Contracts and orders

Owns a pool of offers, each with a requirement (cargo type and quantity, a service, or an object meeting a spec), an origin and destination or a client, a deadline, a payout, and often a penalty and a reputation gate. Offers are generated from templates and current simulation state, sit on a board until they expire, and are accepted by the player. On completion the rule checks the requirement, pays out (often scaled by distance, cargo value, or speed), and updates reputation; lateness or abandonment forfeits pay or charges a penalty. Euro Truck Simulator 2's freight market, Elite Dangerous mission boards, Farming Simulator contracts, Car Mechanic Simulator repair orders, and Transport Tycoon's time-limited subsidies are common forms.

A steady menu of concrete goals. The player scans offers, weighs payout against distance, risk, and time, chains jobs so trips are never empty, and races deadlines. Contracts turn an open sandbox into a sequence of short, legible tasks.

• payout formula (distance, cargo value, urgency, risk) relative to running costs
• deadline tightness and the penalty for lateness or abandonment
• offer generation: random templates versus real shortages in the simulation
• reputation or rank gates that unlock higher-paying work
• number of simultaneous contracts allowed and board refresh rate

• Templated contracts detached from simulation state feel like grind, since taking the best payout per minute is the only decision.
• Abandon-and-refresh exploits let players cherry-pick outliers when boards regenerate too freely.
• Payouts that outscale costs make every contract profitable and remove route planning.

• Players chain contracts into loops that minimize empty legs, producing self-discovered trade circuits.
• Reputation gating creates a ladder where risky early work buys access to lucrative later work.
• When contracts are generated from real shortages, completing them dampens the shortage that created them.

• Do contracts generated by a language model from live simulation state (a town short of grain, a rival's broken supply line) feel less like grind than templated ones?
• Can open-ended commissions be judged by learned evaluators, such as a model scoring whether a built structure meets a client's brief?