Science & Industry

I decided to try to run my first courier contract. I picked up a courier contract last night (.02 m3). 7 jumps. 5 million isk collateral. 10 million isk reward. I would imagine that this would be an extremely rare occurrence as I was unable to find any others remotely close to this kind of reward. Is it possible that this was a NPC contract and that CCP sometimes throws them in from time to time to keep people interested? Of are all contracts strictly player run, and I got very lucky, or someone messed up?

I didnt look. Was afraid I would void the contract if I did. I'm still learning this process.

When I right clicked on the package, the only option was to "Open". Maybe it gives you more options when you click on open or something.

After. I will try it on my next run. Hopefully I find a good one again. :)

Thats what I heard. I will keep my eye out for those. Thanks for the info :)

If you found a Battleship selling on the market for 1M ISK, would you not snap it up? Same thing.

Collateral is in the game for a reason.

...and anyway, considering some of the ridiculous collateral requirements out there, it's a bit karmic.

It IS a contract after all; you can courier it for them, or you can 'accept the sale' and take it for the price of the collateral

Technically it is a "courier contract", as opposed to a regular item exchange contract ;)

I'm not exactly sure whether you're disagreeing or not. I did say that collateral is there for a reason. If you know what you're doing, you're not going to be victimized by a ninja courier, as you'll set your collateral ask to an appropriate level.

I think saying "most players" is just a bit over broad, as well. Most players that are running Courier Contracts are running them for the reward. With that said, once you've accepted your 10th or 100th courier contract with a collateral requirement of 100M ISK that has you carring < 1M ISK worth of goods, you start to become a little jaded. Since the cost to the issuer of the Courier contract is totally divorced from the collateral ask (which I think should change), they can ask any amount they want. The Courier will have no clue whether the collateral is appropriate until they've agreed to take the shipment, at which point they're locked into the contract.

Because of this, "Ninja Couriering" (the act of attempting to identify courier contracts that would be more lucrative to fail than complete) is probably the least developed profession out there. That's not surprising since it contains the greatest imbalance in available information between the two potential participants (courier and issuer). With ganking, you can ship/cargo scan to determine the value of mods fitted/being carried. With ninja salvaging, you usually initially end up at the non-business end of an acceleration gate and can D-Scan to determine the type of wrecks in the mission. With Ninja Couriering, it often boils down to luck of the draw and market awareness. About the best you can do if you want to pursue this as a potential occupation, is identify the professioanl shippers who know what they're doing and those who consistently put up bait shipments and block them from your contract lists.

Ultimately, just like any other market transaction, it's the responsibility of the issuer to appropriately price their goods and set appropriate collateral requests. In other words: Don't hate the playa, hate the game.

Question, if I raised a contract for x amount with y collateral, found out who took it up and nuke their ship and take the cargo does this mean I get the collateral as the contract issuer?