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I don't disagree with much you said, but it's not the whole picture.

You assume that a PCO will be profitable. I don't see how it can be, not within a time frame that is on par with other ways to invest your ISK. So it makes sense to invest your ISK in other ways where there is greater return.

I really suspect that putting up PCO's will be pretty much ignored by alliances, since the alliance wouldn't benefit much from them, and it's 1 more thing to deal with. That leaves it to alliance members to make the investment, and guess what, they can't because they dont have the roles to do so. Basically null sec alliances, and perhaps WH corps won't screw with them, they have better more profitable things to do with their time.

I would love to see the proportions of PI stuff coming from high sec, low sec, null, and WH. If my guess is correct, the greatest proportion comes from low sec. WH logistics is a PITA getting to market. Null sec alliance members are doing some, but are probably more interested in PvPing, running plexes and ratting. I don't see that changing.

A big part of your argument is that PCO's will be profitable, both to operate, and to use as a PI.

Here's some real world numbers. Current tax rate is a 5% tariff, doubling to 10% in high sec after this is implemented.

I just got some 1960 units of reactive metals from a CO, and spent 1489 in taxes, and that would go to 2978 (if it were high sec). If I used a PCO, that had it's tax rate set at 100%, I would have paid 29780 in taxes. That's 1 days production, so in a month, I would spend 893400 in taxes. At command center lvl 4 skill, that's maxed production for that planet. If I had lvl 5 skills, I could add about 17% to that by adding 3 more extractor heads, to my max of 20. That brings the max income from me to the PCO owner to 1,045,278 ISK per month.

So in 80 months, you would start to see a profit assuming I was the only person there, and you never get attacked. Now lets also assume that there are 10 people on the planet doing PI, and they are all doing the same amount as I am. In 8 months, you would start to see a profit, and your max profit per month would be just over 10mil? Also, don't ignore the fact that I am sure many people don't use PI to maximum effect and that some are idle a considerable amount of time. I don't think planets can sustain 10 people doing PI on them, not with depletion the way it is. Where is the money????

For there to be incentive for me to use your PCO, your tax rate must be lower that my launch costs. If it costs more in taxes than to launch, I launch all I can and only use you when I have no other choice. You might screw around with your PCO settings, so I can't get my materials, and there is the risk of getting ganked while picking up materials at a PCO. If I launch, I don't have either of those risks. I suspect that currently it is less expensive to launch than it is to pay 100% tax. This means that you would make less in taxes since you don't tax all I produce.

According to the dev blog, they are "Making planetary taxation a profitable business!" and " EVE Online should not be about bowing to NPC authority, it should be about player-to-player interactions".

I think I made a case that a planetary taxation is not profitable given the numbers CCP gave us. Since profitability is questionable, PCO's would be rare, there would be few to attack and few to camp, thereby decreasing the desired player to player interactions from it's current state. You just go to the launch, pick up your stuff and go. It's safer than going to a PCO that might be camped.

You might make an argument that PCO owners would get import taxes as well as export taxes. I can have a production planet in high sec, where resource density is absolutely meaningless since I am extracting nothing, and only pay 10% in both import and export taxes.

It costs me 15 ISK to export a unit of reactive metals. It costs me 6000 ISK to export a robotics. It requires 106 units of processed materials to make 1 unit of robotics. So the more I produce on a planet, the more tax I pay. It only costs me 1600 ISK to export enough processed materials to make a unit of robotics. The clear incentive, dont make higher tier stuff on a planet with high taxes.

Since it was not mentioned in the blog, one must assume that a major change to the economy, the proportions and relative values of products thereof, is not the desired outcome.

I don't think this kills PI. I think it changes it from a state where the use of a CO is almost assumed, to one where the products are launched are almost assumed. Not because of high tax rates, but because no one builds PCO's.

I like it

But have a question and some ideas from my point of view:

First, is there an ancoring and onlining time for the customs office? I think this is important.

Ideas for 0.0:
The customs offices should fit more in the sov mechanics and players should have a benefit when holding sov.

1. Give a hp bonus for every sov level if you are the sov holder

2. Implement new pos modules to protect those offices. For example a shield emitter array. You can ancor this at a pos nearby and it boosts the hp as well or you have to destroy it befor the office is vulnerable (a little bit like a cyno jammer).

3. Maybe there is a way to install some corp based planetary structures to defend your office. But this makes more sense when you release dust514.


/JACK

OMEN

WHEN?

I see all the same information being answered as posted in the actual blog, yet when you're being pressed for time scale of when these changes are being put in, you haven't yet answered. (Albeit I've only trawled through the first 10 pages)

Can you put the date/patch timescale in the devblog for all to see.

This won't work in most w-space however. Wormhole space is often quite isolated and getting resources in and productions out is sometimes difficult enough as it is. Invaders into a wormhole system can now force the defenders to fight outside the protection of their POS or lose their only fuel source. Also, you cannot pay mercs to protect your installations since the mercs probably won't be able to find their own way inside.

Other concerns is the fact that without defenses there isn't really any risk in taking shots at one of these (other than being in that system in general to begin with), while you will need a fleet to protect whatever ship has to repair it. Defenses, at least, would deter pure griefers and make people have to plan on taking these things out and only do it when there is a tactical or strategical need to do so.

I also find this idea less than ideal for the fact that PI today is not that profitable, even in null, and at least in w-space without static route to k-space is way too much maintenance to do for anything other than own pos fuel needs really. Putting this huge ammount of extra maintenance on it, and creating such serious security issues around it, sounds like a pretty heavy hit on wormhole corps and their business in particular. Has this been considered? And is it perhaps even a silent goal of the change?

I still don't understand where I can get the CO BPC. The original dev blog says that it will be available in CONCORD LP shop but in addition I can get 50% discount as FW participant. So the question is: could I buy this BPC from LP shops of FW corporations or not?

thank you thank you ccp if this is coming

I appreciate CCP trying to give players more control about the world they live in. However, in this case I believe this a bad idea.
High sec planets have such a low resource yield that it is barely worth doing PI on them, so the smart producers set up their planets in lowsec space. A lot of those people are industrial corporations, many of them being very small (not to mention all those single pilots), who can't commit the people and resources to defend a corp owned customs office in lowsec.
If you play eve for a while you will very soon realize, that everything that can be used for griefing will be used for griefing. Entire alliances exist for the purpose of griefing and they gain absolutely nothing from it besides the "fun" of "harvesting tears". So it is a silly idea that there will rarely be people who shoot customs offices for fun. I guarantee you that if you're not a big alliance that actually "controls" a lowsec system, your customs office, if you actually manage to put one up, will be attacked and destroyed after a few days or weeks, even if the attacker has to wait 24 hours to finish the job and even if you want to run a customs office for the benefit of everyone with no access restrictions and no taxes. Especially since any dreadnought pilot out there can easily do it. Thousands of pirates roam lowsec systems all the time, most of them won't have any interest in PI, they live for causing other players losses and will jump at the new opportunity. No amount of "monitoring the situation" by your side, dear CCP, is going to prevent that.
So what basically is going to happen is that most of the efficient PI that now exists in lowsec will be castrated and small industrial players who need it to fuel POSs will only be able to continue it with irritating launches, the prices of planetary commodities will increase probably a lot (as if pos fuels weren't expensive enough already with the goons' ice project at the moment).
Like I said, I too like more control for the players, but in this case with the griefing culture in eve I just can't think of any way this will make things better and more fun for the majority of players.

So far my judgement is that for lowsec and NPC null this going to be a negative change (people in wormholes and sov null should profit from greater control). When the dust settles a few months after the feature has been deployed I think that in lowsec we will see that minor local power blocks will effectively control the customs offices. And independent small pure industrialist entities will have no choice but to move their PI to hisec.
In Metro/Heimater where I know the situation best this will boil down to BANE, -EM- (+greater anti-pirate coalition) and some local FW powers.

Smaller entities, basically anybody that can't muster enough of a 24 hour around the clock presence to discourage bored cap pilots with no interest in local PI from shooting the customs offices or enough of cap force of their own to defend/repair them are **** out of luck and basically at the mercy of anybody that wants to **** with them.

It further affects the way that PI setups operate because if you want to export materials on one planet to import them on another (factory) planet you'll need at least guaranteed access to the factory planet (the export planets can always still launch into space if all else fails that will be tedious and no fun at all but at least it's an option). If I can't have that access guarantee on a factory planet in lowsec (unless I build a customs office that a pure industrialist has no way of defending), it makes hisec the best option, meaning that I will start exporting goods from lowsec to hisec something I was lead to believe CCP did not want to encourage, well then don't make me/us.

I think the change makes sense in wormholes and null, in wormholes the inhabitants can due to wormhole mechanics effectively control and defend them with a smaller group of players, in nullsec well sovereign space is called sovereign for a reason. But in lowsec and npc null it will simply force smaller industrialists out or force us into league with local PvP entities creating more powerblocs something I was also lead to believe CCP doesn't want

We'll have to see how it plays out but I urge CCP to reconsider applying this to lowsec and null npc, until after they have a good idea of the results in other parts of EVE as you can't really roll a change like this back (people will have invested in infrastructure by then).

Reading the posts here i remembered a little bit of lore about titans.



Wouldn't it be possible to make the biggest of the capital ships like the titan and the mothership unable to jump to the POCO because of the above and that would boost carrier, dread and sub-cap fights.

Anyway my two cents.

Then you must make high sec planets more like low sec planets in terms of amount of resources they have. If this is implemented, you would effectivly make me leave WH I live in. I dont have money to make 5 CO. 1 for each planet, because I use 5 planets setup. And that could mean I leave the game too.

If you make CO cheap, it would be easy to replace them. Not too cheap of course.