Shared Storage: the Simplest Way to Share Items in EVE Frontier

It has been bugging me for a while: there is no simple way to share items in EVE Frontier. Field storage used to be great for it, and that is blocked now. If two friends starting out want to pool their ore and modules through a storage unit, the answer has been "learn somebody's market".

What is already out there

To be clear, there are shared storage tools in the ecosystem, and some are impressive. But they arrive as packages: a market with prices and order books, icon grids for everything in the unit, drag-and-drop between differently named storages, and membership areas that depend on your authentication level. There are hangars. There are warehouses. At one point while building this, the AI I work with started calling parts of the interface "drawers", and I had to tell it to stop.

All of that is great when you need it. A trade hub needs prices. A big tribe needs permissions. But for a group of two people who just want to do the simplest of simple things, share items via a storage unit, there was nothing I could find that did only that.

The whole setup: the Shared Storage panel on EF-Map next to its help section, one press of Enable sharing, one wallet approval, done.

The design goal: look like the game

So the brief I set was strict. The panel on the unit had to look as close as possible to the game's own storage screen: item name, amount, ID, and how full the unit is. A new player who can read the normal storage window should already know how to read this one. No new interface to learn, no new vocabulary.

Interacting had to be one click. The game's default panel is a read-only list, so the only real change is that rows respond: click one, choose an amount, take it or share your own. The list refreshes itself every few seconds, so when your friend takes something you see it happen.

Owners have it even easier. Everything in the unit is the shared pool, so you stock it and reclaim it by dragging items in and out in game, exactly as you always have. Zero extra steps.

A storage unit open in EVE Frontier showing the game's default behavior panel: a plain list of item names, amounts and IDs — Before: a storage unit's default panel in game. The game's own read-only list.

The same storage unit in EVE Frontier with Shared Storage enabled: an almost identical list of names, amounts and IDs, now interactive — After: the same unit with Shared Storage running. That the two screenshots are hard to tell apart is the whole point.

The Shared Storage unit panel: a monochrome list of item names, amounts and IDs with a row expanded showing an amount picker and a Take button, plus a capacity bar — The unit panel, here in a desktop browser via the live demo: name, amount, ID, fill bar. Click a row, pick an amount, take it.

Deliberately open

Shared Storage has no gates. No access lists, no tribe-only toggle, no tiers. Anyone at the unit can take items and add their own, whether they are in your tribe or not.

That is a choice, not an oversight. Most of the players this is built for are all in the same default tribe anyway, so a "tribe only" switch would cover thousands of strangers while pretending to be a lock. And an open unit changes the incentives around your structure in a pleasant way: nobody needs to destroy your storage to get your stuff. They can just take it, and you still have your storage. Build in safe spots, share with the people who fly there, and keep the valuable things elsewhere.

Setting it up

Two ways, both quick:

1. On EF-Map: open Tools Library, then Shared Storage, sign in, press Enable sharing on your unit. One approval and it is live.

2. Fully in game: copy the unit's link from the EF-Map panel, paste it into Edit Assembly on the unit, open the unit and press Enable shared access.

The only cost is a tiny network fee paid in free testnet SUI. The help panel shows your address to copy and links the faucet; it takes about a minute, and visitors need the same one-time top-up. I deliberately skipped the sponsored-transaction machinery we use elsewhere: one more moving part was not worth it for what this is.

Built with a human in the loop

A process note, because it is becoming a theme in how EF-Map gets built. The AI got this roughly 90 percent of the way there very quickly: the on-chain plumbing, the interface, the EF-Map panel. The last 10 percent is the part that actually decides whether players can use it, and that only fell out of hands-on testing. Pressing Enable and having the panel not show that sharing was enabled until a manual refresh. A button labelled "Fix link" that made perfect sense to the machine and none to me. Copy that read like a blockchain manual for a feature whose entire pitch is that you never think about blockchain.

Each of those is small. Together they are the difference between a demo and a tool. You can go fast with an AI in the loop, but somebody still has to sit down, click the buttons, and be honestly confused.

Try it

Shared Storage is live now, free, and marked experimental while feedback comes in.

Open it: EF-Map, then Tools Library, then Shared Storage
Landing page: ef-map.com/shared-storage
Poke a live demo of the unit panel (fake items, no sign-in): ef-map.com/storage/?demo=1

If it confuses you anywhere, that is a bug in my book. Tell me in the EF-Map Discord.

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