Trust

In the real world there are many facets to abusing trust which can result in a myriad of outcomes. Sometimes the only repercussion is being outcast from a group of friends which, if you place little value in said friendship, may make whatever you gained worthwhile. Other times there can be legal ramifications if your position allows you to steal or otherwise break the law. In between these areas is a whole spectrum of variation. To add to the complexity the outcome of an abuse of trust also depends on how forgiving the people you betray are.

Online gaming takes the concept of 'trust' and screws with it somewhat. It takes the real-world ideal and looses off the moral restrictions we are normally subject to. In most areas of EVE there are many mechanisms available to mitigate the dangers of abuses of trust. If you are in a hisec/lowsec/nullsec corp you can keep all  your stuff in your own hanger. Corp directors have the largest burden of trust but even they cannot take from members' hangers leaving only the corp wallet and limited assets as pickable fruit. Here the risk rises from hisec through nullsec as the potential earnings of a corp rise. Still any theft is limited to corp assets and a properly prepared CEO should be able to mitigate the issue should it arise. If an unrecoverable theft is experienced then you were probably doing it wrong in the first place.

For corporations who live solely in wormholes we are presented with a separate set of challenges when it comes to managing risk and trust. While we have the same issues concerning the corp wallet there is also the additional problem that all assets in a POS are technically corp assets. Members are allocated to a POS and a hanger and are restricted by permissions to a particular tab in said hanger. There is always a risk, however, that one member could steal from another member due to screwed up permissions. If that occurs the fault ultimately lies with the CEO. Also there is a total lack of segregation beyond the POS level for ship maintenance arrays. This means a single thief can have a significant impact on the morale of a corp (but only if the corp lets them).

I was chatting with one of the guys in our newest corp to join my alliance. It was the end of a fairly quiet corp fleet night and I'd had some wine. The conversation topic went to the state of POSs and I was restating my standard position of being largely happy with the current state of POSs. I really don't have too many problems with them. It would be nice to have permission granularity right down the the hanger level - i.e. restrict pilot 'John Doe' to tab '1' in CHA 'a' at POS 'Praise Bob' - but I'm not keen on too much more security beyond that. To me living in wormholes is like an extended camping trip. Nothing in the hole is worth anything. To realise its value you have to take it back into K-space. People who forget this important detail are setting themselves up for failure and cannot blame CCP for lack of security features should the worst happen. I see a lot of talk about the 'sanctity of the sandbox' and how EVE is a game based on players creating content from the tools we are provided. If this is truly the case why do we so despise POSs? Why not embrace the 'tool' for what it is and learn to love our "pulsating bubble of trust".