Crime & Punishment

Hello C&P!

Instead of my usual ramblings I’d like to gather your opinion on an idea I’ve been thinking about.

I would like a form of mercenary contracts to be added to the game.
A system where a client can put up a contract with specific mercenary tasks stipulated.
This contract could contain certain goals to be achieved in a predefined timeframe and with a reward(paid upfront by the contract creator) given to the corp/alliance that takes the contract and completes it succesfully.

I'm thinking of destroying a certain POS/POCO, killing an amount in ships of your worst enemie, or just being at war with a certain group for a certain time.

If the contracts would involve a war against another alliance or corporation, the fee for wardeccing should also be included automatically in the initial draft (and also this fee should be deposited upfront by the contract creator).

I think such a system would allow for a better, more professional way of handling the hiring of mercs and destruction of assets.
At this moment it looks like most aspects needed to implement this system are already in game (detailed war reports and contracts, killmails,…)

What do you think? Please try and control any urges you might have to call me a srublord/noob and if you must destroy my idea, please do so in an adult manner.

D.

Blizzard lost subs when they put pokemon and pandas in world of warcraft.

Many people need merc help, but not all are aware of these forums (or the now tainted merc contracts ingame channel) to find them, so on that basis this is a good idea for bringing consumers together with producers...

+1

Key though is to have clearly defined goals, fees paid up front and held in escrow until objectives are met...with contract goal failure resulting in returned fees and impacted efficiency rating that can be seen by all :)

i.e.

Requestor fills in:
- Target corp/alliance: Joes Pizza
- Duration: 1 week
and
- Ship/pod value destroyed: 1 billion isk
OR
- Structure value destroyed: 0

Various merc's then 'bid' on the contract...

- Marmite bid's : 1 b isk
- Devil's bid: 1.5 b isk

Requestor can accept any bid not just lowest, and is able to check the ongoing efficiency of all bidders on completing previous contracts :). I.e. Devils costs more but have met 99% of previous contract obligations...

Requestor chooses the Devil's contract, contract is activated.

At duration-end the Devils are awarded 100% of the 1.5 b fee when they meet the 1b isk ships killed goal. (If they had of only killed 500m in ships then 750m of the fee would be returned from escrow to the requestor...)

These are broad thoughts obviously, but the keys are that contract effectiveness is objectively tracked, good mercs will get good ratings based on meeting contract objectives, and the market will drive contract prices openly.

(I also think this would actually be a huge boost to merc gameplay, removing the 'fear' of giving money upfront to mercs when you haven't dealt with them before, etc...)

p.s. Add a 5-10% CONCORD processing fee as an 'isk sink' to get CCP on board... :)

Collateral for taking sounds like a good requirement indeed.
How would you abuse the ratings if collateral was in place?
EDIT: just figured it out myself

D.

Good points and to add to this, there is always a possibility for a nice filter ready/sortable contract history.

D.

The biggest problem with contracts such as, "Destroy X ISK worth of assets" is the fact that defenders have full control over that situation. All they have to do is not log in/undock and the contract is marked as a failure for the mercs, even though the mercs have caused damage to the target since they shut down for at least a week.

Unless the defenders have a damn good reason to log in and undock (or be a complete downy), contracts such as these will do nothing but screw over mercs. Contracts as they are currently handled are far better than the rigid ones suggested in this thread.

Further more, this is when labels apply to corps and alliances. I can see benefits and drawbacks to both being labelled a merc on this level but it applies to being label a good or bad merc corp.

The better out of the odds will proceed to gain all the business which is good since they are better suited for the job, but say you run some jobs where the targets never undock or never log on. You start to earn the label of a bad merc corp/alliance and your business starts to suffer. Its a good idea but it has a high number of drawbacks that I foresee.

Honestly, the destroy x amount of assets would work for null, or wh space, it just doesn't apply to HS.

This is how i imagine it could work:

First of all choose which sec the contract is in:
High Sec
Low Sec
Null Sec
Wormhole

Next up:
War Declaration
Destroy Asset X, in system Y.

War Declaration would obviously only be available if it's a HS contract. (Should start at the same time)
While War Declaration would not be available for LS, Null, and WH.
On top of that destroy asset should be limited to POS, TCUs etc.

However as Adriel said, there'd still be a problem with this setup, it allows a ton of 'scammers' to accept the contracts and get the isk after a week or depending how long the contract is in HS.

So either CCP would have to monitor the system, and look for said 'scammers' (whom could be anyone not being able to get a kill in a war) and punish them.

That being said this is what i mean by automation being a bad idea.
It's way better the way it is, because there's human interaction.

I guess you could say it's a decentish idea, however such tool would only work with a collateral being the deposit the employer made for the contract, and it'd be paid out when the contract is done.
Now you can't really 'finish' a contract in HS unless said target owns assets in space, so that would leave us with a pos bashing tool since that'd really be the only thing we could do with it, in general.

I get you could set a destroy x amount of isk before war is over, but then CCP would have to remove the dec fee for said contracts.
Besides that would open up a whole new world for 'scammers' aswell, since they could just make a corp, make a contract against said corp, mercs not being able to complete the contract would have to pay the collateral.

I've really tried being positive about this, but it's just automation in the end.
Automation is bad because then everything just happens, nothing in between, no reason to socialize, and probably a bunch of other things.

If anything we should have a 'Mercenary List' tool, so you could see who's offering to Merc, then you could contact said mercenaries that way, and that could work.

It could work just like the recruitment ad does currently, just with more options ofc, but automating the process would be bad.

edit: there should be a rating system in the Mercenary List to get rid of the scammers, or atleast get the highest rated ones hired first.

You're misunderstanding me.

If you're setting up a contract to LS/Null or WH mercs, a dec is usually not involved, so if you want a group of HS mercs go after LS,Null, or WH dudes it would have to be a contract to HS mercs.

e.g creating a Goonswarm dec for HS mercs to take on.

Bloody hell, very nice idea Seager!

Let's see how it evolves. In any case, merc work should get some attention and maybe these threads will help in getting just that.

D.