Yesterday, after my space craft got shot to pieces, I decided it was time to join a corporation. In the Eve universe, players are expected work together in these corporations. There are many different corps: mining, mission running, trading and manufacturing, warfare, rat killing or, in most cases, a mixture of all these; often these activities are carried out together as well. Some corps require a tax payment of all your income, others don't. But, the tax charging corps don't only charge, they usually share as well: profits among (active?) members, or other useful stuff: ships, equipments, manufacturing blueprints, weaponry.
Another aspect of corporations is, that n00bs such as myself can learn the tricks of the trade from the old hands who often form the backbone of a successful corp. Transfer of knowledge is usually an integral part of these corps, even though there are corporations who only recruit experienced players.
Finally, last but not least, as part of a corporation you're better protected against random violence: if someone harms you, your entire corp gets to shoot at the bad guy who did it. As long as you're alone, you're basically fair game for anyone with a bigger ship than you; as part of a corp, a bad guy must not only deal with you, but with your corp as well. And your corp members may be much more dangerous than you!
Corporations are not alone either, they often form alliances for political and military purposes. A small corp within a powerful alliance may actually provide better protection than a larger corp without one.
You have to be careful when choosing a corporation. If you join a corp that requires your presence at practice drills or joint missions, you have to make sure you can comply with those demands. My busy schedule hardly allows for that, I'm glad if I get to play at all for several weeks! So after carefully weighing my options and limitations, I applied for membership or the Trade Academy Corporation. It's reasonable in it's demands, yet has an active member base, which is good for learning and protection. So I jumped to their head quarters and applied. After half an hour I got a call from Jenny Twotone, one of their members, and after a brief chat I was accepted as corp member!
Some advantages are visible immediately. In the in game chat window, the corp chat is automatically switched to your new corp. In my case I was introduced to my new corp colleagues by the officer who interviewed me before accepting my application, and others online welcomed me in their midst. Then one of the corp members requested assistance, he was in a big fight with a lot of Mordus rats somewhere in the Halle system. I was eight jumps out, so by the time I finally got there the fight was over - but the sky was literally littered with Mordus wreckage. One of the more experienced members called it "an epic space battle"! We looted like mad, as each wreck had more cargo on board than three of your average Serpentis wrecks combined. I've never had so much different objects in my cargo hold! I had to go to a nearby station to drop off cargo twice; by the time I returned for third round, most of the wreckage was cleared. To my surprise, the corp members allowed me to keep the loot I collected, even though I didn't participate in the firefight itself. A nice welcome present, that!
All in all it felt good to be part of something instead of going it alone. I'm sure I can learn a lot, and possibly contribute too - as soon as I can buy a larger, more powerful ship that is..
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