Corp Management
Running Your Own Corporation
Starting your own corporation in Eve Online is incredibly easy. It costs you 1 million isk, you can set your tax rate to whatever or even zero. This can remove the 11% npc corp tax. But join another corporation first before starting your own, this game is WAY better with friends.
Once you understand the game a bit better, you can recruit friends and family into trying to join the game, but the reality is that you are going to gather players that already play the game. Some of them might become your best online friend in six years and convince you to move across the country. A few will be the biggest jerks you have ever experienced in a video game. And at least one will steal every single thing you allow them to take.
This is a guide to help minimize those losses.
https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/203217712-Roles-Listing has the Role listings which you MUST read.
You need to be able to have a computer/location to pull ESIs. I recommend either:
Alliance Auth in docker - https://gitlab.com/allianceauth/allianceauth/-/blob/master/docker/README.md
SeAT in docker - https://eveseat.github.io/docs/installation/docker_installation
You can buy a domain name or just use a straight IP, and this can be on your home computer if you want, if it has a stable IP address.
You need all your corp members ESIs to track what they are doing, keep an eye out for spies, and generally make sure they are playing. :)
When the time comes, you can join an alliance. An alliance will allow you to have access to more space, more people to fly with, will hopefully complement your goals. To do so, the easiest way is to go to Corporations / Alliances / Rankings, find them there, right click, apply.
Attracting members
This is actually the easiest and the hardest at the same time.
Define a clear 'goal' of the activities you want. This is VERY easy to do in the in game tab. Do NOT say 'we do everything' or 'all parts of space'. Because as a small corp, you won't.
Area of Operation - Null, WH, low, High sec - Null usually requires an agreement with an alliance at the very least. WH, this is the hardest to start by yourself because you need hole control. Low is super easy to do, just PVP or join Faction Warfare. High sec is the most common and also the most worthless, there is little to do of high value in high sec other than possibly homefronts. Most of the good money is in dangerous space.
Looking for - Pick one or three things. If you click everything, you get garbage matching. I would recommend leaning into the thing you like doing. And just assume everyone will be looking for other things too.
Language - Most important, language specific corps are the easiest to secure from spies. :D
Timezone - You clearly define your timezone by your zkill representation, but check Join a Corporation to see what that translates into ET aka Eve Time, aka GMT/UTC.
Skill point requirement - If you break 6.5k mil skill points, that's omega only, generally. Or ex-omega. 10 mil is usually enough to discourage most 'just buy a char' spies.
Be honest in your write up. Say what you have done, and where you're going. But you would be better with proof on zkill.
Start with a recruitment 'ad' in game. Go to Corporation, Recruitment, Corporation Ads, Create Advert. See above about picking a goal, all those steps.
Create a Welcome mail, and keep it up to date with all the details of what you need to join you.
Take that same information and post it to the eve online forums under recruitment. https://forums.eveonline.com/c/corporations-alliances/recruitment-center/63
Take that same information and post it to the eve online discord under recruitment. https://www.eveonline.com/discord (Note, must be verified, see #rules in discord!)
Talk to people as you fly around the galaxy. If they are looking for a place, drop them an invite if they meet your rules. Interview them if you want to be more selective.
That's it. I will state that Horde does not allow 'poaching', but if people express interest in joining you, you're welcome to talk to them further. Note, do not assume a player is 'safe' because they were previously in another member corp. :( And if you do start to recruit while in horde, let kismeteer know your discord link in the eveo discord.
And make SURE to check ESIs before inviting them.
Kismeteer's Happy Corporation Guidelines
This started as a reminder for all those changing CEO and other roles, a couple bits of advice:
If your CEO is afk, consider asking them to handing over the reigns. An AFK CEO is a negative in eve, you need them engaged with the membership. Eve is a pure dictatorship, with the CEO at the top.
Shares are super important. If someone transfers CEO to you, ask them to give you all the shares too. Do it the day they transfer you the role. If anyone has even a SINGLE share, that mean they can eventually steal the corp from even an attentive directorate. If you have any outstanding shares, just start over. Don't have 2 trillion isk stolen because you couldn't have a hard conversation!
Scrape the main wallet down to the minimum required to run the corp. Transfer it to an alpha char on it's own account that only the CEO has. Can give API access to directors for audit purposes. This just keeps it safe. Note: Most tax sites require isk come from the corp wallet, not an external entity.
Directors can do nearly anything the CEO can do with limited exceptions but is the most important because you can mess with titles. If you give director to anyone bad in your corp, they will bleed the corporation of Everything.
Make sure that all people get titles and not raw roles. Searching for roles with the in game tools is painful. But looking at titles is super easy because it shows up in their show jnfo. If you need help setting up titles, surprise, I have a guide for what I did in goons, scroll down.
Lots of roles are super dangerous, of course. But particularly scared of things like config Starbases and facility manager. Also, if you use audit containers, do not give out remove container, because then they can remove the evidence.
If you give someone any role at all, you delay their purge for 24 hours, so it is not advised for new players. But you can give people a text only bit for their show info, and I often would use it to indicate alts, even if it leaks information to the enemy. This doesn't give the 24 cool down on kicking. If someone isn't logging in or active, strip their roles and they can work back up towards it, they don't get a notification this happens.
Modern eve, you don't actually even need that many roles handed out due to alpha alts being so damn easy. 🙂 Config Starbase let's people put bubbles owned by the corp, but that is really the only we tend to use at all. Gunning structures is done by ACLs now, and you can set POS to be gunned by anyone in your corporation!
Be kind to your own people. I cannot stress this enough. If you have someone being constantly toxic, work on that. It's fine to have different opinions, but they need to be kind about it. One spy or one constantly negative person is a negative in this game. Everyone in eve talks, they complain to others, they remember how you make them feel. It's a video game. Help them be better at it. You need them to help you be better too.
If your corporation is generally unhappy with what they are doing, ask them how you can change it. Start new projects, do more corporation roams, go further afield with remote deployments, get your own faction warfare group going, start in a wormhole, there are TONS of things. But they require active leadership.
A Note on Structures
This is for high sec folk. If you anchor a citadel, congratulations, you're now able to be attacked with a war dec. There is most likely nothing you can do to stop it either. So ask yourself very carefully: do you need a structure or is it just an ego thing. :D Just realize it will die, along with your will to play this stupid game.
https://support.eveonline.com/hc/en-us/articles/115004152745-Wars
Goonwaffe roles
These were the roles we used while I was a director in Goonwaffe. These were mostly designed by xttz, the backbone of logistics in Goonswarm, but I modified and codified a lot while there. Yes, I did a lot of work, and I'm proud of that work.
I'd recommend you come up with your own names for things, of course, and match it to the hanger names. Note that hanger names are generally the start of this journey, along with what the players need. It's often easier to just reimburse people based off ESI pulls.
The reason you do titles instead of roles is audit and ability to strip in a hurry. You can very easily edit a title in a hurry to remove everyone's access while you sort out what happened. Editing even just 10 people by hand is a pain.
Spy detection
There are many types of spies, let's do a quick run down!
AWOX
Named after a guy named awox that loved to put these alts into people's alliances to kill them. These spies are looking for quick kills. They are joining you to sneak up on one of your friendly pilots and put a scram or a bubble and generally wreck their day. Because most people tend to play with friendlies off overview, they don't see them immediately. These do show up in the game logs if you think one of these happened to you, though Bubbles don't show up those logs unless you warp.
Easiest to catch, but often only after they've done the damage. In many alliances, there are often fines or SRP you have to do for those affected by your spies. These are also the cheapest type, honestly. They get their one kill and move on. And if you have friendly fire off in high sec, they often do zero damage there. :D
How to prevent is also easy: Check the ESIs of people joining your corporation. Look at their killboard. See if they're playing like a player or if they're playing by someone focused on the fastest way into your corporation. Look for large transfers of isk, ship trades, suspicious behavior. But it's usually easy to see real players.
Blue Eyes
These are more insideous. They provide intel to the enemy. They tell the enemy where your big ships are. They share where you are doing big projects. They can provide warpins on big things while staying hidden themselves. These are the reason why horde has non-gated (anyone including spies) and esi-gated (people who have their ESIs checked.)
These are also easy to pick up by people looking at ESIs. See what they're in, see what they're doing, see what's in/on their ship, pull details on their movement, and compare to hostile actions. It's also easy to give them misleading information to the enemy.
Theft
These players are aimed at stealing as much isk as they can. They can do this multiple ways, but the most common is just trying to get access to misconfigured corp hangers and wallets. Or convince other players to trust them to move things without collateral etc. These can range from trying to get in and out inside a week or last for years and years. They can be doing the other things at the same time.
Once they have roles, they tend to exploit those roles. With full director, everything your corp holds is gone. With Station Manager, every citadel can be stripped and gone. With Config Starbase, all POS are suspect and/or gone. With Personel manager, they can recruit a bunch of awox or spies over a long period and then take everything all at once. Every wallet they have access to will be empty, and every hanger will be empty.
Again, watch for their play patterns. Strip roles if they are not playing. If they're unhappy, talk to them. Most thefts are actually just people unhappy with the corporation.
Corporation/Alliance Destruction
These are the biggest and baddest. Lots of history. These are almost always due to someone being unhappy and being 'turned' by an agent.
It's funny that most of these players end up quitting the game, though.