Under the current game mechanics, corporations are merely a tool for players to identify themselves and communicate more easily. Outside the largely meaningless leaderboards (On which rankings are achieved by quantity over quality) there are very few advantages or interesting elements to being in a corporation. Given that creating one actually costs a hefty chunk of real world money, I propose some additions to the game that aim at changing this.
Corporation Resources
First and foremost, a corporations needs a collective resource pool. I propose that corporations automatically collect a (very) small percentage of the income of each individual member in matches and acquire this in a ‘corporation account’.
Members would also be able to donate credits into this account.
Additional resources could be added, such as Ore, Fuel, etc. if we want to make things more interesting in the future. These could tie in with assets on the sector conquest map and capital ship construction. These resources could be obtained through mines and other space stations, as well as specific PvE missions which involve escorting your convoys. People with more imagination than myself can go wild here.
Corporation Headquarters
This is where the real proposal comes in. I’d like to see a physical structure, be it a space station or a structure on the planetary surface, which acts as the physical headquarters of a corporation. This HQ would have a number of stages and expansions to it which enhance it’s capabilities.
Why?
To make being a member of a corporation more interesting and to add further common goals to the game.
How?
Buildings would require a credit cost to construct, and undergo a certain construction time. Once constructed, they will be subject to a weekly or monthly upkeep costs, which over time reduces the amount of net credit income a corporation gets in their account.
A corporation should be able to de-activate buildings to reduce this cost, but this triggers a cooldown before the building can be activated again. (To prevent abuse in trying to avoid the upkeep payments by timing this)
Upgrades could include:
Corporation Warehouse - Provides additional passive warehouse capacity for all members. Useful for everyone without causing any balance issues. Obviously DLC warehouse increases should go on top of this - rather than providing a fixed limit.
The provided bonus would get larger with each upgrade.
Corporation Ammo Depot - 2 upgrade levels: Provides corporation members with access to Military (cheaper than blue and no loyalty requirement) and Experimental Ammo types.
Corporation Missile Depot - 2 upgrade levels: Provides corporation members with access to Military (cheaper than blue and no loyalty requirement) and Experimental Missile types.
Corporation HQ - Numerous upgrade levels: Provides corporation members with various small stacking bonuses to loyalty gain and/or credit income (to off-set the corporation tax)
Shipyard / Academy - A few upgrade levels: Provides corporation members with small stacking bonuses to synergy gain.
None of these bonuses have to be big, they’re just there to make things interesting and to make it just interesting enough to warrant getting those buildings constructed. It would give corporations something to work on together, and add to our immersion of the game.
Ideally, some sort of screen where we can view our Corporation HQ in all it’s glory would be pretty nice too. I’ve left this fairly open to get people their inspiration and ideas flowing - but you can see where I am going.
(Like chat improvements, corporation interface improvements, leaderboard improvements, profile improvements, etc. etc.)