BP Loophole? CCP Confirms It Is Intended Behavior, But Should It Be?

[Archer_en_Tilavine]

Good EVEning, CSM!

I present to you a scenario which I believe to be problematic - you all may or may not disagree. I have confirmed via ticket and bug report that the behavior I am about to describe is, in fact, intended behavior as per CCP, so the question is: should this behavior be altered?

The scenario is as follows: There is a hangar which NO MEMBER (excluding CEO/Directors from conversation) has access to (ie. no view or take access) and no container take access. Inside this hangar is a container which contains blueprints and ancient artifacts. Naturally, no member can view this hangar or container in the inventory window; however, in the industry window, when they filter for corporation-owned blueprints, they can see the name of the container and its BP/AR contents. Furthermore, they are able to make copies of the BPOs in that container and output them to a hangar they have access to.

In the following screenshot, I use my penetration alt to demonstrate the above scenario.

In my screenshot, the container named “Blueprints & Ancient Relics” is the container in the zero-access hangar. Now I personally don’t give a ■■■■ if someone makes a copy off a BPO (I only put on there for demonstrative purposes; some people may care about this, some may not), but with regards to the BPCs and Ancient Relics, the matter of principle is I want to keep ownership of these items a secret.

With existing mechanics, work arounds would be inconvenient: I’d have to keep the BPs outside of containers (making organization messing or risking the item count exceeding 1000) or maybe putting locks and passwords on containers (I don’t know if this prevents them from showing up but I do believe it prevents them from being used via industry window, making it inconvenient for me and those I do permit access for use).

Point is - yes, CCP says this is intended behavior, but should it be? Personally, I think it shouldn’t.

My proposed behavior: if a member does not have view access to a hangar, then BP/AR-containing containers in that hangar should not show up in the industry window.

I appreciate your time and consideration o7

[Alhira_Katserna]

This is intended behaviour and it should be. This way a corp can share their BP collection without having to mess with roles. If you want to keep your BPs a secret put them into a shuttle.

[Archer_en_Tilavine]

Theft-proof BP sharing can be achieved by giving members view but not take access to a hanger. I do this and it’s perfect, no complants - different from what I am describing, however. What I am saying is when a hangar has no view access, they should have no access to BP/ARs in that hangar ( in my opinion ) - there is a reason the BPs/ARs are in a no-view hangar instead of a view only hangar (or roles set accordingly).

[Haulie_Berry]

There’s really quite a lot about hangar permissions/BPs/production that could use some QOL treatment.

Misc things that are kind of trash about the whole hangar system with respect to production/bpos:

-I would like to share my BPO collection with my corpmates. I am not the CEO. Thus, there is no way for me to safely share them as there will always be someone with greater privilege if I put them in a corp hangar.

-I do production across multiple characters. This was dramatically easier back when I did all of my production in my own single-player corp, but I’m presently in a “real” corporation with other untrustworthy, decaying meat husks people and the same issue arises. If I use the only shared hangar space available, I’m forced to trust someone with greater privilege. The alternatives (attempting to divvy everything up, or just delivering the whole blob from character to character as I go through my production process) are pretty cumbersome. The most practical alternative is to have my production characters all in their own isolated corp, which works fine from a technical perspective but is also kind of silly.

-Last I checked (and it’s been a while since I’ve bothered, owing to the first two points, so maybe this has changed), it was still only possible to create a “corporation” production job when installing from a corp hangar, which means that a corpmate with sufficient privilege could cancel your job (and delete your input materials).

I’d really love to see the whole system ACL-ified but I doubt we’ll see that anytime soon.

[safira_jomita]

It’s simple just deny the players the factory rent role( think it’s that) so they can’t make industry/research for the corp.

[Archer_en_Tilavine]

@Haulie_Berry

There’s really quite a lot about hangar permissions/BPs/production that could use some QOL treatment.

I kindly request everyone stick to the specific topic and context presented in this thread so as to not veer off course. I do not want >>>this<<< thread to become a “BPO/Manufacturing/Hangar Access QOL” thread. Your concerns are valid and merit discussion, but should be done so on a different thread so as to not trample on the intended discussion. Thank you!!!

[Do_Little]

Trust is a gameplay element in a social, PVP oriented game. If you want to keep secrets you can put stuff in a personal hangar instead of a corporate hangar (in structures - directors can view personal hangars in NPC stations) or you can create an ALT corp that only your ALTS have access to. It’s less convenient but I believe that is and should be an intended part of the risk/reward balance.

[Archer_en_Tilavine]

With regards to secrecy I agree in principle, but this is such an easy “fix” that it takes less effort to implement than it is to talk about. Besides - in some instances, such as when the only Directors are alts of the CEO, the notion of keeping BPCs in character hangars is overkill and inconvenient - the alts should have access to the BPCs without having to trade back and forth between accounts. Also, as is often the case in the real world, sometimes “good enough” secrecy is sufficient whereas “Top Secret” level measures are overkill.