NPC-based delivery of goods sold from player-owned markets

[Unkind_Omen]

@Dyver_Phycad

The producers won’t own these structures. They will just use structures from other groups.

Well if someone is generous enough to maintain this structure for someone else for free - that’s their right, but not a good business model. I suggest that market should sort this one out, not game design.

For owner of such structure there is a huge downside - the larger turnaround they generate - the higher chance their competition would hire someone to tear the structure down. On the other hand - once you don’t HAVE to bring someone along to make this trade hub viable - why would you let in anybody at all unless you plan to profit from them?

[Jim_Plaude]

@Unkind_Omen

Is 0.5% per jump really so cheap? At the current rates Red Frog delivery from Jita to Amarr for 10 jump costs about 15 mil for 1.5B worth of goods. That is 1%.

TL;DR It’s very cheap; actual prices for hauling depend on many factors not considered in the proposal.

Your example has a very good reward—for a standard, casual delivery between Highsec hubs. However, you may want to tick the “rushed” box (~70m with Red Frog, ~50m with PushX, ~30m public with Haulers Channel). Then the Red Frog rate would indeed roughly match your proposed 0.5% per jump for 1.5b value (and up to 875k m³ volume)—in this special case.

With lower values, higher volumes, or in Low/Null, the proposed prices would quickly become way too low compared to actual prices. E.g. a 350m value delivery from Jita to Amarr would cost ~15m according to your proposal (that’s ~20% of the Red Frog rate), and since the proposal is not region- or security-level-restricted, or takes other factors into account, you’d pay the same rate for delivery from Outer Ring to Curse (or ~75m vs. 650m with Black Frog). That’s just not considerate enough.

Of course, if your proposed mechanic spawned public courier contracts, I’d be all for it (more content \o/), but they would have to be competitive. Automatic spawning of public courier contracts is a topic of its own, though, and you already mentioned that players (and by extension also any NPC convoys) would be too slow to make sense for your proposal (e.g. a DST, not even a slow freighter, needs approx. 15 minutes for a rush between Jita and Amarr, gate-to-gate).

You will need to come up with a more detailed pricing scheme as a basis for this particular part of the proposal to avoid punishing the hauling profession too much. Consider ISK/jump, time to complete, security levels, volume, value, system activity, as well as the type of ship needed (including it’s align time, warp speed, and PvP capabilities).

Alternatively, base your proposal on going Jump Freighter rates (ISK/m³/ly), considering fuel cost, pilot skills and fitting (at 1.500 ISK/unit of fuel roughly anything between 10 and 70 ISK/m³/ly, and that’s only the actual cost of moving a fully loaded JF through 1 cyno, not including time spent, risk taken, number of players involved, or anything else). Delivery with a JF would be reasonably fast and secure, though, and probably matches your proposal best (if they could jump directly to Highsec—but then that would be another highly superior feature of your proposal compared to what haulers can offer).

If this were actually to be implemented, I’d probably be part of a protest somewhere, mass self-destructing a bunch of Freighters

Some calculators for reference: Haulers Channel, PushX, Red Frog, Black Frog.

[Unkind_Omen]

First, thank you for the detailed price analysis. I should have discussed this issue in OP in greater detail of course. However, I was intimidated that price discussion would overshadow the proposal itself. That being said I am all for making a detailed and fair price that would not cause hauling degradation in EVE.

Summarizing your suggestions we have to have at least the following factors:

1. Price per ISK of the sold goods. This one is straitforward with one exception. We have to prevent people from intentionally making low price sell orders, so this should be also capped by the indicative price of the good.

2. Price per volume of goods. A separate factor so that perople don’t haul unrefined ores and other large objects this way. The obvious limit on usability of proposal here is the volume of a packed BS. considering 50k m3 and desired fee of not more than 1% (1.5mil for 150 mil BS hull) for such hull per jump that would be roughly 30 ISK per m3.

3. Consideration for distance. I don’t think this mechnic has to cover more than 2-3 jumps at resonable price. So the price per jump might be non-linear. I.e. 0.5% + 30 ISK/m3 for 1 jump, 2% + 120 ISK/m3 for 2 jumps, 8% + 480 ISK/m3 for 3 jumps, e.t.c This way all long-range hauling prices would stay competitive. An obvious problem is that players MAY try splitting transfer into multiple parts 1 jump at a time, but 1% sales tax and the fact that goods have to be hauled to a new citadel after every sale should make this unusable.

4. Considerations for security status. This should be either a price multiplier for unsecure deliveries, or, more likely, limitation of this feature to systems connected via HS routes. In this case in LS and NULL this mechanic can be kept within the same solar system only as there is no actual danger for hauling between citadel and a scouted station.

[z0rberg]

I’d be all for this, I think! It’d allow newbros ganking npc haulers in a sort of trainin’ level of difficulty before they’d start gankin’ YOUR haulers for the serious money, shits and giggles.