Forming a corporation
(Page title: Forming a corporation)
This guide covers everything you need to know about setting up a corporation, from the things you have to consider beforehand to the steps you need to take to create the corporation to how to organize your corporation and its members.
Forming a Corporation
Why?
Before starting a corporation, take some time to consider why you want to create a new corporation. It is a big step to make, and it is important to think and plan ahead. Reading this article is a good place to start!
There are many valid reasons to create a new corporation, from idealistic reasons such as achieving a certain goal to pragmatic reasons such as avoiding the NPC corp tax. Three things which should be clear before you start are:
- Who will join the corporation? The corp can be just for yourself and your alts, in which case not much very planning is needed; the corp can be for a small group of friends, in which case a simple corp structure and simple plan will suffice; or the corp can be started by you with the intention of recruiting other players. In this last case more planning is needed, and the corp should be properly structured (these topics will be covered later in this article).
- What will be the goal or purpose of the corporation? Having a goal or purpose is important, it gives the corporation members something to work for and look forward to. If the corp is just for you or for a group of friends, avoiding NPC taxes and having fun might be sufficient goals, but if you intend to recruit other players, having a clear goal will help convincing them to join you. Generally, the more specific your goal, the better. The goal could be "mission-running, industry, and wormhole pvp", but that's very broad and doesn't mix very well. More specific goals would be "Amarr mission-running", "tech 2 invention", or "low-sec piracy". These are just a few examples, there's a lot more to do or to aim for; just be sure to think about it and to make it as specific and clear as you can.
- Where will the corp operate? EVE has thousands of systems, so it is unrealistic for a single corp to want to operate across the whole of EVE - some area of operations will have to be determined. Choose a region or regions where you want to operate, based on preferences or opportunities, and select a system where you want your Headquarters to be (spending some time looking at a map of EVE may help in this process). When starting out as a corp, it is best to establish a Headquarters in high security space, even if you intend to operate in, or move to, low sec or null sec. Having the Headquarters in high sec allows for safe logistics; if needed a secondary base can be established in low sec. Common places for Headquarters are near a trade hub or mission hub (for industrial or mission corps) or near a low sec or null sec access point (for pvp corps).
Requirements
Anyone can start a new corporation as long as some basic requirements are met:
- You must have the skill Corporation Management at level 1 or higher;
- You must have 1,599,800 isk in your wallet;
- You must be docked at a station. The station where the corporation is created will be listed as its Headquarters. Moving the Headquarters later is only possible under certain conditions (which will be covered below), so take a moment to consider where you will create your corporation;
- If you are in a player corporation, you may not have roles assigned to you. If you have roles, you must remove them (by right-clicking your portrait in chat and selecting 'drop roles'); if you are a CEO, you need to resign first (see below). In both cases, you will be able to create a corporation 24 hours later.
(For completeness sake, you may also not have an active session timer. Since session timers only last 30 seconds, you can just wait it out if you encounter this.)
The corp creation window
To start a new corporation, open the corporation window by clicking the button in the sidebar menu, select the home tab, and within that tab the details tab. At the bottom there will be a button 'create corporation'. You will get the options to:
- Select a logo. A corporation logo consists of three layers; each layer can have a pattern or item and a colour. Different patterns or items can be combined by giving two layers the same colour. Play around a bit to get a good-looking logo. Something to consider when designing the logo is what your corporation's main activity will be. An industrial corporation for instance may want to avoid using a pirate-like logo.
- Choose a name. A corporation name has to contain at least 4 characters and no more than 50 characters (amusingly, the error message you get when trying to use a name longer than that is wrong - it claims the maximum length is 24 characters). It may only contain letters, numbers, spaces, and dots (full stop or period). The corporation name may not the same as the name of any other currently active corporation or alliance; it can be the same as the name of a closed corporation.
- Choose a ticker. The corporation ticker is used as a short name for the corporation, for instance in space behind ships, wrecks and containers belonging to your corporation. The maximum length of a ticker is 5 characters, again with only letters, numbers, spaces, and dots allowed. Unlike the corporation name, the ticker has to be unique - it may not be the same as the ticker of any other corporation or alliance, past or present. This can make it quite hard to find a good ticker. Playing around with spaces and dots may help. The ticker button suggests a ticker for you if you can't think of one.
- Set a tax rate. The tax rate determines what percentage of bounties and mission rewards generated by corporation members will be transferred to the corporation wallet. The rate can be anywhere from 0% to 100%, but a high tax rate might deter people from joining. Most corporations have a tax rate between 5% and 10%.
- Enter a Home Page, which is a URL to your corporation website (if you have one). If the corporation doesn't have a website, consider linking to a recruitment thread on the forums. If you decide not to list anything, remove the "http://" which is in the box by default. If it is not removed, it will be displayed as the corporation's website.
- Enter a description. The description of the corporation can contain up to 4000 characters. Note that the description will be publicly viewable ingame, on EVE Gate, and on third-party websites. Giving some information on what the corporation does is a good idea, but don't be too specific (listing "Mining every Friday at 1900 in Rancer" would be a bad idea). Many corporations list diplomatic contacts in their description.
- Membership applications enabled. If this box is checked, other people will be able to apply to become a member of the corporation. Unchecking this box means no one will be able to apply until you enable it again later.
Apart from the corporation name and ticker (which can never be changed), these settings can be changed quite easily later, so don't worry if you're not sure what to put there.
First things to do
- Immediately after creating a corporation, you will get a notification saying "Select Wallet Division". Corporation wallet divisions will be explained later, for now click 'yes' (indicating you want to select a wallet division) and select the Master Wallet.
- Another thing which is smart to do immediately is to take all corporation shares under your own control. All corporations start with 1000 shares, which can be used for various purposes (which will be explained later). The shares are in the corporation wallet by default; for safety reasons it is generally considered best to move them to your personal wallet. You can do this by opening your wallet, selecting the corporation wallet tab and within that tab the shares tab. Right-click the shares, select 'give', fill out your own name, and press 'ok'. If you leave the shares in the corporation wallet, your corp will be vulnerable to hostile takeover by rogue members later on. Though the risk of that might seem small, it happens regularly in EVE - better to prevent it from ever occurring by this simple step. You can (re-)distribute the shares from your personal wallet to other people when needed.
Editing details later
As mentioned, you may want to edit some of the details which were entered when the corporation was created. If you are CEO or director an 'edit details' button will be visible at the bottom of the corporation details window ("Corporation" window, home tab, details tab). When clicking 'edit details' button you will effectively get the same screen as when creating a corporation. From here the corporation logo, home page, tax rate, and description can be changed, and membership applications can be enabled or disabled. Changing the logo carries a fee of 100 isk (yes you read that right, one hundred isk) which will be taken from the corporation wallet. Other details can be edited without a charge.
This screen does contain one thing which isn't listed when creating a corporation. It shows the member limit, which is the maximum number of members the corporation may have (excluding the CEO), and the races allowed, which depends on the skills of the CEO when the corporation was created or last updated. The member limit and races allowed do not automatically change when the CEO trains more corporation skills or when a new CEO is appointed. For the member limit and races allowed to be update, the CEO must click the 'update with my skills' button. (This button is visible to directors, but can only be used by the CEO.)
This means that even characters with low or even no corporation skills can become CEO of large corporations, as long as a previous CEO has updated the corporation with the proper skills. CEO's with low skills should take care not to accidentally click the update button; though no one will be expelled if the member limit is updated to below the current membership, no new members can be accepted until the membership has dropped below the limit.
Moving your Headquarters
When the corporation was created, the station where it was created was automatically named the Headquarters. It is possible to move a corporation's Headquarters to any station where the corp has an office by clicking the 'move HQ here' button at the bottom of the Station Information panel. This button will only be visible to the CEO and Directors.
Skills and member limits
There are currently (as of Feb 2014) a total of 4 skills related to increasing the number of members in your corp, and one which decreases the cost of accepting allies during war. Note that the CEO does not count as a member, so with Corporation Management trained to Level 4, for example, the corporation can hold a total of 81 characters.
All skills affecting the maximum number of corporation members stack with each other.
Corporation Management
Each level of this skill increases the maximum corporation size by 20 members, and is required to form a corporation. With Corporation Management V, a corporation can hold a maximum of 101 characters.
It is important to note that the below skills only take effect when the current CEO opens the corporation management interface and uses the "Update With My Skills" button (NeoCom Corporation>Home>Details>Edit Details). This means that a third party can be used to form the corporation, then resign and appoint another member as the CEO, bypassing the need for the skills to be trained.
Megacorp Management
Requires Corporation Management V. Adds a further 100 characters to the maximum membership per level trained. With Megacorp Management V, a corporation can hold a maximum of 601 characters.
Empire Control
Requires Megacorp Management V. Adds a further 400 characters to the maximum membership per level trained. With Empire Control V, a corporation can hold a maximum of 2601 members. A CEO with Empire Control V is required to form an Alliance.
Sovereignty
Requires Empire Control V. Adds a further 2,000 characters to the maximum membership per level trained. With Sovereignty V, a corporation can hold a maximum of 12,601 members (the absolute maximum corporation size). Training this skill is only suggested for the largest of corporations, as it is suggested that you should create procedures to identify and remove inactive members.
Diplomatic Relations
Requires Corporation Management II and Social III. This skill reduces the cost of hiring allies to fight a war by 5% per level trained.
People who had the "Ethnic Relations" skill trained before the release of Inferno had their skill points transferred to this skill; there was no option for remapping.
Resigning as CEO
Unlike other members of a corporation, they cannot drop their roles and titles or leave while the CEO. The only exception to this is when they are the only member of the corporation, in which case they can leave (but not form another corporation).
To resign, a CEO must right click themselves (either in a chat window or the corp member list) and select the "Resign as CEO" option.
Appointing a new CEO
If there are other members in the corporation when the CEO resigns, then the CEO will be presented with a list of members who have the Corporation Management skill. If no members have that skill, a list of all members will be shown. The CEO can then select a member on the list to be their successor. Once selected, a corp notification will be sent out to all members, stating that the old CEO has resigned, and as their final action they named the new CEO as their successor.
At this point, the old CEO will be on the normal 24 hour role cooldown timer, and can leave the corporation after this expires.
Closing a Corporation
To close a corporation, all members must either leave or be removed, at which point the CEO should resign, which will return them to an NPC Corp.
