Science & Industry

I agree with your sentiments regarding an overall price increase in the areas that have PI as an input.

However I strongly disagree that "ISK generation ingame has not increased at all". One only needs to take a cursory look at all the 'nerf hisec incursions' threads to realise that. You may also not know that a mere 10 anomolies in a C4 will net you close to a billion ISK in blue tags. Blue tags are the only faucets in WH's, everything else is player bought.

I want to be absolutely clear on ISK generation. When you sell stuff to NPCs or get a bounty from an NPC for killing an NPC, this is generating ISK. This is not the same as selling stuff to players.

There are large opportunities to generate vastly more ISK now than there were 'in the old days'. However for the longest time there have been no effective sinks ingame. While I don't have a source onhand, I distinctly remember reading that the majority of PI is done in Hisec. We need some form of effective sink to counter the reletively recent avalanche of ISK that are WHs and incursions, thus we have the PI tax. While not explicitly stated by CCP, that's my theory.

So unless you want to be paying 40 isk per unit of trit, there needs to be a way to keep the overall volume of isk in check. If these taxes are indeed removing large quantities of ISK from circulation, then what will actually happen is that prices will go down numerically, because ISK is worth more per unit. It is sometimes hard to get your head around, but ISK only has value with relation to time. In 04-05 generating a Billion ISK was a big deal and would take a substantial amount of time and effort, then along came Insurance fraud which took entirely too long to get fixed, and generated vast quantities of ISK. I'm deliberately ignoring missions as they have been around for the longest time. Now there is incursions and Wormholes generating vast quantities of ISK and there needs to be some way to remove it.

There needs to be a tax on Hisec to help remove some of the ISK generated by Hisec NPC killing. Null anoms and ratting are offset to some degree by sov and alliance bills. Wormholes seem to be the odd ones out in this respect as there is no sink there, once you replace the Interbus offices. The only way for this to fail completely for CCP is if every Hisec PI operator did indeed cease all PI related activities. CCP has quite reasonably wagered that won't happen.


The people who are blaming goons...I just don't know what to tell you.

The reason that goons are getting the blame is partially due to some things being said by EoG and by being the most prominent supporters of it, who also conveniently stand to make the most isk off high sec getting taxed.

AS fa as an isk sink goes, someone in another thread suggested that the it might be in the spirit of the game if there was a way to bypass it that required a great deal of work (high level skills, a standing of 9 or higher, etc). Personally I support this idea, as it makes it more profitable to players willing ot put the time in, and cuts into big alliances ability to dictate price.

Fastjack, according to certain sources within your own alliance, the brass feel that moon goo, goonswarms primary source of alliance income, will be nerfed.

Since goons currently hold one of the largest nullsec empires, their ability to turn that simple fact into a unstoppable economic juggernaut cannot be dismissed. Given the number of planets you control, there is a very real possibility, given the relative disunity and disinterest of your opposition, that goonswarm could dictate PI prices, and, from there, T2 prices as a whole, through the simple expedient of flooding the market to drive competitors out of business.

Fastjack, I know goons hold more solar systems with planets then anyone else. as far as manpower or wealth,well, from an interesting discussion I had a bit ago, the directorate is doing it wrong.

On item 4) I know you're buying in empire. I am, after all, selling it to you and shipping it to you on occasion. However, if you did build your own, then, yes, you would insulate yourselves quite easily.

Without turning this into yet another goon thread.

Cygnet, I think you're overestimating goons interest in this. PI is incredibly boring, nothing goes boom, and while it seems that there may indeed be 'tears to be had', they aren't really in the style that goons enjoy.

Come on now, guys, everyone knows goons are fat neckbearded OCD people who like to do nothing but sit and click in space.

It's literally the only thing we know how to do.

It's been goons party line, that they're deliberately not making any money off it by setting tax at 15%. Personally, I find the story hard to swallow.



Tasko, fastjack did nothing of the sort. He just sat there and misrepresented what I said, and then tried to dodge the subject by attacking my knowledge of 0.0. You know, the basic way to try an dodge an issue when you know real answers would hang you out to dry? Just counting the systems goons claim sov in doesn't give you the whole picture, which is what I've been talking about. Goons project power far beyond that.

If this wasn't a big moneymaker for them, then goons wouldn't turn up in every thread about it attacking the posters that dislike the current approach. After all, no other alliance is doing so on such a scale and with such diligence, so goons must have an angle. You don't work it this hard without a reason



As I said, goons are pushing hard in the forums and trying to derail or discredit any opposition to it. To me, that smells like rat.

Wow, very condescending, and clueless, of you.

As I've said Zim, I'm making a killing on it, it's just bad for the game. It damages the market in the long run and consolidates too much power over the market in the hands of a very few people. This leads to the sort of stagnation that UO underwent.

No I started attacking your knowledge of 0.0 when you ignored my actual response to you to continue your paranoid rantings.



If you're willing to breakdown what possible advantage there is to having 500 planets over 50 planets to an alliance of any size in your bizzare universe? Because here in reality the game mechanics are that planetary productivity for extraction is so high in 0.0 that there is incredibly minimal negative effects from having hundreds of people doing PI on the same planet, which is why those of us who do PI in 0.0 use the same handful of systems with the best/rarest planetary set ups. If we get another thousand characters doing PI we don't need to conquer another thousand planets, they just use the same ones. (it is also silly to think that we could produce all our own T2 modules with the huge relative disadvantage 0.0 production has compared to hisec, prices would have to absolutely skyrocket to make it sensible, but that's not really on topic)

POCOs actually further disincentivize spreading out our PI since you have to put the custom's offices up.

As for why we'd pay 15% POCO taxes, that's obvious if you've ever actually bothered to read a post from The Mittani: we're space communism here. The government sticks its hose in our pockets in order to shower us in free ships. If the POCO taxes turn out half as much as ratting taxes, it'll be enough to double the ice interdiction/roll out an entirely new fleet doctrine/host a capital ship thunderdome

We also strongly support the fluoridation of tapwater as a means of mind control.