Upcoming Feature and Change Feedback Center

You sure do use quite weasel words quite a bit. I have not agreed with your analogies. Take the Tobin tax analogy, it is not like a Tobin tax. Tobin taxes are on both the purchase and the sale. They are designed to limit short term transactions. Tobin taxes are designed to limit traders ability to make money of small movements in prices, very small. You would buy and sell very, very quickly. To be clear, the Tobin tax is very small, something like 0.1% on both the purchase and sale. The idea is that even with such a small tax rate to buy then sell rapidly you'd need to see a very large movement in prices. Here is an example, the Tobin tax is 0.1% and the annualized domestic interest rate is 5%, then to hold a foreign currency for a year you'd want an interest rate of at least 5.2%. If you are going to hold it for a month, the interest rate has to be 7.4% and for just a day 77%.

Now if you want to say, "A tax reduces the number of transactions." That's different, but no damn need to bring in the name Tobin. All taxes tend to decrease the number of transactions.

As for price increase I have not argued there will be no tax increase. I have disputed the claims that the price will rise by the sum of the increase in the tax rate and the increase in the broker's fee. The actual price effect will be more varied and depend on the price elasticities of supply and demand.

As for these changes are you finally admitting that it may a lead to a portion of traders to move from NPC stations to citadels? That the effects on the in game economy will not be horrible? That the in game economy is far more robust than your earlier claims?



And this is helpful in terms of analogy as the analogy that my cat's are like lions. Yes, they are both members of Felidea, yes they both have tails and four legs, and hunt and so forth, but CCP has vastly more power in forcing players to comply with its desires than any player controlled entity does. Just as I don't have to worry about my cat's killing me with a single swipe of their paws.

I also love how you quote me and then leave off the but that shows how player run citadels are not like a government.

It is amazingly predictable. CCP suggests a change and there is a subset of players whose initial reaction is: "Oh my God, you just killed the game!" And yet....here we are. But who knows maybe this is the time, and those who said it would kill the game can come here and...crow....oh....wait.

Ok let me make something simple.

As the markets stand right now I can buy a Medium Pos, Reprocessing Array and Compression Array for around 315m isk.

In that I can "Reprocess all the things" Literally everything I mine.

So how about we look at the price differences (estimates)

For a Medium Citadel you are looking at..roughly..700m in materials to manufacture 1 Citadel (yes this is the high end)
We would need 2 Citadels to reprocess what we can now, so 1.4bn. Then we have rigs to buy, each BPO is estimated at 100m.
So I have no idea what they'll cost, 20/25m maybe per rig to start..I would need 4. This is all before fuel costs.

2 Medium Citadels would be possibly around 1.6bn (est) Could be nearer 1bn, who knows?

(this is before individual module costs)

For a Large Citadel 3-7bn in materials to build..rig BPO 500m each.

These are all before manufacturing costs and me/te invention costs etc.

So where exactly is the incentive to build one for small corps? It's much cheaper to absorb the NPC costs in a station and do everything there. Or stop compressing and just go back to selling raw ore.

Trying to recoup the losses in a small HS corp would be a waste of time, I was looking forward to Citadels, but the more devblogs I read the more nervous I'm getting.

Hey man, it was the 3rd line this time! You gotta progress that far to read the post, surely?

Yes, I'm saying the tax will reduce the number of transactions :P. (IN NPC STATIONS)

I'm glad we agree that prices will go up. (IN NPC STATIONS)

As for 'doomsaying' (using my own word), I think I was always admitting those things. I just didn't like some of those things. :P It's all about the continued NPC viability for me.

I never said my analogies were good, I tried to insist they were awful, but they were mine, so they worked for me :humph:

Anyway, now we've reach a point where we can agree on most things, what else is there to talk about?

I'd still like to see a usage-case analysis based on player corporations if CCP could rustle one up.

The incentive is that you get a more robust structure with more available features and an asset recovery system that protects you from losing all of the contained items. If you are running a big enough organisation that you are mining all types of high and low end ore and ice from all quadrants, then the outlay for a large citadel should be no problem. If you can't afford one then it sounds like you could just afford to mine two types of ice instead and grow organically over time.

Yup, on the market it's called Sales Tax.

I would presume so in terms of building. Supers, IIRC, require sov and I do not know if that is changing. Given proliferation, I'm going to guess, "No." But it is just a guess, so take it with a shovel of salt.

If this was in a dev blog somewhere I missed it. If it isn't, presumably they will tell us Soon™.

I'm not keen on the extreme rise in the broker fee and transaction tax, although this re-processing rig change is very much welcomed and a sensible move.

Why is this welcome? I can foresee it will be a PITA to manufacture Medium Citadel Rigs in decent volume owing to over-complexity. Picture this: a different rig for each of the missile damage type. This sort of hair-splitting does not incentivize industrialists to be citadel owners within high-sec.

Fitting a variety of refining rigs is just a larger scale of fitting cargo expanders. And we all know how well that turns out. Plus I would assume there will be further specialised rigs for manufacturing and research. That's before we get to rigs which enhance defense/attack.

To see the future we can gaze into the past. When the 11% tax was introduced, this was thought it was bring about the end of long term NPC corporation membership. A fixed 11% tax verses a 100% tax (i.e wardec) for some is a quick answer. So a slight increase in sales taxes, pfff, vs that 100% chance of attack. It is the same quick answer it was years ago.

I thought I would try to recap the market changes.

1. I think that we all agree that citadels must succeed for the continued health of the game. There is some contention on whether NPC stations need to be healthy.
2. I think that most of us agree that broker's fees need to rise some, but some including myself and possibly CSM believe that 5% is too high.
3. There is concern that these changes will hurt newer/average players because trade may not move into citadels. However, if trade does move into citadels this will help newer/average players.
4. There is some concern that someone (maybe null groups) will be able to dominate most of the ISK collected by players in high sec.

My thoughts on each
#1 Nobody knows where this is going to go exactly, so I would like to see NPC stations continue to be a decent alternative in the near future. I am not convinced that a flat increase on taxes and fees will drive traders out of NPC stations, and I do not want to find out how high brokers fees must rise to force traders into citadels. I am confident that these increases will cause inflated prices if traders stay in NPC stations.

#2 I can not believe that there is no push to apply a order modification fee to raise the amount of broker's fees collected. I feel like this would add a reasonable amount of difficulty to station trading. See my other posts to see why. Some of you in favor of these changes have said that you do not plan on moving into citadels. Then are these changes really serving their purpose?

#3 Conclusion: we need to find a way to move players into citadels that MOST can agree on and without relying on sticks.

#4 I think this has the potential to be very damaging for the game, but I am not sure if it is inevitable. I would like to see the creation of different trade guilds that manage XL market hubs and redistribute the wealth rather than funneling it to one place.


Realize that there are people outside of nullsec that want the game to improve and have been playing for years and will continue for years. The game is supposed to be a sandbox, so remember not to alienate anyone too quickly or easily.

The problem is Gevlon you keep down playing the amount of effort involved.

Your initial post was: Print 30 trillion ISK and never log in...'

Never mind that no ISK is printed, and not logging in would not dissuade competiton.

Now you have tried to argue that it will be a coalition like OTEC, where NS alliances will agree not to engage each other.

Problem is it is not just other NS alliances they have to worry about.

Have you ever even read history or are you too busy running nonsensical time series analyses to bother? If you had you might realize that guys like Rockefeller had issues with refineries opening up and making his life difficult. He had to keep on top of his game to ensure his market share was not eroded and in the end it was eroded anyways.

Whom ever wants to try and capture all of the HS broker's fees will have to constantly knock over any competing citadel. And in HS this is not exactly an easy task since capitals are not allowed in HS so the cartel to take over HS will have to be willing to do it only with sub caps.

You keep making the sneering statement that such a coalition can deploy 1,000 F1 pushers at the behest of poop socking trader like you. Problem is that has to be one of the most boring types of game play around. And it is not just Perimeter, but all the surrounding systems and the systems surrounding Amarr, and Dodixie, Rens and Hek.

You constantly down play the costs to make your hypothesis sound more reasonable, but in the end it is a load of dishonest clap trap.

Edit: And on noes...Gevlon is going to post tomorrow. Everyone take cover!!!!

But it's not about small groups being unable to prosper, it's about someone wanting all the benefits of a large citadel in a medium citadel so they don't have to fork out the isk. He asked what the benefit is if he can't do everything and I told him.

Well that's not entirely true. Chances are most trade will stay in stations with a sizable chunk moving to citadels for lower fees. Especially if they don't get CREST working for citadels. I certainly won;t be putting all my eggs in one vulnerable basket.

lol, no it wasn't. Stop being so bad at propaganda.

Sure you are. And to be honest mate, if goons want a citadel there nothing you can do to stop them. Other players perhaps, but since you go out of your way to cripple yourself by refusing to put in effort or work with other players and will only pay people pittance to do stuff, there's no chance of you having any meaningful impact.

I know right?