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Added some context you seem to have missed.

I like how the only people saying the proposed cudgel to force the economy into player owned citadels are members of the huge blue doughnut alliances while pretty much everybody else is clearly saying it's a bad idea to try and force the whole playerbase to do something that will only benefit a chosen few.

Except they aren't.
They may be highly familiar with game systems, that does not mean they are highly familiar with what game play is like for anyone not part of the giant null groups. The two are totally different things, and often mean that said people take a very biased view on what the game systems should be like because of their experiences and the attitude that is pervasive in null culture in EVE.

And dismissing the experience of everyone else is exactly symptomatic of that null culture, which is designed around screwing over everyone but your select group for your benefit. Hence why the scepticism over how the loudest voices in support of this are coming from people like baltec who is well known for wanting to use a massive stick in all areas of gameplay to drive people to do exactly what he wants them to do, either as team mates, market serfs or prey.

But if CCP want to keep listening to those voices and ignoring all the moderates because enough circular arguments are used, then it's their game.

EVE is a sandbox that needs engaging choices, but the current changes feel punitive in nature. I am not particularly against raising taxes, but the implementation is lazy and unimaginative and possibly damaging. I have even suggested in this thread that taxes should be increased by distributing them across order creation and modification (practically free) instead of a flat increase from 1% to 5%.

A change in NPC taxes will NOT hurt the wallet of high-volume traders as much as the wallet of the average player. Any trader that calculates their margins will factor in the higher taxes which will inflate the price of everything on the market. Also the current changes are a massive push towards immediate transactions (no broker's fee) which are much more cumbersome than 3 month orders.

If traders manage to pass off the taxes to someone else, why would they trade in a citadel when there is nothing to stop the owner from raising the broker's fee? Imagine the ganking potential when when billions or potentially trillions of assets suddenly need to be moved out of system. Since asset recovery is only free for transfers to a NPC station in the same system, there would be some potential for assets to be "trapped" in a system. We even have precedent for something like this happening in "Burn Jita". The alternative is paying a fee that is likely to ruin most profit margins to move everything out of system. NPC stations will always benefit from being indestructible and the neutrality of the managing entity. If CCP wants to force traders into citadels, the new taxes must be high enough to force traders to exchange the higher taxes for the inherent risk of citadels into their margins, but that will cause inflation.

Now for a crazy idea. Lets say Chribba or anyone with enough capital wants to build an XL Citadel in high-sec. After spending 100 Billion ISK to construct the citadel, Chribba decides to rent offices in his citadel for between 0.1 and 1 Billion ISK per month. For every 0.1 Billion ISK paid towards the corp office, the renter gets one share of the citadel out of 100. Every share gets a vote in deciding the citadel broker's fee (a poll like a general vote for corps). Every share earns 1% of the Broker's fees from the Citadel for that month and now has a vested interest in the continued operation of the citadel. Anyone that declares war against Chribba would also have to deal with every corp that has rented a office in the citadel (maybe attacking the citadel declares war against every corp with an office). The point is to allow accessible collaboration between corps that want to trade but do not necessarily want to be in the same alliance. Chribba receives a steady revenue from offices to cover the fuel costs and eventually the citadel and allies to help defend. Investors get a citadel dedicated to trade along with some revenue from broker's fees (to cover some of the risk) without being at the mercy of the citadel owner.

I am sure someone will poke plenty of holes in this idea, but there has to be a better and more creative way of getting players into citadels than by raising taxes.

http://puu.sh/nCfk5/a3250087b4.png
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/48s4p1/planned_changes_to_npc_citadel_taxes_and_services/d0n6vge

For those who don't want to follow the link: From Reddit:

CCP_Nullarbor: You can always cancel your market orders and manually eject your hangar into asset safety, even if you have no access to the market or docking or whatever. The whole system is designed so that the owner cannot deny you access to your stuff.

The hull of the structure does not drop as loot. an unknown percentage of the hull construction materials drop, and 50% of the defensive mods drop (using the statement that the drop mechanics are the same for those as ship modules). All rigs and service modules are destroyed, and do not drop. An unknown percentage of the materials from build orders under construction upon the death build will also drop.

Initially, this make sit seem like an attractive target. That is until you also look at the mechanics involved in bashing a Citadel.

Let's say there's a Large market citadel in Osmon owned by Group A, and it's Vuln timer is set from 0:00 to 06:00 on Tuesday. Group B then declares war on Group A, declaring it at Monday 00:00 so they can attack as soon as the war begins.

At 00:00 Tuesday, The Citadel is vulnerable to attack. Group B shows up with overwhelming force, and smashes the Citadel's shield in an hour. The citadel kicks into Reinforced mode.

At this point, the citadel counts forward a number of hours that fall under the vulnerability hour until a certain number of hours passes, then resumes vulnerable state. Since this cannot fall under the same 6 hour vulnerable block, the next available time to attack is a week away, again at Tuesday 00:00, potentially later in that block depending on the hours of vulnerable invulnerability.

At this point, they have to show up and begin bashing the tower immediately, because if 15 minutes count down during the vulnerable block without being damaged (and being damaged only pauses the countdown for 15 seconds) the citadel is immediately repaired back to full and re-enters invulnerability.

If they do show up, overpower the defenders, and bash all of the armor, the reinforcement immediately kicks in again for a set number of hours, punting the next timer ANOTHER WEEK into the next Tuesday, somewhere between 00:00 and 06:00. Once again, the tower must be continuously damaged to prevent a 15 minute timer from counting down and completely resetting everything back to square 0 and putting the Citadel back into reinforcement.

At this point, the Citadel explodes. Let's say it drops 25% of the building supplies and 50% of the mods, with an average mod price of 40 mil per highslot, 20 mil per midslot, and 7 per lowslot. Per http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/68671/1/Structuremodulecomposition.png http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/68942/1/Citadelfittings.png That's roughly 184 mil in dropped Citadel mods, plus 25% of the 7 bil isk build cost, for a total of roughly 1.95 Bil.

And it only took them bashing though a minimum of 81 million EHP (Prob far higher once the scriptable hardeners are officially released), with potential to be attacked by defenders operating under friendly heavy ewar fire, and to have to do it on the enemies schedule across a period of two full weeks and a day. For a drop of 2 Bil. Maybe some extra if people were running production that couldn't be finished in the two weeks before it exploded.

Sounds like a bargain to me. Not. sounds awful. And if the Scripted hardeners can increase resistance of a single damage type on a single later by 50%, that layer jumps up to 60% by itself, if you fit 4, The Sisi version of it shows up to 80% though, which would make a single shield layer on a L Fortizar 108 Million EHP in one reinforcement cycle.

You're right, it's not right to compare these things to a POS stick, because attacking them will be so much worse than a POS, with multiple week long reinforcement cycles, HP higher than a large Caldari Dickstar, people knowing exactly when you have to attack, and at the end of it, a paltry financial gain. And during this, you have to maintain the wardec for 3 weeks to hit all timers.

It would be best to compare it to a Dominion era Station seige, not a POS.

Plus highseccers in a defensive war can invite anyone they want to join in the war, and the new vultures... er I mean defenders, will know exactly when and where to show and get someone to shoot at.

These things are going to be a copper plated ***** to bash.

Hm, apparently so, I was getting some of my information from an apparently outdated devblog. So yes, it will not take multiple weeks unless the attacker fails on a repair timer.

It will still take two reinforcement timers at the time of the defenders choice however, with extremely large buffers, and powerful defensive ewar, and a single failure to bash the tower for 15 minutes will reset the whole process.

Mercs or those random wardec assistance corps can still be easily recruited and know they have a time when they will find targets.

You still have to attack it during the defenders set time during all timers.

The reward for bashing a 3-7 bil isk L citadel is still only going to be between 1 and 2 Bil unless there was serious manufacturing going on.

And you can still drop a new Citadel with a non wardecced corp and have it be fully set up safely unless someone wardecs the dropping corp within 15 minutes of placing the citadel egg.

And if a corp wants to pull up a Citadel, they can start the unanchoring process, and then defend it successfully for a mere 15 minutes once it comes out of the unanchoring invuln timer, although they will lose the entire thing if it is successfully attacked during this period.

So it wont take as long, but everything else that made it difficult is still in play.

The February economy report says that people spent 9.8T on taxes and 5.9T on broker fees. Let's assume that the average sale was done with has Accounting 4. This is reasonable, since max-skilled traders are responsible for most sales and training Accounting to 3-4 isn't hard. This means 0.9% average tax. With that, the average broker fee was 0.54%.

These numbers mean that after the patch the same people will pay 1.5% transaction tax and 4.15%!!! broker fee. If it wouldn't affect traded volumes (it obviously will), people would pay 16.3T transaction tax and 45.3T broker fee. Let me put these numbers in perspective: the total ratting bounties (including even higsec belt rat bounties) was 33.9T.

About 90% of trading is done in Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Rens and Hek (see market value by region graph). Since the trade hub citadel must be competitive for max-skilled traders (3.5% fee), a citadel with 3% could grab all the trade and the owner would have 32.8T/month income. Again: the trade hub citadel owner would make as much ISK as all ratters combined, without even loging in.

Of course if some guy would try it, his citadel would be instantly besieged by literally everybody. This applies to strong alliances or even coalitions. Not even the Imperium would stand a chance holding such ISK print as everyone else would unite to take it from them or at least deny this income. Doing anything else would be suicide as the owner could SRP a full titan fleet every month.

There is only one way to create these ISK print citadels and I have no doubt that this way is being formulated as we speak: if everyone significant would form a coalition to hold and defend the trade hub citadels. Big powers formed OTEC and than BoTLord for 10% of the trade hub citadel income. Do you think that they would throw away more money than all ratters together make, just for the sake of fighting? No way. The day citadels go online, they will announce that all significant powers agreed in an eternal peace to run the new highsec trading hubs. Sure that doesn't disallow fun roams, but clearly mean no significant fighting as someone losing power would allow the others to eject him from the citadel coalition and no longer give him share. So any serious attack would be seen an existential threat and would immediately break the coalition as the rest of the members could be afraid that they'll be next, so immediately unite against the disturber of peace. The spice must flow!

Add to the small problem that we don't need a significant isk sink also. Because isk in is only slightly more than isk out, and since material in also exceeds material out it balances out generally.

Where did I say that? I have no problem with the increasing fees. I have problems with these fees not going to an ISK sink but to the wallets of the new BoTLord holders.

Actually it's pretty evident you're against the idea of increased fees too, but regardless, if you have a problem with players collecting fees, then sop those players collecting those fees. With how much you celebrate over your successes on your blog, you should have absolutely no problem stopping any attempt of the larger coalitions building a market hub. Unless of course you success is exaggerated, in which case you'll have to just hope someone else steps in.

At the end of the day, CCP are moving towards a system where players control pretty much everything, and yes, the inevitable truth of that is that stronger player groups are likely to make a fortune. It's only bad to you because you're not capable enough to be the leader of a strong group and are frustrated by the idea of someone else getting something you can't. I say this with the utmost respect, but you're only really capable enough to do basic trading, mining missions and now SP farming. I imagine there will be a lot of times in the future where you end up at the short end of the stick so you should probably just get used to it sooner rather than later. Alternatively you could ensure that when it does happen you are in a position to be the one running it.