Your description works as well for 1 corp = 1 district... So why not multiply the chances, the battles per day, the "fake" production clones for the MOTHER corp (even if you can't share the clones between all the corps), possibility to lock districts from other attack with your own corps (if you have good sync, other corps won't be able to attack you !!!)

Organization, management, logistic, but still a kind of "exploit" in my mind...

If you attack your own districts in order to lock them, you have to be using all your available clones to attack all your districts everyday (leave one district unattacked and someone else will attack it). You'd never be able to produce more clones because the districts would be constantly 'flipped' by your own sub-corps, so you'd never be able to have enough clones to expand further than the few districts you claimed on day 1. You'd never build up clones and never earn any isk and never expand.

Just play the game on multiple districts. Wait for a window. When you've got one, you take a district for your mother corp...

Take it for 2 or 3 sister corps. Don't tell me that some corp won't never find 4-6 really active guys and confidence to hold the scuad leader role in sister corp. And who will attack everyday the "bigger and better" corp ?

The big problem suggested here is that you guys think that one corp (split into many smaller corps) will become invulnerable because they can claim large areas of space and then outproduce any other corp in terms of clones.

The big rebuttal is that you will be under constant attack on all fronts from day one. Even if you make a circle of self-attacks/district sacrifices against your own sub-corps to keep your districts locked, you'll never be able to produce any extra clones to be able to expand from your initial positions.

As previously stated many times now - you will struggle to even produce enough clones to attack a 2nd district from any of your sub-corps, when under constant attack from external corps.

Invulnerable, by all means nope. Just bigger and capable of attacking multiple targets.

What is "constant attack"? An 1 hour timeframe, when you can be attacked. 1 hour daily. How does a big corp utilize numbers in this 1 hour timeframe? By having many districts to multiply the usage of numbers.

There is no circle exploit or such, just plain and simple:
GÇó put placeholders on districts and play them as normal corps
GÇó instead of fighting for expansion, you remove placeholders and will not lose the attack clones
GÇó the above fortifies one corp in relation to the same corp fighting for districts and losing clones on hard attack

Again, think of the corps in relation to same corp not split placeholder expanding. The 1 hour daily fight goes for the good players that put the clones to best use. If you have a ton of members, you can just do many corps and feed the strongest child. Players are same - they just join as ringers.

To me, from the given info it follows that split expand is vastly easier and moresustainable than trying to eek out clones to exp.

By constant attack I mean every district being attacked in its window every day.

If you leave any district open to attack, it will be attacked by an external corp. Guaranteed. You will lose some clones - maybe not the entire district but enough to stop you from being able to expand beyond most if not all of your districts.

1000 corp ? And how many real threat for the best corps ? So how many time will they really loose clone ?

I know what you mean, it's just not enough for me.

I don't think the constant attack is actually related to the subject of split expand. Surely it makes expansion hard. Splitting makes it easier but won't ultimately allow you to hold any more (I never claimed this). What I claim is that split expand is a fast shortcut to your maximum districts.

The reason it makes expanding easy is that the expander corp will not need to waste clones on attack.

Will these structures on planets cost ISK from our corp?


GÇóCargo Hub: Provides a 50% bonus to clone storage
GÇóProduction Facility: Provides a 50% bonus to clone production
GÇóResearch Lab: Provides a 50% bonus to clone travel efficiency



Just wondering because some of us will have to pay taxes since there is no option. Giving a lot of isk to the corp so we can provide these structures.

I don't think the constant attack is actually related to the subject of split expand. Surely it makes expansion hard. Splitting makes it easier but won't ultimately allow you to hold any more (I never claimed this). What I claim is that split expand is a fast shortcut to your maximum districts.

The reason it makes expanding easy is that the expander corp will not need to waste clones on attack.

EDIT: I'm sorry for the unclear discussion, the potential of splitting is just getting clearer while at it. Right now what I see happening is:
1) corp splits based on how many fights they can sustain merc number wise. E.g. having 64 active every day at your defense frame allows 4 districts.
2) corp takes said 4 to start with, possibly more to narrow down the chances of failure and to get 4 good starts.
3) one of the 4, the main corp, expands to the pre defended districts by yielding fights on alt corps.

Gains as opposed to going 1 corp "as supposed":
GÇó fighting no show, one fight district flips as opposed to 300 clone districts with reinforcements that fight back. this for all your expansions, since they were pre taken and defended as individual corps
GÇó any spare clones on the alt corps can be used to counter attack (clone wars)
GÇó you can put more of your mercs in nullsec fights, providing content
GÇó if one of the starts fails, hop on another instead of trying to restart with pitiful 100 clones

Losses as opposed to 1 corp:
GÇó costs isk to set up
GÇó is tedious to manage
GÇó requires planning

The outposts mechanic could make this less tedious and public, widely used as opposed to shady try hard game. Still the issue of attack spam by making satellite 100 cloners and dropping them on distant enemies exists. You can do that by alt corps currently; outposts would be more expensive in isk, less on metagame and alt creation.

I don't think the constant attack is actually related to the subject of split expand. Surely it makes expansion hard. Splitting makes it easier but won't ultimately allow you to hold any more (I never claimed this). What I claim is that split expand is a fast shortcut to your maximum districts.

The reason it makes expanding easy is that the expander corp will not need to waste clones on attack.

EDIT: I'm sorry for the unclear discussion, the potential of splitting is just getting clearer while at it. Right now what I see happening is:
1) corp splits based on how many fights they can sustain merc number wise. E.g. having 64 active every day at your defense frame allows 4 districts.
2) corp takes said 4 to start with, possibly more to narrow down the chances of failure and to get 4 good starts.
3) one of the 4, the main corp, expands to the pre defended districts by yielding fights on alt corps.

Gains as opposed to going 1 corp "as supposed":
GÇó fighting no show, one fight district flips as opposed to 300 clone districts with reinforcements that fight back. this for all your expansions, since they were pre taken and defended as individual corps
GÇó any spare clones on the alt corps can be used to counter attack (clone wars)
GÇó you can put more of your mercs in nullsec fights, providing content
GÇó if one of the starts fails, hop on another instead of trying to restart with pitiful 100 clones

Losses as opposed to 1 corp:
GÇó costs isk to set up
GÇó is tedious to manage
GÇó requires planning

The outposts mechanic could make this less tedious and public, widely used as opposed to shady try hard game. Still the issue of attack spam by making satellite 100 cloners and dropping them on distant enemies exists. You can do that by alt corps currently; outposts would be more expensive in isk, less on metagame and alt creation.

You can't just say 'I know how this exploit could work but I'm not telling any of you' and claim something needs to be fixed or addressed. I thought this was supposed to be a constructive debate?

I'm still solidly of the opinion that you will never have the opportunity to consolidate either as a single big corp or multiple small corps because your districts will rarely if ever have the peace required to expand. Your sub corps will look small and weak, making them targets. Your main corp will be the target of larger corps who want to take you out of the picture early on. Mid-sized corps that try to fly under the radar may fair okay but with the corps:districts ratio so high nobody will be safe, especially early on. Who knows what might happen after everything settles down a few months later.

It isn't an exploit by any means, all the info to do this has been postulated and confirmed by foxfour that it is doable but likely to result in ISK loss, but thats the point of any sort of business model theres an initial cost and ledgers get balanced over time.

Corp splitting is part of the answer, fox four said it thats something a corp can choose to do.

How to then consolidate is entirely up to the the corp, it is doable but logistically a lot of planning and effort. I see the big picture and know it can be done,

How much it will cost is a different story. I wont even go any further ive given more than i should. Seriously this is the metagame part of the game and i shouldnt have to and wont tell anyone how to logistically accomplish this thats not my problem.

All ill say is reread the wiki and the dev posts, all the info and the postulations are there. Do the homework and crunch numbers beyond that splitting corps is not an exploit and structurally completely doable, but as everything CCP its going to be player driven they have given us the basic foundations to make it happen within the game.

/c

Missing from this discussion of mechanics is any mention of motivation.

Why as a corporation would I want to plunk down that first 20M ISK? What am I getting for my money? Is this a wise business decision? Is there sufficient ROI to warrant this action?

As described so far the only advantage of PC is to produce ISK, so I am buying future ISK with current ISK. There are two cases, either PC is an ISK fountain pumping more money into the DUST universe, or it is an ISK sink.
From what IGÇÖve read so far CCP wants constant warfare so itGÇÖs going to be a sink. Each battle will see significant clone and equipment loss. Sure, the winning side might break even or come out ahead slightly, but in aggregate there will be a loss with CCP raking its take off the top of each battle. By definition the average corp is going to lose half its battles and therefore end up with an overall ISK loss.

With no EVE link all that money is coming from corp members farming public matches for ISK. ThatGÇÖs a lot of farming, especially if you donGÇÖt get picked to join the A-Team for the actual battle. How long are members going to contribute? This feels like the current corp battle system with some window dressing. The only motivation to run them is relief from constant public matches.

The level of conflict has to be fairly low for PC to be an ISK faucet for a corp, and that means constant expansion of the frontier. If you make the districts worth too much you will motivate more corps to fight for them until they are once again unprofitable.
As I see it you just canGÇÖt balance it on an ISK basis. You have to be buying something else for your money than more ISK. What is that, and is it enough?

Can we please have an API available to us BEFORE this gets released?

Rookie corps will always struggle due to both ability and numbers but advanced corps can be just as competitive as the mega corps if they have the ability and numbers. If a corp can perform well enough to win every defense of their starter district without losing 40-60 clones, anyone can retain their position. The longer you retain your initial position, the more chance you have to gain a positive clone production rate and be able to expand. Try to expand too fast and you'll end up losing everything.

To be honest, everyone, even the mega corps, will struggle to expand, let alone 'conquer', even using the proposed mother/sister corp suggested above. If any one corp does manage to do well enough to hold more than 21 districts, it instantly has to double up on a attack windows, meaning 32 players needed online at that time to defend and enough competent players for every other hour of the day, unless they double up more. This will be difficult to maintain (massive understatement).

What you are getting for your money is a first glimpse of the Dust 514 end-game. One day this will be huge and hopefully encompass the entire of New Eden. It also gives you and your mercs something tangible to play for, instead of simply running the same old random matchmade blueberry-ful pub games.

You're right that it could be either a big sink or faucet but that is entirely dependent on how well your corp does. Manage to hold a district for a week or so and you're suddenly earning 100k isk for every extra clone produced. What else do you get? Loot! The best loot because it'll come from players you kill, unlike pub games atm. You could even earn aurum gear! Awesome tanks! Whatever you've seen other people using, that could be yours. I'd say loot alone is more valuable than any isk you'll potentially earn.

And you don't need to be constantly expanding to be profitable. Smaller corps won't be able to protect more than a handful of districts because of numbers but if you manage to hold them, you're in.

So if your corp is good enough to discourage attacks you can make money, otherwise your districts are a PeacocksGÇÖ tail, funded by contributions from public matches. Yes, you get loot, but the average team is going to lose more than they get in return because a certain amount is destroyed in battle. ItGÇÖs a zero sum game as the only assets in play other than the clones produced in district are those the players bring themselves. If clone production isnGÇÖt more lucrative than your battle losses you have an ISK sink that you need to support from pub match ISK farming. 40 clones is 4M. How much gear is that going to buy if you have to fight every day? One tank and a few proto dropsuit fittings? Can the average corp keep their losses down to that level? WeGÇÖve already heard complaints from some corps that 5M ISK contracts arenGÇÖt enough to make up their losses in the current corp match system.

Then that means they are using gear beyond their means to support, if you're making a loss because you're fielding proto fittings in every battle the answer is obvious, use less expenisve fittings whenever you can and only use proto when you absolutely have too