Corporations

This article is about corporations in general. If you are looking for a list of corporations, see this listing.

Corporations are a big part of HellMOO life, whether you are an employee, manager or CEO you are likely to be involved in corporate operations often in day to day play. This article will deal with most aspects of corporations.

Overview of Corporations

In HellMOO players can join corporations, which are similar to guilds or clans in many other games.

There are many advantages and few disadvantages to being a member of a corporation, the primary advantage being money. Being in a corporation allows you to work 'contracts' for money, whether they are tracking contracts or killing contracts a player at any level in a corporation will be able to earn easy money for what is often simply training their skills. A list of the top 10 most wealthy corporations in the game, and the top 10 largest (in terms of active members) corporations can be found in City Hall (CH on the map).

The secondary advantage is support. Corp members generally help each other out in various ways. You also get the companionship of being able to chat to your corpmates in corp-only channels. Most corps have HQs and other communal areas, which can give access to equipment, medical resources, food and drink and various forms of recreational activities. Many have craft benches and raw materials for making things such as armour and weapons. Some even have clone tanks. Just remember to close the door behind you when leaving or arriving.

Corporate Commands

Several new 'commands' are unlocked when you create or become a member of a corporation, for example:

• c - This is a chatnet for members of your corporation only, using the syntax c 'text'.

E.g. c Hello everyone.

This is used to privately talk, scheme or whine at the rest of your corp.

Commands associated with this are corpnet on and corpnet off to toggle between listening to the channel or not.

• Corp - Using this command brings up a summery sheet of your corp's current status, it includes the name of the corp, its abbreviation, the corp message of the day, current corporate cash stockpile, the CEO, a list of managers, employees and inactive employees. The corporate pay rate (this is what percentage of a contracts pay out actually goes into your pocket). And a list of contracts, owned assets and controlled cameras.

• Corpwho - This shows a list of all online corp members, how long they have been idle for, their location and their doing message.

For example:

Player               Corp   Idle Area            Doing                       
Dr.Crowley           JI     0s   freedom city    Me, with my portal gun

• Corp Contracts - This brings up a more detailed list of all the contracts currently signed by your corporation.

• Corp Help - Brings up a list of all the corporate commands, mostly useful for the CEO as many of them can only be used by them.

Employees

So, you are thinking about joining, or have recently joined a corp.

What is asked of an employee varies greatly between different corporations, but in general the day to day requirements of an employee are fairly simple. If you are low level, your main priority will be to make your character as powerful and experienced as possible. Travelling around and getting travel xp, killing many different things for kill xp, doing jobs and quests are all great ways to get xp early on. Getting your primary weapon skill up, as well as dodge, is also something to work on while your character is new.

As your character grows in experience and skill, you'll be able to use your knowledge to train people who have recently joined. You may want to help in other ways, for example by helping rescue corp members who have died and need to recover their equipment. Gathering items for the corp's crafters to use is also a useful activity for any corp member to involve themselves in.

Overall being an employee can be a very good prospect for many players, especially those who cant be bothered managing or running their own corporations, and would rather an easy way to make money and have some fun. The prospect of promotion to management is always a nice incentive to stay in the corp and stay loyal.

Managers

The role of a manager is more diverse then that of an employee, despite the fact that they really are just glorified employees themselves. A manager is simply an employee that a CEO has promoted using the command corp promote 'name' and they can be demoted back to a regular employee just as easily with the command corp demote 'name'.

As a manager you are expected to perform all the functions of an employee but, depending on the permissions your corp has set up, may be gifted with a few more commands. corp hire 'name' and corp fire 'name' are probably the most powerful of these commands, but the ability to sign and corp contract drop contracts is also very important. Managers are tasked with managing employees (what a surprise), overall this generally breaks down into two tasks

• Ensuring that appropriate contracts are signed and active for the employees.
• Helping out employees with questions or game play issues.

Generally a CEO will not appreciate a manager hiring or firing employees without express permission, so it is not recommended to do either of these things unless it has been previously discussed with the CEO. It's also likely that you won't have access to the command to fire other employees at this level.

This is possibly the best position to be in if you are a higher level player who wants maximum freedom and money making potential, without the bother of running a corp and the costs associated with it. This is due to the fact that managers can buy and sign any contract they require - if the corp you are in has things set up that way.

In addition to the c chat channel, managers can chat with other managers and more senior employees using the cm channel.

Shopkeeps

The next rung up the ladder is Shopkeeps. By default these individuals have the power to set prices and stock their Galleria corp store with the shopprice, shopstock, and shopremove permits and have access to corp shoplog, which shows sales activity in the store.

Shopkeeps can stock and remove items in the corpstore with the stock x in case and remove x from case commands and also change the prices by talking directly to the shopkeep NPC assuming one was hired from Gangland. -shopkeepername price x at y

Additionaly, shopkeeps can be ordered to not sell to certain individuals or whole corporations: -shopkeepername ban name, -shopkeepername unban name, -shopkeepername ban corp ticker, -shopkeepername unban corp ticker.

Nyll slides open the sales case and places a scrimshaw of CHILL inside it.
Nyll [to Juan]: price scrim at 7500
Juan [to Nyll]: Ok, got it.

In addition to the c chat channel and the cm channel, shopkeeps can chat with other shopkeeps and more senior employees using the cs channel.

Board

The level below the CEO or Holder. Depending on how your corp permissions are set up, you have a lot of power and generally are responsible for running the corp in the absence of anyone senior to you. If the CEO or Holders are away for too long, the Board are the first in line to take over the corp, promoting themselves to CEO using corp takeover. They can also be selected as a 'successor' if or when the current CEO decides to move on.

In addition to the c chat channel, the cm channel and the cs channel, board members can chat with other board members and corp holders using the cb channel.

The CEO or Holder

Either you have just successfully taken over a corp, or been put in the position after the previous CEO has left (assuming you were named the successor) or you have just started your own corporation, the result is the same, you are now the CEO of a corporation.

Being the CEO of a corporation can be the most demanding and most rewarding of all the positions in a corporation, but it does have pros and cons.

As the CEO you have ultimate power over the corp, you can hire or fire anyone, promote or demote managers at will, but at the same time you have to deal with all the problems of those below you, as well as deal with corporate costs that may be associated with any assets the corporation owns.

It is advisable to have at least a few members in your corporation as a CEO, a lone CEO in a 1 person corp is discouraged by the fact that contracts have a far lower total payout and time span when activated in a corp with few active members. Also, running a corp can be a lot of work for one person to do alone.

The CEO can also set the corporations jingle (the song that plays from various corporate vending machines) and the MOTD (the message of the day shown in the corp screen). Again, this depends on the permissions the CEO has set up, you can just as easily allow junior members to set these motivational messages.

In addition to having access to all of the corp channels holders can change the colors of corpnet text with the corp chatcolor command and also add/remove corp permissions to ranks or specific employees with the corp access command. Use corp listperms for a full list of permits.

eg. corp access remove managers withdraw, corp access add Nyll withdraw

Pros and Cons of having your own corp

Here is a quick list of some of the advantages and disadvantages of running a corporation:

Pros

• You have ultimate power and freedom in the management of the corporation.
• You have a 'private army'; if your employees are loyal.
• You have access to the corporate funds through the corp deposit 'amount' and corp withdraw 'amount'.
• You can purchase corporate HQs, which can be used for you or your corp. These generally have high security.
• You can make a custom HQ using the Matrix.
• You can buy a Security Console in Weezer Village and use it to monitor your HQ, spring traps, control Security drones, and more.

Cons

• You may end up with more expenses, buying contracts, paying corporate HQ rents, buying equipment for employees, stocking corp supplies.
• You have to deal with sometimes very annoying and stupid employees.
• if you have managers, you can't go idle for 3 days without the risk of a corporate takeover
• If you start the corp, you have to build it up, gather employees in the first place, pay for corporate expansion contracts etc.
• Being a CEO can attract unwanted attention from other corporations CEOs and employees, CEOs are generally higher level players, so are sometimes targeted so another player can prove superiority.
• Your precious game play time may be eaten up dealing with the pathetic problems faced by your employees.
• Your corporate shop rent comes out of the corporate till and is calculated based on total value of items stocked. If your corp is an economic powerhouse you can end up paying around 50k per rent cycle.

Other Corporate Considerations

A few things to keep in mind regarding corporations:

Money making methods

• Contracts are probably the simplest way to make money, as they automatically pay you for killing certain enemies.
• If you have a DNI implant and a suitable skill in hack, you can hack gangland cameras for money payout every game day. You as the hacker will receive the same percentage cut on camera payouts as you would for working contracts... e.g. rate of 0.7.
• Corporations can also rent shops in the galleria, they can then assign a gangland citizen to work the counter which trusted members of the corp can then stock with goods to sell, the profits from these sales go directly into the corporate funds.
• Protection contracts for shops - the money from these goes directly into corp funds without any message being displayed when the money goes in or when the contract is lost to another corp. Depending on how much money the shop makes, these can be very lucrative for the corp as a whole. The person who signed the contract doesn't get any of this money in this instance.

Combat/risks

Corp wide PVP challenges are issued when someone, for example, picks the lock of a property belonging to an inactive corp member, or attacks any corp member. Indiviuals can also choose to challenge entire corps.

A lot of fun can also be had in corporate conflict, banding together with groups of players for PVP battles can be highly amusing.

Tougher opponents (such as the Kraken) can be handled by a group of corp members, this sort of thing is generally hard to organize if you aren't in a corp.

Miscellaneous information

• Contract value increases based on the number of active members in the corp. This effects the time a contract is active for after signing, and the total payout on the contract. For example, a crackhead contract will have a total value of $5000 with 5 active members and $5500 with 6 active members.
• A corporation who buys a corporate headquarters in corpclave will have all its members automatically scanned into the corpclave gate lock.
• Soda contracts can be signed and deployed in squares almost anywhere in the world. NPC's and players will buy soda from the soda machine and the player signing the contract will receive a share of the proceeds, depending on how much of a cut the corp usually takes from contracts. Soda machines can break however and will require someone in the corp to repair them back to tip-top shape. Also, some areas get a great deal more traffic from thirsty NPCs than other areas, so choose wisely, otherwise your soda contract is likely to be dropped if it isn't earning any money.
• Corporations can also rent shops in the galleria, they can then assign a gangland citizen to work the counter which the CEO, or someone the CEO has given special permission, usually the Shopkeeper, can then stock with goods to sell, the profits from these sales go directly into the corporate funds.
• Carebear is a type of corp that has made the decision to not participate in PvP.