Science & Industry

Being fairly new to the manufacturing side of Eve although I've been a miner since the start, I've recently run into the problem that this character isn't entirely welcome in Caldari space. I'm training an alt to fly a freighter for me, but in the meantime, I'm kind of limited to using courier contracts to move items to Jita if I want to sell them there.

What I'm wondering is, how do you set your rewards/collateral when issuing courier contracts? I've been setting my collateral price at about 15% above the cargo value or so, but have no idea what a fair per jump reward price should be. Generally my shipment size can vary from small to large, and I try to set a price that I think is fair, but I also don't want to overpay for courier services. I'd also like to have my contracts accepted within a day if I can help it, but that isn't a requirement.

TIA for your responses.

Yeah, that seems like a lot. I've been splitting my shipments up into about 50Km3 or less depending on what it is, and paying about 35K per jump or so, more if it's a long haul. Red Frog seems extremely expensive for my tastes, but I might give them a go with my more valuable cargo.

Oh, and thanks for the search link, but I tried that it and it didn't really answer my questions, thus the post here.

As someone who takes advantage of the services Red Frog provides, it seems like a lot at first, but the convenience of not having to do 20-30 jumps into Jita 4-4, 11-12mil isk is a very small price to pay some times.

By the way, when you do get an alt into a freighter, you'll see why someone who hauls for a living might charge as much as Red Frog does, those are reasonable rates especially if you have packages of several hundred cubic meters to contract. Running a freighter that has some spare room and accepting a cheap courier contract just because it's for a destination along the way is one thing, flying a freighter to make money is something else Warp speed of under 1a/u, plus the time it takes to enter warp if you're not using a friendly webber and if you aren't maxed out for agility (including Nomads), times however many jumps, it starts to add up to quite a bit of time.

I myself have accepted courier contracts for little reward when it was on my way and didn't get in the way of my own cargo. Why not, it can be easier than searching for stuff you can buy locally to sell for profit somewhere on the way.

50,000 M3 at 35,000 a jump. or 500,000 at 350,000 a jump.
860,000 M3 at 350,000 a jump. (with a base of 500,000, or 2 jumps worth.)

Sounds like Red Frog are cheaper to me As long as you're moving huge amounts at a time.

If your public courier contracts are not getting moved in a timely fashion, then either:

- You're offering too little per jump/trip
- The collateral is out of reach or nobody wants to risk that much
- You live in the back end of nowhere
- The cargo size is larger then what the average shipper can carry

For small contracts, keep the size under 25k m3 and less then 30-50M ISK. Otherwise T1 industrial pilots won't be able to carry it. Or try to stay under 40k m3 for very high value contracts, so that they can be shoved inside an Orca. Once you get above 70k m3, you're generally looking at freighters to move your stuff (some Orca pilots will carry 75-90k m3 packages, but it reduces their tank quite a bit and makes them nervous).

The really big contracts (over 900k m3) require a very highly skilled freighter pilot, using either a Charon or Obelisk. Don't go over 860k m3 if possible. See the following for a link of where the various T1 freighters top out at based on the pilot's skill level:

http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Hauling#Freighters

ISK/jump varies. As Ajita says, while you might get something moved in a freighter for 20-50k ISK/jump, it usually only happens if the freighter pilot is going that direction anyway. If you're in the middle of nowhere, more then 3-4 jumps away from a major trade hub, expect to have to offer a lot more (100-200k/jump) to get a freighter pilot interested.

Keep collateral under 1B ISK for freighters / orcas, and you'll generally get it moved more often via public contracts. Packages with 2+ billion ISK collateral take longer to move and are a lot riskier for the hauler. Go with one of the "known" hauling corps and make arrangements in advance. You'll pay extra for high collateral.

And, for the times when you absolutely need it moved, within a definite time frame of a few days - go with PUSH, Red Frog, or one of the many other dedicated hauling corps.

(One way to keep RF/PUSH rates from eating your profit is to always ship at least 750M ISK per trip, rather then shipping 100M here, 200M there.)

Random threads that found via Google may be relevant:

What are acceptable courier contract hauling rates?
Courier contract questions
courier contract pricing?
Courier reward thoughts
Courier contracts cost.

While very true, I like to believe that some freighter pilots out there in space are much like the truck drivers we have and rely on in real life. While there might be some that do it solely for the money there are those out there that enjoy driving the trucks and the satisfaction that comes from knowing you're part of something much bigger.

The minerals you move today, might be part of the ship you buy next week.

Nope.

And if it's not changed in the last few months, the corp bay is unscannable, too.

50k is a very bad size for a courier - it's too big to fit into any of the industrials which means you need a freighter or an orca to move the thing around, but in a freighter that leaves a mostly empty cargohold.

If you can I'd suggest while you have such small sizes to break things down to mammoth size or so - (27k m3 or less) as that would allow more haulers to accept your contract. (you may want to check industrial hauling sizes)

You will see in the long run that filling up freighters and moving stuff out in bulk is the best way to go.