Greetings Pioneers,
In today’s blog, we’re taking a look at Corporations, how they work and what they offer.
In SpaceCraft, Corporations are the equivalent of guilds in a traditional MMO: groups of players who share both long-term goals and progress in the game together. Creating or joining a Corporation opens the door to unique mechanics that encourage large-scale collaboration with like-minded players or friends.
But what if you prefer to work alone? Even as a solo player you can create your own Corporation and benefit from the same mechanics, even if you’ll have to work a bit harder.
Corporation Base
Corporations have access to Requests, time-sensitive contracts offered by specialized NPCs that are located in space stations around the galaxy. Requests are the same for all Corporations but each NPC provides a different selection. Four of these NPCs will be added to the playtest in the next couple of weeks and more will be added for, and after, the Early Access release.
Once accepted, Requests require you to produce large quantities of a specific resource or item. This can be done by collecting or manufacturing them, so make sure that your Corporation has proper automated production lines and logistics set up before taking on a Request. Alternatively, and only if you’re wealthy enough, you can buy all the required items. But your Credits will soon dry up and you’ll still have to haul the cargo.
After delivering the cargo to the NPC, in however many trips it might take you, the Request is completed and the Corporation is rewarded with one or more of three valuable currencies (names are subject to change), each one is crucial in growing your Corporation:
License Points
Corpo Credits
Reputation
Failing to deliver the cargo in the specified time will result in you losing all the previously delivered goods and more importantly time that could have been spent doing something more lucrative.
Corporation Information Interface
License Points are used to unlock Licenses that provide permanent bonuses for your corporation, such as increasing the amount of buildings in a single Corpo base, which can drastically improve output compared to an individual's personal base.
Meanwhile, Corpo Credits can be spent on powerful upgrades, called Corpo Permits, that offer significant performance boosts. The downside is that they come with a daily upkeep cost in Corpo Credits, if your Corporation doesn’t have a steady stream of income then it’ll have to give up some of its Corpo Permits. Choosing which Corpo Permits to activate and when will be one of the deciding factors for how a Corporation will grow.
Corpo Credits can be given to Corporation members and Credits (the standard currency in SpaceCraft) can be exchanged for Corpo Credits and donated by members to their Corpo. Still with me? This opens up different ways to run a Corporation, some may prefer a laid-back, redistributive structure where profits are shared freely, while more competitive ones might ask members to contribute some of their personal savings to be invested in the Corporation.
At the current stage of development, Reputation is used to rank Corporations. However, rewards for the highest ranking ones haven’t been decided yet. We have some ideas but we’d love to hear yours, so let us know if you have any in the comments!
Corporation Licences Interface
A Corporation Manager can assign roles to members of their Corporation, each with its own permissions: from managing assets and activating Corpo Permits to inviting or removing other members. Right now, roles follow a simple hierarchy with a single Manager at the top. In the future, we aim to expand this system to support more leadership models that will allow for a wider range of organizational styles.
Corporations can own shared assets such as ships and bases, which are not tied to a specific member. The number of shared assets a Corporation can own isn’t impacted by the number of members. Instead, it can be increased by Licences and Corpo Permits. Currently the maximum is set at 12 bases and 12 ships, although this is very expensive in terms of upkeep, this is in addition to all the personal bases and ships of each member. If a key member leaves your corporation it will leave a big gap in your operations that will need to be filled quickly.
The Exploration, Technology, Science (all implemented in the playtest) and Combat (not implemented yet) player experience paths each contribute to the corporation in unique ways.
High level Explorers allow other Corpo members to travel farther in the galaxy and exploit rarer resources.
Skilled Technologists build bigger bases with improved automation, and are instrumental in completing Requests.
Expert Scientists can create exotic materials and alloys useful to Explorers, Technologists and even some Requests.
Leveling these paths takes time, members should be encouraged to specialise, a good Corpo is a diverse Corpo
Corporation Permits Interface
To end this blog we would like to give you an update on the game and the ongoing playtest.
Development is progressing steadily, and we’re excited to see how players interact with Corporations after these changes during the ongoing playtest. Your feedback will be key in helping us shape these systems further!
We’re currently working towards moving from an Alpha version to a Beta version, once the transition is complete more playtest invitations will be sent out. This will likely happen in the first few weeks of February, instead of January as we mentioned in our last blog. This change in dates is to ensure that the new wave of playtesters will have new content to test as soon as they have access to the playtest, instead of having to wait for an update.
Thanks for joining us Pioneers.