Caravan courier contracts?

According to information released so far, it seems players' personal caravans would be "self-driven" - players would have to haul the caravans themselves.

I wonder would there be a mechanism for a player to hire other players not to just defend, but actually drive the caravans? Just like the courier contracts in Eve Online.

- issuer sets start & destination nodes, reward, collateral, duration for the contract, post on bulletin board or something
- players familiar with navigating the area, or have access to advanced caravan components (not sure how these will work yet), or have pvp capable friends wanting to play the "guard" roles, could take the contract and drive the caravan to the destination.

Some pros:
- people get to specialize in what they want to do (trade / caravan pvp)

Some cons:
- trader may be able to just park alts in different economic nodes, issue contracts all day and get rich without ever exposing themselves to the risk of caravan pvp (to the trader himself this is probably a pros. But to the game itself? not sure)

I played as a trader in Eve, and ran a few interhub trade-routes, and most of my play time (apart from occasional pvp) were spent on checking prices, identifying profitable trades, managing sell orders, and issuing courier contracts. That play style wouldn't have been feasible if I had to invest the skill points & time on top of that to haul all the goods by myself.

What are people's and the Dev's thoughts on this?

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Comments

TeaGeek

I would love if players can be official quest givers through contracts like these. Mercenary contract that pays a player upon completion of a task is something I’d love to see for caravan driving/protecting as well as a way to pre-set materials crafters want.

Rhadek

i think this is sort of already possible through unofficial but known to steven/Intrepid ways. nothing stops you from organising and hiring regular caravan drivers. before i continue id like to make clear that i like the idea of fleshing out the world in such a manner of player interactions etc. but only where needed or where improvements can be achieved in this manner

I do think its important the note that this system if not done right can be a waste of time and resources and be subject to abuse or neglect from the playerbase. not sure an official system is really necessary as it might be more trouble then its worth, its probably better to just let players do this themselves and form bonds and roles freely as they see fit instead of tied to a system, the system youre proposing wont bring anything new that cant already be done.

Lycanmaster

I wonder if there would be some kind of skill to level up in order to drive specific vehicles or use certain teams of beasts of burden etc. I think that would be a really cool feature and would go with the whole theme of people needing to pick roles and specialize in them

LowQuey

All I'm gunna say about caravans is a dozen or two people from a long way away will turn up with a combatant flag in your area with a load of stuff for you to steal that's worth loads more than your stuff because it's from far away. How many caravans do you think will make it the last stretch without being destroyed and looted by the general population of that area?

Birthday

LowQuey wrote: »

All I'm gunna say about caravans is a dozen or two people from a long way away will turn up with a combatant flag in your area with a load of stuff for you to steal that's worth loads more than your stuff because it's from far away. How many caravans do you think will make it the last stretch without being destroyed and looted by the general population of that area?

A very good tactic would be to have your combat flag turned off while guarding the caravan.

That way your enemies will gain more corruption if they decide to try to take the caravan from you.

QueenofPixels

I love crafting and trading but the more this becomes like an eve style system where I will probably lose all my hard-earned or crafted goods unless I am a member of a megacorp or allied with one for protection, the less interested in this game I will be.

If by taking reasonable precautions I can get my goods safely to a new market 80-90 percent of the time I would probably we will to take a risk. Anything more than that and I wouldn't bother and if I cant craft/trade profitably as a solo player I likely not play at all.

Voidwalkers

LowQuey wrote: »

All I'm gunna say about caravans is a dozen or two people from a long way away will turn up with a combatant flag in your area with a load of stuff for you to steal that's worth loads more than your stuff because it's from far away. How many caravans do you think will make it the last stretch without being destroyed and looted by the general population of that area?

From what's on the wiki it seems when a caravan's destroyed, the raw / processed gatherables it carries will drop as a certificate, but only redeemable at the origin node of the caravan.

https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Caravans#Caravan_destruction

So if you destroy a caravan carrying loads of mithril ore coming into your town, you will have to carry that loot certificate far far away back to the mining village the caravan originated from, and then you can either dump the ores there for cheap, or start your own caravan to ship it somewhere else for sale. So there's probably not much incentive for the general population of a node to try & destroy incoming caravans (unless you know that caravan's from a competitor, or you just want to smash things for the sake of it)

Warth

Birthday wrote: »

LowQuey wrote: »

All I'm gunna say about caravans is a dozen or two people from a long way away will turn up with a combatant flag in your area with a load of stuff for you to steal that's worth loads more than your stuff because it's from far away. How many caravans do you think will make it the last stretch without being destroyed and looted by the general population of that area?

A very good tactic would be to have your combat flag turned off while guarding the caravan.

That way your enemies will gain more corruption if they decide to try to take the caravan from you.

that's not ever going to happen. PvP, robbing and the risk to lose your stuff isn't by accident. It's by design.

Warth

LowQuey wrote: »

All I'm gunna say about caravans is a dozen or two people from a long way away will turn up with a combatant flag in your area with a load of stuff for you to steal that's worth loads more than your stuff because it's from far away. How many caravans do you think will make it the last stretch without being destroyed and looted by the general population of that area?

As a looter, you have to return the materials back to the point of origen in order to collect them. Which means that you have to be one transporting it the next time around.

Bricktop

QueenofPixels wrote: »

I love crafting and trading but the more this becomes like an eve style system where I will probably lose all my hard-earned or crafted goods unless I am a member of a megacorp or allied with one for protection, the less interested in this game I will be.

If by taking reasonable precautions I can get my goods safely to a new market 80-90 percent of the time I would probably we will to take a risk. Anything more than that and I wouldn't bother and if I cant craft/trade profitably as a solo player I likely not play at all.

This game will be very centric around socializing, guilds, and groups it seems. There's no group finder, party sizes are pretty large at 8 people, etc. You don't have to join the biggest group of people on the server, but a group of people to help protect you is gonna be needed most likely. Gonna be hard livin for a solo player in Ashes from what I can tell. Possible, but tough.

Noaani

Birthday wrote: »

LowQuey wrote: »

All I'm gunna say about caravans is a dozen or two people from a long way away will turn up with a combatant flag in your area with a load of stuff for you to steal that's worth loads more than your stuff because it's from far away. How many caravans do you think will make it the last stretch without being destroyed and looted by the general population of that area?

A very good tactic would be to have your combat flag turned off while guarding the caravan.

That way your enemies will gain more corruption if they decide to try to take the caravan from you.

The entire caravan system exists outside of the corruption system.

If you are in the area when a caravan is being attacked, you chose to either defend or attack, and all of those on the opposing side are then able to attack and kill you without gaining corruption.

We do not yet know what will happen if a player doesn't select a side when the option is presented, but I would imagine that there would be a time limit before you are assigned a side if you do not select one. What we do know though, is that the corruption system does not apply to caravans.

To the OP.;

We know that players can share space in a caravan. As such, if you want to hire someone else to run your route for you (not sure why you would, but what ever), all you need to do is have them start a caravan in the node you have the materials you want moved, place those materials in that players caravan, and then they can transport them for you. You will probably need to be present at both ends of the caravan though.

Warth

@Noaani just adressing your 2nd point:

There is the option to press ignore as well. I'd suppose that this will be the default option when it times out

Noaani

Warth wrote: »

just adressing your 2nd point:

There is the option to press ignore as well. I'd suppose that this will be the default option when it times out

Ah true - it will be interesting to see what happens if you ignore a caravan attack while it is going on - whether you will still be able to attack the participants or not.

Based on some threads here right now, I am sure there are people that would say that this is just people trying to avoid PvP.

Tallis1

Fully agree: eve's contract system would not be out of place in this game.
That said, it is good to recognize the weaknesses of the system (collteral-traps/lures etc.).
I am convinced it is possible to initially mitigate this issue, by e.g. make you non-attackable by residents of originating node/affliated guids & alliances + contract can only be offered by maxed level, but even this mitigation will disappear once people have more max-level characters & better social infrastructure.. interesting question!

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