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[orange]

I am going to focus on industry and profit making, it is what I have been trying to build and run for the past 2 years.  I do not think I have suceeded in creating a true corporation with employees. Eve's mechanics are not conducive to a salary or even hourly structure.

This is not to say LDIS has not grown and made a profit, but it has done so at the expense of its hard working members (my characters included).  At the same time, investors (some now outside the corporation) aided the growth of the corporation.

When Dominion changed sovreignty mechanics, I discussed at length how the mechanics enabled an alliance to operate in a very commerical, profit oriented manner (link).

My goal is to build a functioning, profit-oriented corporation that rewards its members for the work they do and provides them with mechanical benefits they would otherwise not be able to us.

PC corporations offer certain mechanical functions unavailable to a NPC corp pilot.

- War Declarations
- Shared Standings
-- Shared Aggressors
-- Jump Clone Access
- Corporate Hangars/Offices
- Starbase Anchoring/Operation/Access
-- Outpost Anchoring/Operation (as part of an Alliance)
- Corporate Wallets
- SCC Market actions as a Corporate entity
- Variable Mission Rewards, Bonus Rewards & NPC Bounty Tax Rate

Did I miss any?

Mutual Security
Mechanics: War Declarations & Shared Standings
These should be fairly straight forward.  I think it is the most common reason for corporations to exist.  How corporations go about pursuing and funding security varies. 

Regardless of how this is done and to what ends, the activities do not inherently provide a mechanic by which to increase a corporation's and its members' wallet size.  A corporation might pursue mercenary contracts, piracy, etc and have a structure to distribute pay based on the contract, kill count/participation, and loses suffered.  I welcome anyone with experience in this vein to talk about it.

"Shared" SCC Market Presence
The title is a misnomer.  While members can buy and sell corporately owned items via the market, individuals still must maintain the orders they establish on behalf of the corporation.  Shared Wallets provides a means to conslidate funds and pay for corporate bills, but these can be a challenge to manage and make available without also risking significant theft.

To utilize these tools in as a corporate entity is challenging (and something CCP should look at improving).  I think this is the largest obstacle to creating a functioning corporate-employee relationship - lack of useful tools.

However, a single player can manage a large number of market orders and create tools to track their revenue vs cost and do so more securely.

Taxes/Fees
A corporate tax has limited utility if the primary means of isk generation for the corporation is not NPC focused.

How can a corporation, without a NPC-focus, generate corporate income and not just individual member income?  What is corporate income utilized for?

Corporate Assets
Corporate Hangars are a nice to have and allow players to be communal in their resources, sharing resources with their friends to meet some goal.  Like the wallets, these can be a challenge to really manage and may have limited utility depending on the tools available and how the corporation is setup. 

They are also an opportunity for theft to occur.

Starbases represent a corporate unique mechanicism.  An individual player (NPC corporation) can not set a Starbase up.  A 1-man corporation can do so, but I am interested in how to move beyond the 1-man corporation.

Starbases provide a corporation the opportunity to mine & process moon materials, establish labs and factories it owns/operates, and establish bases/services systems without stations.  This is truly a
mechanic corporations provide.  By charging for using the labs and factories, the corporation can produce an income and access to limited/more efficient slots.

Available Blueprint Originals (BPOs) are another possibility for a corporation to utilize.  A corporate library of BPOs that members can copy using corporate labs provides members with access to items they may not have the isk for or the isk to invest in.  Copy slots are truly a commodity worth having (and advanced labs). BPOs & POS fuel can be (partially) paid via Copy (Invention & Reverse Engineering) lab access cost.

- BPO Library
- Lab & Factory Availability
-- More Efficient/Inexpensive Factories, Invention & Reverse Engineering
-- Available/Competative Copying

Starbase rights are also something that directors can manage, thus restricting individual members from setting up their own Starbases.

But all these assets must be paid for someway and investors will desire a return on investment.

Dual purposing some Starbases as moon material producing Starbases appears to be the logical choice, which means paying the pilots who do the logistical support.  This is a hauling contract for hauling x m3 every y days between Starbase/Station A and Starbase/Station B.  Another part of payment may be some bonus on top of an estimate of the fuel/material cost.  Lastly someone(s) has to sell any Starbase products.  Another option is to again calculate an expected return for the mining effort and have the pilot wanting to run the operation/mining pay a percentage to the corporation for the right to operate the Starbase.

- Starbase Logistical Support Contract(s)
- Corporate Asset Manager role
- Starbase Operators

Investors
First, there are two kinds of investors: inside and outside investors.  Inside investors are corporation members who purchase shares in order to fund larger corporate projects,  they tend to be less concerned with wallet ROI since they are part of the corporation.  Outside investors are more concerned with wallet ROI since they are not going to get to utilize whatever they are funding.

At some point, inside investors can become outside investors as they depart the corporation.

This lends itself to keeping shares to trusted/internal partners and bonds to those outside.  Shares fund riskier, less liquid projects. Bonds fund projects with low risk and a clear termination point.

Conclusion
It would appear that an industrial, profit oriented corporation should focus its efforts on providing access to copy BPOs and Starbase services to support its member's activities, such as Copying.  The corporation sells certain services to its members at either cheap rates or makes largely unavailable services more available and at competitive pricing.

Other's thoughts?

[Elsebeth Rhiannon]

Regarding salaries, Gradient has one of the few systems I know somewhat works.

Shortly, everyone who does anything for the corp (from combat to mining, from diplomacy to maintaining forums) can put a note on an "Event log", stating they did that thing. In the end of each month, we take part of our profit, and divide it between people who did stuff.

There's tweaks in the system that makes it more complicated to that. For example, the division of profit is not linear to the number of things you did, but rather scaled so that your first entries in the log get you more, and you get progressively less for each entry the more you have them - this means everyone is rewarded noticeably for participating, but no one's rewarded for making EVE their whole life. And things that make isk for corp (industrial stuff) count for more than things that don't (combat, diplomacy), because we just prefer it that way.

Has worked for us for a couple of years now. I rarely do any other isk making than the GRD profit shares, myself. I net about 70-150M a month from that (when I remember to log, which is not, ugh, even close to always) and together with our ship replacement programs that seems to manage to keep me flying. Haven't done a mission for... months. \o/ (I hate missions.)

[Casiella]

Excellent post and a great starting point for discussion. Clearly, you've put a lot of thought into this, though that became obvious long before this thread even came up.

In general, I tend to think of the alliance model as more useful. I wrote about this question of the EVE corporate model a few months ago. In the case of an industrial alliance, I suppose this could present both challenges and opportunities. Alliance members can't use copy or invention slots on a starbase, for example, and can't piggyback off of the average standing for mission and jump clone access. But you have the wallet and hangar divisions without having to trust anyone else, for example.

For those interested in continuing with the existing corporate structure in support of industrial activity, however, I'd suggest that mining provides another possible activity area. Between Orca support and refining, significant benefits accrue to members beyond what they could do on their own. W-space exploration and exploitation also probably work best in a corporate structure due to the stringent requirements on "living" out there.

[orange]

I think Mining, especially with an Orca (& Freighter), lends itself well to an activity that can be monitored and each participant equally rewarded.  I think I have done the math on this before as well, especially if you have someone who can refine at 99% giving certain roles ~5 percent of the total with the corporation taking 5%.

[Vikarion]

I still feel really bad about having to bail on you guys like that, Dex. 

[orange]

I still feel really bad about having to bail on you guys like that, Dex. 

RL first; fully accepted by everyone.

Any added challenge is creating a system for a corporation that can survive its founders having to leave for whatever reason and is expandable and collapsible when needed.

[hellgremlin]

Piece of advice:

Corporations in Eve can be configured in two ways. They can be configured securely in order to make sure no-one screws with them, or they can be configured greedily to bring about the most income possible.

The second is the kind I target for corp robbery.

If you're ever in the position of choosing between "Option A, bit more risky, but will make more money" or "Option B, completely secure but will piss our members off because it's unfairly strict"...

Pick option B.

[Invelious]

Piece of advice:

Corporations in Eve can be configured in two ways. They can be configured securely in order to make sure no-one screws with them, or they can be configured greedily to bring about the most income possible.

The second is the kind I target for corp robbery.

If you're ever in the position of choosing between "Option A, bit more risky, but will make more money" or "Option B, completely secure but will piss our members off because it's unfairly strict"...

Pick option B.

Hellgremlin's past has taught me to have 0 corp hangers and to teach all of my members on how to be 100% self-sufficient. Teaching them that will make it easier on them when you will go through the downtime periods when corp activity is slow.