Market Discussions

Maybe it's time to consider an enhancement of the current game mechanics that might serve to de-centralize the markets.

In a future universe, trade would not be centralized. A culture that could support cloning and FTL technology, would not put up with the silliness of what would amount to medieval trading centers. Instead, there would be a central *network* that allowed any product to be bought and sold from anywhere *and* (more importantly) a reliable system for transporting goods between locations.
The current system relies on player-to-player contracts. This is okay for moving large items from one place to another, but the cost is high and there is considerable risk for both parties in each contract. it's also slow, and not practicable for supporting small transactions.

Would it be possible to set up the equivalent of an NPC-based "United Parcel Service" or "FedEx" that can reliable and cheaply transport goods around the systems in Eve (for a price, of course!)?

If NPC freight services were introduced that could be used to reliably haul goods to/from buyers and sellers, it would drastically reduce the current dependency on market hubs.

For a price -- that would depend on the size of the load (in M3), distance (in hops), and the relative security of the systems that had to be traversed -- any item could be securely moved from place to place in the Eve universe.
The transit price for each system would be set by it's security rating.
Total cost would be a function of the cargo volume (in m3) times the aggregate total transit cost for all of the systems traversed

Players could take goods to regional shipping hubs to save costs, or they could pay extra for pick-up and or delivery services.

Delivery costs could be paid by the shipper or billed to the player to whom the item is to be delivered -- but costs would always be collected before the item is "accepted" by the NPI freight company.

In fact, within the game software, the item would just show up at the delivery point at a period of time commensurate with the normal transit time one might expect - say, 4 hours plus 10 minutes per system) .

Transport costs should be high enough to constrain frivolous use (sending low value items long distances should not be practical unless there is a large quantity involved and a good profit).

There should also be a statistical probability of loss (that would depend on the the distance and relative risk of the systems being traversed) that would drive the possible purchase of insurance for valuable items.

An in-game delivery system would not preclude individuals hauling their own stuff or contracting private carriers, but it would greatly streamline trade and reduce the dependency on market hubs.

Even if an NPC-based transportation delivery service were announced, we would still have these giant "medieval trading centers." You seem to characterize them as inefficient, but actually, they are quite the opposite. A hub system introduces the opportunity for one-stop shopping, which can save a lot of time for individual buyers as well as, it should be noted, sellers. Prices also go down in hubs because of the presence of increased supply and price competition, which is good for buyers. The need for these features in a commercial economy won't go away just because you introduce an NPC delivery system.

And if this service were available for delivery to low or nullsec, then forget about it. That would just be gamebreaking. No more need to develop logistics chains.

Of course, on the flipside, including a small chance of delivery failure would swing it in the other direction. I don't think anybody would want to use the service if there were a randomized risk of failure, because currently available player-run freight services like Red Frog (and their spin-off companies) have nearly flawless track records. I'd much rather have a real person at Red Frog determining whether my delivery gets botched than a RNG. But that's just me.

Market hubs are just a virtual as the rest of Eve. Networks are already supporting the transactions IRL.
I can see stuff for sale anywhere in the region, and I can see (but not execute) contracts anywhere in the Eve universe.

The markets would just become universal instead of local. You would be able to sell universally instead of just locally.
All you have to do is factor in the freight costs -- and this is where the wrinkle would be.

The element of cost is what constrains shipments to or from from null sec or low sec. As I said in the earlier post, the shipping cost would be weighted based on the security of the systems that shipments would need to pass through.
For example, it could be set up so that null sec hops would each cost 20x that of 1.0 system hops.

Transport is all virtual. There wouldn't necessarily need to be any real NPC ships hauling freight around. As I said, the items would be accepted at one point, and show up at another point (with a delivery delay built in).
NPC service interactions wouldn't be much different than those for contracting.

Insurance would be available to cover the cost of possible loss. Again, this could be expensive enough to drive an interesting risk analysis on the part of the shipper or the receiver. If I want to ship an item worth say 200M ISK, across 6 systems and one of the systems is a 0.2 (low sec), the risk probability factor might be .80 (20% chance of loss). (Two low sec systems might double this.)
Carrier insurance cost would be set at, say, 20 ISK for every 100 ISK of insured value, so full insurance coverage would cost 40M ISK -- no small number to be sure.

As the above shows, the risk of transport would still be part of the game, but NPC transport would reduce the opportunities for player piracy or suicide ganking.

An interesting wrinkle might be to suspend freight services for those whose corporations are involved in a war.

If an Eve transport system is properly designed, it is likely that high-value transports will still be done by the player or contracted out.

If this still doesn't sound feasible, then as an alternative, it would even be nice if we could trade within, say, 2 hops of major trading hubs and pay nominal transport charges instead of having to actually dock in them. This would also allow the game to scale much more effectively than it can now.

The only thing an NPC-based service would act as would be as a price ceiling; player corporations wouldn't be able to charge over the NPC-based service or people would just turn to those. It'd be like the shuttle business way back, where NPC-seeded shuttles created a tritanium price floor.

Personally I think that the suggestion is entirely unnecessary, and I love seeing how players find ways to make money in this game.

Except the scams. I don't care much for those, unless they're executed nicely, which so few are.

You're going in on two main assumptions here:

1) Trade hubs in a futuristic universe are unrealistic
2) The current state of affairs is detrimental because it limits the scaling up of economic activities

With regards to 1), it would be reasonable to assume that even in the future there would be a limit to how far and how long ships can travel (Just because we have FTL travel doesn't mean we're suddenly able to zip from one end of the universe to the other instantly), and that physical commodities still need to be hauled around to different locations. Now, put those two together and you face a conundrum that all traders since forever have had to contend with - How far is my ship able to travel, how much can it carry, and at what point does the risk, taking into account my ships capability, my own navigational skills, and my opportunity cost for hauling becomes too high for myself? Trade hubs exist as intermediaries that offer traders more choices with which to satisfy their individual requirements. That's not something that's likely to disappear even in the future.

Also, you claim trading hubs are an antiquated concept, but then suggest that perhaps shipping hubs could be created. Isn't this merely a brute force breaking up of the current player - chosen (of sorts) trade hubs and moving them to arbitrary systems that are designated by an NPC corp? You'd just see the various shipping hubs become the new trade hubs, which contradicts your assertion that trading hubs would be removed altogether.

With regards to 2), I would say that such logistical limits make the game more realistic and fitting with the theme of EVE being a dangerous universe to fly in. It's not just a matter of ISK per distance, it's also one of choices made - Short haul through dangerous low sec versus a tediously long roundabout through highsec, quality corporations like Red Frog versus a random courier, setting up your operations near a dangerously camped trade hub versus settling in a more remote locale with the tradeoff of having troublesome logistics - That you can't get out of just by throwing some cash at someone, because they're not going to go all the way just for a one - time job. You'd see player - run courier corporations rise to meet demand, die when competition gets stuff, and dynamic costs for your courier job. That's a level of depth which if removed will just result in EVE being less of an interesting universe than it was.

Also, the current logistical limits are exactly what allow small corporations or individuals to set up their own industrial operations in far reaches of space, catering to smaller local markets that fit perfectly with their smaller production volumes. That's more diversity and more choice overall for the playerbase which wouldn't be present if major industrial alliances operating out of Jita, say, could just saturate far - away markets by monthly bulk couriers. You'd be providing far less opportunities for the enterprising new industrialist looking to forge his own path and work his way up from smaller outlying markets.

I though my courier contracts are accepted by NPC players allready WTF.

The solution is not ccp / npc automation. What we need is de-nerf of courier contracts, so players can actually create better shipping businesses.

It would be a much bigger advantage if we got a semi automation to player activity.

The best way would be adding load and unload feature to freighters and industrials, and in principle to all ship types.
To balance it between active present gaming and AFK gaming the "dockworkers" would simply have a time sink. So loading and unloading was based on the cubic meters. 1 sec per 25 m3 would be a suggestion..

To further make this a lot better a better browsing of courier contracts would be useful. So you would better be able to see your routes and the isk/m3 payment, and the collateral. Likewise the collateral should be possible to set so it took standing into account. So you could set the price differently for different standing. This way trust and good business conduct would be empowered a lot.

So.. around nine and a half hours for a not particularly skilled up freighter then (864,000 m3 for Minmatar Freighter 4)

And as for trust and good business conduct it happens. How do you think the two major freight corps (Red Frog and Push Industries) in Eve work? It's not by taking public contracts (Well, not as their main source).

Eve FTL probably isn't efficient enough to support such wide scale cargo running. The Charon has a:
* volume of 16,250,000 m3 (16.3 million m3)
* cargo volume of 981,250 m3 (1.0 million m3)

The Charon's cargo is 6% by volume. That's pathetic by real world standards. It implies that the FTL and flight systems take up a ridiculously huge amount of space in a ship, thus making cargo transport expensive and not very scalable.

By comparison, a real world Ultra Large Container Vessel can carry ~15,000 TEU (1 TEU =~ 38.5m3) or 577,500m3 of cargo (59% volume of the Charon) with a ship that, by my rough calculations, has a volume considerably less than a million m3.


tl;dr Applying real world logic to Eve, from physics to logistics, just doesn't work.

Not really. It has been well argued that CCP need to support freighting by introducing game mechanics to facilitate and enhance the process, in a player driven economy.