Jita Park Speakers Corner

To make sure I'm following you here, your feeling is that certain activities and the rewards they offer should be denied from one type of space or another, so as to encourage graduation, in a sense, up (down?) through the various securities? Or is your stance a bit different? I apologize - from your post, I'm not entirely sure what direction you're coming from.

Referring to your article on the Mitanni: http://themittani.com/features/addressing-tritanium-problem

How would you propose to tax mining? Game-mechanics wise, it seems impossible.

I think the question was referring to alliances/corps taxing mining income. Because the issue is, is that even if null mining was changed to to be ten times better than hi sec mining, any tax that tried to take more than a couple percent of that surplus from the miner, would be circumvented by rorquals + jump freighters, not to mention that without selective taxation, a large tax on refining also utterly fucks mineral compression.

Basically, any tax on refining in null cannot be more than 3-4% more than the effective high sec mining tax.

It seems to me, that the best way to allow the taxation of miners would be to track mining volume through the API, and let alliances tax it that way. (i.e. you mined 500m of ore? hand over tax or be kicked/killed. Tax shake-downs in eve, oh baby)

Well if you look at the article he's referring to, Mynnna explicitly refers to empire taxation because of the very effect you describe. If the minimum tax in empire is 5%, then as you say, alliances can charge 7.5% in their own stations.

I hear that hauling low end minerals from nullsec is common and sensible (and free), not stupid and unknown (and expensive), so it's a good idea to factor it in when talking about game balance.

The biggest problem with this approach (or so I've been told by people who know more about the API than I do) is a decidedly large lack of granularity as far as how often the asset API in particular updates. Of course, the biggest problem mechanically is that we're then required to write an application to monitor it and then follow up appropriately, something we don't have to do with any other tax or fee.

There is, as Malcanis mentioned, the notion of eliminating perfect refines in empire, thus giving station owners the room to set a slightly higher tax. This may happen anyway (see CSM7 winter summit minutes for details) but is still imperfect, as it leaves a station owner shackled to the tax rates in Empire...they can't just set what they want.

Anyway, actual fixes. Nothing I've ever seen has ever been perfect; there's always issues with it. For example, the one I keep coming back to is that the Ore Prospecting Array (or another sov upgrade) collects a tax automatically. Make up whatever lore you want to explain it; perhaps "specialized warp capable mining drones that collect the dust and other fragments blown off of asteroids as they're mined" or something (we'll just ignore that it makes no sense that more or less of this is blown off the asteroids based on who controls the space.) The ore is either routed directly to the station (for convenience of the owner) or to the OPA (which, fitting in with the concept of bottom up sovereignty I wrote about, would be a potential target for raiders, who would have extra incentive to crack it open by letting the minerals inside drop as loot.)

The issues? You have to have an OPA deployed. It's an instant teleport mechanism to safety which is itself an argument for making the ore land in the OPA instead. But then the owner is stuck with moving a bunch of extra ore to actually get the taxes, as opposed to simply receiving isk as with PI or ratting.

Another commonly suggested approach is to simply tax the miners in isk taken from their wallet as they mine, based on the estimated value of the ore (or preferably, of the minerals the ore would refine into; that would be more accurate). But that has its own set of problems.

It's a tough issue, to say the least.


Not really a fan of this idea, either. Creating material out of thin air isn't a good thing.

You still haven't said what do you intend to achieve with that scheme about doubletaxing novice players in hisec. I think that you are not delusional to pretend to force miners to move to lowsec or nullsec, and so i ask what's the goal of your idea. Make hisec refining worst, why, and for what?

P0 is the same volume as the minerals i believe. Could always have P1-P4 items made from it that compress it as well. You'll end up with the same refining problems, but at least it would be closer to where you live, and you'd have the option of leaving it as P0.

Personally, i'd remove mining, and repurpose the ships into new haulers, whatever, but that'd be a lot less popular.

As opposed to what? "Mine 10000 units of veldspar to level up"?

Sure. Why not. I know nothing about DUST, tho.