So if I get this right, auction contracts allow you to sell something without going to the market. Unlike the market, you don’t need to be the same region, as long as you have assets in a station you can do this.
Item exchange contracts are to trade ISK for what you want to buy at a specific station.
And courier contracts is if you have assets in one system you need to move to another. With three characters, someone can jump into a Jita alt, buy stuff, switch to his main, do stuff in his main, and never have to leave his home system of his main.
True, contracts will allow you to buy and sell remotely. However, there are also skills that will allow you to sell things remotely through the market. And, of course, you can always buy things remotely within your region, regardless of skills.
You can see contracts in other regions, but you have to be in the same region to accept them. Don’t know about creating them, but it would stand to reason that you’d need to be in the same region for that as well.
Item exchange contracts are typically used for items that can’t be sold on the market (i.e. Abyssal mods, researched BPO’s), selling rigged ships (you don’t have to repackage the ship to sell it in a contract), selling assorted things all at once (i.e. cleaning out your junk drawer), and scamming.
Yes, courier contracts are used when you want someone else to move your stuff (and for scamming).
Yes, people frequently have market alts which allow them to buy and sell stuff without having to move their mains to market. This is particularly useful if you are using courier contracts, or alliance JF freighter services.
I get that eve is a cutthroat world, and I’m not expecting everyone I deal with might be Saints. I might hang out with criminals. I might end up helping a corp do something in one constellation while I know their other operations involve ganking. I might even lie in the future.
But I can say this for sure. If TiberianSun371AlexW hires someone on a courier contract, it will never be with the intention of making him fail, not even if the collateral is a bit too high. TiberianSun371AlexW will not only not get his hands dirty trying to block a deliver he hired, he won’t even have someone else do it. Any couriers hired by him will only face the normal dangers.
And TiberianSUn371AlexW will never have a criminal flag. I felt confident about that when I finished the tutorial and now that I rememeber the three characters thing, I’m now 100% sure.
)