Contracts
Contracts are one of the primary money-making methods in HellMOO. They also serve as an XP-farming method and are instrumental to some Jobs.
Overview
There are several kinds of contract, but none of them are complex. Here's a run-down on contracts in general and how to use them.
Usage
In order to use contracts, one must be in a Corporation. This is the most important mechanical advantage of being in a corp. Making money is very possible without contracts and a corp, but it's much slower, and the early game in particular is a financial struggle without them. Even ENEMA has basic contracts!
To view contracts that are currently signed by your corp, type corp cont. There are several different kinds of contract, and all of them have different readouts and mechanics, but here's an example:
Contracts for Wiki-Assisted Negligence Group (WANG): Maas Police Contract Time: 42 mins left, Credit: $15310 / $30000 Kill redneck ($145) juicer ($140) chutney ($180) hepcat ($240) mutant bootlegger ($475).
This readout comes in four parts:
- Line 1 is the title of the readout, depicting the name of your corp.
- Line 2 is the name of the contract your corp has. This example only has one, but most corps will have more.
- Line 3 is the amount of time remaining on this contract before it expires, followed by the amount of remaining money that can be earned from the contreact and the total amount that the contract allows from the start.
- Line 4 explains what specific task must be accomplished to gain credit on that contract. Most of the time, that's killing something.
Upon completing any task in line 4, you will immediately get a payout, and a message in corpnet will tell everyone what you have achieved. This can vary, but it often looks something like this:
[ WANG ]: Western Hunter -- ReadTheFineWiki earned $230 for a huge smelly ice yeti.
If you're tired of getting updates every time some N-tag in your corp kills a crackhead, you can turn these messages off with @prefs corpprogress is 0, but they're on by default.
Contract Management
Eventually, you'll want to add your own contracts. To do this, just have the contract in your inventory and sign it. This will automatically add it to your corp's contract listing. Some notes on practical contract use:
- Contract slots are finite; don't waste everyone's time with dumb or useless contracts.
- It is possible for corp leaders to restrict contract signing priviliges, preventing basic employees from signing new ones. In practice, nobody has time for this kind of bureaucracy in a video game.
- Contracts can be dropped with corp cont drop <contract>. This ability is restricted more frequently; dropping contracts has a negative impact on the corporation's audit grade.
Payouts & Pay Rate
Not all corporations pay 100% on their contract payouts. Type corp sum to see your corp's pay rate:
Pay Rate ..........: 0.9
WANG's pay rate is 0.9, so ReadTheFineWiki won't actually get $230 for killing that ice yeti. This sum is multiplied by 0.9 first, so the player gets $207 instead. The remaining 10% goes to WANG's corporate funds. Depending on WANG's management, this can be spent on various things or hoarded.
Contract Types
There are seven different kinds of contract, four of them being regular:
- Exterminator contracts. The most common kind of contract. These are purchased from various shops in the game, and effectively add a passive buff to an entire corp while they are active; every time a player in the corp kills a mob covered by the contract, that player will receive an immediate payout to their credit chip. The example in the Usage section is an example of an exterminator contract. Some of these are much, much more popular than others. The Western Hunter contract is probably the best exterminator in the entire game; the Highway Security contract is absolutely the worst. If you're not sure, check with your corp that the contract you're choosing has sensible mobs first.
- All exterminator contract payouts are reduced by 25% for carebear players, which is subtracted before the corporation multiplier is. After various other financial factors are considered, this is a totally insignificant amount.
- Invasion contracts. These spawn mobs immediately after they are signed in a specific area. The contract's signing message will say what zone the mobs are in, but if it's a big zone like Gangland they can be hard to track down. Each invasion contract has a few consistent spawn points, so they're best memorized. Once the contract is signed, it's a race: find and kill all the mobs. Once every mob spawned by the contract is dead, the contract pays out to everyone who did the killing (and may award job credit depending on the contract). If the contract isn't finished before its expiry time, all the mobs in the contract die, and nobody in the corp receives credit for any killing done. Coninuous readouts will also display how many mobs are left to kill before the contract is completed.
- Invasion contract payouts are not reduced by carebear status.
- Typing corp cont reduces the amount of time left on all active invasion contracts in the corp. Seriously.
- Protection contracts. These are available from most shops; when signed, they will give you a percentage of the proceedings from whatever shop they belong to. If you have a protection contract from a very popular store (a place where Implants are sold, for instance), then this can become profitable quickly. Unlike most contracts, protection contracts cannot be purchased; instead, they must be beaten out of the shopkeeper (or taken from their unconscious body). Once the shopkeeper hits about 25% health, they will offer the contract for their store. Only one corp can hold a protection contract for a store at a time, so they can change hands frequently. All protection contracts have a time limit of 30 days and a credit limit of $100,000.
- Tracker contracts. The least common kind of contract. These are similar to invasion contracts, but only spawn one mob at a time, and give credit as soon as the mob is killed. Their time limit is also much less restrictive, and continually spawn a new trackable mob after each preceding one is killed. True to the name, use of the track command and skill are instrumental in completing these quickly.
Miscellaneous Contract Types
There are two unusual types of contract that are totally different from those previously listed:
- Soda contracts. These produce a soda machine kit when signed, which can be deployed into a soda machine whereever the user desires. Whenever someone (sometimes a player, but usually a random citizen of Freedom City or another settlement) buys a soda from the machine, the contract will pay out, from a total credit limit of $15,000. Soda contracts are one of the most passive money-making methods in the game, and work reliably in the background, a lot like buying bonds. Strategic machine placement is its own topic; areas with lots of NPC traffic will naturally make more money. Soda contracts can only be purchased from the Weyland-Utani Building.
- Soda machines can be disrupted by kicking them over, and must sometimes be fixed, but they can't be outright removed by other players.
- There cannot be more than one soda machine on one tile.
- Unsigned soda contracts delete themselves one real-life hour after being purchased, to prevent people from hoarding a mountainous soda machine empire.
- Simulator contracts. These produce simulator kits, which build simulators that are used in crafting. Only two simulator contracts can be in use by one corp at a time, so it's impossible to cover all four simulator types in one corp. Unlike every other kind of contract in the game, Simulator contracts have no time limit; they can be kept as long as the corporation doesn't want to swap them out for another sim. Simulator contracts can only be purchased from the Weyland-Utani Building.
- Rescue contracts. These begin an NPC escort mini-quest on signing. The contract will name the location of an NPC who must be tracked down and escort them back to a safe zone (also named by the contract). These are time-limited, but the limit is generous. They pay on completion and give credit for jobs, and automatically fail if the NPC dies en-route.
Contract Listings
Here's a listing of contracts available in HellMOO, organized by contract type and then purchase location. Protection, soda and simulator contracts are not listed on account of their lack of distinguishing information.
Exterminator Contracts
Exterminators are probably the most used contracts in the game, and with good reason. A passive money gain for doing stuff that everyone in your corp was doing anyway is very strong!
Greater Freedom City
FC has the greatest number of available contracts, but only a few of them are actually useful (or used). The Eugenic Cleansing and Sewer Cleanup contracts are newbie staples. The top-tier Western Hunters are also sold here, and Hall Monitors are sometimes used as well.
- Eugenic Cleansing - In City Hall.
- Kill crack baby ($30) crackhead ($70) crackfiend ($125) scumbag ($80) gangland citizen ($95) old fart ($70).
- Eugenic Cleansing 2 - In the Weyland-Utani Building and Rough Trade.
- Kill babymomma ($210) serial killer ($350) mutant firefighter ($340) toxic freak ($260).
- Sewer Cleanup - In the Unemployment Office.
- Kill sewer beetle ($40) chud ($70) red chud ($135) sea chud ($85) chobo ($100).
- Sewer Cleanup 2 - In the Unemployment Office and the Weyland-Utani Building.
- Kill alligator ($115) crocodile ($135) arachno ($230) arachnotron ($360) caiman ($95).
- Chomo Killer - In City Hall.
- Kill chomologist ($145) chomo guard ($175) tankboy ($210) chomoninja ($530).
- Scrapper - In Dope Jack's.
- Kill drilliac ($120) jigsurgeon ($120) grindroid ($120) mob enforcer robot ($65) exterminator ($65).
- Beachcomber - In Bait & Switch.
- Kill molegull ($50) lobstrosity ($210) carnie ($150) mutant shark ($210) bull stingray ($165).
- Atheist Enforcer - In the CSICOP Operative Shop.
- Kill yacatisma cultist ($100) satanist ($100) juicer ($140) satanist nun ($150).
- Ghostbuster- In the CSICOP Operative Shop.
- Kill poltergeist ($160) apparition ($200) romper ($300) necropolis spectre ($260) great old one ($300) junker ($850).
- Mythos Buster - In the CSICOP Operative Shop.
- Kill yacatisma cultist ($100) satanist ($100) shoggoth spawn ($165) deep one ($260) tentacle raper ($420) monstrosity ($320).
- Western Hunter - In Rough Trade.
- Kill chukka ($80) porcuswine ($85) tusker ($145) yeti ($200) treeman ($420) bladefish ($65) bonepanther ($300) ant larva ($495) giant ant ($495) antopotamus ($700) river squid ($210) Jacob sheep ($120).
- Zombie Hunter - In Zombie Hunters Inc.
- Kill zombie ($100) celebrity zombie ($125) phagelab zombie ($160) boomer zombie ($180) mall boomer zombie ($245) mall zombie ($140).
- Hall Monitor - In Commander Andy's.
- Kill karnivore punk ($340) karnivore senior ($400) mutant footballer ($400).
- Kakuri Assassin - In Rough Trade.
- Kill nipposervulant ($135) nippoinitiate ($160) nippoacolyte ($180).
Crater Rim & South-East HellMOO
Most of these go unused. Lammergiers are double-covered, but nobody bothers to trek up Fisty to kill them. Maas Police is the only one that sees regular use, to capitalize on profitable bootleggers.
- Rim Hunter - In Blastarms.
- Kill chukka ($80) beefalo ($80) armordillo ($160) lammergier ($190).
- Desert Hunter - In the Society for the Conervation of Interesting Species.
- Kill rattlesnake ($80) scorpion ($160) vulture ($145) radscorpion ($210) sandworm ($1060).
- Maas Police - In the Society for the Conervation of Interesting Species.
- Kill redneck ($145) juicer ($140) chutney ($180) hepcat ($240) mutant bootlegger ($475).
- Mountain Climber - In the Quonset Hut.
- Kill thunderbird ($700) lammergier ($190).
- Chomo Terrorist - In Clear Supplies.
- Kill citizen ($180) K-9 enforcer ($200) C3-50 ($400).
Botany Bay & Ocean Cliffs
The Telegraph Office sells two very popular contracts. Dino Hunter can single-handedly carry rifles users through the midgame and much of the endgame, and Western Hunters are useful to almost everyone throughout the midgame. The other two contracts here are mostly unused.
- Highway Security - In the Telegraph Office.
- Kill mountain pass bandit ($180) blue screamer ($230).
- Dino Hunter - In the Telegraph Office.
- Kill small dinosaur ($260) adult dino ($530) large stormfront dino ($1060) basilisk ($800).
- Western Hunter - In the Telegraph Office.
- Kill chukka ($80) porcuswine ($85) tusker ($145) yeti ($200) treeman ($420) bladefish ($65) bonepanther ($300) ant larva ($495) giant ant ($495) antopotamus ($700) river squid ($210) Jacob sheep ($120).
- Mine Safety - In Rockhound's Hut.
- Kill cave spider ($50) cave chukka ($80) bat ($80) vampire bat ($115) cave rat ($115) chuman ($115) cave slug ($140) giant cave spider ($190) cave bandit ($210).
Necropolis
The Necropolis Heart contract is very popular; nullianacs are popularly considered to be the midgame and early endgame XP source, so making money from them is a sensible choice.
- FCEF Scout - In Crime Mart.
- Kill FCEF scout ($800) FCEF commando ($1200).
- Necropolis zombie exterminator - In the Command Post.
- Kill necropolis zombie ($250) necropolis boomer zombie ($500).
- Necropolis' heart - In the Command Post.
- Kill nullianac ($1100) gulfhound ($420) glass tree ($280).
Tracker Contracts
There are only two of these. Both are exclusive to the Freedom City area (purchased in the City Hall), and neither are very popular, but both mobs are rarely seen outside of their respective contracts, so they're sometimes signed for people to get kill journals.
- Chomoninja Tracker
- 5 hrs long. Track down chomoninjas for $1500 each.
- Tankboy Tracker
- 5 hrs long. Track down tankboys for $1800 each.
Other Contracts
These contracts are still in the process of being organized.
Freedom City - City Hall (Contracts on the first and second floor)
prisoner hunter contract Time: 2 hrs, Credit: $4000 / $4000
chud invasion contract Time: 2 hrs, Credit: $3500 / $5000
racist invasion contract Time: 2 hrs, Credit: $4500 / $4500
mine rescue contract Time: 4 hrs, Credit: $14000 / $8000
broken arrow contract Time: 4 hrs, Credit: $6000 / $8000
freedom city enforcer contract Time: 37 days Kill criminals for $250 plus $80/star.
business expansion contract Increases business's maximum contracts by one, up to a maximum of 10.