EVE General Discussion

I've been running a one-man corp for a few weeks but am considering letting others in and growing my operation. Over the last few days, I've been setting up my roles and titles and while I think I have a structure that should suit me, I'm having a difficult time figuring out the best way to protect my blueprints. I want anybody with the appropriate title/role to be able to use them but only I should be able to remove them from the corp hangar. That in itself isn't difficult. The catch is, I want the blueprints to be organized by type and that's adding an extra layer of complexity that I can't figure out.

My organization requirement implies containers and I don't see another way around this. However, in order to be able to see inside these containers, it seems that a player needs the Take permission on the hangar. Luckily, there's a separate permission that blocks them from being able to remove the containers themselves but that doesn't prevent them from removing the blueprints from within the container.

I tried setting up the Station Containers to automatically lock the contents but unfortunately, players can still just unlock the items and then move them out. While I can set a password on the container and require it for unlocking items, having a password prevents the Industry window from being able to use a blueprint from within the container.

I haven't tried using the corporation locking mechanisms for the blueprints, mostly because I've read that it requires a vote to unlock them and I don't want to have to do that for every blueprint I own.

So my question is, is there an easy way that I'm missing that will allow me to have the blueprints in containers that corp members can then use to manufacture without them being able to remove the blueprints? If not, do I have any alternatives besides corp-locking or just putting all the blueprints in the hangar directly and not giving anyone Take access to it?

The best you can do is limit who you allow to use the blueprints. Unfortunately, part of "use" means, having in hand (digitally speaking). You have to trust your manufacturer personnel. Yes. In a sense that's problematic. Also, it's not so difficult for most people. One thing that might help is running copies of original blueprints, and allowing access only to limited run copies. Those aren't that tempting to steal.

I somehow sense the gist of this is "how can I run a corp without trusting anyone?" You can. Keep it a one-man corp. If you're going to CEO, you're going to have to delegate eventually. And, to do that, you're gonna need people you trust.
'T is the way of things.

Actually, just forget containers and forget sorting the blueprints.

You said yourself that you can lock the blueprints so they can be used but not taken, but when you tried to sort them all manner of extra complexity was added to the security setup. So keep it simple; unsorted blueprints isn't that big of an issue, set up your security to lock them up, and your members will just have to scroll through the list of them or use the search filters.

As far as shares and votes, take all the shares and move them to your CEO's personal wallet, and if you want votes do informal votes via in-game mail.

My other recommendation is to make an alt the CEO, so that your main can leave the corp. if necessary. You can make your main character a Director if you want to handle the day-to-day issues in the corp without logging in the CEO.

Keep them in your own inventory.

I'm certainly glad we got this sorted out!
*orders an asp*

I don't understand why you would want to bother with people that are going to betray and back stab you anyways.

You can try

This was the first thing I tried but when my alt tried to get to a blueprint to use it, an error popped up saying they can't open the container unless they have the Take permission. And of course, giving them the Take permission means they can remove items from the container, which I don't want.

make copies and share them out.