With the second coming of the messiah, aka guild banking, having finally materialized, a new type of guild would add even more depth to in-game interaction:

Corporate guilds

A corp guild would be pretty much the same thing as a normal guild. In fact, they need not be different, if not perhaps the guild tag being something else than enclosed in [CORP] to differentiate. Silly suggestion: <CORP>

Where a corporate guild differentiate with regular guild is in the cash influx. Whoever buys more into that guild (aka, deposit in the bank) ends up commander. Just like buying shares into a public company. Runner-ups end up getting Lt and council positions.

Purpose? Drive a company forward. Acquire corporate guilds (either by other companies or regular guilds or individual players).

Spending becomes an issue however. The following is a preliminary suggestion. PLEASE DISCUSS.

Over the top of my head, I would lock down the company's cash. Any member could request a Purchase Order number for a given amount. This PO#, if accepted by a majority of the council or the officers, would thus become available for spending by that user. POs could be asked using

/guild purchase amount reason

which would log current POs in the company, viewable by members of that company with

/guild orders

which would list the obvious:

# supplicant amount reason

where # is the sequential number of pending orders, supplicant is whoever asked for the PO, amount is the credits requested and reason is an arbitrary short description for justification and logs.

Councils and officers would accept a PO by using

/guild purchase #

Any accepted PO would simply transfer the cash to the supplicant for spending. Weither the member delivers on the purchase is left to the corporation to deal with. Any ousted member would loose his investment in the company.

In-game applications of this would be far and wide. People could start creating UIT corporate guilds and acquire others, mining corporations could see the light of day, trading corporations, corporate scandals (non-materializing purchases), hostile take-overs etc etc are all on the menu.

so basically your talking about a stock market??

sounds like a good idea

but then there would have to be some kind of chart that showed how the company was doing finnancialy so where you dont invest in a bad stock.

PS: this idea is most likly to be shot down (no offence). because right now the devs are saying no to something as simple as upgrading weapons and armor. sorry pal.

More notes on the spending thing:

The more a company OKs POs, the less valuable the company becomes (no shit Sherlock!), thus making take-overs easier.

One's rank in the company would be based on amount put in at the current value of the company. Perhaps percentages could determine positions.

Probably not as complicated as a stock market. Nothing with fluctuating value or anything like that. No assets would be accounted for or anything like that. Just raw cash (net worth) of the guild.

It could function as a simple guild as well. Aka, you can't buy into a second corp any more that you can be a member of two guilds.

Hence the <> tag. You're either a corporate investor or a member of a guild.

I think you should eventually get money back for buying part of the guild (or whatever you're really buying) so it doesn't seem like a rip-off to the people at 2nd and 3rd place on the chart.

Yeah. Perhaps a simple percentage of whatever you ever put in minus any PO that were accepted for you in respect to the current total net worth of the corp.

Thus, if a corp ever grows through any means, if you ever opt out (rather than being ousted), then you might end up with a profit of sort.

What would the corporation *do*? Normally (in the real world) corporations make things to sell or provide services. As it stands, this just seems (correct me if I've missed something) to be a way to have a shared bank account.

To make a corporation really useful and believable, the money that gets put into it needs to be put to some use. For example:

Purchase a convoy which does automatic trading. Convoys doing trading missions already exist in the game, fully NPC controlled. A corporation could buy half a dozen XCs plus some NPC escorts, and plot a course with a list of things to buy/sell.

A shop. The convoy buys stuff from one place, takes it back to another and provides an interface for PCs to buy from. Several people have implemented this already with LUA hacks. It would be nice if there could be official shop tabs in the station interface.

Mining. Buy mining ships which fly to a sector, mine, and bring the ore back.

Except for the shop, backends for all the above already exists in VO. All(!) it requires is a UI to allow people to set things up, and to control which bank account the profit goes into.

These would add to the PVP features of VO, since rival corporations can raid convoys and mining expeditions, and members will want to defend them.

Thoughts?

Sam.

Sora1373, what upper case is talking about is a group of players Incorporating a company.

We already have at least 2 incorporated, limited liability companies with register of shareholders, in VO, that I know of.

UC: the idea is interesting, but there is red tape to actually using the cash of the corporation (PO's).

The main thing that makes corporations of limited relevancy and usefulness is the lack of opportunities to invest in real assets to create real returns. Say you have all this cash - what productive use are you going to put it to? Why couldn't I as a regular player do the same activity, with only 500k in my account?. Your ability to milk the infinite-money springs in VO is not limited by Cash. There is too much cash and too few uses for it.
If and when we get a new economy that is balanced and dynamic, can purchase capital assets (plant and machinery), and can hire NPC convoys, in order to organise a profit center and create value, Then maybe a corporation may become relevant.

Sounds like a fun idea although I think Foo's right that in the current economy it would hurt more than help.

I think this was mentioned before, but if not (I skimmed most of the middle posts), I want to suggest that the more someone puts into the corp, the more power they get in controlling the decisions on POs.

Also what would be the point of regular members, if council/LT/CO decide the POs?

I think it's kind of funny how Sora responds to one of the most liked and appreciable (if inactive) members of the community. It's like UC is some n00b who doesn't understand jack about how the game works. Hehe

/me goes back to watching the news

UC is some n00b that doesn't understand jack about how the game works.
Then again, so is everyone else in this thread. Ah well.