Hello spacefriends! With the new update on SISI today you will see a long anticipated feature for Upwell Structures that we are working on getting to you this September.
Upwell Cargo Deposit allows players flying outside any Upwell Structure to place items into their own personal hangar in the structure without docking.
The initial seed of this concept was planted a few years back when we were working on adding contracts to Upwell Structures and enlisted the aid of a focus group to help us improve the feature. One of the suggestions put forward by the courier contract experts was to allow items to be placed into the structures even if you can’t dock – so that third party courier services could ensure delivery even if their hauler characters don’t have the ability to dock in every station. We also think that this ability will be very useful for pilots flying ships that are too large to dock in a particular structure, such as Rorqual pilots mining outside an Athanor-class refinery.
The cargo deposit system is quite easy to use. You can open up the cargo deposit window from any ship that is in space within 10km of an Upwell Structure using the right click menu, radial menu, or selected item window. You can then drag items from your cargo (or other specialized ship bays such as the ore bay) into the cargo deposit window and hit the “Transfer” button to place them into the structure.
You do not need to have access to dock or tether on a structure in order to use Upwell Cargo Deposit. Beware that if you place items into a structure that you do not have permission to dock in, you may need to use asset safety to retrieve them.
You will not be able to use the cargo deposit system while you have an active weapons timer or criminal timer, or while cloaked.
The cargo deposit range on Upwell Structures is 10km, just like tethering (although remember that you can use cargo deposit even if you do not have permissions to tether)
Upwell Cargo Deposit may only be used to place items into a structure, not to take items out of your item hangar while undocked.
This service will automatically be available on all Upwell Structures in all areas of space.
You can give this feature a try on SISI starting right now, and we are very interested to hear what you think.
Thanks!
Known issues:
On this SISI build the restrictions that prevent depositing cargo with an active weapons or criminal timer are not yet working.
Excellent news. I’m very happy to see this thing we talked about on the Contracts round table becoming a reality.
But, of course, we’ve been given an inch, so… could any courier contract plastic wrap that is delivered into a structure via this mechanism automagically complete the courier contract in question?
While on the topic of courier contracts, could we make it possible to deliver couriers from your deliveries hangar? As of now its like a void, in that you have can see items in your assets but can not do anything with them. The only way to get items out of it is to fly there.
Do you think going back to regular npc station contracts will be fine?
Do you think the citadel one was too easy?
I am not saying anything regarding the scam at hand. I am not a scammer. What I would like to know is if it has a negative impact on those who do courier scams and if you plan on introducing a new option now that you have taken one away.
The point, or TL;DR:
You guys have removed an “option” (something someone can do). As it is a general rule that having more options is always better than having less options, you should be making sure that it is really okay to remove one, because, over time, one tends to forget how many options he has already removed in the past without re-introducing new ones.
I like that courier contracts get a fix and structures can be used reliably.
I don’t like that this new feature only works in one direction, which now requires lore to explain why we cannot have bidirectional cargo access. It’ll be some political nonsense again, or possibly the cargo tractor beam, which can only pull but not push sort of story …
I also don’t like that none of the other issues got solved, which occur when a station owner can close access at any moment without a notice, leaving market purchases or industry jobs hanging. I still wish it had a grace period for access changes including a notification so others can finish their business or clean up before being shut out.
I disagree with this as I think it is giving too much away, why should enemies be able to store stuff in a citadel you own and take it out when they feel like it.
I agree with this with a couple of reservations, because in one sense having to have your own indy production structure can produce content, however…
But what has been detailed is very good news indeed, as long as courier contracts in wraps and double wraps can be completed via this method.
I do courier contracts frequently, and I gotta admit I’m a little disappointed with this change. The Access List scam was a scam, sure, but it added a layer of prep work and necessitated an attention to detail that previously didn’t exist in doing courier contracts.
For example, several hauler communities have their own blacklists/whitelists for citadels, which added a layer of player interaction, both in getting put on the blacklist, but also building the trust of the community to be whitelisted. CCP hasn’t traditionally interfered with that except in extreme circumstances. This didn’t feel like one of those extremes.
While functionally I see nothing wrong with the change, I think it’s solving a problem that didn’t need fixing. I’m concerned about the precedent it sets as well for future Citadel related changes, which could further shape player interaction rather than letting the gameplay emerge organically.
@CCP_Fozzie In addition to the existing restrictions, please make it so you can’t store stuff if you’re scrammed. That will prevent people from dumping their valuable cargo (including potentially shiny refits) into structures when you’re killing them.
Thank you but in this case I am very content not having to continue this utterly annoying and tedious work of maintaining such a list, which means a lot more necessary effort from haulers to prevent falling for scams, compared to the effort scammers have to put up to impersonate, rename and simply put up to facilitate their lazy-mode income.
Nothing emerged organically here. The feature is as old as sov null sec outposts and it prevented hauling to sov null sec ever since. High sec citadels merely exasperated and highlighted the problem of this feature.
