Science & Industry

HTFU, crybabies.

My corp put up POCOs on two of the six planets in our home system right after Rubicon. We went and did wormholes for two weeks and when we came back we found that the other four planets had been taken. We offered the two corps who had put up POCOs the choice of selling to us or getting a war dec; one chose to sell, the other chose a war dec. A lot of the corps who own the POCOs away from the hubs are tiny carebear corps who will not show their faces when war decced; it is ridiculously easy to take POCOs from people away from trade hubs. Those who are complaining that it's so hard are just being pansies.

This leads to the second point - cost. The reason we only grabbed the six planets in our home system and not every highsec planet within 2 or 3 jumps is that POCOs have a rather high upfront cost. It costs 125 million to setup a POCO and that can add up quickly in systems with lots of planets. Balance this with the fact that POCOs away from trade hubs are going to have very low usage and even to get that you'll need to have low tax rates or your potential customers just do PI one jump over or go to lowsec. We put out over 700 million for the six POCOs in our system and even with the better than expected usage rates we're getting, it's going to take months and months and months of 200K and 300K ISK trickles of tax income before we even break even, much less make a profit. If you think that paying a couple hundred thousand in taxes in order to export millions in goods using a structure that cost 125 million is excessive, then you don't deserve to be doing PI.

So for the "no risk" claim, this is patently false. You sink a lot of ISK into a structure you can't move, which everyone knows where it is, and with which it will take months to break even. That is a big risk when anyone bigger can simply come along and say "mine" and then you're out your investment.

As for the absurd idea that POCOs should decay over time, what you're really saying is that you don't think there should be any highsec POCOs outside of 3 jumps from a trade hub, because absolutely no one is going to be willing to setup a POCO when they're guaranteed to take a loss. You think 10% tax rates are high? Try launching your PI goods into space using the super high tax rate and tiny cargo sized launcher on your command center when there's no POCO to use on that planet.

tl;dr
Carebear POCOs are ridiculously easy to take.
Putting up a POCO outside of a trade hub is a very long term, low yield investment.
Putting up a POCO entails risk.
Decaying POCOs = dumb.
HTFU, crybabies.

So if they add some kind of "siphoning units" to POCO's that would just mean higher taxes to pay for this loss. The same would be for decaying POCO's.

You have the typical "Lets make it hard on the nasty rich corporations" attitude that many have in RL. The problem is all the extra cost you're putting on that big corp to make it painful for them is just getting passed on to the consumer when they buy their products. Same thing in Eve. The ISK has to come from someone so in the case of a POCO it's the person doing PI.

You said "There should always be some type of drawback to 'afk' income like POCO's."... Umm there already is but you don't like the answer. I would say blowing up someones POCO that they spent their ISK on is a pretty good drawback. Ten stealth bombers with torps will make quick work of a POCO and it's really funny watching them try to stop you.

Of course this isn't an option for those that insist on playing Eve but refuse to get involved in any kind of PVP... For gods sake there's even merc corps that will do your dirty work for you... Stop being scared to PVP in a PVP game!

This comment is based on the entirely wrong premise that this change has discouraged highsec PI, on the contrary, player ownership of highsec POCOs has dropped the tax rate across the board from the Interbus NPC default of 17% to an average of 10% or 11% depending on if you have the new skill trained to 4 or 5. Don't let one crybaby who would rather pay more taxes to NPCs than less taxes to other players distort the issue. This change has made highsec PI more profitable (although of lowsec, nullsec, and WH PI are all still better).

When NPC Interbus owned all the POCOs in highsec, every single one had a tax rate of 17%.

Rubicon changed that. A player owned highsec POCO now has the tax rate of: X + (10 - Y) = Tax %. Where X is the tax rate the player corporation who owns the POCO sets and receives which is added to a flat 10% NPC tax and this NPC tax can be reduced by 1% for each level of the customs code skill you train up to a maximum of 5. Most corporations, including mine, have set their tax rates at 5%, and this is added to the flat 10% NPC tax makes it a total of 15% with no skills. However most people doing PI in highsec have that skill trained at least to 4, so we subtract that from the 15% leaving an average tax rate of 11%. This is an average drop of 6% in highsec PI tax rates in the aftermath of Rubicon.

most of the POCOs i run into are at 20% tax than theres a 10% npc tax, and if you train the skill for npc taxes that can be lowered to 5% which still means 25% taxes on what ever you ship offworld.

I think it depends on.......I'm not really sure what. I'm out at the a**-end of Ammatar space and there are 3 systems with nothing but 20% and up POCO tax, much higher taxes than previous. I have no idea what those overcharging Corps are making though. Or if they just don't care and are just "Trolling"

I just won't contribute to that. Low sec is just better atm indeed.

Well now I understand much better the basis for what I was told.

Unfortunately, the end result is that for most, PI seems to be both riskier and less profitable than before, and just does not seem to be worth the trouble. I could be wrong, but I am just going to write PI off as something to have anything to do with in this game unless and until it is substantially improved to make it worth it to the average player.

I'm sorry, but most corporation have not set their POCO tax rates to 5%. The average I'm seeing is at 15%.

You're correct. My previous post should be amended to that 6% drop is from players shooting the Interbus POCOs and putting up their own and no change from the Concord ones.



Do you have the customs code skill trained? Because without it, a player corp with a tax rate of 5% shows up as 15%.



If you think that you need to own a POCO in order to do PI profitably, then you don't deserve to do PI.

Its too bad there isn't an easy way to find POCO's by tax rate or by Alliance/Corp. If I knew you had a bunch of 5% POCOs near my area I would definitely become a customer.