EVE New Citizens Q&A

So I've noticed a trend lately. New corporations are springing up and they all seem to have the same thing in common. A lack of understanding how player organizations work in EvE. So this guide was written to help grow and expand your new corporation. Better times will be had by all. So to start, you'll need......

1) Purpose.
So you've decided to make a corp. Great, but why? Why did you make a corp? So many new corps lack the most vital aspect of running a corporation and that's Purpose. If you made your corp with the intention of just being a one man corp to avoid taxes or whatever, then this guide doesn't apply to you.

But if you intent to recruit others, then your corp needs to have a purpose and direction. It's common for newbie CEOs to make a corp with the sole purpose of being "A chill and relaxed place for people to hang out in". That may work in other MMOs, but EvE is like no other MMO. This kind of corporation ALWAYS fails.

As a CEO, the burden rests on you to create a corp that's both appealing to others and has specific goals to achieve (which will be discussed later). There's a lot of pressure riding on your shoulders as CEO. Running a corporation is not a casual thing. It takes long hours, consistent management, commitment and years to develop into the awesome corporations you hear about in the news. It's not something that happens spontaneously. Growth is always slow and tedious in the beginning. It's unavoidable, but if you're serious about it and committed, you'll succeed.

As a CEO, you wear multiple hats. Dictator, friend, mentor, guide, figurehead, diplomat, corp representative, counselor, whipping boy, judge/jury/executioner, legislator, and a myriad of other roles. If you're not willing to commit the time and effort it takes to make a great corp, then you have no business being a CEO. It doesn't get any simpler than that.

2) Location.
Location location location. It makes a world of difference. If your corp runs missions, it would make sense to live near mission hubs. If your corp mines, you should live near the best asteroids you can find. Makes sense.

Whichever system you decide to reside in, it would be to your advantage to place your headquarters somewhere else. Preferably a region or two away. If someone wardecs your corp, I can guarantee the first thing they're going to do is look at your corporation details and travel out to your listed headquarters. It's free information for your enemies and it's easily avoidable.

Avoiding certain areas is just as important as well. Highsec is not safe, just safer than other areas of space. Highsec still comes with dangers from other players but it can be avoided if effort and planning is made. Trade hubs are always densely populated which means a lot of players (both good and bad) come through there. If you live near the trade hubs, there's a good chance a few griefers will wander into your home. This is especially problematic for mining corps.

Best advice is to stay away from living near trade hubs and stay away from common trade routes. You're trading the inconvenience of extra jumps for safety and solitude. A good trade off in my opinion. If you live in highsec, I recommend you look into highsec islands. They are pockets of highsec which are only accessible by going through lowsec. The chances of suicide gankers and griefers finding you out there are quite low.

3) What's In A Name?
So, you have a genuine purpose for making a corp and you've scouted out a good location (you did scout, right?). Now your new corp needs a name. Names are important as it defines you as a collective. For the love of God, please run a spell checker before you make your corp name final. There are HUNDREDS of CEOs who've made this mistake and it just looks awful. Getting your corp name right is the one time where proper grammar and spelling really matters. Don't f**k this up or half a** it.

Avoid generic names that are recycled so many times. For example: Knights of the Round Table, Knights who say Ni, Knight Templar, or any variation thereof are out. Don't use crappy names like this. Put some real thought into your corp name. If you're going to other MMO forums for corp names, you obviously don't care and shouldn't be a CEO. That leads into the next point.

DON'T COPY AND/OR RIP OFF OTHER PEOPLES GUILD/CORP NAMES! You're guaranteed to attract the ire of anyone who sees it. Being a cheap knock off does nothing except discredit you and your corporation. A corp or alliance name is their calling card. It's how they're known throughout EvE and beyond into other games. If you're leeching off them by copying their name, then you've proven that your corp is worthless. Don't do that.

If your corp name is in a different language (Latin for example) do your homework and be sure you actually know what it means. It's so common for new corporations to string along cool sounding Latin or other language words together without knowing what they mean. I have personally witnessed a guild in another MMO who's name literally translated to Donkey Purple Knife.

Silly or ridiculous corp names are a hit or miss. It's hard to pin down why some fail and others succeed. It's a gamble with goofy names.

8) Member Retention, Incentives And Benefits.
This is a hard topic to cover. Retention of members is complicated due to many different reasons. Infighting drama, lack of member activity, excessive CEO absence, CEO ******* behavior, using members as meat shields, little to no rewards, or other reasons. One of the biggest reasons highsec corps struggle to recruit and retain members is because most highsec activities can be done solo. If your corp is a mission running or mining corp, why would anyone join you if they can do exactly the same thing solo and tax free? That's not a rhetorical question and one that you need to put some consideration into.

If your corp has taxes, there needs to be a good reason for that tax money to go to other than your personal wallet. Players can easily create their own one man corp to avoid paying taxes when they do their thing. If you want people to join your corp, they will be forced to pay corp taxes. You'll have to use that tax to cover corp expenditures and help with members needs. This is where incentives and benefits come in.

Things like ship replacement programs are a great use for tax money if ship losses are kept low (proper FC skills play in well). Having a well thought out and written ship replacement program really does help, especially for newbies. I typically have a ship replacement program that covers any tech 1 frigate or destroyer. Any frig or destroyer lost, regardless of the circumstances, is guaranteed to be compensated by the corp wallet. That ensures that corp members who fly frigs and destroyers in PvP engagements are far more likely to participate when it doesn't affect their wallet. Corp defense is easier to muster when members know they're not risking their own assets. That's just an example though and yours may differ entirely if you have one at all.

Whatever you choose to do, make it clear that you're not simply pocketing the tax money.

Membership efforts towards corp goals should not go ignored nor unrewarded. If your mining corp has a major mining operation, you're going to have to pay everyone who was involved in some way. Nobody likes putting in hours and hours of effort to someone elses benefit unless they're getting *something* out of it as well. That's not to say your corp gives handouts. What I am saying is that a corporation is a Give & Take relationship. Not a Give & Give or a Take & Take relationship.

9) Empty Promises.
There seems to be an uprise in corporations making promises to their members that they can't keep. Simply put, don't promise your members anything you can't provide.

If you don't have the money available to pay for a ship replacement program, then don't promise a SRP. If you don't have orca support for your mining fleets, then don't promise orca support. Nothing makes members more disgruntled than being tricked into joining a corp, only to find everything that was advertised was a lie.


10) Weeding Out The Unsavories.
Sometimes you need to be brutally honest and tell people that you don't want them in your corp. There's no shame in it. EvE is a brutal game and full of unsavory people. Sometimes they're spies, griefers, drama queens, moochers, thieves or worse. When recruiting, ALWAYS ask for their full API key. An API key is not the same thing as an accounts username and password. It doesn't grant you power over their account. All it does is provide you with details on their character and other characters on the account. Nothing more.

There is absolutely no valid reason why anyone would refuse to give a full API key other than hiding something. And if someone is deliberately trying to hide something from you, then there's trouble brewing and you're better off refusing their membership alltogether.

Don't be afraid to ask questions. Why is your security status in the negatives? Why did you leave your last corporation? Why does your employment history have so many corp listings? Why are you in each of those corps for only a day or two? May I contact your previous CEO? What do you bring to our corporation? What do you want the corp to do for you? You get the idea.

Don't be afraid of turning away potential members just based on their time zone. If your corp is primarily a US east coast time zone corp and a eastern European wants to join, it's really going to suck for him. When he logs on is when everyone else is logging off for the night. He may be a cool and trustworthy person, but you're doing him a great disservice by recruiting him into a corp with a dramatically different time zone. Believe me, you'll be doing him a favor by turning him away from your corp.

Sometimes you'll recruit someone who later turns into a drama queen or is always spreading dissent within the corp. There's nothing wrong with disagreeing with the CEOs decision, but if it deteriorates into rumor spreading, drama and infighting then it needs to be dealt with swiftly and decisively. Democratic corps typically don't function well in EvE which is why the vast majority of them are ruled by CEO dictators, be them benevolent or malevolent.

Recruiting newbies is a decision you need to make early on. If you have the patience to teach them the ropes, then good on you but they can sometimes be a hindrance. If your corp is made up of older knowledgeable players and you've got one rookie, he may have an easier time learning the game. On the flip side if your corp is made up of a lot of rookies, you'll find your corp making a LOT of silly mistakes. It's to your discretion whether or not to have SP limits.

As a final note, it's so very important not to recruit anyone and everyone that wants to join. I can guarantee you'll pick up quite a few bad apples or worse.

Misconception: Lowsec is full of pirate players and I can never get in due to every gate being camped.
Not true at all. The vast majority of low and nullsec is completely empty. Many systems don't see a player enter for days or even weeks. It's the low or nullsec systems that border highsec is where the player pirates like to congregate. Get in a few jumps deep and system population drops off dramatically.

Misunderstanding: Why do so many corporations and alliances require some form of voice coms to join?
Voice coms are such an important aspect of EvEs gameplay that it's often mandatory. If you have a PvP fleet who's members are on voice coms fighting a PvP fleet who's members don't have coms, I guarantee the voice coms fleet will win every time. Some corps and alliances will let you get away with not having a mic and not talking on voice coms, but being able to hear others on coms is an absolute must. Any corporation worth a damn will have voice coms.

Misunderstanding: What is a Ship Replacement Program (SRP)?
Some corporations and alliances will compensate you for your ship losses under a Ship Replacement Program (or SRP for short). They typically have a document that details what the SRP covers and doesn't cover and how much isk compensation you will receive. SRP's are a great way to incentivize players into participating in PvP fleets with low chances of success.

Myth: Concord will step in if one of your corpmates shoot you.
Absolutely false. Corpmates are free to shoot and pod each other for any reason in any place. This becomes a problem for both new recruits and CEOs recruiting. You don't want to field your expensive ship just yet until a trust builds up. Otherwise that new recruit may come down and smash your expensive ships or the corp members may do the same to you.

Awesome guide, should be copied to the official wiki imo.

Very nice guide, not a CEO for sure, and only been in one player owned corp, but still very interesting to read, and I'm sure it's very helpful for both current and budding CEO's.

Also, re: weeding unsavories, this is completely true: http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20120625

(okay not really, but the mentality is there)

Wanted to add another point.

12) Don't Pretend To Be Something You're Not.
This problem is so very common ingame in the recruitment channel and the recruitment forums. Corporations claiming to be a type of corp when they're really not. It's such a massive problem that everyone is calling each other out on the lies. It's getting to ridiculous proportions. For example:

If your corp doesn't do wormholes, then don't say you're a wormhole corp!
If your corp doesn't do incursions, then don't say you're an incursion corp!
If your corp doesn't live in nullsec or lowsec, don't say your corp lives in nullsec or lowsec!

Holy freakin Jebus! Why would you ever claim your corp to be something its not?
To attract new recruits maybe? That's **** poor logic because they're just going to leave disgruntled after discovering the truth. You're left with no members and a bad reputation. If your corp has plans on being a wormhole corp in the future, then great. But until your corp actually starts doing them, you can't call your corp a wormhole corp.

If you and Fred once found a wormhole on probe scan, that doesn't qualify your corp as a wormhole corp. This is actually a real example of what I've encountered. My alt was looking for a wormhole corp. This small corp said they do them all the time. After two weeks with them I've discovered they don't actually live in a wormhole. They don't actively do wormholes nor have they even been in one for over a year. But because they once found a wormhole on probe scan, they felt justified in calling themselves wormhole explorers.

An isolated incident of stupid? Hardly. This is so very common. Every time I see a new corp advertising themselves to be a wormhole or incursion corp, I ask when was the last time they actually did that activity. The answer is usually never or once a long time ago.

Don't be that corp. Be better than this. If your corp does Activity X, then feel free to advertise it. If you don't do Activity X, then don't pretend to be. It will only end badly for your corp.

If you really believe in your corp, it should do well. New corps have a hard time in the beginning. Sometimes it takes them months to really take off.

I hope you do well.

I would add a simple tip in terms of asking recruits to do one thing.

Get them to join estel arador and get jump clones. This will massivley boost willingness of players to try the riskier (and cooler) stuff in the game.

It takes a couple of hours and is well worth it

For corporate hanger access, that's typically a no. The vast majority of corps don't give their members corp hanger access unless they have a good reason and need for it. Corp theft happens all the time when naive CEOs grant corp hanger access to members AND put valuable stuff in said hangers.

On the flipside to that, it can serve as corp theft bait. Give members access to the lowest level hanger access and throw in about 5 to 10 million isk worth of assets inside. I've seen this act as very effective bait for would-be corp thieves who get impatient and take this.

But back to the main point. corp hangers (aside from POS corp hangers) really aren't used all that much and if they are, it's between high ranking and trustworthy members of the corp. Everything else is done through trades and contracts.