Science & Industry

I read all about the refining efficiency advantage in 0.0. In my experience a lot of it is going to be void, because the station owners will tax refining as an income source. What is your experience concerning this?

Sounds like someone got Obama involved in null. What a shame...

The point was made that all producers and miners will rush to 0.0 because there is this ~10% advantage. I think in most cases it won't be there for the individual.

And since individuals usually decide based on their personal profits, especially the industry types currently in highsec, i do not see the huge benefit currently.

Add to this the added risks and logistics issues and it pretty much becomes "meh".

Edit: you could argue that it is another move to fill the pockets of organization leaders.

It is as such foremost a benefit for organization leaders. Now in same cases that may trickle down to organization members, but in most cases it doesn't.

Same.

It depends on your organization's priorities. Now, if your alliance has the kind of leaders who institute these taxes for their own gain, sure its worth being upset about. But most successful nullsec actors place their focus on organizational growth. Therefore, if your space is short on minerals, they wont dare tax the refineries, but if your group is loaded with miners, then they'll tax it in order to fulfill a strategic objective(including a positive monthly balance).

TL;DR - if it's a lame organization, then your fears are warranted. If your organization has competent leadership, then there's nothing to fear.

Be the station owner.

Very, very few outpost owners tax mining at all, because the amount of mining that happens in null isn't generally high enough to make it a strong income stream. This becomes especially true once you consider the logistics of actually realizing money from those taxes - you basically have to have a large producer willing to buy whatever you get to supplement his imports. I sell the taxes (5% rate fwiw) to one of our supercap producers who uses a Titan to bridge around 3-4 freighters as a solution to the logistics problem, for example.

This may well continue to be true even after summer, too, but it'd depend on how much local industry pops up to take advantage of the cost difference. Outside that, only thing that'd change it as a rule would be having the option to take refine taxes as ore (so it could be compressed for ease of export) or simply straight isk based on estimated value of output.

Whether that's a relief or not probably depends on what your viewpoint is, but thinking that taxes would be a reason to leave is amusingly quaint. As was pointed out, neither the space itself nor the defense of it is free...

It's funny how the "fact" about those ebil alliance leadership people who take all the income for themselves is usually brought up by people who have never been part of any serious Internet spaceship organisation.

Let me tell you how being a part of it actually is like:

It's freighters. Lots and lots of Freighter runs. Moon goo to jita, ships to the staging. We have an alt Corp in Highsec that handles most of our logistics (and that's only for our Corp, not even talking about the alliance here). There are dozens of Freighter runs per week. Many more if sbus, tcus and ihubs need to be moved.

It's setting up multiple pos for supercap ops that don't happen, it's recruitment and dealing with spaceship drama.

It's paying out SRP for hundreds of people while making sure not to add that additional zero. It's answering the most stupid questions from even more stupid people. It's placing ihubs in dozens of systems. A mind-numbingly stupid task that needs a serious amount of concentration to not loose the Titans and freighters involved.

It's scouting. Scouting is even less exciting than Highsec mining in a 1.0 system.

Leadership is a lot of things, but it's certainly not being scrooge McDuck.

If you want your organisation to ne successful you need to make sure that any penny of income gets reinvested. And if that means buying a Titan for your Corp so you can Bridge your spacefriends into combat or your Freighter in the system that needs am ihub, I guess that is only fair.

Exactly. F yeah. Finally. It only took like 10 years or so since the last time something cool for industry happened in null.

Oh, and that super coalition talk of yours. Go ask tri, the fountain core dudes and black Legion how they think about it.