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PCO's don't make economic sense. It takes 13,333 robotics units to pay for 1 PCO, at 100% tax. Thats 4444 hours of production, just turning consumer electronics and mechanical parts into robotics, not making the electronics or mechanical parts. Thats over 6 advanced industrial facilities going 24/7 for a month. I don't think there are many planets that can produce that much, month after month.

The problem is that no one will be willing to put up a PCO, because it's essentially defenseless, can be put into reinforced mode in minutes, and isn't worth defending. Why would you defend a 80mil PCO with a fleet costing billions? Why would you risk a logi who is repping the PCO that is more expensive than the PCO itself? The income you get from it isn't that great. Why pay a merc corp to defend it? What merc corp would work for 80 million or less to defend a structure? More than 80 million and you buy a new PCO, not hire a merc corp to defend it.

The PCO needs to make a fair profit on his investment and risk. With the current system, you can't move enough resources through the PCO to recover your costs in a reasonable amount of time, and this assumes you won't loose a PCO. So only null sec alliances will use them, and then only so they can produce higher tier products, that can't be produced on a single planet. It won't be a profit making venture (the PCO itself). It makes no sense to import to a PCO, since you'll be taxed going in, and coming out, at presumably a higher rate than in high sec.

What would prevent a PCO owner from suddenly cutting off access to materials? You would have to keep the materials planetside until you are ready to pick them up from the PCO. Which makes the larger capacity of the PCO's pointless. Do you pay taxes when you move materials out of the hanger and into your cargo hold? I don't believe this is the way it currently works. I think taxes are paid when you export them to the CO. Does the PCO have access to things in the PCO? It makes PCO's a grieving tactic on PI, which makes it more likely just to launch stuff into space and skip the PCO.

As a PI person, I see me launching stuff into orbit as often as possible, and every 3 days going around to collect it. I avoid any taxes, any risk of loosing materials in a PCO, and any chance of being attacked at a PCO picking up my stuff. I then haul it to high sec to a production planet. It doesnt make sense to risk things with a PCO. What I can launch is my new limit of what I can produce, not what I can produce on a planet given it's resource concentration and my command center upgrade skill.

It follows that it no longer makes sense to max out my command center upgrades skill. I only upgrade it to the point that I can't launch all that I can produce.

I don't know how you make a PCO worthwhile to invest in and defend. It's pretty clear, given the feedback in this thread, people wouldnt allow neuts to use a PCO in null or in a WH. So the incentive to put up a PCO there is not income. Other than the cost of putting up a PCO, those in null and WH's pretty much carry on as before. This whole thing is irrelevant to them.

In low sec, you some how need to reduce the cost of the PCO to make it profitable to anchor and recoup your costs in weeks. In doing so, the lower cost it is to anchor, the less incentive there is to defend it. If you raise the cost of the PCO to make it worthwhile to defend, you'll never recoup your costs. So it's a catch 22, cheap enough to be profitable, or expensive enough to defend. I see only planets with very good resources even having a chance at a PCO. PCO's have to be cheaper then simply launching the stuff into space, otherwise no one will use them.

I see this falling out 1 of 2 ways. People put up PCOs, and they get knocked down, making it a losing proposition to own a PCO, because it takes so long to recoup your costs. So the new norm would be simply launching your stuff into space since there is no PCO to be had anywhere, which totally defeats the whole point of the new PCO system.

The other possibility is that PCO's aren't worthwhile to attack. You blow up a PCO, what do you get? With a POS, you get what's in the POS. With a PCO, would you get the resources that are stored there? Pfft, that would simply mean that a PI person would never store their resources in the PCO, making the larger hanger there pointless. Maybe the incentive is to put up your own PCO for income. I don't see a PCO as a real source of income given the numbers we have been given. What else could you gain? I don't see anything else. The result is that no one attacks a PCO, since attacking a structure that doesn't shoot back for no gain is pointless and boring. The result of that is economics is screwed up for a bit until things readjust, and we have exactly the same system we have now, just with some players making a few million ISK a month from PCO taxes which is essentially a long term investment, from a few planets that have high resources. Most planets never get a PCO. This means few PCO's around, higher PI material prices,

I tend to think that there will be few PCO's, since they are unprofitable and at risk. The new norm will be people launch as much as they can into space, haul it to high sec to a production planet. High resource planets are no longer as desirable, because you are limited more by what you can launch than what the planet can produce.

The new cost of PI materials will be determined by what can be launched into orbit in low sec or produced by those in null/wh space, and the cost of importing it to and then out of high sec production planets to produce higher tier products. I don't know what that number is, but I would think it's less than 100% tax, making PCO ownership even less desirable.

The system they worked so hard to design, falls flat on it's face and is self defeating. Instead of making PCO combat happen, it eliminates CO's from anyplace but high sec.

This will fuckup low sec with corps moving to make them all 100% tax regardless they do PI or not.
But will be fun in 0.0 and W-space.

congratulations CCP for making PI a worthless investment for the low sec.

paying 20 times higher fees will be fun i guess.

For you to produce stuff and launch it into space, it must be worth enough to cover the cost of launching it. Since the presence of a PCO provides cheaper option for exporting goods from the planet, those who use PCOs will be relying on the tax income from a number of people using the planet. A PCO will soak up the profit of one planeteer for 6 months at current prices. With the advent of destructible Customs Offices, expect to see all PI materials rise in price.

That customs offices will remain in hisec is a disappointment — they would have been a nice target for wardecs, and having them provided free and forever by CONCORD provides another bias towards hisec away from lowsec.

PCO is most definitely a feature intended for null sec, especially considering it is possible to set the tax rate to 0%, which immediately provides a material advantage over hisec.

something i just thought about .

are these new offices meant to be dustable ?

implementing dust mechanics into these might be the ideal way of handling some of the issues highlighted in this thread.

for example :
the structures are extremely hard to destroy .
but through dust they can be captured recaptured etc.

Nobody here voicing opposition because of increased risk of pvp. If you bothered to read (and more importantly, understand) the replies in this thread you will see what people are really opposed of: this particularly bad implementation of what supposed to be part of an amazing concept that links EVE and DUST worlds.

To me, the Devs did a good job on transforming Tyrannis PI to Incursion PI. The reception has been good, and it is good for a reason. People who did PI then and now knew the difference and saw the Incursion PI system is better. No need to over generalizing here. Yes, there are people who whine for everything, and there are people who whine for whiners. I guess you are referring to Incarna on your second paragraph. I am pretty sure the people who pushed for the idea of walk in station wanted a current implementation of Incarna--a single room with your avatar walking awkwardly due to bad control and ******** lightning effect.

Eve will always evolve and it's generally better to let players control more things in game... if the changes to implement makes sense. This particular implementation of being proposed here does not. I hope nothing has been finalized as there are only a handful tweaks needs to apply to lessen the negative impact before Christmas when this is finally implemented.

If the Future Vision video is to be believed, what CCP has on the drawing board includes bigger customs offices (beanstalks in fact) and planetary defences. So for the immediate future, I can only see customs offices acting as chew toys for bored capital pilots, but once DUST514 and the appropriate DUST/EVE links are implemented, I wouldn't be surprised to find that dumping a fleet of super caps on a fully upgraded planet is tantamount to suicide.

As a planeteer, imagine for a moment the implications of having a customs office with ten times the capacity, and no export tax. You and your friends could exploit every available resource on that planet, arrange for it to be punted to the customs office, then drop by once in a blue moon to pick it up in a freighter: the "economies of scale" lead to this operation becoming extremely profitable even when you're harvesting resources that would cause you economic loss in hisec.

Now imagine that you had a few planeteers dedicated to harvesting resources, and a few planeteers dedicated to planetary defences: these are the guys who have trained the specialised PI skills for ground based doomsday weapons, contracting with DUST mercenaries, and probably have their own DUST corporation on the side. The security team arranges the planetary defences, builds the customs offices, collects the customs tariffs in order to fund the planetary defences, and when the super caps arrive to challenge your sovereignty over the planet, they lose a titan a minute to the planet-based and office-based static defenses.

So calculate the tariffs on what a null sec planet could produce if you exploited every resource sustainably, and there's your budget for defending that planet.

Even better, it's pretty well documented which planets you need to control in order to provide the appropriate resources to build or fuel POSes, so it's pretty easy to decide which of your enemies planets you need to interdict in order to wreak economic havoc upon them. Thus the cap pilots end up having a purpose when blowing stuff up, and the fights will actually be interesting because the enemy planet will by definition be there already.

How will this work out in reality? Perhaps the null sec folks will decide that planetary defences are a waste of ISK, and that it's cheaper to let the planet fall and just take it back later. All I know is that back in the days of "Reach For The Stars" and "Spaceward Ho", the best tactic was a combination of moderate defence and extreme offense. A planetary cannon/doomsday might only be enough to wipe a few dreadnoughts off the field before the planetary weapon is itself wiped out: each dreadnought still represents material loss to the invaders, so to me those planetary weapons are worthwhile investments.

Will ground defences like POSes where the installed defences use "Artificial Stupidity" in target selection, locking and firing on random targets and not shooting any one target long enough to be a threat? Or will planetary defences use something like Sleeper AI: picking a likely target and focussing on it until it's dead? Then a Dust combatant can choose to enter the facility and take over the controls, either not firing at anything (because there is no defending fleet), or firing at specific targets (because there is a defending fleet) as called by the attacker's FC?

Enough babbling for now. I'm looking forward to what CCP has in store in terms of the DUST/EVE link.

It's my experience that in eve people will opt for control rather than a little profit on the side because the denial of a resource to potential enemies outweighs the isk, which they themselves use other means to get (or may even use just to isolate their planet for private use). It'd be trivial to make it happen without the wait and see prospect. In low sec, which is after all empire space, you could and probably should force the issue. If concord tax is going to be 11%, make the maximum cap at say, 15%. Prevent it being from being locked up to the public - and anonymize the tax data, including times e.g roll it up into one planetary export tax at downtime, so low sec pi ninjas can get their chance. Yeah, this is 'against' pvp - but that pvp is basically ganking a hauler, not exactly '~goodfites~'.

This is like sov lite, and gives low sec alliances the chance to exert some meaningful control to monetize real assets, not just use them as bait or totally shut down production to the enterprising small pi ninja (or 'entrepreneur', if you want). Small/medium alliances will compete to control the tax revenue, really small corps (individuals) that can't (and never will) become pvp oriented can still use low sec, aren't being forced out, and are incentivising someone to want to control the offices. It's like renting out your ports to companies rather than being state owned (i.e. like real life) - P&O don't get to say who uses the port, the government does. Thematically it's like concord contracting corps/alliances to take over this part of the universe. They get to administer it and take a cut. Now in 0.0 in your sov space that'd be different. Let them get shot down and lock out whomever the owner feels like, because they're the sov owner. I'm still pro to the idea of letting anyone anchor a CO though - not a lock and key held by the sov system, so that you have to actively police your space, especially the parts you're just sitting on to keep someone else from doing it.

I find myself quite enthusiastic about this idea. As others suggested I'd agree that leaving existing offices in place is a good idea, so production can tool up. And I'd also suggest to have a distinct spot customs offices will just spawn at when you anchor the office gantry, i.e. where they currently are. If you let people anchor them wherever, than they will find a way to put them within range of poses. Maybe you want that. Maybe not.

PVP corps would rather have the shiny killmail of a hauler filled with planet poop. tax rate doesn't matter. it's the fact that it'll get camped out by a stealth bomber or two waiting for a nice km. Which I'm probably gonna do btw. :))))

INDY TEARS COMMENCE!

I have a hard time figuring out what the changes are supposed to do. For me it sounds mostly like adding a whole lot of trouble to PI without adding much game dynamics. I suppose it may fit into a larger plan related to Dust but it's hard for me to imagine how that would work.

Currently PI is a low effort, relatively low income activity that is somewhat tedius but still pay well enough for some people to attempt it. Prices of PI products are pretty high right now, as I'm sure most POS owners would acknowledge. Adding more work to PI would probably increase the prices, somewhat offsetting the increased workload. But that also affects a very large part of the Eve economy, pretty much anything related to T2 and T3 products and the cost of running POSes. I wonder how high CCP would like PI prices to be, and how they imagine this price increase would shape New Eden.

Currently I imagine that PI adds a bit of extra traffic outside hi-sec, which I think is a good thing. It adds some dynamics even if they are slight. But with the changes I see a risk that a lot of PI production would simply be moved to hi-sec to avoid the hassle. The added dynamic is a questionable ability to shoot more structures. Even if the majority of customs office becomes publicly available and add income to the owners, this doesn't really add much dynamics, but just a slight trickle of passive income. In effect just moving ISK around without player interaction. And there is still the risk that most offices will be private, held by thousands of landowners in their own little corners. I don't really see much potential in this. Would people wage wars for customs office? In player controlled null-sec maybe they would, but in low-sec and w-space I doubt it. There is simply too much room and too little gain for this to happen. Although maybe there is a potential for the occasional drive-by shooting by a bored fleet.

My overall feeling is that since PI is pretty insignificant in the first place both economically and in terms of gameplay - why even bother. Some posters in this thread have exclaimed "Deal with it!", and my initial reaction would be that ignoring PI completely would be the sensible way to deal with a change like this. Unfortunately we can't ignore it completely because it has become an essential building block of the universe.




Some more specific issues:

- Corporation roles.
Corporation roles already are in a dire need for more granularity, effectively preventing organizations from growing organically. Having lived out of a wormhole for 2 years, I know everything about this. As another poster described so beautifully, either you give people the key to Fort Knox, or you tie them up so good that they need a Director's permission to go to the bathroom. There is no middle ground the way corporation roles are designed. Adding more bloat to this failing structure isn't good.

- Lack of stability
Managing a PI network is a pretty static affair. When a network is set up it stays put, otherwise the owner is facing some substantial retooling costs. Both in terms of time and money. For this reason the owner needs to assume that nothing changes in the foreseeable future. If there is a risk that the customs office will be locked down, blown up, or taxes increased ten-fold then it may not be such a good idea to plant a command centre on that planet in the first place.
Some kind of contract mechanic between the owners of PI networks and the owners of customs office would be needed. Trust isn't worth dipshit in Eve after all.

- Incentivising public customs offices
When Eve players have the choice of locking something down, or allowing the public to enter, we tend to go for the lockdown. The small amounts of ISK that a customs office can generate won't change this. Sure there will be a few centralized locations that could generate plenty of tax income for the office owner, but taking the vastness of the universe into account most planets won't see much traffic. The only reasonable thing for someone investing in a customs office would be to keep it private. This is especially the case where public access is a big security risk, as it is in wormholes for instance. There are no dynamics to be had here, all it will do is keep individual players and small corps locked even tighter up in high-sec.

I really do see this as a concern from someone like me that does PI in lowsec, sure call this a PI is broken rant if you like if not read on. I don't mind that you are making these changes in an attempt to make lowsec more inhabited and give the pirates an income and an invested interest to live there, by all means do but be reasonable.

As it stands sure you will make PI 5 times better in low and highsec but with giving the POCO owner the ability to set access restrictions to whatever level they like and to let them set the Customs costs if by off chance you get a pirate corp that will allow outsiders to use the POCO to anything they like its clear they will as there will be no incentive for the effort to protect this POCO i cannot see them allowing you access to it without paying through the ******* for it.

So as a non pirate your left with the option of hoping to god you beat these guys to it after patch DT to set one up and you won't be able to beat the blobs that will now move in for this feature. Or your left with the option of hoping to god they allow public access to the POCO but hope they don't charge obscene fees (I think we all know they will)

Last option is pretty much everyone that does PI in lowsec and not a part of a pirate corp/alliance will move back to highsec to the planets CCP think they have just buffed by 500% only to find thousands of other people forced to do the same thing.

Don't take this as a rant CCP i do like the concept behind the idea, but you have clearly ballsed this up on the first attempt.