Player Features and Ideas Discussion

As an idea to support industrial players - a module (or set of modules) that adds trade based functionality to a ship.

Low Slot - Trade Bay
Converts one of the ships holds to a trade bay - allowing access by the public to it via the 'space2space trade interface'*
Goods take time to move to/from ship to ship (30 seconds + volume - trade is completed at the end of the count down, this could be considered a cooling off timer).


Low Slot - Rapid Cargo Transfer Tube
Allows stationary ships (as long as the trade-ship is stationary) within 2.5km transferring good from/to the trade ship to reduce transfer times by XX%
Reduces cargo capacity - increases ship mass x4? when active (space anchor)?


Medium Slot - Mercantile Communication Array
Create a beacon in the system overview allowing players off grid to be aware of the trade ship / trades offered


Medium Slot - Industrial Services Management Array
Allows the automated sale of 'services' to ships in proximity as part of the 'space2space trade interface'* such as shield/armour/structure/cap reps, ore compression, lock box, hangaring.


* the space2space trade interface allows traders to setup specific offers for example:
buy 333 Veldspar @ XXXisk, sell 333 Veldspar @ XXX+10%isk
and so on, the number of offers that could be in place at any given time is limited by the pilots trade skill x5 (?)

The idea behind this is to bring industrial players out of stations into space, to facilitate wormhole trade and for open mining ops.

POS versions of these modules could also be available.

Yeah Farmers market in space - that's a good analogy!

I now have a mental picture of a very twee farmers market suddenly getting invaded by an angry biker gang (stereotypes ahoy) - protect the watermelons!!!

And your spot on that it would be a target for attack, part of the reason I'd like this sort of thing would be to facilitate emergent game play such as trade ships hiring guards to protect them. That said a trade ship dost need to fit a beacon module if they don't want to advertise their position off grid.

In some ways these function in a similar way to customs offices for PI, which can be a kill zone as well.
If the location is one that can be easily warped to or scanned down the dedicated will find it warp there and (try) to kill you - however the risk could offers a suitable reward.

Picture this:

An relatively new player is jumping through some systems playing about with mining, they don't have a second account to haul with (and don't have the time/money/dedication/confidence/will to get one), and they're scared of "all teh evil scammerz" that apparently populate eve.

On their overview they see this beacon "O'flanigan's Open ORE emporium" - Beacon, they're curios and warp there (at range just in case of the equally scary hordes of gankers that make up the other half of the population). On warp they have an info panel pop in (ala warping to DED mission, Incursion etc) that explains what this thing is.
Apparently Mr O'flanigan is sat in his orca of holding at a nice gravimetric site he acquired and is paying for all the ore pilots want to munch and selling to anyone with a badger that want to haul (making a small profit all the time).
As payment and delivery is handled by a game mechanic (the space2space trade interface) the newb can be slightly assured that outright scamming is unlikely (veldspar for 0.00001isk anyone?).

There might be whole mass of ships there munching, making their isk, both mining and hauling - when the equivalent of space bikers (sorry bikers I like you really) show up to the tea party and demand 'all the watermelons'.
Luckily Mr O'Flanigan has hired some strapping chaps for just this eventuality and a nice little ruck ensues.
Fun is had by all - the industry chaps get to munch, the pewpew is on tap and in the mean while Mr O get to whistle all the way to the bank...

Yep definitely a gank magnet! I don't have issues with PVP and industrial focused players interacting like that - if you chose to fit this to a cheap industrial hull (badger etc) then ganking would be easy, on a an orca not so much.

Yep having combat in WiS would be interesting...

However you can't fly a station to a belt, WH or gate and park it there (unless nomad stations appear).

TBH the main way I'd envisaged this being used was to park industrial / orca / xxx hull at a location and semi afk or multi box.

However I'd love to do this as a deployable using some of the existing art assets, this sort of thing might be akin to a very basic POS that can be deployed anywhere (fitable maybe add guns?)

Hahahaha yeah, I guess you could require some sort of object (star base charter - bit like a street trader license really) and sufficient faction standings to deploy in high sec - if it has the same rules as anchoring cans then you can't do it in > 0.7 anyway?

Although I now have images of these sort of itinerant trade ship clusters popping up along common routes between trade hubs.

Sounds fine, just make sure the trading radius is smaller than the radius of a (smart)bomb.

I hadn't really thought of it being a system linked to the existing buy/sell order system as I'm not sure how you'd (or even if) you'd get that system to allow it (variable locations?!).

In relation to the trade radius - I would go down the route of having a system where by the range effected the time taken to complete the trade.

So optimal trade range would be 30 seconds + (volume0.5), or whatever, with the maximum range taking x5 times longer to complete a trade.
You could always have modules to alter these values.

If optimal sits inside smart bomb range that's OK - you then have to trade off between safety and speed.

Vincent - from the users point of view the interface could well work how your describing, but the trade time element exists to add the opportunity for game play shenanigans (the waiting time would be fairly short anyway).
The initial setup of the trade ships offers should offer a great deal of granularity. For example you might want the price you pay to be adjusted by the quantity of stuff you have in your cargo hold.
So when you have no veldspar it pays more for it than if you have a near full hold (and wont buy if it is full) - and conversely sells it more expensively when near empty than when full. It might take standings into account for pricing. And once the trade ship captain has set this up as long as the ship is in space and anchored it runs automatically (while the pilot is logged in).

I've sat in belts in an industrial and done this sort of thing with a reasonable ROI - it would be nice to run it through a game mechanic as it reduces the hassle of open space trades, for things like open mining ops and live events and starts to add some of the nomadic gameplay that some players have requested.

I have re-read the thread and it seems I overlooked a couple of things.

I misinterpreted the whole mobile trader concept. I wrongly assumed you wanted litteraly a moble trading post hooked up to the market.
What your actually asking for is a new 'in flight' based trading UI, possibly working in a similar way to the market but in a direct trade manner. A customer would effectively only be able to interact with set buy/sell orders that the trader would set up on his own ship.
Is that it in a nut shell?


Transfer should be instant, just as all the other transfers are. Also, either a 2.5km or a 3km range on the trade should be fairly mandatory, as those are the ranges for interacting and transfering everything else in space.
There is plenty of opportunity already for nefarious activity, given the amount oof time needed to approach and align by the ships that will be interacting with the trade ship. They aren't exactly going to be nimble.


Not sure about this concept. I think the trader should adjust his prices himself accordingly, rather than have it change in the same way the NPC buy/sell orders do.

Other than those two point, I am starting to appreciate the concept a bit more and I am actually starting to see the broader appeal.

Yes that would summaries it very well.

I can see why instant transfer would be appealing. I'm trying to think of a way to balance distance/size of trade with a risk mechanic, instant transfers mean that every trade is equally risky - should that be the case?
Is it more, less or the same amount of fun if a freighter (should freighters be able to interact with trade ships - maybe the trade ship needs a module that allows this?) takes longer to complete a transfer as 120,000m3 of veldspar compared to a crow picking up a corpsical at the all night mortmart (orca parked near a gate "corspicals bought and sold")?

If I may play the advocate for transfer times - it could allow extended functionality for cargo scanner modules, what if they can detect what trade is in progress (scans the cargo shuttles flying back and forth). This might create an interesting mechanic where by pirates can watch for 'interesting' transfers for profit rather than just for tears (precious tears).


With regard to the automated functions of trade offers. I'm trying to think of functionality that will potentially be able to work in settings in addition to space2space trades - its a system that would support working from an un-piloted POS module, or a WiS player 'owned' npc agent or whatever...
I can see that it takes some of the dedication out of it (i.e. sitting at your client and tracking this) and from that point of view might be seen as less skilful - but setting up an elegant system to run this automatically might be considered more skilled (somewhat like setting up a good PI network for example)?