Science & Industry

That won't happen though. The material costs are higher then a battleship at the same ME. Unless they're changing the material requirements, at least the amarr one will always cost slightly more than a tier one battleship.

Yes, it does not have nocx, but the other materials that it requires more of, occasionally significant more of, offset this entirely.

People keep saying they'll be in line with the other BCs around 30-40 m, but unless the mat requirements change, that's not happening.

Assuming CCP recalculates the rate frequently, the same argument could be made for sales taxes in the real world. And yet stores will sometimes increase prices, and they seem to believe they're making more money. Why? Because the tax rate is less than 100%. If your tax rate is 17% you can increase price and still keep 83% of the increase.

Overall you seem to be working from the assumption that the market will not adapt further. Markets are good at adapting, but it takes more than a day. Even so, based on current Jita prices my high-sec PI actually increased profit a bit. If other PI isn't profitable at current prices, some people will stop doing PI, supply will drop, and prices will increase so that those PI players remaining can make a profit again. It will bubble up through the tiers, yes, and advanced goods will have to increase significantly more than lower tiers, but it will work out.

This is how it happens in the real world. You didn't buy your computer from somebody who smelted ore and put Windows on the hard drive with a magnet and a microscope. You bought it from somebody who bought parts from somebody who bought parts from somebody... all probably paying a lot more than 10% in combined taxes and overhead at each tier.

And all this is moot if low-sec PI corps find a cost-effective way to keep their POCOs alive. It's not obvious they can, but the attempt will be very "sandbox".

The same pilots who don't have Large weapon skills now will suddenly have them to fly the new BCs? That makes perfect sense. +1.

Mate. You can still mate isk doing PI. I just don't know if you'd want to bother.

Indeed, I was trying to frame my response in the oversimplified model of the original poster, which ignored that distinction. My point about how increasing prices supposedly increases taxes too much to be worthwhile is actually stronger in the real model, because there only needs to be a large price increase in goods without a lot of demand, which means the increase will have a relatively smaller effect on the average.

But I'm not sure taxing by average versus per-good value is an important difference in the long run. Think about shipping in the real world rather than sales taxes for a moment; it's perfectly normal to charge by weight and volume rather than by value of goods being shipped. It costs the same to ship a pound of gold as it does to ship a pound of lead. PI taxes don't follow that exact model, but if the PI value averaging model is a game-breaking problem then the real-world shipping by weight model should be even worse.

And even some taxes are done the same way. Gasoline is often taxed at a fixed rate per gallon, regardless of octane, quality, or additives. Where I live, it's around 10% of the total cost of a gallon of gas, and it's lots higher in other places. Cigarettes are taxed per pack here, and alcohol by volume, broken into categories like "hard liquor". You'll pay the same tax on a shot of rotgut as you will for a shot of well aged whisky.

Call it shipping charges, call it taxes, call it butterscotch pie, it happens in the real world and the real world still works.

We seem to be muddling the concept of "a broken economy" with that of "an economy that works in a way we don't like". The PI economy works differently now; if you want to profit you'll have to play differently. You may have to coordinate with a larger corp rather than being purely solo. Or find a low-profile low-sec planet where you can set up your own POCO with little risk of losing it.

New Eden is a harsh place. PI was safe before, and approachable, and quite nice for high-sec carebears like me. Now it actually fits the universe, with lots of risk and potential bloodshed.

Do you remember the PI introduction? What were the prices on POS fuel and T2 components before and after?

Robotics used to be just 6k on NPC sell orders, coolant and mechanical parts, just 500 isk. Uranium 4k (these are from a 2006 pos guide by Aurora Mahair, but it's not far from what I remember from late 2009). Then PI came along, and those prices went up 10-20x. Did that cause a collapse of the T2 economy? Not really.

The potential increase from this change is much lower. We are looking at increases of 30-50% over most stuff. How will this cause economic chaos if the PI introduction didn't?

No, people will not be selling these for 40m or less. That would be selling them at a loss.

50m may happen eventually, but not for a good while.