Ji'kahr
1st Praetorian Guard
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Posted - 2011.05.22 03:41:00 -
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Edited by: Ji''kahr on 22/05/2011 03:45:11 Edited by: Ji''kahr on 22/05/2011 03:44:20 I think it's a good idea, even if only to have another 'commodity' to fill up your cargo hold and haul from point A to point B.
Years ago on my Mac I played an EVE-like space game where you could make money as a hauler. One of the things offered in EVERY station was passengers that wanted to get from point A to point B, as a way of filling out your cargo hold. It made hauling a lot more interesting, profitable, and fun. Often, you would plan and arrange your routes and waypoints based on where the passengers wanted to go. The advantage that hauling passengers had over hauling cargo was that passengers was a guaranteed steady income, whereas you could lose money hauling commodities.
In EVE, these would be 'Interbus' cargo missions. Your passengers would be the 'livestock' in the market in EVE. (tourists, homeless, etc.) Generally the NPC passengers would want to go from trade hub to trade hub, but a few of them might want to stop off at some mission hubs too. There is lots of opportunity here for CCP to add some storyline missions and background, such as 'tourists come to Yalebap V to listen to the warbling of the air whales that float in the hydrogen clouds of this gaseous planet'. A great way for new players/ haulers to travel around EVE, learn about the background story of EVE, make more money, and have fun.
Of course you can also run passenger missions for the factions as well, such as ferrying slaves for Carthum Conglomerate, Freed slaves for Boundless Creations, etc. In that case there should be a standings loss, so a 'neutral' Amarr hauler in an NPC corp that hauls slaves in Amarr space will eventually find (s)he can't get passenger missions in the other three empires. You might lose standings with Interbus too.
In the game I played, jettisoning a cargo hold full of passengers was the fastest way to get a negative security standing. This was desirable in some ways, since only pirates could access 'pirate stations' in low-sec space.
As for hauling actual players? I'm not as sure about the usefulness of this since everyone can fly at least a shuttle. I suppose it might be useful to contract out one of your jump clones to a hauler and have them take it to another station, along with all your goods. This might be convenient if someone has to move themselves and all their goods from A to B when they are offline. It might also be a way to get yourself and your goods into null-sec. This seems like it might be eliminating the danger/ risk of flying there yourself, but freighters and haulers can still be scanned and ganked, etc.
So on the one hand, you can transport ALL your corps resources and players to a new system/ station at once. This saves an awful lot of game time for some. On the other hand, your corp could lose ALL of their players jump clones AND ships, mods, etc. if that hauler gets ganked. Pirates can now ransom each and every jump clone for as much as they would a pod...the Pirates might even be able to scan what implants those jump clones have.
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