COMPANIES

A company is a legal person: it owns ships and stations, signs contracts, and has a controller who gives its orders and owners who hold its shares. Who stands behind a company is private.

Companies

• A company is a player account with no hull. It has its own map, events, contracts, tags, groups, nodes and standing orders.
• A company's command posts are its own and those of its controllers.
• GET /v1/me lists the companies a player controls or holds shares in, and those whose control is offered to it.

Incorporation

• POST /v1/companies, with a station_id and a unique name, founds a company at one of the founder's stations, which pays the incorporation fee as slag.
• The founder becomes its controller and holds all its shares.
• It registers in the station's system and receives a copy of the founder's charts, sightings and finds.

Acting as a company

• The X-Company: <id> header acts as a company in any request. It works for any key above the company in its chain of control.
• POST /v1/companies/{id}/key gives a company its own API key, replacing any it had. That key acts as the company and the companies below it, never above. DELETE removes the key.
• A bot holding a company's key touches only what that company and its subsidiaries own.

Hand-overs

• POST /v1/fleet/ships/{id}/hand_over and POST /v1/fleet/stations/{id}/hand_over, with to_id, give an idle ship, or a station with no work under way, to the same player or a company in the same hands.
• The hull, a ship carrying a courier job, and a station with open contracts cannot be handed over (cannot_hand_over). Payouts waiting at a station stay collectible there.
• A hand-over fails with claimed while another key holds a claim on what it hands over, and ends the claims on it.
• What is handed over leaves its old owner's nodes, tags and schedules, and stops hosting their nodes.
• transfer moves cargo between any ships and stations in the same hands.

Shares and control

• POST /v1/companies/{id}/shares, with to_id and shares, gives shares to any player or company (shares.moved).
• Control passes only with the receiver's consent. POST /v1/companies/{id}/control, with to_id, lets the direct controller offer it to any player or company (control.offered). Nothing changes until the receiver accepts.
• A company has at most one open offer; a new offer replaces it. DELETE /v1/companies/{id}/control withdraws it (control.withdrawn).
• The receiver sees the offer in control_offers on GET /v1/me: the company, never who offers it.
• POST /v1/companies/{id}/control/accept, sent by the receiver, passes control (control.changed). An offer that no longer exists, or was made to someone else, fails with not_found.
• Control cannot loop (control_loop), checked at the offer and again at the accept; shares can.
• A change of control removes the keys of the company and every company below it.
• A ship hand-over is an order to the ship, so it takes effect when its packet arrives; until then the ship obeys its old owner. A station hand-over and an accepted change of control take effect when they resolve.
• An order already sent as a company still runs after its control changes.

Payouts

• POST /v1/companies/payout, acting as the company, sets goods aside at one of its stations, split among owners by share in whole units (payout.owed).
• GET /v1/payouts lists what is owed. POST /v1/payouts/collect, with a ship at the station's dock, collects it (payout.collected).

The registry

• GET /v1/companies and GET /v1/companies/{id} show each company's name, registered system, ships, stations and filings.
• Filings: incorporated, asset_in, asset_out, contract, payout and leak. A player on the other side of a filing shows as "a private party".
• Owners and controller never show in the registry.

Claims

• A claim stops two controllers dispatching the same thing: it holds a ship, a facility or stock at a station for the key that sent it.
• Every order records whose key sent it as sent_by. An order from a trigger or schedule counts as sent by the key that set it up.
• POST /v1/claims, with one of ship_id, facility_id, or station_id with goods, plus minutes, claims something the acting company owns, for a limited time (too_long). A claim on a ship travels to it like any order.
• While a claim holds, an order sent with another key to the claimed ship or facility, or transferring to the claimed ship, fails with claimed.
• A stock claim fails another key's order that would take the station's hold below the claimed amount.
• Claims stop orders, not work already under way. Research and study at a station leave labs another key has claimed alone.
• A claim ends when what it holds is handed over or wrecked.
• Claiming again with the same key renews a claim. POST /v1/claims/{id}/release ends it early, only with the key holding it.
• GET /v1/claims lists the claims on what the player owns, and whose key holds each (claim.changed).

Audits and leaks

• POST /v1/companies/{id}/audit, with a ship in the company's registered system, takes time and pays a fee from the ship's hold. Each repeat audit of the same company by the same player costs more.
• An audit reveals, to the auditor only, the company's direct owners, their shares and its controller, as of the tick it finishes. An owner that is a company needs its own audit.
• GET /v1/companies/{id} lists what the player has learned as known, each with its tick.
• The audited company and its controller receive company.audited, which does not say who. The auditor receives audit.started and audit.done.
• POST /v1/companies/{id}/leak makes who is behind a company public: by an owner or the controller, or by an auditor with audit_id. The registry files it as a leak by "a private party".
• Audit records cannot be traded.