Basically if youre a hauler, you could que up for “work”, in a system that automatically assigns you work orders based on your settings and people placing orders:
Settings:
(dont have to choose all settings, just choose the ones that matter to you as a hauler)
range of delivery/pickup (in jumps from your location (minimum 10 jumps/maximum unlimited)
security system
highsec/lowsec/nullsec
faction space
m3 cargo
After someone places an order from ANY NPC station in the universe and chooses the delivery system to get their items, they would get a message with the estimated time for delivery, and given options to choose how long they wish to wait before the delivery is cancelled.
The seller choices:
time for delivery before the order is canceled (after be given the estimated time)
type of delivery (normal, priority, urgent) different prices
collateral (but the hauler could see the estimated price of the total sum of the items hes accepting to deliver… this estimated price would be the average of the whole universe price in the last 3 month with +20% or -20% of the current trading average)
This will allow hauling passion players to work as a self employed without having to belong to x or y corporation just to get some contracts. And no the contracts thing isnt the best nowadays.
An automatic system that evemails haulers that turned in the hauling service “just like uber drivers”, would be assigned hauling services according to their settings, and have the option to pass or do the delivery.
The more times you pass whilst with the services turned on, you would get a penalty in isk, starting low but exponentially grow rapidly if you pass on more than 1 delivery in a row in less than 4 hours (like missions).
The payments would be calculated per jump, per m3, per security system (highsec/lowsec/nullsec).
There could also be an extra payment for priority, and/or even urgent, which the seller could choose and pay more to get his items delivered faster (in terms of the system would move those orders up in the que)
Players have already created this themselves- Look up Red Frog! They take hauling contracts for pay and assign them to truckers. No need to take up valuable dev time for something we can take care of ourselves.
We have contracts already where players set the pricing and collateral, which is a thousand times better then what is proposed. Mentions that the contract system isn’t the best but of course doesn’t say why…
Mechanics for this already exist in-game. Contracts are accessible across all of New Eden, and player-driven organizations like Red Frog will already do long-distance and/or large volume hauling of contracted items.
Single market is also a non-starter. A lot of people make their living through inter-regional trade. If you want to see prices in other regions there are 3rd party tools like https://evemarketer.com/
No need to waste developer time on problems that already have good solutions.
CCP Just Announced in the Eve Vegas Keynote that they are implementing a “GLOBAL MARKET” for plex within the year, and it might be followed by more global market access I believe but don’t quote me on that.
Automatic hauling system is a different idea, the contract system is a little clunky, maybe streamlining it, and allowing people to accept contracts from the entire “global” market vs having to be " in region" could be an improvement, play testing and data would have to dictate.
I believe CCP is already looking into these issues to be honest.
I posted a similar topic about the market about 21 hours ago.
o7
tl;dr
CCP is already beginning to implement a GLOBAL Market later this year, starting with plex, in jita.
it makes sense for Plex since the implementation of Plex storage because that storage removed the need of hauling. For everything else in game global market is detrimental.
It also makes sense in that Plex is an item purchase IRL with real $$$. Especially considering the NES Store can be access from the app, it makes sense to make Plex sales and trades easier from the app.
Seems like an awful lot of text saying how this is so good for haulers, when its painfully obvious that this is only about the OP wanting to be able to buy from anywhere in the Universe, and have stuff delivered without doing any effort.
NO