Player Features and Ideas Discussion

For those of you who don't know, Plastic Wrap in EVE is when you place the cargo in a courier contract and it gets put in a box with no description, then place said box into another courier contract, there is no telling what is inside unless it is broken open and the courier contract failed. The contents within cannot be scanned because the scan simply shows the contents of the box to be another box.

This plastic wrap is frequently used by haulers and has proven itself to be an interesting gameplay element in highsec, in that haulers use it to avoid being ganked for carrying too much value, and gankers sometimes gank people carrying plastic wrap to see if there's good loot inside. It works because the effort required for putting this plastic wrap on items is sufficiently high so as to deter people from using it frivolously, especially when it might actually increase the chance they get ganked.

The control factor from the other side is legitimate courier contracts, which are automatically plastic wrapped, and do not necessarily contain candy and caramel corn.

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My proposal is to add plastic wrap containers which bypass the step of putting the stuff in a courier contract--the cans would come in all the normal sizes but would be much more expensive than regular cans. The extra expense is to balance with the effort on the other side, because ultimately haulers hauling cheap goods should mostly pass up the chance to plastic wrap. Gankers won't get lucky very often if everyone is plastic wrapping everything.

Benefits: less heart attacks, less subscription cancellations
Drawbacks: gankers have a higher learning curve

TL;DR: if this meager post is too much for you,, the title should suffice for your needs; however please do not try to debate topics of which you lack a sufficient working knowledge to discuss properly

edit: added bold text in the first paragraph and added strikeout -- this means there is no control factor

A Plastic Wrap is only unscannable if the goods inside are two layers deep. Generally, goods inside of a courier contract will be in cans already so that a second layer is created or re-couriered in order to create a second plastic wrap that acts as a second layer.

Plastic Wrap
>Container
>>Items (Unscannable)

Plastic Wrap
>Plastic Wrap
>>Items (Unscannable

Plastic Wrap
>Items (Scannable)

Is it really that hard to put your goods into a container that's already in the game and subsequently courier it to an alt? Furthermore, if you're absolutely worried that your items are going to get scanned, you should be able to go through the extra effort to secure your package and make sure it's double wrapped. If not, and your volume of items is low anyway, I'd suggest buying a Transport Ship.

Benefits: Currently none because the tools are already in the game. If it does cause heart attacks, it's because they already have preexisting medical conditions. Subscription cancellations is a laughable strawman arguement.
Drawbacks: I know that my organization will gank Transport Ships and Double Wrapped Freighters. We call those 'Scratchcards', like a lottery.

TL;DR I treat normal forum readers as illiterates and need to insult them in a tl;dr.

"I will not address the counter argument, therefor I'm right."

CCP if you give them this feature I will shoot him on principle!

Nothing is stopping you from doing that right now. Just courier all those cans and trade it back to your hauler. Tadda, scanproof items in cans.

First, you cannot "forward" courier contracts with assembled containers.

This is a quote from FAQ at Red Frog Freight, if you don't believe me;

"We appreciate if containers are avoided as much as possible, as it increases the handling time of the contracts (due to the impossibility of forwarding these types of contracts to our out-of-corp freighter pilots). There is no need to use containers if the number of stacks of items are 200 or less."


Plastic wrap hasn't (since Tyrannis IIRC?) been able to "hide" stuff in cans anyway.


In fact I just did a test, here I had 10 civilian shield boosters in my cargo hold, 10 more in a can, 10 more in a courier contract, and finally 10 were forwarded and "double wrapped", a la courier in a courier.


http://i.imgur.com/LP3KWB6.jpg?1

As you can see, the container holding 10 shield boosters doesn't even show up. neither does the "first wrap" in a courier as you can plainly see 3 groups of 10 shield boosters.

However trying to "view" whats inside the "double wrap" ends in failure. As the game just has the show info and "remove freight container from overview" options and doesn't allow you to "drill down" and see what's actually inside the second wrap.

To me, this is a fair tradeoff and if you have something to hide then it's not really that much extra effort. If you don't care, or are careless then that's your problem. In my mind everyone should "double wrap" so that it's always a gamble for the gankers. If they want to gank, then fine but it should be a risk and not just easy profit because a module told them so.

Oops. (I'm drowning in fail, HALP)

Introducing the new Secret Shipping or like i call it SS! Contract me your items you wish to be shipped in containers (with appropriate collateral if your so inclined). I will then courier contract these back to you to your required destination

lol

Onoes, 20k isk to double-wrap a thing! That's like, 2% of the bounty of 1 BS rat!



Also, why would you want to stop people (like me) from double-wrapping a tritanium and flying around highsec with it? Literally killing emergent gameplay right there.