Science & Industry

Well it really depends on where your Indy corp is going to live high sec or null.

Low SP high sec miners are looking for

1. A good place to mine
2. A good refine station or someone to refine their ore for them with no loss of materials
3. Perhaps an ore or mineral buying program so they don't have to sell stuff
4. People who can help them with exploration to find grav sites.

I would say builders would be looking for a corp with at least 1 high sec POS so that they can do ME/PE research and hopefully have some local station build slots or manufacturing capabilities at the POS. Of course this is hard to monitor/police for corp theft.

If you talking null sec

1. A good place to mine with relative security
2. A good refine rate
3. A mineral buy back program or logistics in place to haul mins back to HS
4. Upgraded space for grav sites and ABC ores.

For miners, the best way to keep them nterested is to have a large wallet and offer an ore/mineral/ice corporation compensation program.

Most low-sp miners have the skills to mine, but don't have the best skills to haul. Offer to buy your members' ore/minerals/ice at a set price (I offer 90% Jita Buy price) and for them to drop it off at the corporate office (or wherever is convenient for you.) It's also an easy way to establish a "home" system -- if they want the compensation program, they have to mine near "home."

Make sure you have a good sized wallet though. I was often paying out 1-2 billion ISK per week when a lot of my members were mining. This ore will often sit in limbo for a while and may even devalue. So be prepared to be able to continually pay out ore while being able to financially float yourself until sell prices return to decent levels if their value goes down.

Also, you can also incentivize others (aspiring blockade runners/haulers) to move your purchased ore to a trade hub. Before you know it you'll have a whole mining and hauling operation.

For manufacturers, this gets a little trickier. You have to be the harbinger of bad news and tell them that some ships sell for under material cost and that most mass production characters are ahead of the game by having access to properly researched BPOs. The best way you can counter this is by having your own stash of BPO's. They don't really need to be researched that well. I'll often just give away free BPC's to low ME/PE modules to let people get their feet wet and start to understand the process. This way they can figure out if they really want to manufacture as a main source of income or it being a "side hobby."

Most importantly, you need to let them experience the whole manufacturing process. Being, acquiring the materials, the blueprint, and selling the commodity. This can be very tedious and most players don't recognize that manufacturing is a multi-pronged process that doesn't exactly reward as well in terms of time/ISK ratio when compared to other activities. Once you figure out who is actually a little experienced and dedicated to manufacturing, that's when you start a partnership with them with more advanced BPO's with higher ME/PE values. Most manufacturers don't understand that it may take days or weeks for their ship to sell on the market.

For the inventors, you'll need a research POS and some research slots available to them. And, even if you have the research slots, most won't complain if you charge them (like 1 million per day or whatever) as long as you justify it by [truthfully] saying "it helps pay for POS fuel" and that you yourself are losing money by letting them research their dinky Antimatter S blueprint instead of using that slot to research your own Drake blueprint. This isn't you trying to skim profits off of your members (there's easier ways to do that if you want), but rather let them know that they are using CORPORATION resources for possibly their OWN profit. Additionally, most inventors don't realize the amount of time/ISK investment it takes to make a profit from inventing. Once they see the whole process, some will quit. And, once you find someone who is genuinely interested and experienced in inventing, put them in charge of your research wing and let them handle the lab slot stuff.

Generally speaking, I've found that most industrial/mining/invention focused people simply want to be part of something of a bigger process. Let's say you want to make a Raven. Yeah, you could go to the market and easily pay for the minerals and pop one out. But, you'd be amazed to see how eager some new miners will be to go mine to help build that Raven. Because, now they aren't mining just to mine -- they're mining to MAKE something -- a larger goal. New players think it's awesome that they helped make a battleship. And, it doesn't even have to be a battleship. If you want to take it a step further, give them a BPC and let them run with it.

This is just my general attitude and what I did. My corporation has a strong industrial backbone, but we experienced some losses during a series of 4 war decs. We survived, duh, but some members (after those wars) switched from industrial to PvP -- and are amazed at the amount of money they can make from combat anyway (level 4 missions, WH sites, faction warfare.) I say all of this because you should expect the inevitable war dec. Your miners that were used to AFK mining will inevitably die, and some will inevitably leave the corp. That just happens.

Good luck! You (or anyone else) are welcome to open conversation with me if you want to chat more.

Name your corp appropriately, such as "Suicide Gankers of Doom" as opposed to "Harmless Carebears LF Decs."