User blog:Katat0nyx/Determinging the difficulty of contractors

Over time, working on the various contracts, I felt like the Easy/Medium/Hard ratings didn't really do justice to how challenging it is to complete all contracts for a given contractor. I wanted to get a better understanding of where those numbers came from, and where the boundaries between the difficulties lay. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, let's start with a summary of how many resources each contractor takes to complete.

DISCLAIMER:

Yes, it's time for the disclaimer. Some of the numbers in the table above cannot be disputed (e.g. George), because all of the contracts involved have specific, defined goals. Other contractors may require cargo carts, or have options on how to complete contracts. I've used two rules to account for cargo cart and multiple option contracts.

1. For cargo carts: I first choose the fastest, non- cart to complete the job. I estimate resources to complete the contract using that cart type delivered by steam locomotives.

2. For multiple option contracts: I always choose to deliver gold over cargo. In my opinion, gold is much faster and easier to deliver than cargo.

While I welcome discussion on this topic, I do not want to enter into long debates about the numbers in the table. They are representative of how I choose to complete each contractor, and you are free to calculate your own numbers if you choose a different path.

END DISCLAIMER

As cute as that table is, it's not generally helpful for me to differentiate between resources beyond cargo and gold. Let's take that information and make it work for us.

Interesting. Much as I suspected, gold has little to no impact on the difficulty rating. It is far easier to generate passengers and mail, and far more efficient to deliver them, than it is for cargo.

There seems to be a point at about 50,000 / contract or less for which a contractor is rated Easy. Wolfgang has some work to do, because right now he's looking much more Easy than Medium.

There's a gray area between 50,000 / contract and 75,000  / contract. Not enough data to determine what's going on there.

Between 75,000 / contract and 100,000  / contract generates a difficulty of Medium.

Anything over 100,000 / contract is difficulty Hard.

I haven't gotten far with either Alan or Lucy, but it looks like Lucy is going to be a giant pain. Maybe they should establish a rating above Hard, like Insane or something...