lynkfox
commented
2 months ago i think what may be best here is to fully develop the multiple acl list aspect. We have a second ACL list that is combat comms, that one can apply to without being in IVY/IVY-A
that plus our signals only affect the main WHC acl, this one is not affected at all.
Still perkolating over this
Currently, mains and alts are expected to be a member of either IVY or IVY-A as a precondition for ACL access. For alts that are not yet a part of either and are looking to join an alt corp, we have Combat Comms. The issue is that there's a bit of a circular dependence currently. If an alt is not yet in Combat Comms, then they are likely in an NPC corp awaiting access, which prohibits a WHC alt application. If an alt is already in Combat Comms and has not yet applied, then we have permissions leakage to other tools and no easy way to trigger a notification of when a character should no longer be in Combat Comms. In addition, the latter case removes Alliance Auth as the singular access authority (since Combat Comms would be managed separately).
In order to solve this, I'd like to propose adding a "provisional" membership state. Alts in NPC corps could apply to WHC as an alt with the intent to join Combat Comms. A WHC CC would accept the application, and the alt would be transferred to the provisional state, where they would have no special access. (Eventually a notification would be sent to CCs to inform them the character needs to be added to Combat Comms, but for now, this would be done manually.) When the alt joins Combat Comms, an ESI trigger would cause whctools to move the character from its provisional state to an accepted state (and thus gain ACL access and get tracked as a normal alt).
There's some edge cases that would need to be handled. If a character leaves the NPC Corp to join a different (not Combat Comms) corp, they would need to be moved from provisional to rejected. If a main is kicked from WHC while a character is in the provisional state, then it needs to also be removed from provisional and placed in the rejected state. Characters voluntarily withdrawing an application would also need to get removed from provisional. Cooldowns for all of these should probably match their normal alt counterparts.
Ultimately, we'd also eventually like the same type of features for continuous tracking of corp status against the ACL, so members in Combat Comms who were supposed to be removed can be detected, but (like the in-game vs auth ACL matching feature) this can wait.
This does not technically block the launch if we decide to roll out applications with just mains for the first N weeks. But as soon as alts are opened up, there's going to need to be a mechanism for players without their own alt corporations to join WHC, and Combat Comms should be that path.