cargo warnings count it in every case. - Non-perishable delivery time: 15 to 75 min (default 25 min). Cargo whose base delivery time is at least this counts as non-perishable; at 25 min only food (meat, fish, vegetables, beverages, grain) is perishable. The game's Delivery Time tab displays it at 150% in 1900, falling to 75% in 2020. GOOD TO KNOW - With the default settings a spoiled unit pays nothing, so a save with a lot of spoiled cargo can lose money. Raise the spoiled pay if that is too harsh. - The change is part of the game's own pay, so the floating income numbers and the vehicle and line windows show it. - Works on a save that did not have the mod before; its settings start at the defaults. - Before removing the mod from a save: untick "Show Stale Cargo warnings" in the settings on Load Game, load the save, and save it. A save that still holds a Stale Cargo warning does not load without the mod. COMPATIBILITY - The mod replaces no game function: it changes pay only by answering the game's ticket price event, the way the base game sets the company level's pay. - The mod's pay change is a multiplier the game combines with its own (the company level's) by multiplying them. Other mods that set a pay multiplier the same way should combine too (not tried yet). - It contains no files from the game. - Gameplay mods may disable achievements. Source and notes: https://github.com/WuphonsReach/tf3-best-before-mod (MIT licence).