Thoughts on the Metacorp

There's one group that will always be loyal, that will never betray you, that you can count on for money, ships or whatever else you need, that will check prices for you when you need it, that will always agree with your decisions. You won't find them on any ticker. They're the metacorp.

The metacorp, short for metagame corp, is all of the characters in all of the accounts that you own. I know a lot of people who at least dual window, keeping a miner, trader or shuttle scout in the secondary window. In some ways, this metacorp matters even more for the spy than it does for the PVPer who funds ship replacement with mining. But even for the non-infiltrator plaeyr, it can be useful to consider how your various toon interact with each other. Who makes the money? Who does the scouting?
Let me give an example:
I've got two accounts. ABC's entire account is essentially "burned" since any big alliance will want an API key that shows all characters. His alts will stand up to casual inspection but if someone really starts digging, there's a body hopping Gallente Reborn staring back at him saying "hi, I'm a spy". So right off, this is the home of my trader alt. . .who, through a weird twist of fate is part of a nullsec alliance. My essential, day to day ISK making will probably always come from this account.

My second account is currently training for Covops and cyno for an amusing side project I have in mind. He might make some money at it, might form a corp or any number of other things. He won't be doing it soon, though. In some ways he's the most amusing of my current "bodies" or "toons" or whatever you want to call them but he's not going to be PLEXing my accounts in the near future and he needs time to grow into my goals for him.

OK, so that's three out of six slots on two accounts. Both of them have training queues that will last months. So what to do with the other slots? Well first, each account has an NPC corp, totally unskilled shuttle pilot. Each exists for price checks or advance scouting for the opposite account. If I ever get a third account, though, it won't need a shuttler. I can use one of the other two. So to recap we have:
Account 1:
ABC - the public face of the spy operation
Trader/explorer: who makes the money
Shuttle pilot

Account 2:
Secret project X guy
shuttle pilot
?????

The ????? spot is spoken for, too. This will be my first real infiltrator, a bought character. Checking all the characters on his account won't "burn" him, in fact it'll reduce suspicion. He'll be on the "good guy" account while the money to purchase him came from the "bad guy" account. The only downside to this is that I'll have to pick whether the bought infiltrator or Project X gets to train. So all of this may necessitate a THIRD account. Considering I'll be 1bil a month in PLEX and 10-30bil to buy and outfit a good PVP toon, it may be a bit before I really have to deal with this. It might be interesting, though, to look at your own accounts and see what the lineup on each account says about the characters in it. Since I don't know how other people think about these things, I'd love to see an example of how your metacorp is laid out.

Quick Update

Well, the real world gig worked out so well that all of this week has been taken up with planning and executing for other things. However, I did start an "invite a friend" account. My new alt is making a beeline for cloaky ships and covops cyno. If anyone needs a cloaked propaganda officer to drop on the enemy and commence psyops, drop me an EVEmail. The basic plan goes like this:

Step 1. Infiltrate enemy system.
Step 2. Hide out and cloak up.
Step 3. Stay online 23/7. Make occasional posts in local/region/constellation designed to annoy and/or demoralize (don't want to give away too many details. Suffice it to say I'm a good demotivational speaker)
Step 4. Watch frustration mount.
Step 5. Profit!