Requisitions are not great, suggestions to improve

[Solwra]

FRANK EDIT: Merging this thread into the existing requisitions thread

Introduction
Requisitions in my opinion is one of the most neglected features that rarely gets used in Quartermastery to make any significant amount of money, they are very much unintuitive and obscure to do… Therefore I, an idea Andy am providing an idea for how a possible requisition rework can look.


Requisitions Manager
This could be inbuilt into the packager to create a more seamless system or kept inside the supply console. Requisitions manager gives you all relevant information about all requisition information you will need. This console would require a quartermaster’s access, same with the requisitions packager which will be talked about later.

• Requisition Selection
  

This tab allows you to look up requisitions you can select to work on, selecting a requisition locks it from being refreshed (unless it is a special timed requisition) then it allows you to complete the requisition in your own time. While browsing, you will be able to see the name of the requisition, hinting at its overall requested content with a description and all the items it needs listed as well as the payment for completing it. There are specific requisition categories that go in depth about how each requisition could look in order to get an idea of how this tab would exactly look like.

You get an option to select up to 3 requisitions at the start, with a possibility to gain upgrade cards from certain requisitions to bump it up to a maximum of 5.

• Processing The Order
  

Once you select a requisition, you get a couple of options:

Making the requisition public
This function allows you to toggle whenever you want to use the Public Requisitions Delivery Station for the crew to dump the items for the selected requisition in order to complete it. You can set the price of how much you want to pay out for each item allowing you to pay out people for the requisition (I’d advise a certain credit cap for this, but I can’t think of anything right now).

Cancelling the requisition
Once a requisition gets cancelled, the packager dumps out any items it has collected for the requisition and the requisition gets put back into the requisition selection, where it disappears on next market update.

Checking the requisition
You can check the requisitions status, if it’s in progress it will show that, if it has been completed and is awaiting packaging it will give you an option to package it for a sendoff.

Completing the requisition
Once the requisition has all the item it needs, it will give you the green go to package it and send it to the recipient. Once the packager packages the requisition you can send it off normally as if you were selling any other crate and all the credits will be sent instantly and any additional items will be shipped to you.


Requisition Categories

• Regular Requisitions
  

Generally, regular requisitions can range from dead easy to somewhat challenging but never hard. This means you can complete these requisitions to get a steady income without stressing too hard about getting certain items and often feature items you can just print from fabricators, mostly.

A subcategory for regular requisitions would be the departmental requisition, where it requires a specific set of items from a given department, be it a security, engineering, service, medical or science department. These requisitions would be more rewarded, however requiring a level of cooperation between departments to work.

There must always be 5 regular requisitions available, up to 7.

• Special Requisitions
  

Special requisitions are more difficult and actually require you to put in a lot more effort in order to complete them, be it getting a head of personnel’s equipment or having to run around on timed requisition to get it done as quickly as possible. This is not a requisition you will be ready for and it may be very difficult, but it pays fairly well and can even provide some material goodies if completed.

These must always be 1 special requisition available, up to 3.

• Illegal Requisitions
  

These can very rarely slip into special requisitions, however if you slap a manager with an EMAG it will provide you requisitions to syndicate stations to get more contraband and/or to get stupid amount of money. This can range from piss easy to almost impossible requisition and it may require you to do some evil deeds to complete these.

This is only available if the console has been emagged and there will always be 3 available.


Requisitions Packager
This machine has a simple purpose, you can package completed requisitions to be sent off to the buyer. Upon successful packaging, a crate pops out that is permanently locked, meaning it cannot be tampered with in any way. The only way to open such a crate would be with an EMAG or an explosive. Sending a crate that has been opened yields nothing, not even 10 credits you usually get for crates, because you broke it, duh. All items must be inserted into the packager while having an appropriate requisition selected, otherwise it will be rejected.

Public Requisitions Delivery Station
You’re a staff assistant, you’re low on credits and REALLY need that pack of cigarettes. 

You rifle through your pockets.

“What's that? A space suit? Didn’t that station just there accept a space suit for a requisition in exchange for 120 credits? Wow, that’s enough for a lighter AND a pack of ciggies!”

You can exchange items on public requisitions for money.
The idea is pretty simple, if you have an item that an active requisition requires and need some quick cash you can use the delivery system to quickly exchange that item for money or you can pick up that item if it has been rejected or the requisition has been cancelled/expired.

“Where does the money that ended up in the staff assistants wallet come from?” Well, I provide 2 options.

• A. It comes from the requisitions' earnings.
  

The money that the staff assistant earns from a requisition comes from the actual earnings distributed by the requisition provider, meaning they only get paid if the requisition comes through.

This poses a problem in itself, if the packaged requisition gets intercepted by an antagonist, you’re never seeing that credit go up and you essentially lose both the item and the money. However, if a quartermaster cancels a requisition before it’s packaged you get a refund on your item. This would all be communicated through the person’s PDA, meaning they will be informed that they can pick up their refused item from a delivery station.

• B. It comes from the station budget.
  

A very simple solution, this puts all blame on a quartermaster if a requisition gets cancelled and leaves no poor staff assistant any more poorer. This puts more strain on the station budget though, meaning that if a station has a low budget you will have to collect the items yourself no matter how difficult they are to get by yourself. The items rejected will be spat out from the requisition packager, allowing for usage in other requisitions, selling it on the market or running a garage sale on the items back to the crew.

I favour option B, as it’s more of a quartermaster’s fault for cancelling a requisition and the collateral may get heads involved rather than an angry staff assistant making a ruckus.


Conclusion
Right now this is what I got, I may keep updating/changing this when more ideas come in. Feel free to take this idea and make this a reality. I could come up with a list of requisitions that it can actually do, but this is more of touching on the mechanics on how the overall system should be reworked into rather than providing any new/changing existing requisition orders. 
Any feedback is welcome.