EVE: Viridian Patch Notes - Corporation Projects And AIR Opportunities

EVE Online's Viridian expansion, set to launch on 13 June 2023, is the game's second full expansion since the return of the content format in November 2022. The patch notes are fairly extensive. Instead of just composing a surface-level single post giving my thoughts, I thought I'd do a little experiment. Are people interested in perhaps a little deeper coverage? I'm about to find out, as this post covers Corporation Projects and AIR Opportunities.

Corporate Projects - CCP has made strengthening corporations a priority and in Viridian the main system to accomplish the goal is Corporate Projects. Last week CCP introduced the idea to players in a news article.

At the heart of the improvements to the corporation experience in Viridian are Corporation Projects, a tool that enables leaders of corporations to create new projects that become visible to every member, allowing large and small corporations to be managed more easily. Player corporations significantly enhance capsuleers’ experience of belonging, achievement, and purpose in EVE Online, while also providing a source of pride and direction for many in New Eden. Corporation Projects will enable player corps to set goals for their members to contribute to, as well as providing them with the means to monitor member progress against those goals without having to leave the game. 

The patch notes went into further detail.

• The following projects are available: 
  
  
• Manual - A free form type project that is an empty canvas; it is flexible and can be used for any purpose, with the caveat that the tracking of progress is manual. 
• Deliver Item - Members can be mobilized to deliver items to the corporation, for the purpose of anything from buyback programs to the corporation acquiring materials for large manufacturing jobs. 
• Destroy Non-Capsuleers - Contributions to this type of project are made by destroying Non-Capsuleers, optionally in a specific solar system. 
• Damage Capsuleers - In a PVP fight, a member can contribute to this project by dealing damage to another player; thus being recognized and rewarded for their effort without having to strike the final blow. 
• Mine Ore - A project that can be used to incentivize mining in a specific solar system to for example raise its Industrial Index. 
  
  
• Corporation CEO’s and Directors have access to the Project Creation Tool which they can use to create up to 100 active projects. They also have access to a special tab for each project that displays each member's individual progress towards the goal of an active project and how much they contributed when the project is completed.
  
  
• Corporations with an office in either a Station or an Upwell Structure will have a new hangar called Projects. This hangar can have items dropped into it that are required to progress the Deliver Items project. Unlike other corporation hangars, this one does not have configurable access and is only accessible to either the corporation’s CEO or Directors. Other members have drop access only. 
  
  
• Projects can be linked in chat and other text fields by dragging and dropping. 

AIR Opportunities - Once the Corporate Projects are created, players need to know they exist.

• The Projects Tab and the AIR Opportunities window are inherently linked. Clicking a Project within the Projects tab brings a member to the Project’s entry in the AIR Opportunities window. 
  
  
• For a corporation member simply looking for a Project to work on, the AIR Opportunities window will be their primary means of accessing Corp Projects.

This is a new interface which replaces the old Journal and is intended to be a counterpart to The Agency. Where The Agency is a catalog of content, Opportunities is the presentation of content available now and could be of interest to you.

Last week's news article explained the end goal of AIR Opportunities in greater detail:

AIR Opportunities (and Corporation Projects) will assist players with being aware of what matters to their corporation and accessing activities that directly contribute to achieving those goals. This reduces the need for new players to check in various locations for things to do, as this will be the hub – or heart – where players can decide what they want to take part in today. 

When a player makes progress against one of their AIR Opportunities or chooses to opt in to or track an AIR Opportunity, it will be represented in the active tab of the interface. This active tab will take on all the functionality of the current journal but will expand it by tracking any content that is represented as an AIR Opportunity. The opportunities can be shared by linking them in chat channels and EVE mails (drag and drop to create a link to specific opportunity). 

Hopefully this post has helped explained what CCP hopes are very important changes to the way players manage player groups in EVE. For a long time corporations and alliances have relied on outside services to manage their members. The largest and most successful often have an IT group that rivals those of many businesses. If systems like Corporation Projects and AIR Opportunities can help move some of that effort inside the game client, then the developers will have accomplished their goals.