Corporation logistics

(Page title: Corporation Logistics)

Offices

Offices give the corporation a physical presence in the universe. The Headquarters is just an entry in the corporation details (think of it as a PO box); an office is an actual space in a station. If the corporation has rented an office at a station, the corp will be listed in the offices tab of the station and corp hangars are made available in that station. Corp hangars allow items to be shared between corp members and allow members to do research or production from corp assets. This is a great advantage, so every corp should have at least one office. Ideally, the office will be in a station which has good station services, such as medical facilities, a reprocessing plant, and a repair shop, as these services will be useful for corp members. Industrial corporations may want to rent an office in a station with manufacturing and research slots.

Renting offices

Any member with the "Rent Office" role can rent an office by clicking the rent office button at the bottom of the station information panel in a station. There is no limit to the number of offices a corporation can have, but any corp can have only one office per station and every NPC station can have offices for only 24 corporations. (Player-built outposts in 0.0 also can have offices, but the number depends on the type and upgrades of the outpost.) After clicking the "rent office" button a window will pop up showing the current 30-day rental fee for that station. When clicking 'yes', the rent for the first 30 days will be withdrawn from the corporation wallet and the corp will immediately receive a bill for the next 30 days. This bill must be paid before the first 30 days are over, else the corp will lose the office. A new bill will be issued like this every 30 days, for as long as the corp has the office. If the corp has multiple offices, it will receive one bill per office. (More on bills, including settings to automatically pay them, later in this article.)

Dynamic rental fee

Note that office rental fees are dynamic; they vary per station and will go up or down depending on demand at the station. Office rental fees are calculated daily at downtime based on the number of free offices at downtime. Monthly fees rise by 5% when there are no available offices at the station; prices stay the same when there is 1 available office. When there are 2 or more available offices, prices drop - the size of the drop is based on the number of available offices [1]. Since you only get a bill every 30 days and prices can rise by 5% per day, there can be a large difference between one month's rent and the next month's rent (in the worst case, the rent can quadruple!).

The minimum rent is 10,000 isk, but in popular stations the rent can be several million isk per month. In the very popular stations, such as the main stations in trade hubs, rents can be in the hundreds of million isk per month! Most stations have more sensible rents though, from the minimum of 10,000 isk to a few hundred thousand isk. It is very much worth it to 'shop around' when looking for a good location for an office; even stations in the same system can have widely different rental fees. Unfortunately there is no way to remotely check the available of offices or the rental fee. When you are docked at a station, the number of free offices will be listed in the offices tab of the Station Information panel, but the only way to see what the rent is, is to click the 'rent office' button. (Note: even if the station has no free offices, it is possible to see what the rent would be by clicking the button.)

Naming hangar and wallet divisions

The default names for hangar and wallet divisions are straightforward (1st Division to 7th Division and Master Wallet, 2nd Wallet Division to 7th Wallet Division, respectively); often it is easier to give the divisions a more descriptive name so that it is easier to remember which is which. The CEO can rename hangar and wallet divisions via the "Divisions" button at the bottom of the corp details window ("Corporation" window, home tab, details tab). Many corporations name their hangar divisions after their contents or the member groups which have access to them. Wallet divisions are often named after the type of isk transactions they're used for. The only division which cannot be renamed is the Master Wallet of the corporation wallet.