Player Features and Ideas Discussion

If some way can be found to facilitate it, I'd very much like to see "break bulk" contracts, where I can assign a huge quantity of stuff, e.g. ammo, minerals or ore, to be moved from place A to place B, but without needing to care about how the couriers move it - if they haul it as 2 Freighter loads, or 3 Freighter loads, 4 or 5 or more, or if they use Orcas or even specialized T1 industrials instead.

Basically "move this large volume of crap for me, I don't care how, here's the total ISK-per-jump I'm paying".

If I have, say, 3.1 million cubic meters of minerals, that I want moved, then it's a lot of work for me to load-balance it into 4 Freighter-load-sized Contracts, both with regards to value balancing and volume balancing. It'd be nice if I could just assign it all as a single contract and let the courier figure out how to distribute it, or even have the game auto-didide the load as per the courier's preference (i.e. "into 5 even loads").



I'd also like to be able to chain courier contracts. Sometimes when I set up chains of courier contracts to Red Frog, their pilot will accept one contract from the middle of the chain, to his own inconvenience, because he didn't notice the chain. He didn't notice that I had first issued a contract from A to B, then B to C, then C to D, but rather he just accepted the B->C one.

Some way to make convenient chain-courier contracts more visible to potential couriers, at least, could be nice.

And if it is all in a single contract, then a Red Frog guy can legitimately accept all the steps of the chain at once, whereas I believe that's illegal under their rules with the present contracts system.

This could be automated, based on Standing to the recipient of the contract (character or corp).

If standing issuer->recipient is Excellent, the final preview is simply skipped, whereas if standing is Good, the final preview is simplified. For Neutral or worse standnig, the final preview remains.

Fine Print (rank 2) - adds 8 contracts per level
Skill in filling the borders and margins of contracts with endless terms and conditions on a scale that even nanotech engineers find impressive.
Prerequisite: Contracting 5

Contract Law (rank 4) - adds 16 contracts per level
Skill in applying local laws and legal precedents that favour your contract dealings.
Prerequisite: Fine Print 5

Legalese (rank 6) - adds 32 contracts per level
Skill in burying contracts in meaningless legal jargon so effectively that nobody dares to contest their validity.
Prerequisite: Contract Law 5

May sound a bit odd, but I'd like contracts that can be filled 10% of a time.

Let's say I want meself some Tritanium, in a particular station, but for whatever reason I dislike going through Market Buy Orders. Perhaps it's those greedy tax officials and brokers...

So I can issue a contract to an in-game associate for 60M units of trit, at a set price. If my associate dislikes the price I've set, he'll presumably reject the contract (assuming he has noticed that it's been issued to him in the first place) thereby telling me that I'm a miserly bastard and that he wants more ISK.

But if he doesn't reject it, then I must assume that he has begun working to fulfil it, and that in 4 or 8 or 11 days, or however long it takes him to gather such a huge amount of trit, he'll complete it so that I get my stuff.

Key word here: assume.

It'd be nice if it was possible to have a new contract for a single kind of item in large quantity, e.g. trit or Massive Scordite or a very particular kind of ammo, that can be fulfilled in chunks, these chunks always being 10% of the total.

Each time a 10% chunk is delivered, the contract is updated (thereby nicely telling me that my in-game associate is actually working to satisfy my demand, and not being a lazy-ass bum) and 9.9% of the contract ISK total is paid out, except for the final chunk, which pays out 10.9% for a total of 100% of the amount, in this case whatever I think 60 million trit is worth.

This is nice for my in-game associate too, because he gets paid every now and then, instead of only getting paid at the end. E.g. if it's a huge-ass contract for many dozens of millions of trit and he'll need most of the 14d time limit to actually get me that much.

And there's also a gamble element involved, because as soon as he accepts the contract, with its ISK amount, its stuff amount, and its time limit, he's gambling on being able to fulfil it within the time limit, as failure to fulfil means he'll lose 0.1% of the ISK value of however much he has delivered.

Note that I can't really grief with this, since if I issue an asshat contract, such as 4 billion pyerite out in the middle of nowhere, with a time limit of 2 days, the recipient that I'm issuing the contract to can see the impossibility of fulfilling it, and reject it. Or he can just ignore it, leaving me to notice, perhaps 8 or 12 or 16 hours later, that chunks of pyer aren't incoming, whereby I realize that he didn't fall for my scam.

Even this gamble, or the potential to scam someone who's really dumb, is a very minor thing, in that if you partially fulfil such a contract, but don't complete it, you're only losing 1% of the value of however much you did fulfil. Perhaps I've even set the chunk-payout too high, possibly it should be 9.8% or even 9.7%, with the final 2% or 3% paid out upon completion.



Such contracts can also be issued to corps, perhaps, where individual corp members can each try for a 10% chunk at a time, although I'm not sure how that'd work with the "crowner" amount that's held back until the contract is fulfilled entirely. Perhaps the corp itself gets the crowner amount, that is the last 1% of the ISK (10 times 0.1%)

Absolutely. Ratings would be entirely subjective, and the EVE playerbase would have all sorts of reasons other than altruism for rating people as they will.

All the more reason to add it. It is exactly the sort of thing that makes EVE unique and popular.

I wrote something here:

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=330994&find=unread
Suggestion for better/easier contracts, for getting fitted ships

A new way of creating contracts and a new type of contract, called "Fitted ships" contract. It has a little box named "Fitted ships" that can be checked by the creator of the contract. Players can search for "Fitted ships" contracts.

If someone creates such a contract, it must obligatory contain a ship+modules. The game does not need to check if the modules fit the ship or not. The ship can be already fitted, or packaged and the modules beside it.

If the contract contains more than one ship, it will obligatory contain the same number of modules for each ship.
When creating the contract, the creator drags the ship to one box, the modules to another, then specifies a number in another box for example x10, x100, and the ship and module boxes get filled with items from his inventory, with correct numbers. Option to create multiple such contracts, or save a contract and copy it, would be nice.

What's new? When the buyer checks this "Fitted ships" contract, a fitting window opens, presenting the ship and modules fitted if the ship is already fitted. Red modules - the buyer cannot use. And a number near it saying x10, x100 etc.

If it's not already fitted, the game does not try to present the ship as fitted (too complex, depends on the skills of the buyer, it's hard to choose what modules to fit first if the seller put the wrong modules in), the buyer just sees the ship and the list of modules near it, this list would look like the list I get when browsing saved fits. And the x number near the window, so the buyer knows he gets x5 of the ship and x5 of all the modules listed. The ones the buyer can't use are red, also there could be a warning message if a module has nothing to do with the ship or cannot be fitted even with perfect skills - like a 100mn AB to a frigate.

There are a couple of things I can think of.

1. Have an option to show icons in the item listing, the same way as in inventory screens.
2. Show contents, fitted modules etc, in a collapsible tree with container or ship as root, and show the contents of all items.
3. Allow item exchanges to have a collateral and time limit, so, say, an industrialist can manufacture items on demand, given the appropriate minerals.

Another idea I had, you can fly a ship with rigs you don't have the skills to fit, yet finding someone to fit them can be problematic. You could introduce a "jury rigging" contract, that operates similarly to a contract for collateral/reward, but the collection and delivery stations are the same, in which you list a hull and (up to) three rigs, and the contract is completed when the ship, with rigs fitted, is delivered.

Up the max amount of items per contract. I never understood why i cant put more than 200 individual items in one contract.

Here are few ideas regarding UI/functionality from top of my head:

1. Allow creating contract in the name of corporation from personal hangar.
- Currently if I brought corporation manufactured item to Jita and want to sell it in the name of my corp (on behalf of corporation ticker) to the public, I can't without owning office there. If contract fails items should be back in personal hangar and if goes through money gets into selected corp. wallet. So I guess somewhere in contract there should be hidden data where does item on contract fail go to.

2. Preserve filter option on query change in "Available contracts" tab
- Lets say I have 3 BPOs. I want ot check cost of similar BP originals on contract. When I right click on my BPO and select find in contracts it shows all BPOs and BPCs for that item. Thats ok to cover needs of all pilots and if I select in "Item category" menu "Blueprint original" it shows only originals. Now if I right click to my second blueprint and choose find in contracts it resets "item category" window and I have to reselect "Blueprints originals". For best overall functionality, tt would be good to preserve "Item category" state as long as the contract window is kept open like it is done with "Contract type" state but still reset "Item group" state back to all. Same is with "Location". If I select "Current region" I don't want it to reset to "All regions" as long as Contracts window is open. There is a reason why I'm browsing contracts in only current region. You can reset all stats on Contract window close.

3.Keep selected items flags when going thorough contract creation process
- In personal assets or in local hangar, when creating contract, we select item(s) and right click -> create contract.
When we get to 2/4 window items that were right clicked are preselected/ticked, but if we now go one step back to change anything on first screen 1/4, like item exchange<->auction or public<->private, and then proceed to second screen 2/4 selection is reset and we have to reselect items we want to put on contract. Usually I cancel creation process and right click again like I did initially because its faster. Keep what items are being contracted through whole contract creation process. If we additionally select one more item in 2/4 window during process, keep that also when going thought previous/next tabs as long as creation window is open.

4.Remote contract problem on changing item amount
- Personal assets tab, remote contract. Lets say there are 5 rifters in distant system shown in assets tab and we right click to create contract. If during contract creation process amount in stack changes, contract cannot be finished. Can you lock the stack from change and start filling the other (second) stack during contract creation process and if I cancel contract then merge stacks? It is even worse when working with raw materials that get amount change every few seconds from my buy order being filled while I'm trying to contract initial stack for transport. 1mil trit, excellent->rig click->next.next,next, you cant complete contract because now you have 1mil and one trit in the stack

4b. Allow remotely to merge stacks in contract window like you now allow to split stacks. That could be even better solution instead automatic stack merging from canceled contract creation in previous point (4.).

Hope it helps,
A7

This.

Such an easy change. So much better overview of the contracts.