Fair Start

Fair Start holds accepting and bidding closed for a short review window after an offer is published, so every carrier gets time to read the details before the race begins. Declining is possible right away.

Overview

Without Fair Start, an instant offer goes to whoever taps accept first — which rewards the carrier who happens to be looking at the screen at the moment you publish, not the one best placed to run the work. Fair Start adds a review window to each offer: for a set number of seconds after publishing, carriers can open the offer and study every detail, but accepting and bidding stay closed. When the countdown ends, responding opens for everyone at the same moment.

Key highlights

• A review window per offer — accepting and bidding open a set number of seconds (5–120) after the offer is published.

• One finish line for everyone — the window ends at the same moment for every carrier, no matter when each of them opens the offer.

• Declining stays open — a carrier who does not want the work never has to wait.

• Three levels of control — a marketplace-wide default, a per-offer setting, and a per-step override inside a Sequence.

• Optional — Fair Start is off until you switch it on.

How Fair Start works

Every offer you send — an instant offer or an auction invitation — is a Callout for a Tour, published to one or more carriers through the Marketplace. With Fair Start switched on, the review window starts the moment the offer is published. During the window, carriers can:

• open the offer and review all of its details — stops, loads, timing, and price;

• decline it, if the work is not for them.

What they cannot do yet is accept an instant offer or place a bid in an auction. Once the countdown finishes, the offer behaves exactly as it would without Fair Start: instant offers go to the first carrier who accepts, and auctions collect bids.

The window has one finish line. It ends at the same moment for every carrier, no matter when each of them opens the offer — a carrier who looks late sees a shorter countdown, or none at all. Fair Start removes the advantage of being first to look; it does not slow down whoever is first to decide once responding opens.

Each published offer carries its own window. When a Sequence distributes a tour in waves, the offers in a later wave start their own window at their own publish moment — the windows of earlier recipients have usually long ended. Inviting a carrier again later also gives that fresh offer a fresh window.

Fair Start never extends an offer's validity. If an offer would expire before its review window ends, no carrier could ever accept it — Orbit MissionControl warns you when you configure an offer this way, so you can lengthen the validity or shorten the window.

What carriers see

In Orbit Connect and Orbit Cockpit, an offer inside its review window shows a live countdown — Accepting opens in for instant offers, Bidding opens in for auctions — and the accept or bid controls stay disabled until it finishes. Declining remains available the whole time. If a response does reach Orbit during the window, it is turned away with a note that the review period is still running, and the offer simply stays available — nothing is lost or forfeited.

Operators see the same state from the other side: in the Marketplace in Orbit MissionControl, an offer inside its window shows Fair Start — accepting opens in (or bidding) with the remaining time.

Configuring Fair Start

Fair Start is configured by an operator in Orbit MissionControl, at up to three levels. The most specific level wins.

Marketplace default

1. Go to Settings → Marketplace and open the Fair Start card.

2. Switch Fair Start on. The duration starts at 30 seconds.

3. Adjust Fair Start Duration (Seconds) to any value between 5 and 120, and save.

The default applies to every offer that does not say otherwise — offers you send by hand as well as offers sent by a Sequence or by Auto-Callout. Switching the card off removes the default; offers then run without a review window unless one is set closer to the offer.

Per offer

When you configure an auction or instant offer, the Fair Start (Seconds) field offers three choices:

• Marketplace Default — inherit the marketplace-wide setting. The option shows the current value, for example Marketplace Default (30 s).

• Custom Duration — a value between 5 and 120 seconds for this offer only.

• Disabled — no review window for this offer, even when a marketplace default exists.

Per sequence step

Each distribute step of a Sequence can carry its own Fair Start setting. Offers created by that step use the step's duration instead of the marketplace default; setting the step to 0 seconds switches Fair Start off for that step. Because every wave publishes its own offers, every wave opens its own review window.

Which setting wins

1. The setting on the offer itself, when one was chosen.

2. Otherwise, the setting on the sequence step that sent the offer.

3. Otherwise, the marketplace default.

4. When none of these is set, the offer has no review window.

An explicit Disabled (or 0 seconds) counts as a choice: it switches Fair Start off for that offer or step even when a marketplace default exists.

Example

Keiko dispatches for Spaceport Shipping Co. in Rotterdam. Container work is popular, and her instant offers used to be gone within two or three seconds — always to the same two carriers who kept the Marketplace open all day. She switches on Fair Start in Settings → Marketplace and sets the duration to 45 seconds. That afternoon she publishes an instant offer for a container run to Lyon to twelve carriers. Mohammad opens it straight away and has 45 seconds to check the stops and the load; Julia opens it half a minute later and sees 15 seconds left on the same countdown. When it reaches zero, accepting opens for all twelve at once, and the tour goes to the first carrier who commits — this time, one who actually had a chance to read what they were committing to.

Technical details

Offers created through the Orbit API take the same setting: the fairStartDuration field on the offer-creation request accepts a duration in seconds (5–120), 0 to disable Fair Start for the offer, or can be omitted to inherit the marketplace default. Offer data in API responses includes fairStartEndsAt, the moment accepting or bidding opens. See the Orbit API Reference for the full schema.

FAQ

Can a carrier decline during the review window? Yes. Declining is available from the moment the offer is published, for instant offers and auctions alike.

Does a carrier who opens an offer late get the full countdown? No. The window ends at the same moment for everyone, so a carrier who opens the offer late sees only the remaining time. This is deliberate — a per-carrier countdown would hand the advantage straight back to whoever opens the offer first.

What happens if a carrier tries to accept or bid during the window? The response is turned away with a note that the review period is still running, and the offer stays available to that carrier. Nothing is lost — they can respond normally once the countdown ends.

Does Fair Start delay when an offer expires? No. The offer's validity is unchanged. Make sure an offer stays valid for longer than its review window — Orbit MissionControl warns you when it would expire before the window ends.

Does Fair Start apply to offers sent by a Sequence or Auto-Callout? Yes. Those offers inherit the marketplace default unless the distribute step carries its own setting, and each distribution wave opens its own review window when its offers are published.

What durations are allowed? Whole seconds between 5 and 120. Choosing Disabled (or 0 seconds) switches Fair Start off at that level.