POCO Logistics Contracts – Courier + Direct Sale from Orbit

EVE Technology and Research Center Player Features & Ideas
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Hey capsuleers,

I wanted to share an idea that could make Planetary Interaction (PI) way more engaging (and honestly, less painful). It’s a concept for a POCO Logistics Contract System—a way to either outsource your PI hauling or sell your goods directly from orbit without needing to undock.

:police_car_light: The Problem

Moving stuff from your POCOs is a chore—especially in low or nullsec, where you’ve got POCOs all over the place, and you’re just begging to get caught hauling. Right now, there’s no way to safely hand off that job to someone else, even if you want to. No contracts, no access permissions, nothing.

:white_check_mark: The Proposal

Let’s add a system with two parts:

  1. Courier Contracts for POCOs
    So you can hire someone to move your PI from a POCO to another POCO or station.
  2. Direct POCO Sales
    So you can just sell the goods from orbit to another player, and let them handle the rest.

:delivery_truck: POCO Courier Contracts – How It Works

You’d set up a contract that looks a lot like a normal courier contract, but instead of starting in a station, it starts at a POCO.

  • You pick a POCO with goods in the launch can
  • Set a destination (another POCO, a structure, etc.)
  • Choose a reward (flat ISK or % of cargo value)
  • Add collateral (optional, but useful)

You’d be able to set who can accept it:

  • Public
  • Corp/Alliance
  • Specific players

When a hauler accepts the job, they get a temporary access token to grab the cargo. A timer starts, they fly the goods to the destination, and once delivered, they get paid automatically.

:locked_with_key: Safety Stuff

  • Collateral protects the owner from scammers
  • Haulers can’t re-launch the goods to orbit (they’re stuck with pickup/delivery)
  • Access can be limited by standings, corp, or explicit permissions

:repeat_button: Some Nice Extras

  • Recurring contracts for regular setups
  • Collateral suggestions based on market values
  • Reliability stats for both haulers and issuers

Example: Courier Contract

  • You launch 15,000 units of Oxygen to your POCO in system XYZ
  • You create a courier contract:
    • Pickup: Planet V POCO
    • Drop-off: your station in system ABC
    • Reward: 1.5M ISK
    • Collateral: 15M ISK
  • A hauler picks it up, completes it, gets paid. Done.

:shopping_cart: Direct POCO Sales – No Hauling At All

This one’s even simpler. You just want to sell your PI straight from the POCO.

  • You pick the goods in the POCO
  • Choose your buyer (character, corp/alliance, or public)
  • Set a price (fixed or per unit)

Once they accept:

  • ISK gets transferred to you
  • They get access to the cargo at the POCO (temporary token again)

If they want to haul it somewhere, that’s their job now. You’re done.

Example: Direct Sale

  • You launch 20,000 units of Oxygen
  • You list them for 18M ISK to HaulerCorp
  • They accept, pay you instantly
  • They handle the rest

You never had to undock.

:globe_showing_europe_africa: Why This Is Good for EVE

This system creates opportunities for:

  • New hauling corps focused on PI
  • Scouts and newbies to make ISK as contract runners
  • Pirates who know when and where these routes happen
  • Industrialists to work together instead of solo grinding

Yes, some people will undock less. But a lot more people will be doing PI now that they can offload the boring part. That means more ships in space overall, not fewer.

Would love to hear thoughts or improvements. I’m happy to clean this up more or even mock up an in-game UI if that helps.

Fly safe—and outsource smarter. o7

Rewrote, and changed to be less help from ChatGPT, sorry i am Dutch my English Sucks!

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First, allowing other characters to access PI goods in a POCO of another character through means of a contract results in less ships in space as people like myself would (ab)use this to chain their PI production chains safely together on one planet.

For that reason alone I don’t think POCO trades are a good idea.

Next, goods within a POCO are not safe. POCOs can be destroyed, the goods looted. What happens when you sell goods to someone and then destroy the POCO to loot the goods again before the buyer obtains them?

Such a trade isn’t safe, unlike other trades and contracts within EVE, which makes it prone to abuse.

Lastly, does every suggestion lately have to be in chat-gpt format? It’s really hard to read and understand the underlying intention of the poster when it’s all fit within the same format that doesn’t distinguish between what the writer thinks is important and what are lesser details when everything is presented the exact same soulless way. I may have missed some details of your suggestion because I had to skim through a whole lot of generated text in order to understand the original thought behind the suggestion. Please post the original thought next time?

3 Likes
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Hey Gerard, appreciate the thoughtful critique.

I’d argue that EVE shouldn’t be “safe”—that’s what makes it interesting. The fact that POCOs can be destroyed and goods looted isn’t a flaw, it’s a feature. Giving players tools to trade or haul from POCOs adds risk, yes—but it also adds opportunities for ambushes, piracy, betrayal, and all the things that make New Eden tick.

Also, I don’t think this would lead to fewer ships in space. If anything, it enables more people to get into PI, because they can outsource the hauling, which is the most annoying part for many. That means:

  • More PI being produced
  • More people needing haulers
  • More ships flying contracts
  • More targets for pirates

Sure, some players will stop flying PI routes—but if more players start doing PI as a result, the net activity goes up. Logistics, piracy, contracts, bait—this system adds fuel to all of it.

And about the format—fair enough. I’ll keep it more direct next time. I just used ChatGPT to polish the English a bit, nothing more.

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Which is a growing problem. Its ok to use it as inspiration, but copying its format and words is soul less.

A lot of organizations look down on it. I know one organization is giving away $1000 to whoever writes about why they are in their career, and explicitly states nothing can be done using chatgpt since its not authentic to us.

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As a person who would love to have the ability to contract out my PI hauling needs from POCO to Station, I understand the reasoning behind not having it.

Other than allowing me to gank someone there to pick up my PI products, this really adds little in the way of PvP.

Strange, I never ever thought of the 'selling of the PI products from the POCO? Hmmm…?

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Any proposal that utilized AI gets a downvote from me just on general principal.

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apriciate the words, and kindness.

also gotten lots of info ingame from poeple, my english is bad. sorry.

AI actualy give me option to talk, and expline things good.

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Would be abused. How? You can clear the POCOs storage capacity simply by “creating a contract” because any item within a currently not accepted contract is basically teleported into a “void” while the space it has occupied in whatever hangar is freed.

So what people could do is storing basically unlimited amounts of materials in POCOs by creating contracts, which can then all at once be retrieved by an alt on demand.

1 Like