I’m calling this a concept because I do not have this idea all fleshed out and am interested in feedback.
I’m thinking of a new contract type that would facilitate the movement of ore from the point of gathering, asteroids, etc… This would be mainly targeted for new player miners and haulers.
The miner would mine the ore and when his hold gets full he would put in in some kind of can. The can would have some level of risk. The miner would create a pickup contract when the can was full. A hauler would pickup the ore and deliver it to a nearby station.
In this way miners and haulers, especially newer players, could work together without knowing each other or forming a fleet.
Why is this a requirement? Particularly when they’re are already loads of fleets open to brand new players that already use haulers.
That goes for the idea as a whole. People already and have always managed to work out arrangements to have someone haul and someone mine. There is rarely a drop in demand for either role and do to the lack of isk capable of being hauled in a single load in this activity it doesn’t require a high level of trust.
We don’t need more hand holding masked under QOL changes. We need more player agency not less. There is enough options for player to figure out by themselves hauling from belt to station. They just need to take initiative and talk with each other. Any game mechanic that works similar to current contracts (collateral, time limits etc.) will only end up with ton of scams. Or competition would be so high that prices will be absurdly low. We already have people hauling for less that 0.5 mil per jump with billions in collateral.
What would work better is some sort of public “job” board. When you say that you need hauler or whatever. It’s visible in region, constellation, system, etc. and anyone interested can start chat with you for details. Again, more player agency and actual interaction between players.
Since it’s a contract, I assume you could assign it to whomever you wanted to.
If so, then conceivably some local corporation could start up to specialize in this type of service. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, but I do think there’s a lot of room for an implementation to be an obtuse pain in the butt only known by those specialized in esoteric knowledge of Eve’s every detail and I also think that implementation would be difficult since I can’t think of anything currently in the game that functions in a similar way.
I don’t really see a reason why you’d have to restrict the contact to ore in specific, though. I’m not sure if people would actually use it for other goods, but you may as well let players choose what gets shipped if there isn’t a compelling reason not to.
I put it in the ‘could be cool but I don’t know if it would actually pan out that way in practice’ category of ideas since I have no way of substantiating a claim that people would or would not use such a feature for an interesting purpose but still think it is technically possible they could if they wanted to.
My response to this is the same as my response to @Lugh_Crow-Slave which is for new players there is a real trust issue, which is good, they need to be carefull. For that reason many new players are solo which is not good. This is intended to simply facilitate that newbie miner, newbie hauler relationship.
It could be expanded. I choose ore because there is need; to often miners try to be haulers or haulers can’t get a start because every other hauler contract has a 1m isk colataral.
Thought about it but forgot to write in first reply…
In my Idea I wanted to add more direct Player <-> Player interaction (conversation etc.) on top of current contract system or your idea. Which I assume would work quite similar. It might sound like I wanted to bypass some game mechanics that provide some sort of safety (eg. courier contracts). But it’s other way around. I though of adding another, optional layer on top of what we have now.
Speaking from my experience: I had some of best EVE moments after I went out of my way to talk with people I frequently haul for or people that buy regularly buy products from me.
Currently there is no mechanic that encourage new player to talk with people. Unless they join corp and be somewhat active there. Most of them play “solo”. I thing that this also big reason why joining corporation help in player retention. It’s push they need into social interactions inside EVE.
Contracts in space feel overtly risky for the hauler (sure you avoid getting locked out of station).
Are these jetcan contracts limited only to belts or can they be dropped in anoms and sigs? (Potentially with active NPC rats let alone ready player gankers?)
I don’t see haulers pre-accepting these jetcan contracts if there is a possibility of a.) the site is still full of rats and b.) the space jetcan can be destroyed while they are in route to pick it up thus forfeiture of collateral (and if you make these in-space courier cans invulnerable for a long time period that introduces its own set potential system stability issues for item clutter).
From a usability standpoint I don’t see players accepting likely low payout ore hauling jobs in space with a lot of additional risks.
On the other hand, this task seems a lot more suited to NPC ore haulers that can respond to new contracts at any time zone and have their own always ready defense fleet (that doesn’t mean the NPC hauler is invulnerable).
I recommend newbies can use this NPC contract system (a right click option jetcans) to send ore to nearby stations however the NPCs take an 11% cut of the ore volume. This still leaves room for players to maintain their own logistics operations.
That’s the point. Players can run insurance. There is still room for players to run these ship replacement/insurance programs even with an existing NPC system.
The NPC system works at scale for more people in a manner that most or all player Alliance ship replacement programs could ever operate.
Should NPCs ‘always’ be cut out of providing a service at scale that Lugh Crow-Slave insists should not happen?
It works in the sense you are guaranteed to get money back under agreed terms. It’s a market confidence system.
Also, the fuller context is ‘the NPC system works at scale’ delivering baseline services in-game any time and anywhere.
There is foundational operation of gameplay without the need for player-to-player trust. Players can still expand upon the system with their own niche communities (scamming or honestly delivering service), all the while all players can be served by a baseline of purposely ‘imperfect’ NPC service.
Where do you get me advocating a single player only experience?
Eve Online should remain overwhelmingly run by players and the stories they craft, however to put ‘complete’ control in the hands of players is simply foolishness and wasted dev hours on features.
I make the argument that developer hours are better spent on something other than in-space courier contract cans if the ‘only’ option is for human players to interact with these contracts. I forsee too much risk, in-space item spam, server optimization concerns, and too little payout from ‘newbie’ miners for players to realistically handle a niche system that can already be handled by real players picking up jetcans.
