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It occurs to me to bring up the following:

When CCP first transitioned to the current 'Scrum' development style for overall project management, it was publicized that teams would routinely provide snapshots of their work (to the other teams iirc) on a weekly or almost weekly basis.

With the announcement of Tier 3 Battle Cruisers, and their Battleship sized weapons, and given what has been announced regarding PCO eHP amounts...

How did Team Pi meld the Tier 3 Battle Cruiser concept into their overall feature design during the development process?

Is this why PCO's are designed the way they are? (No Defences, negligeable overall eHP for a single point of access structure, etc.)

Lastly, if as proposed, PCO's are left fully destructible in all regions (excluding High Sec), then what was the rational for making the gantry volume m3 higher than what a blockade runner could hold?

Wouldn't it better serve the feature to allow these to be moved into position that much more easily, rather than create an artificial hinderance by relegating deployment to only a T1 Indy hauler, or Deep Space Transport (i.e. Bustard)?

While I understand the fundamental philosophy behind this feature, as well as it's incremental movement towards linking EVE Online and Dust 514; it is very difficult to discern some 'perceived' inconsistencies regarding development details, and their tie ins, without greater clarity in communication from CCP and Team Pi

Roughly translated: A lot of this isn't making a lot of sense (even when trying to analyze it objectively)

Can we expect a Team Pi update to the community? And if so is there any E.T.A. for a "This is where we're at" style update related to this feature?

This would be a version of hybridization of PCO's in Low Sec...

+ 1

A. I understand your argument against indestructible structures. I do agree that "attack here for profit" is a problem, but making them destructible doesn't solve that.

PI materials have lots of uses other than POS fuels, including the production of T2 mods and such. In my opinion, the usefulness of PI materials is about where it should be as is the demand. It's not hard to sell PI materials. I repeat my argument - I don't think destructible POCO's can be made priced right to both be worth attacking/defending and also be profitable in a reasonable time frame without dramatically changing the economy of PI. Those are both the goals of the whole idea. I also think dramatically changing the economy just to get PCO's in game is really bad.

With a system similar to the one proposed in the blog, very little is changed in null/WH space. Ninja PI decreases in null, and corps don't want the administrative overhead for minor profits in null/WH, but are in the position of being forced to make an investment for either 0 or insignificant profit just to keep their current operations (like POS's) running. I don't see how that adds to the fun/challenge of the game.

One assumption that many seem to make, is that destroying a PCO is with the intent of putting one up in it's place. I think many attacks would be just for lol's and the killmails, not for any potential profits from putting up a PCO in it's place. We can not assume that there would be an interest to put up a new PCO if the old one were destroyed, either by the ones destroying it or anyone else. If your doing PI on a planet, suddenly not having a PCO there drastically changes the attractiveness of that planet for PI. If your constantly dealing with planets that suddenly don't have a PCO, you stop doing PI in anything other than high sec. I do not think we can assume that those doing PI will put up a PCO, since PI is often done by poor and low SP characters. Not knowing if your PI planet will have a PCO tomorrow doesn't make you want to invest in an elaborate high income PI setup on a planet. You need elaborate high income PI setups to justify investing in a PCO. PI people need some kind of stability or they just wont invest in PI. I think the end result is a huge impact on the economy that we can't predict now, and this whole plan revolves having sufficient people doing PI to make taxes profitable. So having destructible PCO's is a bad idea in my opinion.

B. I agree that the NPC CO's should stay in game. As to have the taxes increased over time to a point or indefinitely, I disagree. The incentive to put up PCO that your not seeing should be the profits of taxation. I don't think this plan gives enough profits to justify the investment, but that's a side issue. The problem is that many planets are low resource planets, and are not profitable enough to interest a corp to put up a POCO there, ever. As the NPC tax goes up and up, eventually the planet is removed from the pool of useful planets - not enough tax to have a POCO put on it, but too high taxes to do profitable PI on the planet.

C. Hate the idea of taxes being actual goods and not ISK. How does a corp get the goods out of a POCO to haul them to market? The volume of the collected taxes would be substantial. I am not going to fly a freighter in low/null/WH space to collect my taxes from POCO's. I just won't have POCO's. Only potential ship I see is a JF, and then fuel costs cut into already slim profits. Never mind having to keep track of how much taxes are in various POCO's. I think this would mean 0 tax in null and WHs, just so you would not have to go get your taxes, and no one wanting to put up a POCO in low sec. People stop PI because it's a PITA to haul stuff around, and people would stop owning POCO's because it's a PITA to haul stuff around.

D. Size of planetary launches - I have lvl 4 in command centers. With that, I can get about 7000 units of P1 materials (like oxygen) from a planet doing nothing else in 24 hours. That's 2660 m3 of volume. Guessing lvl 5 would get me 3000 m3 of volume. If I can launch something near that volume, my production is the same but my taxes are very low. So are the profits of the POCO, since people launch and avoid the POCO taxes. More disincentive to put up a POCO. If I can launch 2500 m3 of stuff and have it cost 25k to do so, or I can use the POCO and pay 20k in taxes, guess what, I'll launch every time. Getting my launch in essentially a safe spot or going to what could be a camped hostile POCO for the difference of 5k ISK, or even 100k? What would you choose? As much as I like the idea of adding flexibility and making the command center something worth clicking on, doing so really breaks the profitability of POCO's, already of very dubious profitability.

I thought of another grieving tactic that could also be used as a tool to make defense of a PCO very difficult.

I know nothing about when an email is sent that a POS is under attack. So some of this is based on what makes sense, and not necessarily what actually happens.

I assume that a PCO under attack would have the same email sent as a POS under attack. I believe this would be when it is initially attacked and perhaps also when it's put into reinforced mode.

If I were to seriously attack a PCO and wanted to avoid a counterattack, why would I not attack all the PCO's that a corp has in an area? It would generate a ton of emails, some are fake distraction attacks, and there would be 1 real attack. Other than pure luck, how would a defending corp know which PCO was actually under attack? If a PCO can be put into reinforced mode in 20 minutes by a fairly small force, what chance does a corp have of defending it, having to organize and warp to the correct PCO, unless it has very few PCO's?

I can also see bored people just taking pot shots at PCO's not to destroy it, but to annoy someone.

If I get 10 emails a day that my PCO is under attack, how often would I actually go out to defend it?

The PCO has no defenses other than it's hit points. There is nothing preventing even a noob ship shooting a PCO once and warping off to attack some other PCO. There may, or may not be a real attack following.

I can only see 2 solutions to this problem. One I can see is either no emails, or an email when it's put into RF mode, neither of which helps achieve the goal of more player to player interaction. The other is to put guns on the CO to ensure that any attack is a real attack, and I don't like that idea either for several reasons.

As much as I like the idea of profits from taxation and fighting over CO's, the more we discuss it and poke holes in the current proposal, discuss problems with it in low sec, null, or WH's, how it would affect the economy, solution to problems and what effects they would have, the more I wanna say.... leave it just the way it is now.

It's not broken now. You're enhancing it, and as desirable as that is, too many problems result from that enhancement that change too much that you don't want to screw up. We keep trying to shove this in and I really question is it worth it?

So abandon this idea and go work on new content that doesn't break what you have working now.

I will be very happy with these changes if:

1) PCOs can anchor one or two defenses like a tower can. Give them some CPU and powergrid to play with.
2) Multiple tax brackets can be defined based on standings and not just give the PCO one tax rate for everyone.
3) 1 Planet can have more than 1 PCO
4) PCOs require no fuel to run. (If they did require fuel, the expenses will be passed on down to the consumer level, which will inflate the PI prices alongside the existing possible inflation based on taxation)

I think we are all wasting our time here folks............the only answers that CCP are giving are like the one above, it seems POCO's are going to be rolled out as in the original blog otherwise how would a DEV be able to answer this question as definitely as this?

If there was any doubt as to the final implementation the answer would have been worded differently and also note that this is on page 68, so they already know of peoples concerns!

Scarlett Ninja over and out.........going to find something else to do :(

A problem is that we are discussing things while we haven't got a clue of what is going to happen. People see things changing that weren't broken. CCP hasn't stated WHY they want to change PI. Is this merely an expansion where players take over the role of NPCs? Although I like the idea of expanding Eve this way, I don't believe this is the sole reason for introducing custom offices.

I think there are two other motives:

1. Dust514
Dust514 will change PI as it currently is. Eve players will need to interact and trade with Dust players and they will need structures to do so.
Dust514 is also one of the reasons why I think nullsec COs can be very profitable: think of the amount of stuff a million Dust players can produce. Think of how much tax you can collect on all the imports and exports from hundreds of Dust players on a single planet.

2. Sov mechanics
CCP has stated that they want to change sov mechanics. They lean towards a system where the corporation that de facto uses and controls a system will receive sov. Corporation-owned custom offices are a method of expressing use and control over solar systems, so they can be expected to play a vital role.

No I am just giving the answers I know for sure. Some other changes are in the pipe but aren't finalized.

One issue I have with aggression on POCOs is the fact that a GCC only lasts 15 minutes. After that 15 minutes is up, a defending fleet will lose standings shooting the offenders once they get to the POCO. Picture this scenario: My indy corp's POCO is under attack, so I get a fleet together to go defend it. That takes anywhere from 15-20 minutes, including travel time to said POCO. Once I get there, the POCO has been reinforced and the offending fleet no longer has aggro, forcing my corp mates to lose standing. I propose that the corp gets 24 hour kill rights on the players that attacked the POCO. This would eliminate the need to lose standings in order to defend an otherwise defenseless structure.

I'm not sure how long you've been playing EVE, but people almost always shoot things just to shoot things, especially if they're bored. Hell, I shot at an offline TCU for 2 hours yesterday, and it belonged to an alliance that had been long disbanded. Just goes to show you, that if people get bored, they grind out structures, especially ones that don't have defenses. POCOs won't even take 30 minutes to RF, seeing as the HP on those aren't nearly as high as a TCU or an iHub.