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[Ember Vykos]

Been mulling the idea of starting a front corporation around in my head for a while, and decided I wanted to see what you guys thought of it.

The basic idea is like money laundering or being a fence. Ex: Pirate A kills a ship and takes loot back to his/her base to sort through. After they sort out what they want to keep and what they dont they are faced with selling the trash in their locale for less than they could get in empire or rolling an alt to sell it for them. I know most pirates and other unlawful type people have alts with a neutral sec status to be able to do this, but I thought it would be fun to have a corporation that they could go to and have them sell their stuff(for a small fee ofc) and get to roleplay it out a bit as opposed to just handing it over to thier alt to take and sell. Other possibilities are drug smuggling and the like, but I dont know much about that in all honesty.

Anyway, Im curious to see what you guys think, and if this would be a viable thing to do cause I'm really considering it. Obviously I need some more ideas to flesh this out a bit so if ya got em post em.

[Silver Night]

Do you have a way you would deal with trust issues?

[deMangler]

sounds like a nice atmospheric idea for some RP.
Hope you get it off the ground. If you want some further richness to the RP re. this idea then LS-RP might be willing to be involved, most of what we do involves stuff other than flying around.
Check my sig for a link.
BTW, the link in your sig needs some repairing... Just a heads-up.

dM

edit: As an aside, the way that I deal with trust issues in EVE is to apply the "Don't fly what you can't afford to lose' rule to business - don't do business with assets you can't afford to lose. If someone rips me off once then I never do business with them again, or at least build the experience into future RP.

Problem is that there is really no effective defense against alts of people who have ripped you off coming back once they think they have found an angle on you. Apart from not trusting anyone.

One of my most enjoyable experiences in EVE was when somebody surprised me by scamming me out of 400million ISK. Obviously my character was a little pissed off! Shame was that the person was not a RPer it didn't really go anywhere - it was just 'ho hum, there we go...'
That was before Pilots Licence Plexes Trading and it was about three months work to make the money back. Taught me a lesson that did.
dM

[Marcus Gord]

If it'll work or not, depends on if people can get a better price from you, or from selling locally.

That'd be the decider for me anyway. I'd be interested in offering support for this if you decide to go ahead with it. I'm working out some stuff for PRELI that'd help.

As for drug smuggling, the only way to do it at the moment is with an Orca's corp hangar. If you went ahead with that, I'd be interesting in working with you too, since I sort of already do that, and have future plans related to it. I don't want to say more until I have stuff worked out

[orange]

I would suggest finding any organization interested in selling to you for X% (say 10%) less than Hub pricing.  You offer pickup of the goods and then transport them to your favorite hubs for sale.

You will need upfront capital, but it will help with trust issue.  If you make more than the Hub pricing, gravey; not their fault for not studying the markets.

The role is being a trader for a particular segment of the game's population.

[Vieve]

An additional service you might consider offering is purchase and delivery.  Instead of just selling loot and getting a cut of the price as a service/transport fee, you could also offer to acquire and transport items to the seller.

I did this myself via a small alt company for a few months while I was honoring JOUET's lingering contracts and providing "help to tide you over until we find you another reliable supplier" assistance to its best clients.  (Granted, trust issues weren't an issue, since I was dealing with established relationships.)

[Ember Vykos]

Like orange stated most of the trust issues would taken care of by me buying at x% below market value in a hub and then taking it there to make my money fromt the deal. Also, if I did rip someone off and not give them thier money then that would pretty much kill not only the business but my characters reputation as well, and its not in my best interest to do something like that if I do want to RP as a fence type of character working with the seedier underbelly of EVE society. The biggest problem I see form that is me getting enough of a profit to take the risks to go to x system pick up the goods return to empire and sell them when the people Im dealing with could just use an alt to do it and keep all the profit for themselves.

I like the idea about also purchasing and delivering items my customers would need. Might look a bit more into that. This whole thing is still kinda jumbled in my head at the moment, but its workingitself out bit by bit.

[orange]

It is about selling your service, your playing time to them in exchange for isk.

Sure, they have an alt that can make the run from Syndicate to Jita in a Blockade Runner, but do they have the time?

People talk all the time about things like Industry, PI, missioning, etc their alt can go and do and they don't take a 5% hit on the transaction or whatever.  But then that is time not spent playing their super-pvp character or running their own industrial pipelines.

There is a lot of talk about the hyper-capitalistic nature of Eve, when all anyone really has to trade is time spent in-game.  It is how you enjoy using that time versus how someone else enjoys using that time that matters.

[Merdaneth]

I don't think there is much RP in your idea. If you like hauling and selling stuff, I guess it can be ok, but it is basically a courier service.

For example, I have a lot of stuff from kills lying around low-sec as well. Would I want it moved for me to high-sec to sell? Surely. Would I want to pay the market price for it? No, it is simply not worth the effort for me to try and make out contracts and pay a price that couriers would still move it for. Would I RP with my courier? No, not really, have no reason to talk much to him. What would there be to discuss?

Hauling is simply not a very exciting job, and as such you need to 'invent' things to RP about.

[Vieve]

Bah.  I think there's plenty of RP potential in the service.

For example:

* Negotiations with players convincing them that they need your service.
* Negotiations with industrialists convincing them that they need to give you a cheaper rate on what they're building because you can guarantee them regular sales.
* Negotiations with customers convincing them that they need to pay you a higher rate because you've provided them such good service.
* If necessary, negotiations with pirates along your regular routes convincing them that a) you're not worth the price of the ammunition they'd expend in shooting you or b) that you could provide them some useful services.
* If necessary, conversations with natives along your regular route in order to establish a personal intelligence network of the areas you fly through.

I've done all of these things in character.

[Merdaneth]

Bah.  I think there's plenty of RP potential in the service.

I stand corrected. Yeah, the negotations could be a good source of some RP. I was thinking to much from the angle of an already established relationship.

[Vieve]

I stand corrected. Yeah, the negotations could be a good source of some RP. I was thinking to much from the angle of an already established relationship.

Well, yeah.  The 'intensity' of the RP will likely die down as the relationship is established, especially if the other parties aren't roleplayers.

[BloodBird]

There is still incentives to keep up relations with your peers, and possibly needs to re-develop deals as some factions leave/die off and new assume their place, and so on. Nothing is set in stone thus your ever diplomatic mind constantly need to keep your relations and deals up to date.

[Silver Night]

RP-wise, this seems like one of those things where staying IC is mostly a matter of just acting naturally and not mentioning OOC stuff. Character-wise, you might modify that depending on how your character handles business, ofc.

[Ember Vykos]

RP-wise, this seems like one of those things where staying IC is mostly a matter of just acting naturally and not mentioning OOC stuff. Character-wise, you might modify that depending on how your character handles business, ofc.

Yeah pretty much. I would probably add some things to make it personal. Like giving a discount or something to organizations Ember would like ICly or characters I already have a friendly IC relationship with versus characters I dont know ICly.