08 - Corporations and Contracts

Hello. Welcome back to APEX, and thank you for choosing the APEX Corporations & Contracts guide. This is an intermediate guide will guide you through joining a corporation, some of the features of joining a corporation, communicating with various members of the galaxy, and establishing contracts.

One way that members of the galaxy organize themselves, is through the establishment of corporations. By establishing a corporation, users can be represented by a single entity, received governorship dividends, and benefit from a production bonus by the establishment of a HQ on a planet.

To start a corporation, open up a blank tile and type in the command CORP. From here, you will be able to set the name, the code, and the starting capital that your corporation will be funded by. Now keep in mind, that only PRO licensees will be able to start a corporation. All other license levels will only be able to join pre-existing corporations in the galaxy.

Once your corporation is established, your CORP tile will change, and you will see a list of all the members in your corporation. Let’s move our attention to the NEW PROJECT button. It is here that you will be able to establish the Corporation HQ, which will provide a 10% production bonus to the planet of your choice that your corporation wishes to establish itself on. Keep in mind however, that your Corporation HQ will only be allowed to be built in faction-less space.

If you wish to invite someone to your corporation, use the USR command. By typing in USR, and then the person’s in-galaxy username, you can find the person in question. Then, by opening up their company’s name, you will see an INVITE button, which you can click to invite them to your corporation.

Now, one important aspect of the galaxy is communicating with other users in the around the universe. To do so, you have been given access to the general public channels that we discussed in the previous guide. However, if you wish to chat with users only situated on the planet your base is at, you can use the COMG command. First off find the unique identity of the planet your base is on. In this case, the planet is VH-331a. Then by typing in COMG PL-VH-331a, you can access a planet-wide comms channel to communicate with.

If you wish to just communicate with a user privately, use the USR command, and then click the button CONTACT USER. This will open up a private communication between you, and the other user.

Now, speaking of direct communication, one important lesson you will need to know when traversing the galaxy, is the use of local, and private contracts.

Contracts are agreements between you and another user for the payment, delivery, and shipment of a certain commodity or currency.

First off, lets talk about Local Market contracts. As mentioned previously, local markets are the planet wide bulletin boards that users use to post buy, sell and shipment orders. If you wanted to post one of your own, keep in mind this feature is only available to PRO licensees and only Basic licensees can accept contracts but not post any of their own. To start open up the local market on the planet screen of your choice. Once open, select the POST AD button on the top.

From here, you can set a number of parameters, but most importantly, the first one is whether you are looking to buy, sell, or looking for another user to ship one of your commodities off-planet. You can set the type of commodity, the quantity of the commodity, the currency you want to deal in, the total price. Be wary though, this is the total price of the contract, not per a unit of community, so some calculation is needed. You can also set the delivery time, and how long the ad is up. Governors of planets will set local market ad fees, so if your ad is up longer, you will pay a higher fee for the ad.

One important piece of business with a local market ad, is the minimum rating. In the galaxy, users are given a rating. You can find yours by opening up the Sidebar, and selecting your name. Only PRO licensees can have a rating, so if your rating is pending, it means you are a FREE licensee only. You can increase your rating by fulfilling contracts, maintaining a stable financial status, and being active in the game more.

Because the local market contract is a public contract, you can set the minimum rating a user must be to accept it. By setting it to A, you are essentially asking for only really experienced users to accept the contract. By setting it to P, you are allowing pretty much anyone to accept it.

Another recent feature of the APEX interface is the use of private contracts. You can access them with the CONTD command. You can start a private contract between you and another user only by clicking the Create NEW button. From here, you can name the contract, write some notes about the contract, and then select a template such as a buy or sell contract and fill it out as you normally would. The best part about private contracts is the feature of saving the contract, so you can quickly access it again if need be. Once your contract is finished, you need to find the user in question, and then hit send. The user that receives the contract will need to accept it before any business can be transacted between you two.

This has been the APEX corporations & contracts guide, and has been indicated as complete by the APEX module, so this video broadcast will now be concluded. Please continue further to learning about your second base, or the planetary governance guide. Thank you for choosing the Advanced System for the Facilitation of Production and Exchange for the Exodus of Mankind.