Ok, obviously there are bugs with CTC. I'm not talking about them. If you're replying to this thread please keep it to suggestions not commenting on bugs.

Amount of Cargo:

S = Number of Serco Online
I = Number of Itani Online
F = |I-S|
T = Total number of Serco and Itani players who have been online at some point in the past two weeks.
s = number of Refined Xinthrite delivered to the Serco station by players currently online.
i = number of Refined Xinthrite delivered to the Itani station by players currently online.
f = |i-s|
t = number of Refined Xinthrite delivered anywhere by any players (on or offline).
A, B, C, D, E = Constants
r = random number between .5 and 1.5
N = Number of cargo spawned into convoys each hour.

Suggestion: (something like)
if (T) {
N = ([A * (1 + D*(S + I - F) / T) * (1 + E*(s + i - f) / t)] - [B * (1 + F / T) * (1 + f / t)] + C) * r
} else {
(A - B + C) * r
}

This would mean that the larger each team of CTCers are, and the closer to equal they are, the more cargo will be spawned. If one team has far more players online or far more active CTCers on, then there will be very little cargo being created (probably some min since the equation above can produce negative numbers).

Realism? Ok obviously that's not based on anything realistic. I've never cared much for realism at the expense of game play, but I understand that things which look really unrealistic turn people off so I just wanted to point out that you could easily just call the amount of cargo that is spawned "random" and it's damn unlikely anyone would complain.

Tracking Cargo:
In CTF people couldn't turbo while carrying the flag. This gave people trying to take the flag from them an advantage (pretty significant other wise chasing was and still is near impossible). I think a similar advantage to apply to CTC would be allow people carrying cargo to be tracked no matter where they go. This would additionally prevent innocent bystanders (anyone passing through Sedinia, Odia or Bractus, now that people have started hiring newbs to carry cargo) since you would know wether or not they had the cargo.

Suggestion:
Put a hud marker on each Refined Xinthrite in your sector (toggle-able and off by default for those who don't care about CTC). Any sector which has Refined Xinthrite in it should have a green tint (if the cargo's just lying there, in a convoy or in a player's hull), either to those in the same system or to everyone.

Realism? Serco/Itani spies putting tracking devices in their enemy's cargo. It also would explain why we can all see the announcements in 201/202.

XP:
No XP penalty for killing people carrying Refined Xinthrite! People are hiring newbs to carry the cargo which gives many players a large experience penalty for killing them. There should be a min bonus of 100xp for killing someone while they are carrying Refined Xinthrite.

Cargo Lifetime:
The cargo should last some fixed amount of time 45min to 1 hour (for example). At the end of that time it will become unstable and decay regardless of wether or not it's in someone's hull or floating in space. It shouldn't time out at all until the time is up if it's just sitting in space.

EDIT: I remembered my final suggestion.
Implement Newtonian physics when picking up cargo. Conserve momentum.
s = ship's speed
m1 = ship's mass
m2 = cargo's mass
s' = ship's speed after picking up cargo

s' = s * m1 / (m1 + m2)

Hmm.. I rather like the buildup cycle, even if the amount should probably reflect the difference in active players.

what I mused on yesterday was to have the cycle into 2 ten-hour cycles, that means that over time they will rotate, so the "top deliveries" won't always fall into the same times and amounts.

This would rather even things out between timezones ( fex. for some reason our Serco team is very European. ).

What is it currently supposed to do? Because it seemed like there was more cargo in the last 2 days of the week than the first 5.

I don't know, I do know that it increases the intensity on the cargo for "peak hours" in U.S.

ie, your evenings get more transports with more cargo... Which is sort of annoying, since thats in the middle of our nights. (6-8 hours ahead)

Overally that makes us quirky, since when we have "prime" time, theres not much cargo since its in the "low" period.

Cycling the intensity in a 10 hour phase would make it roll across, and might put the intense times at odd hours, but thats more "fair" with comparsion to the rest.

Your definition of terms and the general equation needs some reconsideration.. is "f" supposed to be "i" and "d" supposed to be "f"? Also note that at the beginning of the round, N evaluates to NaN ((s+i-f)/t = 0/0).

Your general idea is good though. What it does now is attempt to mimic the value for "I+S" by noting the daily and weekly cycles of people online and simply interpolating the values in a table for the idealized cycle of players, and on top of that it "builds up" during the week up to a frenzied pace on weekends (Friday, Saturday, Sunday).

It is kind of unfair to European players, because there are fewer of them so the daily cycle more closely follows the American "prime time".

The ideas for tracking are good. I hadn't seen the XP penalty coming, honestly. Definitely something we should fix.

Actually. Dropping all XP penalties in Grey space would be ideal.

n00bs both attack and defend, and using this to drop players down several thousand XP points by homing nearby, zooming in and dying, repeat ad infinitum...

Not fun.

Also. We still don't get anything for defending the convoy. No money, no XP, no nothing. Overall its far more -work- to defend, you tend to die more often, and waste a lot of more money on the process.

Some set of rewards here would be good.

I'd like to see a different "special" weapon for each race too.

The n3 is ok, but it is defintly more itani friendly because it requires a ship that is fairly agile to use.

Maybe something like a beefed up Gatling Turret for the serco. A L-port weapon that can be used on the prom.

uhhh ya, a1. I screwed that up. Originally I had D and d for the differences but then I wanted D as a constant though I ended up not using it. Also got rid of the divide by 0. I meant it as more of a suggestion of parts that are significant than an exact formula to use, though do feel free to use it exactly if you want. Though if you use it exactly enjoy picking A, B, and C that work well I certainly couldn't do that without looking at the numbers (actually C's easy somewhere in the 4-6 range).

The frenzy was pretty crazy. I think both nations got more cargo Friday evening and all day Saturday then either of them did Sunday + Monday + Tuesday + Wednesday + Thursday + Friday(Morning/afternoon).
The plus side of having it go up as the week goes on (other than the fact that there are more people online on the weekends) is that it makes it easier for a come back. The down side is that it makes 1 days work more important than 5 days, which can get frustrating.

I'm not sure about the loss of boost when holding Xi-rite. I think giving it a mass much higher (say 3000kg-5000kg) than it currently has (which is quite a lot anyway) would have a similar effect: slowing progress of players carrying it around.

I would also like to see a few more transports in the convoy. If Xi-rite is really heavy (as above) 10 units may require 5 transports to carry the load. Much larger convoys would be less vulnerable to attack from a lone wolf, requiring more team work. How cool would it be to see a convoy of 20 transports leaving 1 min apart in the final days of the round?

I also agree that the XP hit for killing low level player in unaligned space needs to be removed. A few days ago, I defended the Itani convoy from a pack of marauding UIT players, all low level. It cost me around 4k in combat XP.

simondearsley, you're right the slower boost wasn't a good idea... it was a poorly thought out one that I put there cause I knew it addressed a problem I'd thought of, but I also knew I'd thought of a much better way to fix the problem, but I couldn't remember what the problem was or what my solution was (I should get more sleep). The problem is that people can turbo at 200m/s and pick up the cargo while already at top speed and then there's no disadvantage of the large mass and the fix is now where the other suggestion was.

Very good idea. Although I'm not really sure this will have such a large effect. It is very hard to line-up cargo from a distance, boost up to full speed and run right over the top of it.

One of the key reasons I would like to see the mass increased massivly is it will slow players down. The choak point in systems are pretty obvious, so setting a trap is an easy thing to do. The problem I have now is that once a player has the cargo, they can run from defender very easily. If their Vulture or Hog suddenly becomes a pregnant Centaur, the matter becomes much simpler. Sure they can infini-boost at 200ms, but it would take them 60 second to get to that speed. Plenty of time to run them down. And remember they have to do this 10-12 times to reach safety.

simondearsley: well, if the player is highlighted as well, that won't ever be the case. It will simply turn into a "who is homed closest" competition.

Also, the cargo is pretty darn heavy, for a loaded prom you don't even reach full speed in 5km of straight-line boosting.

simondearsley, it's a pretty easy thing to do actually. Might be hard to do without a zooming in nicely, but if you can't you should check out the custom binds thread.

I also editted the formula again so it would work a bit better as an actual equation than just an idea.

I like your suggestions, that was the exciting part about flag carrying back in the day, cruising along at 65m hoping no one stumbled across your ship, nowadays anyone can run amock and escape with ease. but alas, before the CTC is added to and what not......perhaps it should be fixed! last thing we need is a buggy CTC that gets added to and does something crazy like.........give serco players a frigate or.....turn itani centurion border guardians into chickens!