¶ Introduction to LinkNet
The LinkNet is a community of different corporations and players who all have their unique playstyle and focus on EVE and may operate in different areas of New Eden. Despite this fact the corporations are interacting and playing together whenever possible. This allows both individual members and other corporations to get a glimpse of different playstyles and careers in EVE without the need to dedicate their characters on the gameplay style right away. This also makes it possible for you to keep on playing with your old friends whenever your decide that it is time to try something new and join a corporation within the community that is doing something different than your current corporation.
LinkNet is a neutral state who only operates on corporation level in order to try to provide a vast variety of different type of gameplay opportunities for all types of players. While many of our member corporations are part of other alliances and EVE coalitions, we do not hold any standings or opinions against those larger entities within LinkNet. The only standings we keep track on community levels are the standings for our member corporations within LinkNet. All of the other standings are internal matters for each different corporation.
We allow free movement within and outside of the LinkNet community by allowing any member to advance into any corporation or alliance, may it be part of our community or not. Obviously we try to serve different types of gameplay within the community and keep our friends with us, but whenever this is not possible we do not favour or boycott any EVE corporations over another.
For a normal line member LinkNet means free will to do whatever you want to do. We raise joint operations in different areas of space so that you would get a better idea what you can do in EVE and seek to help you find the best possible corporation and gameplay for your personal needs. If that corporation can be found within the community then it also means that you do not need to let go of the old friends you have been playing with before when you move into new areas in EVE.
Most of the new LinkNet members start their journey from the entry level corporations which have very laid back attitude and low requirements. These entry level corporations do not have any mandatory operations or playing hour requirements. As you grow older and figure out what you want to focus on you are able to move to the other more specific corporations, which may have higher requirements for their own members and provide more dedicated content. You are also free to keep on playing in the entry level corporations if you feel like that the laid back attitude is just what you need.
For corporations to LinkNet means a way to offer their own type of content for different types of players as well as an easy way for finding new players to their corporations. They are also able to learn from other LinkNet partner corporations about their solutions to overcome different types of problems in EVE and to provide different type of content in different areas. As the community itself doesn’t put any requirements on its partner corporations such as mandatory deployments or fees to pay the decision making powers for each corporation remains within that corporation.
¶ Core values
The primary goal of the LinkNet program is to create a community where each different type of player are able to enjoy the game and pursuit the goals they have set for them.
Our other goals are:
- To create a community of players that would have fun and interact with each other’s while playing the game despite their real-life divergences.
- To provide a friendly and mature community that respects all types of players despite their in-game orientations.
- To help individual members to find active corporations that suit their personal game play needs in EVE Online
- To help corporations provide content across of the whole community and help them pursuit their own goals
¶ LinkNet Community Structure
The following section will you an idea how the LinkNet community is structured, operated and kept intact. It aims to paint a clear picture for each community member so that they would understand the mechanisms that we are using to keep the community functional and how we are able to allow autonomy for our member corporations.
EVE is a massive game and there is a lot to do in it. For this same reason a single corporation or alliance simply can’t provide its members with all the possible content. To fix this we have created the LinkNet community that has members from different corporations operating in different locations.
¶ Membership levels
There are several different membership types for community member corporations. You can find the explanations and requirements for each type in here: Requirements for coalition corporations
¶ Joint operations
Each corporation in the community has the ability to open their own type of content and fleets towards other community members. By doing this they allow members outside of their own corporation who are part of the community to gain a trial sneak peak of the corporations content.
By allowing players to get a sneak peak at your operations you are able to get to know to them before inviting them to your own corporation.
By offering fleets and content for other community members you also educate them about the different types of things they can do in EVE.
¶ Standings
Each corporation or alliance that is part of LinkNet may be also part of other coalitions or alliances.
The most typical case is for a null sec corporation to be part of LinkNet, their own null sec alliance and their null sec mega community. However only the corporation that is officially part of LinkNet is treated as a community partner while the alliance and mega community are simply neutral states toward LinkNet.
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Each linked standing our partner corporations may inherit from their own entitie parters such as alliances or coalitions will be ignored on community level. While the alliance and community may be blue to the community partner corporation they hold no standings with the rest of the community partners.
community only operates on corporation level regarding memberships
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¶ Conclusion
By doing this we are able to provide different type of gameplay for different types of players while still playing the game together. Many of our partner operations and activities are open for any of the partner entities to join if they choose to do so. For example pvp fleets, special events and mining fleets.
¶ Interacting and playing together
The key for our community success is for each of our member entities to interact and play together whenever that is possible. It is obvious that players from a high sec corporation can’t be allowed to wander into null sec alliance territory as they would show neutral to the null sec alliance and be killed sooner or later. However the null sec players that are part of the null sec corp inside LinkNet are free to come to high sec space and operate in the area of the HS corporation.
In order to cross borders with communications all general chattering that is not classified as op sec should be done on the public channels that the community has. This applies both in and out of game channels. This way as people from different corporations are interacting they learn about each other’s. When people know about different activities and corporations in the community it is easier for them to transfer to a corporation that matches the most their desired gameplay.
This again makes it possible for you to not to lose any friends even if you would move to the different side of New Eden into a totally different type of gameplay, all your friends can still be found from the global channels!
¶ Technical solutions
As the community has entities operating in different areas and as we do not want to restrict their gameplay and allow them to have 100% autonomy over their own corporation we have created some technical solutions to keep our entities together as a community.
While there is a high sec alliance for non war decable corporations (silent company) there are plenty of corporations that can’t or do not want to join it for several different reasons.
¶ Standings
Standings is what determines the relationships inside of EVE. Each LinkNet entity is set to +10 or +0 and labelled as LinkNet partner. This way people know who their allies are in-game.
Standings are maintained via a standing mailing list. When a standing needs to be modified it is the responsibility of each corporations leadership to do the necessary changes to their own corporation changes. This is the largest difference to an alliance with one player managing all of the different corporation standings versus a corporation that is not in the high sec alliance we have.
¶ AUTH and ESI
AUTH is our central access management system that manages access outside the game. Your access to our external systems depends on your corporation status ingame.
AUTH is linked to your eve character with ESI endpoints. You log in with SSO with public scope only which allows AUTH to determine the corporation you are in.
Based on your corporation you are placed inside groups. Each group may have access to different places and systems. This way we are able to restrict access to channels that may contain sensitive information for players that are not part of your group.
Different groups can be assigned and applied to via AUTH The principle is exactly the same as it is with the corporation groups: they restrict your access to certain systems.
Groups are primarily used on Discord where all of your groups are synced on the discord groups automatically. This allows community members to access LinkNet global channels and restricts guests only to the public rooms. No manual work is required when a player joins or leaves the community corporations as all information is pulled via AUTH and updated on the rest of the services. Players can be given groups such as fleet commander, which allows to do certain things on discord like ping or see sensitive channels.
Similar SSO sytems are used with our other external services.
¶ Goal
The goal of LinkNet is to allow different types of players to play the game the way they want to play it. It aims to keep you in touch with the friends you have made over time while allowing you to transfer to different corporations that better match your game play.
The goals of each different LinkNet partner corporations are up to them to decide. They may change over time completely over. In situations like this the LinkNet structure allows players to advance again to another corporation if the new change does not match their desires in eve.
The secondary goal is to help people find the right place they want to be in EVE. This is why we are trying to have different corporations in the community in different areas so that they would each bring something in to the community as in terms of content.
¶ Rules
In order to keep our community of thousands of players as a friendly and a nice place to play we have set some ground rules that apply on each member within the Linknet partner corporations. With these rules we are trying to keep our focus on EVE and on enjoying the game with players from all over the world with all types of ideologies.
The rules that are currently in effect can be found from here: community Rules
¶ Logo
The high resolution version of our logo can be found from here:
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