Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Building and transporting ships is a PvP deterrent for me.
It can take hours sourcing the parts from the markets and moving them to where they're needed, only to spend a fraction of that time actually using the ship.

The proposal is a contract that consists of a shopping list, a delivery destination, a payment for the deliverer, a guarantee for the contract and an expiry time.

You place an order for the gear you need in a particular station, with the payment placed in escrow.
A pilot accepting the contract pays a guarantee.
The accepting pilot collects up the items in the shopping list, then delivers to the delivery destination before the expiry, receives the payment and has the guarantee returned.
If the accepting pilot fails to complete the contract then the you get the cash from the guarantee and the payment.


Why can't this be done with the existing contracts?

1. Courier contracts don't allow you to request delivery of something that you don't already own.
2. Want to Buy contracts can only be fulfilled when the seller has all the items at the destination. If a seller sees a Buy contract and decides to fulfill they could waste time, money and risk only to have someone slightly faster beat them to completion. Accepting the contract before committing resources reduces the risk to the acceptor, encouraging acceptance.

What's the guarantee for?

A griefer pilot could accept a delivery contract but purposely fail to deliver, wasting the contractor's time and tying up their resources. An appropriate guarantee will make a griefer pay for this behavior while still allowing failed contracts for strategic purposes.

or you could put up buy orders with a range of "station" for the items you need at the price you want. There are constantly haulers out there looking for stuff to haul for a profit.

I don't know how you have your character slots deployed, but you could just leave an alt in Jita, have them buy your stuff, then contract it to your main. Main then courier contracts it to destination. Given how much of a pain entering a shopping list into the new contract form would likely be, it seems the Jita alt is a lot more workable.