Player Features and Ideas Discussion

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For the most part I find courier missions to be boring and pointless. At the same time, public courier contracts are usually lame and unprofitable. To solve this I propose the two mechanics be merged into a single function.

To set this up, the existing courier missions and public courier contracts should be removed, including all the courier agents. Each station should gain one courier agent (either a "person" or some AI thing like Aura) to manage the missions.

When consulting the agent, the player will be presented with a list of missions with a start, finish, size, distance, and reward. That's all. No what, who, or why the mission is happening, just a package. The missions will be a combination of NPC and player contracts going all over with a variety of difficulties. The NPC missions will fill out the list so that there are always some available.

Players will be able to make contracts listing a source, destination, and goods at the location. The end points could be stations, COs, or anything else that's fixed in space. Based on the distance, size, and security of the route the contract will increase in reward (like existing courier missions). Based on the reward, the creator will need to kick in a small percentage list fee and the mission runner will need to pay a large amount of collateral (many times larger than the payout).

If the creator doesn't feel the collateral is high enough, they can add more reward money to increase the collateral a scaled amount.

The idea is that the average player can set up a dozen (or more) courier contracts to haul their stuff around at a small cost that allows others who enjoy hauling to make decent cash without having to pay like crazy for the service.

Target cash rewards from NPCs should be in the area of 1K to 1M isk including time bonuses.