How do I use a trade charter item on a ship?

[dan0812]

I've got a trade charter that says it will last 2:30 when activated and is then destroyed. It's in the ship item section so how do I activate it?

Tried the ship menu, tried a trade menu with Archie. Right click, left click, dragging - nothing happens. The countdown timer doesn't start. I bought a single item from Archie and didn't get any discount, it didn't start the timer, nothing. It's also impossible to remove the item from the ship at the harbour - it's just stuck there.

[Chaosium]

Left click activates ship items, then the discount should be applied for the next 2h30

The cooldown on items is quite hard to see, especially because the duration is so long, but after some time if you squint hard enough you can kinda see the duration effect ticking down on the item, then it'll get automatically removed once expiring

How can you be sure you didn't get a discount? Those items are worth 5/10/15% depending on quality, it's not very noticeable if you buy cheap stuff

[dan0812]

The game has been running for well over 1hr since I equipped the item but you can see here, the timer is greyed out and hasn't changed.

The prices this ship pays to trade are exactly the same as a ship without it when you add items to the cargo slot:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3161896800

[dan0812]

So I sent two ships to Archie and then one that didn't have this item was being charged more. But that was the only way to check as the display timer doesn't seem to function.

[asterix52]

The colour difference is very subtle. If you look very carefully at the item box, you will see that the right side is slightly darker than the left. The change seems to be at about 12:30, but it's hidden by the "1" in the black box. My guess is that you have about 45 to 50% of the duration left.

[dan0812]

Thank you, I couldn't see that at all. I looked online and people had asked the same thing - the response was that there was a timer so I assumed the numbers would tick down like all other timers in the game.

[some guy]

yeah the feedback on item use is very bad. usually their ui is pretty good but this could have used better signposting and an audio queue.

[dan0812]

There are a few annoying quirks. It took me ages to do my first treasure map diving search because you can’t zoom out far enough to scan all the rock formations. I had to sketch the map from my screen then look at the trade map to find a tiny cluster that matched.