Idea for a new mission type for haulers.
Alright, as the title says, my post is about an idea I had for a mission for Haulers. This idea is great because it works to move inventories between trade hubs/systems. It creates a system that guarantees items are moved from the intended starting system and delivered to the intended destination system. It would be great because of the variable reward system can improve rewards for more dangerous system routes/destination systems.
So bare bones the system would look at markets for the HS/LS/Null NPC. Specifically stations and not Citadels. It would then determine items on that market that are either stagnant and/or lower value then a destination market. It would work to move items from HS to HS, HS to LS, LS to HS, Null NPC to HS, and HS to Null NPC. It would then create an outstanding mission at the starting station, requiring the hauler to buy XX items from that Station, it would bundle those items into a packaged “mission item” that the player would then have to deliver to the destination system.
As a side note, I’m being very specific here because I want the system to avoid people from gaming it. The Mission window would have an interface to buy the items from the station market, and then would bundle the items after purchase. This is designed this way to prevent people from buying cheap items from a player owned market or a different system and then using those instead, unfairly increasing profits.
Because the items would be bundled into a package, that package would be specific for the mission therefore preventing users from gaming the system.
You could then decide if you wanted to, to tie in market selling and having a small bonus for the player to relist the items he hauled at the destination system, after they were turned in to the mission, on the market. Either using an interface through the mission to setup a market order or however that would work.
As for reward, I would adjust the reward based on the number of jumps, the average time to complete jumps, the systems the route would go through, calculate a fair ISK value for the time, and that would be the reward. So for example, traveling through HS, going 20 jumps, it takes 1.5 minutes(just a random number) per jump, each system is in HS on the route, the so roughly 30 minutes to complete the mission. You would then figure out a fair and competitive ISK per hour value, something that would make this hauling competitive to other HS activities. Maybe create a bonus for running it faster, create a leaderboard for different routes that players could compete for fastest route etc etc.
This type of mission would really work to get items moving between regions. You could offer bonus if say no one is running the LS to LS or HS to LS, to try and gain activity for those areas. Obviously the more dangerous systems would require different and more expensive haulers, so the ISK value would be increased for hauling.
Just a thought on something fun that would be nice to add to the game.
