The current system we have for this is crazy.
At present we are required to load a ship, jettison, and have the other player pick it up. And then they dock and unload.

I propose a new system for this, we need one that is balanced in the constraints of time and sabotage. It needs to be fairly slow, but able to be pirated or sabotaged.
This would help immensely for the construction of large scale ships such as the Trident.
Because right now it is tedious beyond belief. So much that I actually feel like throwing my conputer at the wall. But that poor wall it never deserved such a beating.
I'm very okay with the whole transport and such, that seems balanced considering the scale of the construction.

Feedback?

Now, stations have no internal structures. They are like a big freezer with ships frozen inside...

If we have a spacely civilization, the logical consequence is that most of life happens inside stations, including trade. Why can't I simply order to load my cargo on someone's else ship instead of mine? Or simply replace "my tag" with someone's else tag while keeping stuff in storage areas? Are the bots (or porters) so stupid like that?
Crate B429837xc98, owner Player1. XFER. Crate B429837xc98, owner Player2. Crate remains in place, untouched.

I'd like a simple implementation. One can order to transfer anything he owns and is locally stored to another player. Present or not.

No payment control of any kind. Simple transfer of ownership. Now it belongs to me, then it belongs to someone else. Keep banking separated from items ownership transfer

Prone to abuses? The worst I can imagine is transfering goods between alts. That can be easily prevented, but I'd like that way, so I can help myself, my new alts...

Now, stations have no internal structures. They are like a big freezer with ships frozen inside...


Do they also contain closets, monsters, crates, candy, or some combination thereof?

It needs to be fairly slow, but able to be pirated or sabotaged.

+1, but how do you see this in practice?

candy sounds nice

yea there really should be a way to do this, but it should come with some risk of plain old screw up, one out of 1000 or so get accidentally routed to a random player's inventory, or is simply lost, because well, if you want something done right....

Also some way to try and intercept said cargo would be cool, as for how to implement this, I have no idea

I agree that there needs to be some way to transfer goods between players while docked at a station. I don't agree that of needs to be slow or able to be sabotaged. There does, however, need to be some form of cost associated with such a system.

I propose a escrow system, whereby some entity at the station will take goods from a player and hold them for another player at a cost commensurate with the amount of cargo to be held and potentially even the length of time. This would even allow cargo haulers to not require their client present upon delivery. The biggest benefit to such a system is ease of implementation. It's much easier to write a system to hold X cargo for Y individual at Z cost.

I really don't think this is a problem. Having to physically move the cargo prompts player interaction and requires you to at least have some trust in the person you're doing business with.

Having to undock and re-dock for a mission to take your cargo... now THAT is a problem that needs fixing.

My vote is that in-station transfers should only be available for transfers of 1000cu or greater. No random risk that it goes wrong, unless going-wrong means the cargo is simply jettisoned into space where any interested party could retrieve it. Having it randomly be transferred to the wrong player or disappear would just be lame. Vendetta is a skill game, not a dice game.

If both ships are present, it could be free and instant. If the receiving party is not present, it should either require the sender to pay a weekly fee, or else it should continue occupying the sender's inventory space for the purposes of rent calculations until it is picked up. Such transfers should be able to be canceled by the sender if he is docked at the station holding the cargo, in case the receiving player changes his mind.

Pizzasgood said:
My vote is that in-station transfers should only be available for transfers of 1000cu or greater.

I disagree with this. Often a player may want to contract someone to haul less than that amount somewhere for them. This would then require that the client be present upon delivery, and potentially be non-viable due to timezone differences or other events.

Pizzasgood said:
If both ships are present, it could be free...

I also disagree with this. This service should never be free. If you want a free transfer of commodities, then it can be taken outside of the station. Consider that the players likely don't own the forklift (or other futuristic machinery for transporting cargo) that is being used to move their cargo around. They certainly don't own the space it is being stored in, and likely don't even have carte blanche permission to walk in and inspect their cargo without doing some paperwork first. The fees for a transfer of goods could potentially be lower if both parties are present, but fees should still be in effect.

As for what the service should cost, it should probably be at least 5x to 10x the amount of regular rent. Though perhaps on the lower end if they have to pay for each day the cargo is held. Additionally, the per unit cost could decrease with bulk holdings, so the 1000+cu transfers would be more efficient.

To enable people to easily conduct business in this manner, there needs to also be a way for the person sending the goods to receive payment from the person receiving the goods. Of course this should continue to be on a per-station basis, though they could be sent a message that they have a payment awaiting them.

Another side to this sort of system is that it's not much more of a stretch to turn this into a market system, whereby players can post items they want to sell or want to buy and at what price.

I have no problem with charging a fee, and would in fact prefer that, but it wouldn't bother me very much if it didn't. That's why I said "could" rather than "should". Fees should definitely be involved if more trivial transfers are allowed.

If secure payment methods are to be included, a good percentage of the payment should be kept by the station. 20% maybe. That is for the added overhead of them handling the money and preventing the payer from taking the cargo and running off.

On the screen where you would press "make payment and receive goods", there could be another button labeled "Seize goods!" which would jettison the cargo into space, eject you from the station (in an unarmed EC-89 if you didn't already have a ship selected), set you temp-kos, and slap you with a heavy faction penalty equivalent to killing an Admired ship. (Of course, in a Corvus station, there would be no long-term penalty, and the fees incurred by the seller might be smaller to balance that out.)

Good suggestion, nice thoughts about it. I agree with draugath and Rin's ideas are creative and constructive. Like it.

Kinda like this? http://www.vendetta-online.com/x/msgboard/3/22434#292969

Yes, way beyond over due. However, just for the people who insist that this would kill piracy... keep in mind there is still the trip from station to station in a fully loaded, slow, huge and cannot maneuver to save it's life Moth.

And for those who learn better through visuals...

Why not just pay stations to trade your shit for you that you have in your inventory.

If inside the station transfers are not available, then the station sends moths out and into the station again, but putting it into inventories of the receiving party.

Another idea could be paying stations PER JUMP fees for transporting your goods to other stations.
You could designate what ships they should use, and the price per ship per jump also increases base don the amount of CU it is hauling.

Kierky said:
... paying stations ... for transporting your goods to other stations.

I believe that player-owned inventory should only ever be transferred via players. Also, I think trying to implement something like this might end up being harder than trying to implement a player-to-player transfer.

I think it'd be perfectly alright to move cargo between stations, but VO needs player generated convoys first.

So are you suggesting that players be able to hire npc's to haul stuff between stations?

+ 100 to intra-station trade between players

I don't care if there is a fee.
I don't care if both players have to be present, or not.
I don't care if it is restricted to 1000cu or more per transfer.
I don't care if the station handles selling my stuff to other players (market system).
I don't care if there is an escrow system.

Imagine this: I have some stuff in a warehouse that I am giving to a friend who will also store it in the same warehouse. In order for me to give him this stuff the warehouse makes me load it in my truck, drive out into the parking lot, transfer the stuff to my friend's truck, then he has to drive his truck back to the warehouse, unload the stuff and put it back in the warehouse exactly where it was when I owned it. This makes no sense.

Please devs, make this happen somehow.

OR implement a player market system. (which would actually be better)

Kierky said "Why not just pay stations to trade your shit for you that you have in your inventory."

@PaK - I think he is proposing two things: allow the stations to list your inventory for sale to other players, and allow players to hire npc convoys to transfer "shit" between stations.

I like the idea of hiring npc convoys, but I doubt it will happen. It would be really cool, and probably drastically increase trade traffic providing many great opportunities for pirates.

The big problem with PC hired NPC onvoys is that we should be coming up with ways to drive player interaction. These would simply create more opportunity to not interact with other players. I saw the claim that these would create more opportunities for pirates, bit they won't. They might create a couple more easy targets, but it doesn't help pirates or the player economy.

Adding a way to trade goods between players, especially if both parties aren't present, promotes trade, which promotes pirates, which promotes those who provide guard services. We've had two guilds in the past six months who specialized in cargo hauling. They both collapsed and I believe this was in part due to the lack of a system for trade of goods.