Crime & Punishment

I have a feeling this will just unnecessarily complicate the whole process.

Just contact us if you want to see some dudes in spaceships explode!

Excuse me for chiming in.

I personally see that as a possible job description for a specialized third party agent, i.e. a "mercenary broker".

If you had a broker service, the client and the merc could set up their contract in a truly free manner, both agreeing on certain conditions and goals and price tags attached to them. Then the client places the money with the broker and after the contract period, the merc would prove their success in killmails and such and, upon agreement with the client, get their money from the broker.

The broker would also have the ability to check on disruption claims (hey, we got them but they won't undock) by running locator agent searches and checking the systems/stations themselves. That would place some form of report duty on the merc in case the campaign doesn't work out as planned.

The idea is great, but IMNSHO more a business idea than anything else.

Hell, if I wasn't a complete newb with only one char and less than 4 M SP, I would actually give it a try and work out some standard contract textblocks and such myself...

Maybe in a few weeks when I can fly cov ops to check for claims outside of high-sec, I'll open a merc broker office.


The idea is great. But I wouldn't put the implementation into an automated system. That would just take away too many options.


Cheers, Ryder

Merc Brokering as a business model is a waste of time as the risk of not getting paid by the broker, even if the job is "satisfactorily completed," is phenomenally high. I, for one, require to be paid up front for any and all contract work at our standard rates. If they're too high or you don't want to pay up front, find someone else.

Regarding the Merc Contract Channel - we only get about 10-20% of our contracts from there as of late. The vast majority of ours come from word of mouth, repeat customers, or our frankly amazing merc thread.

As I said before, I'm of the opinion that a formal game mechanic for merc contracts is a really bad idea. The idea of destroy X ISK from alliance/corp A is bad for both parties. The obvious case is or the merc - if the targets stay docked/logged (and there is no way CCP will force undock with DUST mercs, and frankly they shouldn't) then the merc gets screwed.

On the other hand, if the mercs snag one high value kill like an expensive pod or a single bling mission ship in the first 10 minutes of the war, the contract obligations are met and the war either ends or the mercs have no incentive to try anymore since the contract will be marked completed. What the client really wants is maximum damage done to the target, and the merc doesn't want something that can be so trivially manipulated to ruin their reputation.

In the current system, without rigid game mechanics, it is in my best interest as a merc to always be hunting and trying to cause as much damage to my targets as possible, regardless of how much I've already inflicted. Furthermore, having people not undock/log in is not necessarily a bad thing currently. Anyone who does actual hunting knows that it only takes a few weeks for a group that doesn't log in/undock to completely shatter. As long as the targets are legitimately staying docked/offline and the mercs do legitimately hunt them when the targets are online, then this system works fine. Obviously not all mercs will uphold their end of the contract, but this is where the reputation of the different merc groups comes into play.

If you want people properly hunted and chased to the ends of EVE, hire someone who has a damn good reputation of doing just that. If you want some nullsec group to get popped every time one of their members goes to a trade hub then hire one of the camping groups. If you need another merc/pvp group put in its place, hire someone with a good reputation of doing just that. If you're too damn lazy to do a modicum of research into the type of merc that is the best choice for what you want done, then you deserve to have the contract done poorly.

Did you read the entire thought process behind the dust player insertion?

There are factors with the dust insertions.
1. Limited supply of clones
2. The docked player can hire his own dust merc corp to defend.
3. The docked player is able to fortify his position with in the dock
4. NPC security details and NPC station guns are active as the mercs would be intruding.
5. The docked player could log off till the war ends, and the dust mercs still get paid for the set up.
6. The docked could undock and warp to a safe insta undock then dock at another station restarting the entire set up process.
7. The dust bunnies could be defeated by the station defenses, insuring bragging rights for the docked. This also gets noted in the merc log and war report.

I find it hilarious that you guys want auto undock timers.
That you want to be able to use dust mercs to attack other dudes in stations and get pod mails.

It's straight out silly and unbalanced.
Either one will result in implants not being used anywhere.
This entire thing is silly honestly, why change something that works?

Your dream is bad and you should feel bad.

Edit: Also, this whole idea effectively removes scamming via 'merc contracts' from the game, removing metagame/player interaction like that is not desirable.

As I think about the pitfalls of concrete objective scoring against a merc corps rep some have raised (i.e. ship value killed, structure killed), perhaps a good quick first phase implementation would just be based on how Ebay track's provider quality...

- Merc corps/alliances flag themselves as providing merc services, and checkbox the areas they will work in (hisec, losec, null). This gets them listed in the new shiny 'Merc contracts' market ingame.
- Prospective client goes to the ingame 'merc contracts' market and selects a target corp/alliance from a dropdown/search, but then types in freeform verbage on what he wants done. i.e. "Kill 1b in ships" or "Gank toon MrBiggun" or "Harrass and grief them". Client also must select a duration in days or weeks.
- Merc corps contact the client through email to get any clarifications, expectation level, etc and then actually bid on the contract by providing an ISK cost in the merc contracts page.
- Client picks the bid he wants to accept, based on reviewing the cost and 'rating' of the various merc corps who bid
- At contract duration end the client can rate the merc corp with a 'positive', 'neutral' or 'negative' rating that feeds into their overall rating score. Wise merc corp ceo's will manage expectations upfront with emails etc. i.e. "Please give us a positive rating, because we camped them in their stations for a week and shut them down (even though nothing died)" As in Ebay, both client and merc provider can leave 1 line of freeform text for all to see. i.e. "AAA+++ Merc, recommend", or "Target never undocked" on the merc side.

Key goals met:
- Merc contract volume is vastly increased with this ingame market, hooking up clients new to merc contracts with contract providers. (ie.. No more wondering how to find a merc, and in-game promotion of mercs in general...)
- Over time truly good merc corps will accumulate lots of positive feedback (like on Ebay), with the ability for merc ceo's to manage expectations

p.s.
To prevent padding you would still want lots of things similar to what they did in bounties... i.e. Only a half (or third?) of total contract amount is actually paid to merc corp, the rest is a fee/ISK sink (CCP will love). You might combine that with minimum contract values (i.e. 100m ISK).