This collection of rules is a guiding light for players that are perhaps unprepared for the harsh world of EVE Online. In this guide we discuss the politicking, secret games of personalities, and watching out for number one. This is a good primer for any new player that wants to succeed within a corporation or run one of his own.

#9 Limit Your Exposure

In society as in business, it is better not to put too many chips on the table at once. Don't overstate your zeal for an idea: it may not work, and you will be associated with that failure. Don't invest all of your spare ISK into a single business model: if it wipes out you will be ruined. At every opportunity where you can do so without it being obvious, hedge your exposure.

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style="font-style: italic;">Watch out for number one, and never expect others to not be doing the same.

Is your corporation living out of a low-sec or null-sec station? Or perhaps a POS in wormhole space? Do not keep more ships or goods there than absolutely necessary. At any moment, things could go belly up and you could be banished from the corporation, or someone could do some math about your ships left floating in that w-space POS and realize that they could make more ISK stealing from you than by running sites there.

It must not seem to onlookers like you are half-assing it, though. The task at hand must be completed, or at least it should be someone else's fault when it fails. Fly good ships, and use them as well as possible. But keep your stuff organized in such a way that it is easy to flee at a moments notice, and always leave a jump clone in that conquerable outpost, just in case.

#8 Never Forget The Mission

Don't make any friend that you can't screw over to win at EVE Online. Don't get over-invested in what your corporation is about, or what its goals are. Your goal is (assumedly) to get as rich as possible. Everything else is a distraction. Getting bogged down with complicated projects that do not directly relate to the accumulation of wealth and power is useless.

Of course, EVE Online is a sandbox game. You may well define your own goals to be something other than raw ISK. Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Maybe you want to found an alliance, or take one over. Maybe you want to destroy an alliance, perhaps from within. Maybe you want to fly a Nyx. Whatever it is, work out your plan and the steps you need in order to realize it, and never deviate from it, even when it will hurt someone in your corporation's feelings.

#7 Shun Failure And Love Success

Your goal as a member of a corporation, or a member of any group in EVE Online that profits by reputation is to be seen as active, competent, and a desirable ally. The last part is the hardest, but is easily ameliorated through deceit. Even when you are not successful, it is better to lie about it and seem so, so that people will be interested in being your partner in future endeavors.

Avoid black sheep, people with stained reputations. If you must deal with them, do so quietly and through back channels, so that you will not be associated with that person in the minds of other people. The worst thing is to be tarred incompetent purely by association.

When something goes wrong for you, do not "own" the failure by apologizing for it or otherwise admitting that you are at fault. To do so would be showing weakness in a way that people subconsciously understand to be incompetence. Nor, however, should you point fingers when something goes wrong. Doing so makes one seem shrill and reflects poorly on you. Rather, diminish your failure by discussing things in terms of luck. Should you fail to spot an obvious ambush and get a lot of friendly ships blown up, briefly bemoan your bad luck before discussing the positive points at hand. Perhaps you blew up a ship or two despite the overwhelming odds. Everybody loses a fleet occasionally, it's just a matter of time. In any case, your goal is to use language to re-frame failures as partial successes so that you will be regarded well by others and thus maintain your social standing. It wasn't that you failed to sense that trap, it was that the trap could have happened to anybody and this time it was you.

There is a fine line to walk, here. If you cannot walk it, or if people seem particularly incensed by your mistake -whatever it was- then you may be better off saying nothing at all. Eventually, the memory will grow dim and you will do something successful to eclipse that black spot in others' minds.

#6 Win Your Battles In Peoples' Hearts And Minds

Every battle in EVE Online is won on the battlefield of peoples' hearts and minds, not in space. This is something that every military in the world has realized, and for good reason. No alliance or corporation is defeated until its members believe that they are so, which can have as much or more to do with how you aggrandize their defeats and minimize their successes in the public fora, than with any facts on the ground.

If your followers are invested in your cause and in your image, it almost does not matter what happens in-game. They will be willing to re-shape their own point of view to match a more flattering version of even the worst events. They will be willing to take greater risks (like trusting you), dismiss their own losess, and generally go the extra mile because they think that you are winner. Never mind the so-called facts.

That said, people must be happy in order to be effective. If players are losing a lot of ships and becoming poorer, they will earn more ISK (or PLEX for it) if they think the cause is worth it, and they think they have a good chance to win. But once that player believes that defeat is likely, he will not bother. That kind of negativity is a self-reinforcing cycle that needed to be carefully guarded against.

#5 Fame Is Better Than Money

Tons of opportunities arise inherently from you being famous. This is true in real life, and it is just as true in EVE Online. Perhaps more so, since your accumulated ISK is generally a secret number that you alone are privileged to know. Whereas someone like Chribba, SirMolle, or the Mittani, can leverage their fame into fortune with far less difficulty. People with name recognition that they can rely on are more likely to be trusted, more likely to be indoctrinated into a power structure, and more likely to be kept in the loop or "collected" as a friend by other EVE players.

Although it is good to seek to increase your fame, it is better if you can get others to do so for you. Pull off memorable stunts or antics, be renowned for you generosity, rescue someone from a difficult situation, be free with advice and with "friendship", do not shirk from taking credit for what you have done or confirming others' high expectations for you. Whatever you can do to make yourself be recognized as talented and worth having around, is good. When you are famous, people will cut you a lot of slack, give you better deals, and even eschew blowing your ship up. It's the perk that keeps on perking.

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style="font-style: italic;">Flattery, loyalty, and a veneer of competence are the keys to promotion within nearly every corporation in EVE Online.

If your personal brand is popular enough, you will eventually be incorporated into the leadership of whatever organization you associate with. Bet on it.

#4 Within An Organization, Flattery Equals Success

The primary motivation of 99.99% of EVE Online politicians -that is, the people running corporations and alliances- is ego. Just like real life. The key to success within these groups is to cause the people in charge to associate you with positive emotions and usefulness.

When they think of your name, they should remember that you knew what was really going on. And by that, I mean that you re-framed the subject at hand in the most positive possible light with regards to them.

Positivity is also often confused with loyalty. If you constantly seem to affirm that your corporation or alliance is on the right track, your leaders will subconsciously associate you as "on our side" whereas people that disagree, complain, or point fingers are "on their side". Basically, your goal is to use flattery to no longer be The Other to these people. Get them to see you as a person, and your star will rise in the ranks. If your positivity is seemingly mirrored by expertise and competency as well, so much the better.

#3 Tersity Is Unto Godliness

The more language you put out there, the more you risk your reputation. The more words you deliver into a public area, the more things there are for people to potentially disagree with. Anybody that spends a lot of time arguing on the internet will quickly achieve an intuitive understanding of this principle. Your goal when communicating with others is to generate short sentences with solid points with which it is impossible to disagree. Ideally, they should be vague enough that any readers can project their own desired meaning onto them. Small talk (on forums, in alliance chat) is the worst, unless you are winning over someone in particular or otherwise pursuing your goals.

Things like "we are going to form a fleet tonight, get ready by doing this and this" are much better than a paragraph long explanation of the principles behind your decision, or a desperate seeming entreaty for people to attend and help out the corporation. Talking a lot makes you seem weak and ineffective, rather than a man of action and capability. Put succinctly: A coup de grace is better than a coup de blah blah blah.

#2 Nip Your Enemies In The Bud

If you can spot trouble a mile away, then you will be able to spot it when it is personified by other people in your corporation or alliance. A lot of the long term rivalries that develop in EVE Online develop via an accumulation of grievances over a longer period of time. If you suspect that something like that is developing between yourself and another person, look for an opportunity to get them removed sooner, rather than later. Ideally, you should destroy that person before they even have a chance to realize their enmity with you.

Do not be premature, of course. But if you are in a strong position and the other person is not, it is better to ruin them before they have a chance to dig in. Perhaps you noticed that the person was acting strangely, and suspect that they are a spy. Perhaps you have a seemingly accurate chat log with that person where they imply that they are looking to rip people off. Maybe you even have carte blanche to kick that person out of your corporation. However you do it, do it so that it will stick. There is nothing worse than tipping you hand too soon and having an embittered enemy sticking around for the duration.

#1 Trust No One

This is the most important thing to realize about EVE Online: Every single person in EVE Online would screw you over if they could, but players must pretend to be nice or risk being destroyed. While not quite true in every instance -there are some players that haven't caught on yet, or never will- you will never regret keeping this as a basic assumption in EVE Online. If you do your best to limit how other players can hurt you, you will never regret it. While if you do the reverse, trusting others in EVE Online freely, you will find it biting you in the ass again and again.

Even when people are not looking to screw you over at a particular juncture, they can still harm you. Incompetency can be just as devastating as betrayal. Even when dealing with your friends, you should take the fullest precautions. Does your friend want to borrow your Orca? Get him to fork over collateral "just in case you get suicide ganked". If people want small stuff, it is better to help them out than to seem miserly, but for assets or risks of any kind, caution will serve you better every time.