As a rule, I prefer to do my own Planetary Interaction with pilots in one of our wormhole corporations. There are however times and pilots that this is not practicable. My highsec freighter pilot for example is in an NPC corp. Some corp members are in various lowsec and nullsec groups, and use PI to fund their ship replacements.
The problem with doing PI with an out of corp pilots is storage. Whether you are doing manufacture PI and need a stockpile of low end mats, or simply don’t want to use the wormhole with partially empty ships every single run, you want some space.
Jet canning PI from an Epithal is painful, as you can only jetcan from your standard hold, and not from your PI hold. While you can add additional PI to your initial jetcan, an Epithal holds more than a single jetcan and you will need to wait a few minutes to create a second.
My solution to the Jetcan issue had been swapping ships between 2 Eve pilots, and emptying the contents directly into the POS with the in corp pilot. It works but takes a few clicks and sufficient attention to ensure you are boarding the right ship. Boarding the same ship you just ejected from is a bit embarrassing even when no one else is watching.
Enter the Enormous Freight Container (EFC?). We had seen a few launched in our wormholes on occasions; cheap storage with zero security. We have treated them as target practice, but wondered how they could be launched. After all, they are 250,000m3 unpacked and nothing that fits in our C1 can hold that much to unpack.
They are however only 2,500m3 when packed, and … can simply be launched for self from any t1 industrial while still packed. Facepalm. I have been playing this game for long enough to no longer be considered a green novice, yet I simply did not think to attempt this until recently.
EFC’s can be launched for self while still packed. It takes a couple of minutes between launches because you still have the jetcan delay, but that is trivial. They also can be launched inside of your POS forcefield, so are generally secure from neutrals. Out of corp pilots can be given a POS forcefield password.
Occasionally (but not always), I need to set my ‘safety’ to yellow to access the EFC. Why? Not sure, it feels like a UI bug, but I don’t really care enough to raise a support ticket with such an easy work around.
I still would not leave expensive stuff in an EFC for any duration longer than logging over between pilots on an account. I believe that a little trust goes a long way, and there is no point in leaving temptation for corp members when our POS is set up for ‘secure’ storage.
Containers launched in and around POS do not seem to despawn. We have a couple of smaller containers that have been around one of our POS for a very long time.
Out of interest, I tried bumping an EFC, and could not manage to move it, even with an Orca. They might be bump-able, but I didn’t have much success.
I don’t think I am ever going to be able to re-pack them but they are cheap enough (500k at trade hubs) not to worry about.
The other advantage for the single player (or close knit first life corp) is that the EFC’s don’t require CPU. Theory says that EFC’s will be available even after a POS is re-inforced. I will have to try it out on SISI (the test Eve server) at some stage, as I don’t feel any huge desire to deliberately attract unwanted attention by re-inforcing my own POS on ‘live’.
So, EFC’s are simply easier than jetcanning or ship swapping, with far more volume than any individual industrial can hold. I should have set them up a long time ago.
– Foo
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