Assembly Hall

I’m sure most people would agree that the corporate roles system is pretty terrible, and in need of a drastic overall. However, I’m also sure that most of us realise a complete overall is a significant undertaking, and isn’t going to happen anytime soon.

However, would it not be possible to look at two or three of the most serious issues separately? Would solving them not make the wait for a complete overall of the roles and title system much more palatable?

For myself and many others, the most serious by far is cancelling corporate Science and Industry jobs. It’s currently not possible to give a player access to start corporate Science and Industry jobs without also giving them the ability to cancel any and all existing jobs. This really makes absolutely no sense what so ever. I know a lot of people take the view that this should be a trust issue, and that corporations should be more careful with recruitment and who they hand out roles to. I don’t accept this argument. For even a medium sized corporation with industrial interests, it’s very easy to get a Science and Industry jobs list billions, if not tens of billions of ISK. Where is the risk vs. reward argument for giving a player access to that, just because they want to copy a Kestrel BPO?

If people do stupid things in Eve, they should (and quite often are punished). However, you also need to give people the tools and ability to be able to do things sensibly, and avoid problems. Right now, the only option for such players and corporations with industrial interests is to just not hand out roles, not recruit industrial minded players, or make use of alts and alt corps to manage large industrial projects. Many of these are very much counter to the whole MMO experience.

So, I have a simple proposal. Change the role system so that only directors have the ability to cancel other player’s corporate Science and Industry jobs. This should be a relatively simple solution to implement, and would solve the issue until a more complete overhaul of the roles system comes into place.

Because "someone trusted" already has their copy slots filled with copying titan BPOs?

Maybe trusted players are busy with their own personal jobs, or corp jobs.
Maybe newer players have S&I slots free that they want to use.
Maybe newer players want to feel like they are helping and contributing to the corporation.
Maybe because it adds a lot of extra work and hassle for everyone involved – for example, max single run copies for invention on many BPO’s is in days, not weeks.
More so than anything else, why should they have to?



Not sure you quite get the problem. It really doesn’t have anything to do with hangers. If someone can start a corp S&I job, regardless of the type of job, where the job is running or where the job was started from, then they can cancel any and all other corporate S&I jobs.

Please yes. This would be a step in the right direction. Of course there would need to be many, many more steps on that path.

Under that same logic, do you not think BoB might possibly have had problems earlier if they had allowed director level access across the board to all of their corporate members?

Ultimately, directorship in all but the smallest of corporations should be a very trusted and privileged position. If someone makes it to that level in a corporation and one day decides to cause some trouble, then so be it. The same goes for someone works their way up the corporate ladder with these specific intentions. Ultimately, you shouldn’t have the same level of trust with a standard corp member as you would with a director, or even vice versa.

In all of this, I am not for a minute suggesting that we try and eliminate the possibilities for theft, scamming, espionage, sabotage and so on. Myself and many others just want simple tools to counter this side of the game, in this particular case by allowing corporate members access to do relatively simple stuff, without wildly unnecessary exposure to the corporations assets and interests.

Twice in the last few weeks I have had conversations with pilots regarding recruitment, that touched on the industrial aspects of the game. The first prospective recruit was interested in getting involved with the corporations’ industrial efforts, as they had significant and underused Science and Industry skills. The second prospective recruit was interested in using some of our BPOs and research facilities. I had to tell both pilots that it would probably be weeks, if not months before we would grant them the roles to be able to do this. The pilots both understood the absurdness of the situation, with one eventually giving up on the idea of assisting with industry projects and joining a dedicated PvP corp, and the other forming a corp with his industrial alt, so that he could anchor a POS and just use his own research facilities.

I would consider both of these situations to be as absurd as each other, and striking examples of how simple changes like this need to be implemented now, rather than years down the road with a more comprehensive overhaul of the roles system.

We already have a lot of this stuff in place. Short probationary periods as part of in game channels before we even accept new members into the corp. Probationary periods before we give out any basic hanger or roll access. Further probationary periods before we allow members to use our wormhole facilities – and so on.

I don’t think this is as simple as whether you trust someone or not. I am sure you trust most of not all of your standard membership – but do you trust them enough to give them director level access? It’s levels of trust, and the risk of handing out roles to someone verses the rewards and benefits of a particular member getting the rewards. Right now, the risks (exposing the whole of the corporations S&I jobs) verses the rewards for a member being able to copy a Kestrel BPO do not stack up – especially so for larger corporations where you could be looking at access for 10’s of players to such roles.

If you made this change, you are still going to have to hand out hanger and lab access and you are still going to have to setup wallet access. In turn, the process is still going to involve levels of trust and there will still be oppertunities for pilots to break this trust - particularly with corporations who have not locked down BPO's, secured wallets and hangers and so forth.

In all of this, we should also consider this from the prospective of your members:

member > Hey, you guys have frigate BPO’s? Great! Can I run off a few copies to try out invention?

director > No, come back in 3 months time when we have got to know you better and can trust you not to cancel 10 billion ISK worth of industry jobs

^^ this +1