Corporate Benefits

The most common question I was asked when recruiting a new player to my corp (after “what is a corp?”) was “what are the benefits of being in a corp?”

One would think the answer would be obvious - 'teamwork,' 'division of labor,' 'specialization.'  But how do those concepts apply to EVE?

Well, here are a few ways player corporations benefit can their members:

1) Skill Point Specialization <<< NEARLY ALL OTHER CORP ADVANTAGES FOLLOW THIS PRINCIPLE

In real life, people are born with natural talents and abilities wildly different from each other.  In EVE, every toon starts life with the same attributes and very similar skills.

Also, training time is an objective resource in EVE, meaning that unlike real life where two people can study the same skill set for a year and achieve wildly different levels of knowledge, in EVE players are getting the exact same skill points for every second their toon trains a skill.

However, it takes a long time for skills to train, and being able to produce the more expensive items in the game takes a lot of training very specific skills. 

It saves players training time if they synch their skill ques to where, rather than creating one toon with all the skills, they could be a multitude of toons with the same skills and only a fraction of the training time.

  

When you form an indy corp, you should not only come up with a business plan, but a training plan for the people you recruit as well.  You can have your mining guys specialize in nothing but getting to a hulk.  Have your refining guys specialize in refining the ores you commonly mine.  Have your manufacturing guys specialize in the type of item you're going to make, etc.

When they reach those goals, you can then look at specializing into a different product using the same technique.

PvP and PvE corps have a little more leeway in this because there are lots of ways to achieve the same results in combat, whereas industry corps have to train specific skills to make a specific product.  However, letting members train whatever they want will still not be as effective as assigning them certain combat roles to work toward.

The difficulty in achieving this, however is that players many players want the freedom to train their character how they like, so it takes some convincing to get them to train the skills your corp needs.

Prove to them how much ISK they will make specializing with you rather than generalizing on their own, and they just might be convinced.

2) Division of Labor & Pooling Resources

In real life, we split labor for many reasons, but almost all of them have the same goal: having more resources for everyone involved.  Two people can work together to chop down a tree and have energy left over to chop down another, whereas one person chopping down a tree may not even be able to finish the first one.  In the end, more people doing a task benefits everyone in real life.

In EVE, two players doing the exact same thing will achieve the exact same results, the only difference in their end product being the time they’ve spent training certain skills.

This applies to a lot of things.  As Margin Call states, “there is no product differentiation in EVE,” meaning that every product a player makes is the exact same.  In a similar aspect, there is no way to pull more ore from an asteroid than another player aside from training skills (and everyone can reach the same level eventually).

Because of this, there is little point in having a corporation where everyone does the same thing (unless it’s combat) since you can achieve the same results as the next guy eventually.  The resources a group pools will not be more than what you could earn on your own, unless you have someone who can gather more resources than you, and if you can’t yield as much as another guy, what reason does he have to help you, split the resources, and lose profit?

The way to get around this is by having your corp specialize their skills to where you can manufacture a product for fewer resources than the next player or corp.

For example, if one player wanted to make Miner I lasers using the fewest resources in the fewest time, and be able to consistently bring in enough minerals necessary to make them in bulk, it would take months of training. 

If a group of people wanted to make Miner Is, they could split the training time.  Two or three players could increase their mining yield.  One player could train to refine Plagioclase at max efficiency (plag has all the mins necessary for Miner I production).  Another player could train to manufacture Miner Is in the fastest amount of time and with the fewest minerals.  Another player could train to be able to research Miner I blueprints at max speeds, and another to research for max material efficiency.

You’ve just split your training time 7 different ways.  You’ve also split the profits, but if you pick the right products (Miner I is a bad example here for profit) and are able to produce them in enough bulk, then your team will be making more ISK together than they ever could have on their own.

By specializing your skills, your ten man corp of month-old accounts now has the capability of a six month old (or more) character.  Plus, you have the added benefit of having more eyes to watch the market, which leads me to my next point.

3) More players = more eyes & more brains

This one is simple to explain, but nonetheless important.  It could have fit with division of labor, but the resource here is information, not items or ISK.  Really, it’s all about scouting.

Having more people in your corp means you have more eyes than can study market trends, more eyes watching local chat for possible pirates during mining ops, and more people to compile knowledge about the game.

Having people in neighboring systems watching local can give your mining op one system over more time to get to a station if things go south.

Also, if you get to where you’re running multiple hulks and an orca, having people fly to the different belts in a system and scan them in advance can keep you from wasting time warping to thin or empty belts.

You can send people running around the galaxy looking for new places to move your ops, places with little traffic, good belts, cheap stations with science and industry facilities, etc.  As they search systems, they can also scan down asteroid fields for rare asteroids in highsec, or wormholes if you’re a wormhole corp.

Information is just as important as productivity, because without the right info, you won’t know what to be producing.  Plus, info is the one thing that can be shared simultaneously by your corp members.

4) Mutual Defense

More often than not, the team with more guns wins the fight.  So an obvious advantage of being in a corp with more players is that you’re more likely to win fights.

You have to be careful with this one though, because this is not always the case.

It takes more than a lot of guns to win fights.  Different fights require different guns and players who’ve invested the training time to use them well.  You also need to be well-organized and know the combat mechanics of EVE.

If you’re a PvP corp, then I suggest going all out and gaining as many members as you can to help you take down bigger targets.  This is one of the few areas of EVE where more bodies yields more products.

However, if you’re an indy corp, I suggest not having any PvP guys at all.  The organization require by a CEO to handle both combat operations and industrial operations is intense.  Plus, more numbers will not scare away other corporations from declaring war on you, unless they’ve done their intel and know you can defend youseves (and they will do the intel).

Instead, a better option would be to found a sister corp that handles PvP for you, or get in good with an established PvP corp that needs industrial backing.

In the mean time, use your numbers to conduct recon in an effort to avoid combat, not excel in it.

5) Sharing is easier

After spending so much time saying that you can’t share in EVE like you can in real life, it’s almost contradictory to suggest joining a corporation for the sharing privileges.

However, you will need to share resources if you’re going to follow the models I mentioned above.

Staying in an NPC corp will keep you safe from wardecs, but sharing resources means having to initiate a trade every time you move to the next process in an item’s production.

With corp hangars, you can just drop stuff in the hangar, and when the person handling the next step of production can take it when they need it, even while you’re offline.

For PvP corps, having hangars set aside specifically for fleet ships makes logistics easier.  You can have 50 ships with the same fitting prepared in a system and ready for any nearby pilots to hop in and fight with them, rather than having a mix-mash of various ships all over the place that members may have to trade in order to form a well-organized fleet.

6. Exclusive Socialization

Another easily explained one, but very important.  Most people play games to have fun, and most people play MMOs to have fun with other players.

You can make friends in the default NPC corp’s chat, but you’re forced to see their remarks there.  In a player corp, you can recruit people you like, or join a corp with people that seem friendlier than whoever may be in a default corp.

Playing the game with the right people can make it ten times more fun.

That’s all I have for corporate benefits.  There are likely others, things that may apply to nullsec operations and operating POSs, but these are things players are more likely going to run into when they first start looking for or managing a corp.

With that, I bid you adieu o7