about a week into eve and I finished the tutorial and have been slowly going through career missions. The reason its been taking me a bit more time is cause when i get back and get a bit of downtime I try to do some trading in Jita (which I now understand is the main trade hub). I have been doing pretty well trading. My question is do people play eve just to trade and are traders accepted into Corps and Alliances? If so, what is expected from them?
There’s only a handful of corps in EVE that are “trade” corps. Most are just alt corps/alliances of much bigger entities. Trade in EVE is mostly a side income, you can turn large sums, however due to PVP being the best content in the game; trade takes a back seat as an income rather than “career” in the traditional sense.
If you have more questions just @Peta Chieve in the discord linked below and i’ll answer any questions you’ve got.
Trade in Eve is PVP - there are 2 parties to each transaction! As a new player you can provide value to any corporation by doing price checks. As you earn trust you can do purchasing and sales for the corporation, manage their buyback program, contract courier services etc…
Some people like to shoot at stuff and that’s an important part of Eve. There wouldn’t be a market if stuff didn’t explode but you also interact, competitively or cooperatively, with other players in the markets. The nice thing about the markets is the PVP is asynchronous - parties to the transaction don’t need to be logged in at the same time and place, which makes it a lot easier for people who have real life constraints on their play time.
Corps are quite volatile in their staff, so don’t expect to get into a rl corp but more a bunch of dudes who try to reach a goal together, but do not receive a pay cheque from the corp. There are many corps that accept newbies and show them the basics and help them to find out their strengths. Generally they are very happy if someone with talent in a certain field helps with their daily business.
As you are new I highly recommend to have a look in all the aspects this starter corp can show. Especially PvP training is essential, you can’t avoid being attacked, but you can understand what attackers do. You have to train countermeasures if you want them to be successful. Another field is fitting, the tips and saved fittings from vets are gold for newbros.
And of course there are business corps. Some players are just playing for business, and they like it. You may have a look at the Recruitment Center.
Always have in mind: All you need to quit a corp is a few clicks.
The CEO/Directors can give you access to the corp. hangars (for items) and corp wallets (for ISK), if they trust you. Once you have access, you can take everything out of there and put it into your personal hangar / wallet. Nobody (but you) has access to take stuff back out of your personal hangar and personal wallet.
Because of this game mechanic, it’s very unlikely that the CEO/Directors will trust you with the corp or alliance wallet. By necessity, some funds are set aside to pay office rental and other fees, and some of the veterans who have been in the corp for a long time may be trusted with access to these funds, but there’s no guarantee that they won’t take stuff and run.
But don’t let that discourage you. You can certainly ask to trade for the corp, and see what they say. They’ll likely give you access to a smaller sum, to start with, and possibly increase it if their trust grows. As the others have said, though, it’s easier to build a relationship with the rest of the corp by participating in activities (PVP or PVE) that the corp organizes for everyone, than it is to ask for access to money from the start, and then build trust by not stealing.
EDIT: Corps don’t recruit “traders,” and they don’t recruit “miners”, “remote repairers” (healers), etc. Any character can train anything, so unlike other MMO’s where they may be lacking healers or tanks or whatever, in this game it’s a simple matter to just add some skills to the queue and voila. It’s safer to just ask the existing members, hey guys can you train up some logistics ships for remote repair, than it is to recruit outsiders who have those ships unlocked. So as a result corps don’t look for roles, they just look for “active, trustworthy players, who have compatible personalities and like the same jokes / activities that they do.”