Over the past months I've read a few threads about people who have been robbed and lost everything when they have a shop on a home base. Is there a bug that makes these inherently unsafe, or did they have them set up wrong?
Is it safe to place a shop on a home base?
What is best practice for setting it up to minimise risks?
In reply to your question, yes it is safe to place a shop on a homebase. It is the safest solution for having a player shop as by placing it on a physically indestructible entity, you are ensuring its safety
from physical harm. This is physical breach.
Now you would have probably read about different cases which vary from case to case, however in general it is through fault of the shop owner, rather than through glitching that people have been robbed. Usually they have set permission to all faction which means a new member can steal everything from shop and leave.
This is an internal security breach
Alternatively, you could have gone half way and set very tight security on the shop itself. However don't forget the shop module is a block itself. If you allow someone to access the station on which the shop is located, they can drain all items from the shop into a storage block. This is why it is always a bad idea to 'set up shop' on the base of another player/another faction, as it can lead to
inner station storage breach.
When you set up a shop, there are a few features which must set if you want it to be safe:
- Owner of shop: Owners should only be members of your own faction, of officer rank or above only, otherwise you are prone to internal security breach.
- Who can access the shop: Setting this option to faction only is the safest you can go if you want to be 'democratic' with your faction as this will allow your faction to all access the shop. Ideally though, prevent access altogether, place shop within trading system and manage every transaction this way. This prevents internal security breach.
- Set permission to edit homebase/station on where shop is to only allow highest ranked members to edit station. This prevents inner station storage breach.
- Using trading system to buy and sell is much easier to do then opening shop up to public. Yes trading system can be buggy but you can manage that as well. Simply keep your shop unavailable to everyone and keep your items apart from your shop in secure container (ideally docked to base with personal permission set on the storage). When you want to import, connect your shop to trading system and order a delivery. For exports, it is better to agree large deals with consumer economies or sell en masse via trading system, advertising in chat that you are doing so. Always stay aware of your shop if it is open to the public.
This should have you set up pretty well. There are many other secure features you can include such as a docked 'room' around the shop so that nobody but you can walk up to it and cause damage that way, if you decide to allow everyone access to station. If you do decide to allow everyone access to station but want to avoid shop risk, keep 1 build block only and supervise members you don't trust 100%. If you have any other questions, or this answer doesn't satisfy your query, let me know.
