Well then, congratulations!
Without a core, a structure’s cargo hanger reverts back to the old gameplay rules of just using access lists. There will be a ‘cargo delivery’ button showing on the station’s overview but when someone presses Transfer, they will actually be denied because the hanger is offline (like tethering).
This means you can (again) create undeliverable courier contracts and collect their collateral without risk!
Step 1: Set your destination station’s access lists to public. Make it appear welcoming; add Freeport to the name, etc.
Step 2: Create the bait courier contract.
Step 3: When you get notified that the contract was accepted, remove all public access to the station so that the contractor and their alts can’t complete the contract.
When the contract eventually fails, you collect the collateral and they get to keep the cargo,
Tips For Creating The Bait Contract
- Keep the reward inline with the averages (or slightly below average). Don’t look special.
- Keep the collateral requirements inline with averages. Don’t look special.
- Keep your volume up. Put in freight containers and T1 ammo so that its volume is an irregular value; i.e. 23,537.2m3.
- Usually cargo will be picked up in a trade hub and delivered close by. This is too obvious, make the destination station an average distance away. Don’t look special. If you decide to deliver to a trade hub instead then make your pickup station far enough away from the destination to make it more difficult to dock there first and then accept the contract. If you go this route, you will need to increase the reward in order to make them more nervous about losing the contract to someone else.
- Post your bait contract at the beginning of your game session. This will give you a longer window in which to switch station docking rights.
With collaterals easily near 1 billion ISK, pay day is not very far away.
They won’t get mad until after they see the cargo contents but by then its too late. What if they blow up my station? Most won’t but if they do, you already have more than enough ISK to buy another.
In the future, if CCP changed the rules to allow contractors to use the existing cargo delivery mechanism for all outstanding contracts when docking privileges were changed…you will be out of luck. But we know how slow and resistant to change CCP is so don’t worry about it.