I don't know if this has been mentioned in the forums, but maybe perishable goods will make trade more interesting.

It would be kinda like a timed trade mission, except that instead of losing time you end up losing your cargo. Bacteria for research station, fresh vegetable/fruit matter that goes bad in ship cargo holds, maybe certain creatures from planets that can't stand space travel for too long, or even strong alcoholic drinks that must be kept in ideal conditions not found in the storage hold of any ship... The longer you're flying in space, the more you lose.

These should be the most valuable items at their destination selling for 2000cr or more per CU every wormhole, but that's balanced by the rate at which a CU of the item goes bad. Of course this'll make Ion storms and pirate attacks even more of a nuisance than before...

it's probably been mentioned, but it seems like a cool idea.

I searched the forum and I haven't seen any suggestions concerning perishable trade goods. Or maybe I searched wrong...

It seems like the PCC might be able to pull this off. It's essentially a regular timed mission where the cargo becomes valueless after a set amount of time has elapsed. Looking at it another way, it could be a valueless cargo that earns no bonus after a set amount of time.

The problem with doing it that way is that you still have something your cargo hold, and it'd have to be a mission. The idea behind perishable goods is that it's like any other trade item except the moment you purchase it the item starts to deteriorate. You lose 1 CU of the item every few minutes or so; either it disappears or it transforms into something more inert and a lot less valuable. Either way if you take too long you will lose a ton of money when you get to your destination.

So, like, some sort of ore or metal that corrodes quickly in transit. Or a radioactive isotope that has to be kept in "stasis". Interesting idea.

Deterioration should not start the instant you leave dock, have a grace period of, say, ten minutes.

It would give smaller hold/faster speed trade ships a purpose.

The start of deterioration would depend on the product being shipped. Perishable ores and such could have a grace period of maybe 3 to 5 minutes. Other stuff such as food and drink would start deteriorating the moment you leave dock since storage hold of a ship is more exposed to space.

And to spice things up a bit, these items would deteriorate even faster when exposed to open space (making AFK mining/jettisoning cargo for later pickup impossible with these valuable ores) and ion storms could accelerate the deterioration as well.

having ion storms doing the opposite would be more interesting, actually.

One effect of having perishable goods is the production of faster trade vessels. And the effect of that is the use of Raptors and their many variations. After all, you'd need interceptors to catch those quick and pesky traders. :)

You already need interceptors to catch the non nimble merchant ships due to their infinite boost, if perhaps large trade ships lost that ability even marginally to make way for smaller truly fast trade ships...

Say give the behemoth centaurs and atlas a 51 or even a 52 drain so they are forced to slow at jumps, while more nimble vessels such as the EC series can make their stand as blockade runners by not having to stop to charge their cell for jumps. It would be a trade off, you can outrun just about anything but you lose large amount of cargo capacity, or go for the larger hold knowing that if you get chased into a wormhole you may take significant damage in escaping.