Assembly Hall

Now that we have had some time to reflect on the PI / POCO changes in this latest update, I would like to suggest a few tweaks.

1. SET THE NPC TAX RATE TO ZERO WHEN A PLAYER CORP SETS UP A POCO. Lets think this one through for a moment - why should Interbus (the NPC) get ANY tax at all once their customs office is destroyed? It makes no sense - it is akin to paying rent to a 0.0 corp for a system they no longer control. It also makes the Hisec POCOs much less profitable for the player corps that have invested the 100M or so necessary destroy an Interbus Customs Office and set up their own. Interbus deserves NOTHING, NADA, ZERO from planets where they have no customs office.

2. APPLY CUSTOMS CODE EXPERTISE TO POCO TAX RATES. I was not a big fan of this skill in the first place, but if you are going to say that training this skill gives you such expert tax knowledge that you can avoid 50% of the customs duty at level 5, then go ahead and apply it to POCOs as well. Player corps can set their tax rates with the sure and certain knowledge that anyone who cares a whit about PI will be training this to level 5 anyway, and it makes the skill consistent.

3. TAX FREE PLANETARY LAUNCHES. Throughout history, there have been those daring individuals who seek to maximize profits by evading customs duties - they are called SMUGGLERS. The planetary complex you build, full of your own people - should not be sending ISK payments out every time you do a planetary launch. Instead, keep the ISK and take the RISK - make the planetary launch tax free from NPC and POCO taxes, but make the pickup of such a container in orbit a suspect-flagging offense, and make the materials in the container appear as loot in a smugglers wreck when destroyed. This motivates both smuggling and tax code enforcement by corps with POCOs --

Flame on.

"I'm gonna make some terrible suggestions based on shaky lore interpretation and RL comparison without any regard for game design and balance."

Whats the point of a POCO if everyone using the planet can do free launches.

RocketShips aren't free you know, transporting a bunch of cargo from the ground into orbit is pretty expensive.

3.) What are you smoking? Smugglers get PAID for moving goods. You have to pay to move goods from your planet surface to some orbital pickup point, and if they call that a tax, so be it. Your not landing on the planet in your iteron, and it is silly to not to expect to pay for transporting goods from the surface to its pickup point.


Hauling corps with Freighters get paid for moving goods. Smugglers get paid for moving goods past customs authorities without paying the duty. The 'danger mode' of hauling would be blockade running, running from gate to gate in your cloaky hauler from nullsec to Jita hoping you can get your cargo in.

If it were POSSIBLE to land on your planet in an Iteron in this game, load up your cargo and then try to pull a daring Han Solo escape past the ships camped out in orbit, I would be all for it. As it is, the ONLY possibility for smuggling is the planetary launch system. As I noted above, there is no difference in cost for launching 500m3 of lead vs 500m3 of gold, so planetary launches should be fixed price - no tax affairs. All that means is that it only makes sense to smuggle valuable items - duh.

Would you support adding a base tax (say 15%....maybe reducible to X%) to all highsec activities in order to help balance the risk? Meaning all refining, manufacturing/invention/copying, sales, LP, bounty, etc.

You know... to pay for CONCORD.

I've destroyed plenty of POCO's, and own a few myself. To RF a POCO in 20 minutes, you need to deal out 6.5k dps, which is ~6 Oracles. Given 6 POCO's in a system, that's 2 hours of structure shooting for 6 pilots. In nullsec or lowsec, you can use a single supercap (or dread if you are brave), and RF a POCO in half the time. You don't have to wardec (time & isk savings), and you use less player time.

In highsec, there are more planets than is pragmatic to control. This means anyone can setup their own "tax free" POCO, and have the ability to perfectly produce high tier PI goods from low tier PI goods. Why would this be good for the game?

The only benefit that low/null planets would have is much better extraction rates.... This is good, but it is only one part of the PI industry.

Truthfully, you are only suggesting this because it helps you personally, not because it is good for the game.

My experience is that you get about 2x the extraction rate in lowsec and 4x the extraction rate in null/WH space (per head). I don't think this difference in extraction rates alone would offset the cost of moving goods from low/null to highsec. Especially since nullsec generally requires the use of JF's to move goods, which adds considerable logistics cost. Furthermore, some people would simply setup alts to milk highsec worlds dry using straight up extractor worlds, since moving those goods to/from a planet would cease to cost anything. In the end, this would simply be an unnecessary buff to highsec, which is the safest area of the game. Highsec was already recently buffed by the creation of highsec POCOs, and I don't see the need to buff it again (especially in a manner that discourages PI in other sec zones, by reducing the profitability of PI overall).



Have you ever tried to conquer someone elses POCO's? 6 Oracles can put an entire system into RF spending several hours of time, but then to complete the job, they must return at the owner's designated time and spend several more hours to finish the job. If they don't destroy it within 4 hours of it exiting RF, natural shield regen will increase shields to the point you have to endure another RF cycle. A griefer group then must alarm clock to conquer the damn thing, and the POCO's are still fully operational when RF'd. This is on top of wardec fees, the ability to bring in allies, and the shear number of available planets, and I'm certain you are being unrealistic about highsec POCO vulnerability.



To be frank, the ROI on highsec POCO's is already reasonable if you are fully utilizing your planets true potential. Why does the ROI need to be improved? A longer ROI makes it a larger risk to operate one, and more risk is exactly what highsec needs!

If you're unable or unwilling to assemble the PvP capability to take on six guys, you're doing it wrong. If you have neither the interest nor the ability to defend your own stuff, you should either be looking to find and join a proper alliance that actually will defend its infrastructure... or you should not be setting up that infrastructure in the first place.

Just saying.

So, you transport 450m isk in goods to highsec... You require operating a 6b isk JF, needing 20m in fuel, and certainly encouring inconviences and/or risks when moving it.
Alternatively, you can earn 1/4th this (110m isk) over the same time frame, you don't need a 6b isk JF, and you don't operate in risky space. Paying the 5% tax on your exports reduces this to 105m isk, which has marginal effect on your profit line for these goods. In contrast, your factory worlds which routinely purchase 500m isk in materials to import down to a planet and then export it as 1b in higher-tier commodities are going to be much more heavily impacted by the import/export taxes. It is precisely because of this you wish to eliminate the NPC taxes, so you can have your perfect factory worlds. Why do you deserve tax-free factory worlds in highsec? You are already enjoying low-risk operating costs, as well as concord protection, I don't understand why you should be on equal rewards with null/lowsec.




Hmm... Let's look at the small or midsized hisec industrial corps. What do they have in common?
They own and operate POS's, most notably with adv & regular mobile labs. These run 60-110m each, not to mention the 3-12m / day operating expense. These corps regularly deal with "griefers" (You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means) that attack them, usually for the profit involved in blowing up the POS and taking the labs. They put just as much up front (if not more), they have about the same ROI, and they cope with the threats that come at them (or die, hohoho). While POCO defense is different than POS defense, each has their own major benefits over the other. Again, I am positive you are being unrealistic about highsec POco vulnerability.



1.) Oracles are used because they do decent damage (800-1,000 dps) without the need to reload ammo.

2.) Rattlers are tanky, but do less dps than an oracle unless fit with missiles. If you are going straight dps, there are many ships that will out-perform Rattlers (like the Talos). If you want dps & PvP ability, there are also many ships that outperfrom Rattlers (although they have their niche too).

3.) You don't need to put 2-3B isk on the line to take on a 6-man gang. You need to play smarter, not bigger.



1.) This is, and has always been risk when operating in highsec. It is still generally low risk though.

2.) "No way you can compete extraction wise?" My dear friend, POCO resources are worse than asteroid resources. You keep mining the planet and you keep getting resources. The difference between highsec and lowsec/nullsec is you gain more resources when operating in riskier environments. We call this concept "risk vs reward", and I fully support upholding this paradigm.

3.) QQ -- Some boogy man might attack your POCO for zero profit, just to **** you off. When this happens, offer to sell it to him to recoup your costs. It save them hours of shooting structures, and is generally win-win (I've dealt with buying & selling POCo's many times). Then you move your operation somewhere else. This is a dog-eats-dog world, and you submit/lose until you are strong enough to win.

4.) Why would the big badass boogyman no-one else can defeat be interested in your lame-ass POCOs? Hint, there is very little profit in blowing up a POCO, and shooting them for ***** and giggles gets very old very fast. Pragmatically, the only time your POCO's get attacked is if you attract attention to them somehow! Then you rightfully need to deal with the fallout.

If I stasis a POCO, it should slow it down so that it falls back into the atmosphere, no?
Let's bash POCOs with stasises! How awesome would that be???

Oh and for 1 & 2 : No. It feels bad.
However, free planetary launches... Why not! This cool feature is not used enough. Even within its niche.