EVE Information Portal

True. The Stick Method never worked and never will.

since I still can't get a CCP comment, I'm gonna repost in full from S&I / previous info portal thread:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=33468&find=unread

I went through and got some numbers on sisi regarding highsec CO changes and nullsec POCOs. Highsec COs have indeed had all their import/export taxes doubled. The sisi export tax rate is 200 isk/m3 or 1200 isk/u for p3's (like robo), and 12 isk/m3 or 18 isk/u for p2's (like coolant). This corresponds to a "10%" tax rate in highsec on sisi. The sisi tax rate is essentially a joke number: it's based on a reference value that doesn't place any importance on the "market value" or "maximizing profit" aspects of the game at all. If we assume the p3 is Robotics (70k isk/u) and that the p2 (say, Mech Parts) is worth 10k isk/u, then the p3 tax rate is actually 1.7% and the p2 tax rate is a laughable 0.18% based on market values.

With current market prices, a POCO costs about 100m isk to fully deploy/upgrade (including BPC LP value). Unfortunately, the tax rate can not be set above 100%. Since the highsec values correspond to "10%", just imagine highsec x10 as the highest tax you can set on a POCO. If you have reds set to 100% tax rates and the reds are exporting p1s or p2s, they aren't going to care about the miniscule tax. On p3's a 100% tax rate is actually a fairly sizable hit, but not enough to stop a user if they don't have other easily accessible options, because what the heck, "my time is free". A 100% tax rate nullsec POCO is almost certainly more profitable than a highsec POCO doing extraction just because of nullsec abundancies. p1 extraction in nullsec is laughably cheap even at "100%" POCO tax rate. It's about 0.912 isk/u, which if you're extracting chiral corresponds to about a .12% market tax rate. It can essentially be ignored.

What does this mean for the overall market? Let's look at daily Jita volumes and assume an average "20%" tax rate for nullsec/lowsec POCOs. If half the PI supply comes from nullsec/lowsec, we can guesstimate how much prices should rise after an equilibrium is reached -- when POCOs have been deployed on all planets players have interest in, and when the market has evened out so that producers are making about as much profit (in isk/u) as they are now. Yeah, not totally realistic, but w/e it makes for an easier estimating. The rise is not that much, only about 1200 isk/u based on pure export value ( surprised? :math: ) for Robo, plus whatever trickle-up effect you get from more expensive p1/p2 supply and import costs. Call it about 2,000 isk/u overall. In short, if nullsec/lowsec taxes are not pretty much all set to 100%, the effect JUST FROM TAX CHANGES will not be a big deal. If everyone sets POCO tax rates to 100%, the effect is more amusing -- over a 10% rise in price -- but since most p3s are made in highsec that scenario is unrealistic. People buying PI goods to build POCOs and the disruption as POCOs are set up or fought over will have a much greater near-term impact on the PI market. Since PI is boring, it's likely that the near-term spike could be quite long lived. But any changes in price should be attributed to the setup and fighting over POCOs themselves, not to tax changes.

Can an alliance make isk from taxing POCOs in their region? Let's assume it supplies the entire Jita market with enriched uranium. That's about 1m units/day. At 100% tax rates (heh), that would be about 180m isk/day for the alliance, or 5.4b/month. That's a ridiculous scenario and it's still only a fraction of a tech moon. Basically, POCOs are terrible for alliance income until their handling of taxes is SUBSTANTIALLY changed by CCP, or the reference values for taxes reset way, way upward. Oh, and if your "20%" tax rate POCO has users exporting 100,000 units of p2s PER DAY (heh), it will still take a month to recoup costs of putting it there in the first place.

WHAT CAN BE DONE? Well, as I mentioned in two older, less-wordy posts:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=208048#post208048
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=224363#post224363
CCP needs to give the POCO owners greater control over the exact taxes. I would recommend the following:

FIRST: reset the default "reference tax values" to represent full Winter 2011 market value of the average good for that tier, instead of the fantasy values they currently have. This would have two immediate effects: increasing the isk paid by users of highsec COs (an increase of an isk SINK, which your economist should love), and increasing the range of isk values over which POCOs can be taxed. This is the easy, no-brainer option.

SECOND: give the POCO owner the ability to change those "reference tax values", per tier (p0/p1/p2/p4 goods). This is an expansion of the current fairly nice POCO configuration menu and would allow POCO owners total flexibility in setting their tax rates, saving future game balance headaches. Just let the players handle the market, as it should be. Note: if allowing different reference values would screw up your interface for displaying tax rates to the user, then allow tax rates over 100% (and adjust default reference values!).

If CCP does not do this, there are SERIOUS FUTURE GAME DESIGN PROBLEMS which will crop up:
Problem 1: nobody likes POCOs. Corporate joes bug their corp CEO or alliance CEO to put POCOs up, because PI is important to some poor people. However, the corps and alliances hate the things because they can not provide good income, have to be deployed in dozens/hundreds of places, and sometimes get shot at. They are Not Fun.
Problem 2: nobody cares about POCOs. If they don't generate corp/alliance income, and if they're trivial to replace, nobody is going to bother to reinforce them, or defend/kill them when they are somehow reinforced.

(also, interbus COs everywhere? this will kill any interest in putting up POCOs, they are now basically worthless)

And I still maintain that people travelling into lowsec to scoop PI and leave again mean absolutely nothing to lowsec.

You don't live there. You don't participate in the economy there. You don't play the game in there. All you do is cloak your way in, cloak your way out and extract profit.

You add nothing by being there, you'll subtract nothing by leaving.

So worst case scenario this fails completely in lowsec and all of the PI is done in highsec with high taxes and PI price inflation? Doesn't sound so bad to me to be honest.

If PI prices go up then POS's will be more expensive to run and invention costs will go up which means inflation in T2 ship prices. Rising PI prices will effect the low end materials the most such as titanium diborite and the other racial armor plates this is where the price increases will be seen. If anything may also expect prices of the high end moon goo to drop initially as T2 production drops.

In the end it will all work its self out, not running for the hills and screaming OMG EVE-O recession any time soon.

Edit: Also if T2 ship prices increase then more people will choose to fly T1 ships and mineral prices will go flying up, especially with new T1 BCs entering the market. Really interesting time to be a trader so much is being changed its hard to predict the actual effects!

QFT. Indeed. Having them not despawn is a source of much relief to me. BTW, what tax will Interbus be charging?

3000 FW LP + 10k isk ... seems quite cheap.
WTS 330 blueprints, 15 mil. each.

Why do you make them cheaper than a drake, how about 50.000 FW LP and 100.000 CONCORD LP per blueprint instead ?

Kitty's right, I live in a hole. But I can think outside the hole as well.

Perhaps you're right that the few people in low won't miss those folks entering low for PI. Perhaps low is better off with less traffic, with less people even sticking their feet in there for small dips... people that may someday decide to stay longer. Who knows? Maybe low is already over-crowded enough and you don't have the resources to spare to people venturing in from high sec for PI. I suppose that's all possible.

But perhaps you're wrong.

Dunno if these questions have been answered, still :

• What happen to goods in Reinforced POCOs ? Or, are POCOs still accessible while in reinforced mode, in order to move goods away ?
• Are goods in hangar jettisoned when POCOs are destroyed ?
• Are players with Planetary Installations (not necessarily from owner corp) somewhat warned when their planet's POCO is assaulted ? How to know we have to evacuate goods from POCOs before they get destroyed ?
• Are POCO grids completely static or is there a plan to be able to set a new POCO at different coordinates ?
• Are POCOs allowed to have names ?

It also varies from P1 to P1. Try bacteria vs oxygen, for example.

I hope this is just a sign that they are playing with the numbers. I bug reported it just in case.

Attackers always should dictate when the initial battle occurs. Defenders are reactionary by nature.

The real mechanic missing though is the ability to force-exit the reinforced timer. This is needed in LowSec and Nullsec, allowing the defenders to start the repair process ahead of time. POS's, IHUBs, Stations, and more should have this ability as well. Regretfully, I fear it would make Sovereignty warfare even more dull as timer issues would move even more into the Defenders side and require near perma-camping of a system during an invasion (which in real life makes sense, but would be boring as hell for a compute game).

Ultimately, I miss POS's being sovereignty related and being the only reinforced timers. It was more fun than what we have now.