I'll start this off by saying that Cargo is one of the roles I play the most. I actually really enjoy it in it's current form, but can absolutely see how it would get stale fast and I've also had shifts that seemed to drag because no one needed to order much.
First and foremost, the QM should have command chat on his headset and the ability to make a station announcement. He doesn't need Bridge access or anything crazy, but a dept head should be able to talk to QM over the radio in a more direct manner to make any of the changes suggested here more expedient. Otherwise, I may have to sit and wait on paperwork, which a lot of people don't seem to enjoy.
I think the most useful improvements are those that will INCREASE interaction with other departments. I LOVE the idea of a randomly generated list of items that NT needs send back that shift. This would also mean that the QM would be responsible for sharing that list via station announcement at round start.
I also like the idea of being a little more limiting on what supplies are around so that more people need to come by cargo.
However, this means that more telepads (or being able to make them somewhat easily) should be around the station because the mail system can be pretty fragile and isn't super easy to fix once it breaks.
I also wish there was some incentive for non-cargo people to use the mail room to send packages to other departments. I'd probably be quite happy to man to mail room for part of a shift if people actually wanted to use it. Maybe make it so that you can write a destination on packages with a pen before dropping it into disposals and then we can use our destination tagger to make sure it gets where you wanted it? This would mean people wouldn't need to physically walk to the mail room and might make mailing things more common.
Why does persistence matter here? The economy only really "exists" in the current shift, so it shouldn't matter if it's "canon" for the characters. If I'm not mistaken you're not meant to IC remember specifics about shifts anyway, right? I think it would should be able to achieve a pretty basic working economy, but it would likely be a lot of overhaul an testing wokring. That being said, there's nothing wrong with making it a long-term goal and then making short-term decisions to work toward that goal.
I like this. Scavenge and be rewarded. Maybe turning in items to Cargo via a machine of some sort could reward some credits or something? Would promote the greytide to bring us goodies.
If we're going to increase the things that can be made in the autolathe, is it a good idea to just plop it out there for anyone to hack/use?
EDIT:
I don't really have an opinion on this since the only cargo tech tator I've been was blob and I started in maint near disposals which was a pretty decent spot.
I love this.
This is actually a big problem with cargo. If I order a crate, I have to hand deliver it if I want to accurately check the contents before stamping the manifest because I can't check what's in it without the right access. It's a PITA and means I just stamp pretty much everything as good and accept the point loss when I'm wrong.
This is also an amazing suggestion. I love the idea of NT sending us a message that says they're sending us some ancient alien tech they found and want us to study it. It could even just be implemented as a random station event (like Meteors, radiation fields, etc) at first to test the idea with the players. Doing an MVP like that first would require less coding than making a whole new setting for risk and would be less "wasted" time if the players didn't like the mechanic.
If it goes well, you could eventually incorporate this into science to make studying the object more interactive than stuffing it into the EXPERIMENTOR. Once we study it, maybe we could then have the option of sending it back for massive points or keeping it and saying it didn't work (no points) so we can use it for ourselves.
