I would like to suggest: When we mine and stockpile at a station which has the worst prices. It would be nice for this to be like the mail. Pay a delivery charge and have the ore brought to you at the designated station. And have it show how long the delivery will take etc. Also, the delivery could be instantaneous like Star Trek beam me up Scottie or you could create and npc transport capable of delivering the cargo. The more transports that it will take the more the cost. Furthermore, we could hire npc fighters to defend the transports. Which of course we would be charged of fee for their services as well. But the total amount would add the cost of transports and defenders. This may also work well if you don't want to do the travelling for the procurement missions. This may also work well with the tedious duty of travelling all the way back to Itani or Serco space to get nation only ships. That you could put in a order of how many ships that you want, that's if you have good faction. Also, with weapons...stations don't offer the best weapons in Sedina for the fights in B-8. Especially when you want to fight with a Neutron Mk3. Which is only active in your nation station. Just a thought...I despise transporting cargo.

Well, I'll say no to instant transporting a la Star Trek, but hiring NPC traders to do your transporting could add interesting aspects to the game. Especially if pirates could buy information on who has hired NPC traders to carry what cargo from & to where. But it should give the NPC traders escort AI, so the player has to go with them (no having the NPCs doing all your work for you).

Something like, after NPC traders make deliveries, they stick around in the bar for a few minutes, and you could hire them there, and gain access to their ships to load/unload cargo. And if the NPC you hired belongs to a faction that a pirate has good standing with, then the pirate would be able to buy information on where you hired the NPC, and where you told the NPC you were going to. You could lie to the NPC (tell it you were going to one station, but then actually go to different one), but the NPC won't like being lied to, and you'll take a faction standing hit with the faction the NPC belongs to.

On the pirate side, the pirate would want to build up a "contact network." He would hail NPC traders from factions he has good standing with, and tell them he would be interested in information on any cargo transport jobs they were offered (along with a monetary incentive up front). The pirate would want to do this with as many NPC traders as possible, because he would only recieve a message about the players hiring those NPC traders that he has made contact with. Then when a player hired a NPC trader that a pirate had made contact with, the NPC would send a private message to the pirate, offering to sell the information.

all the more chance to role play

*Stamp of wantting*

What we need, is a bunch of noobs to carry it for us. The thing with hiring bots is okay for our current condition, but try to think lots of more people, with lots of npcs

Besides, I think Broma-Ba Slick is trying to start up a courier service for ores.

Trust me, i hate moving cargo too. I have about 8000cu of stuff i havent moved because i just didnt want to. Though, if i had a friggy to carry it with...

I'm not big on hiring other players for it. The reason we'd want to hire out rather than doing it ourselves is because it's boring: I say let the bots do the boring stuff, so the players can do fun stuff.

Also due to the boredom factor, I think NPCs would work cheaper than players.

And I would really like to see the pirate contact network with NPCs that I described earlier. That could work with players too, but I think is likely to work better with NPCs.

i tried doing a courier service as well as an escort service... they flopped... perhaps it was just bad timing but there wasn't much demand/willing costumers.

Having bots run cargo sounds like a really good idea. It makes piracy, and more importantly, defending against piracy, much more interesting, If you have a fleet of NPC Centaurs hauling 1000 cu's of lux goods, moving at 120 m/s, You could make massive profit, but you're also much more vulnerable.

Stamp of utter joy

I would really enjoy this upgrade. It would bring new ways of piracy but also makes it easier on the player. Not having to spend countless hours of transporting ores and such from station to station. Especially trying to find a good price for the ore. If this couldn't be done then maybe a larger hull ship should be created that could hold a lot more ore. Other than the regular 120cu behemoth. But when the player owned stations get put in then we would most likely have to hire NPC station guards to defend the station. But this is just a thought. I would really like to see this suggestion added.

as a good way to introduce the big bulk cargo ships of some future update, they could make them start out as the bot npc hirable convoy fleets. a huge fleet of moths or centaurs just doesnt make sense, if we plan on being able to have huge bulk cargo ships.

I saw that the Devs will be adding something similar to this idea... I can't wait.

This has got my approval too, I would say though that the npcs should move at a semi-slow speed, say 100 or 120 that way you *could* send them unescorted, but you stand a chance of losing a lot of money if a group of pirates happen upon them. Plus traders will be thinking more of attack than run like hell if they have a fleet to escort. It opens the chance for great profit on both sides of the fence, and a great dynamic as well. Being able to build up contact networks and the likes is a great idea also.