Well the individual merc gets paid with battles in PC.

If you lose, each player gets loot which might not cover what he lost in fittings.

If you win, you're guaranteed 12 million ISK to your team if you lose no clones yourself. That's 750k ISK + loot each player will get.

If you win, but lose 100 clones yourself you'll get 20 million ISK to your team. That's 1,25 million ISK + loot to each player. With 100 deaths it would be 6 deaths each on average, so it should cover each player's loss.

All of this require trading or corp hangars of course, since the loot you get will probably be useless for you (getting HMGs when you're a sniper etc).

If most of your income is derived from your direct involvement in PC battles then what happens to all those players who are not good enough to be on the primary 16 person team but is still required to contribute via corp taxes.

For example you have a corp of 50, 100, 200 + members then you will work out who are the best 20 or 30 players etc and only use them for PC battles leaving the remaining 20 to 170 players with nothing but a continuous drain on their wallets while those 20 to 30 players live it up in the protos you paid for and still make a profit on each of the battles they are involved in.

The idea floated that anybody who contributes Isk regardless of whether they are involved in the actual battle is a good one. Profits from a district should be solely based on the Isk invested by that member. For those that actually fight in PC their bonus income will come from the salvage, or a percentage of it, that they receive from a successful attack or defence of a territory since all the equipment used will come out of the corps coffers.

For those corps, which are not made up of good friends and families, who do not make a profit or at least offer something else desirable like training will find that they will loose their lower ranked members fast.

I would hate to see a situation where the majority of the lower ranked, non elite players, end up creating mini corps on their alt toons because they get nothing out of larger corps.

It doesn't have to be about Isk but corps must foster strong and happy relationships with all of their members or risk loosing them and their Isk.

I think you're pushing the idea of balance and equity a big too far. We aren't workers. No one owes us anything. We aren't indentured servants. We owe corporations nothing. If you want to have individual wealth, I say fight in public matches or do some PvE. If you want fame, infamy, and to be part of something bigger than yourself, you should join a corp looking to enter PC.

It would be really nice if shares in EVE/Dust were actually traded on a stock exchange. The current mechanic stinks, but it does have the ability to pay dividends for instance.

If shares were actually tradeable (and classifiable - Voting/Non-Voting/Preferred), then people could make money several ways- paychecks, dividends, daytrading, and long-term investing.

I think most of those ideas, while good, should stay within the realm of player interaction rather than be hard coded mechanically. The exception is the idea of shares, it does seem to me that the ability to invest in a specific area and have that tangible location also provide a tangible and direct payoff would enhance immersion and corporate cohesion.

Just to reiterate, I think a good corp should be providing a symbiotic dynamic with it's membership but very much believe that should be in the hands of players rather than hard coded into the UI. Providing tools which players can corps can opt into/out of on the other hand is purely a step forward and I support that concept fully (the suggestion of shares works well as a possible example).

0.02 ISK
Cross

I respect your opinions, they are consistently reasonable, but I disagree about these things not being hard coded.
Seems odd to me that mechanics for corps to automatically take money from members should be hard coded in the game, while systems of reciprocity should not. I don't see why one is ok while the other is not.
Corps could negotiate and collect money from members without it being hard coded in the UI (though I am in favor of an automatic tax system if systems of reciprocity are given the same treatment).