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Come on man really, you just wasted a whole bunch of time not really posting anything constructive, just a total whine fest.

You clearly like doing what you are doing right now, post some ideas about how they can still preserve what you are doing by dipping your feet into low sec to do some PI but still having choke points that can be contested by entrepreneur that wants to play space over lord?

You are overly trivializing the problematic design philosophies of the desired goal here by just plain old calling CCP incompetant. Surely you've got some brilliant ideas.

Contribute.

I like this idea. While an acceleration gate might not "make sense," you could have the Customs Offices so close in orbit to a planet as to be unengageable by ultra-large ship classes (i.e. supers and titans).

For example, a ship class the size of a small planet would not likely be parked just outside the atmosphere and perhaps would need to stay further away from the planet to prevent unfortunate gravitational accidents. This does not prevent blobs, but does encourage sub-capital pvp in a way that "makes sense" (i think?).

1. There was very little risk and none in high sec. This is being corrected.

2. The other option is to remove the customs offices entirely and rely on improved rockets. Having a static point provides for a possibility of hostile player interaction. If there is a structure it needs to be destructible.

3. I agree. The costs for a customs office seems quite high compared to likely income. I'd like to see the cost of these structures reduced to allow for profits sooner considering they are such a visible target.

4. It makes more sense than magically appearing structures, especially in w-space.

5. Greed is good. As an industrialist I'd rather collect taxes that just attempt to starve people out. If they use 'my' planet I get money. If I build an offices then I'll have them open. The only problem is figuring out a tax rate that makes it worthwhile.

6. PI has been fairly easy ISK. Just read back for all the people that fund their accounts with it. II think it's too easy to fund accounts with in-game money in EVE which is eventually going to trash the economy, but I'm not an economist, so my opinion doesn't matter much on this point.

I think the main issue they need to balance is the cost of the structure and balance the alternative so that smugglers can rocket their products off planet. Maybe look at dropping commodities to colonies too but personally I'll be doing my advanced production in empire.

(Only read first 5 pages or so, so may be repeating someone. Still, bears saying)

As far as lowsec goes, I strongly suggest making customs offices:

A) Capturable instead of destructible
and
B) Open to anyone, with the option to charge higher rates (up to the new highsec ones) to neutral and reds
Further, make command center storage space increase with upgrades, to 5k m3 or so.

As it stands, there's a good chance large areas of lowsec will be impossible to run PI in.

Another possibility would be to have all (null/low) customs offices capturable only, and allow the owner to order a self-destruct sequence; without killmails, there would be a better chance of people leaving it up and hoping for a buck.

Its your limitation of 1 installation per planet. No longer such a bright idea (in low/null/w-h) when you consider this change.

If I am a member of a corp and want 6 planets my corp/alliance must have 6 planets or I need to have standings with 6 other corps. Then have to manage more relationships; this is going to make moving corps around harder .


So some quick questions:

Can you sell a set up installation ?
Can you dismantlement an installation (pack it up and move it) ?

Can't do FW missions while part of an Alliance I believe. And I'm a Trader, so even faction standings is important and FW is counter-productive for that.

Well quite frankly, the ability to do anything akin to claiming sov in a system without actually being able to do just that, doesn't really "make sense". So really, I don't think it should need to at this point. It doesn't make sense that empire space is empire space and yet we can take over customs offices, so I don't see anything wrong with an acceleration gate. Plus, that would make it much easier to defend, because then the defender actually has a strategic advantage vs. the attacker as opposed to a straight warp to the POCO, which, as I addressed earlier, will place the defenders at a disadvantage since they will go GCC if they attack first.

After reading several pages of comments I did not see any questions regarding this statement, apologies if it has been addressed:



When? How? All at once?

At first I was worried everyone outside Empire would be cut off from thier planets but I caught that you can still launch your own cans. That does bring up a more interesting (and reasonable) point though. With Command Centers and Spaceports scattered all over the planets surface, is there anyway to break up where cans launch to in space? It could put a hole tax dodge/smuggling spin on PI if you could drop in and get cans off-grid from the Customs office. Of course your structures are obvious on the surface (presumably vulnerable to DUST players... later) and you'd have to be uncloaked at one or more times to make a successful pickup so a diligent Planetary Authority could go about protecting it's 'borders'.

Also, where are you going to put Customs Offices contents if they are not empty at time of removal? Customs Offices are already much larger than the lone Spaceport most of us use and most Spaceports are busy filling up with outputs anyway, can't really force Customs contents back on the planet.

This thread reeks of cowardice.

I'm almost stunned at the number of people butt hurt that their days of losec 'risk' are over, and that they're giving up PI altogether. Aww, the poor munchkins... Let's assess the 'risk' you've so far invested.

1. Pop cloaky scout into system... Gate is clear, local's quiet?
2. Pop hauler in, grab stuff and warp out.

I'm in awe. Okay, I'm not...

Well, cowards, the good news is - prices are likely to go so damned high after this change, that keeping your PI in hisec will soon net you more Isk than you ever made in losec before... with zero risk. (gosh) -- of course, you'd be making even more still -- if you kept on producing in losec, but... the imaginary monsters in the cupboard are too scary.

You remind me of the people who're afraid of AFK players.

And as for those few of my fellow WH dwellers who think that they should be somehow exempt from the system. Ahahahahahaha... Priceless.

I know only too well how much Isk we make in WH's from PI, and having that Isk faucet suddenly become vulnerable to attack adds a whole new dimension to the mix --- And just on the off-chance that someone's reading this thinking "It's pointless though, because holes only stay open for a limited time, so attackers won't be able to finish the job" - please leave WH space and don't come back, you're not ready... People will keep cloaky alts in your system for days and weeks if needs be. If one of my friends reinforces your CO, and the hole closes, you can pretty safely bet they'll be back later to finish the job.

If you live in a WH with a Hisec static, and don't think there's any point in taxing your exports because you're the only corp using the planet...... Don't be so stupid. I almost guarantee you've got ninja's in there outside of your TZ. Put the tax up, to 15% and you'll soon find out.

I don't think the proposed system is perfect yet, and I doubt it will be, but it's a firm step in the right direction.

My 2 cents.

As any change, there is a uncertainty factor here. We just don't know what will happen.
So stop crying and make a constructive review of this change. Point some of the obvious flaws and give possible solutions to solve them.

For good or worse, this is here to stay so lets help the devs to improve it, for our sake.

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My opinion is that there must be a difference on how the custom offices should work in 0.0 from 0.0 NPC/low sec from wormholes., because we have 3 very distinct different areas with different issues that need different approach.

0.0

- In here we have big alliances; we want to promote small warfare; we want to avoid having more structures with big HP to kill, specially when we change sovereignty; so...

- make the CO only deployable by a corp that belongs to the alliance that has the system sov and make them transferable between corps of that alliance only -> [sov matters]
- system sov must be level 3 or higher before someone can anchor one CO -> [sov matters / sov needs to be kept and defended before you can make money from it]
- If system changes sov, all COs will change owner also (to the sov corp holder) [avoid structure shooting]
- If the system looses sov, all COs shutdown -> [obvious]
- All COs in 0.0 should deactivate at 95%, not 75% so a small gank can do some damage in ~5 to 10 minutes -> [small gangs have something to burn]
- Once deactivated the CO will remain in that state for at least 16 hours and should not activate even if someone goes there and rep it. -> [That should be the penalty for not coming out to defend it]
- The CO should rep it self x10 times faster than normal once the 16 hours period goes by and if shield is above 75% -> [ avoid the griding of daily reps after a small gang does some damage]
- If the CO comes out of reinforcement and while shield is below 75% CO is deactivated and shield goes up at normal pace -> [defend it and rep it from big fleets damage]

low sec / 0.0 npc

- In here we have small corps, very few alliances; big alliances like to come to grief small corps; capacity of defense of small corps is limited; sovereignty is NPC!

- Here the CO only should deactivate below 50% -> [the enemy wants to disable it or reinforcement it, bring a fleet, avoid greffing by big alliances, since nobody will form up a 100+ men fleet to go to low sec to shoot a CO]
- Access to the CO's should be according with the sov owner standings and not the corp standings -> [the sov is NPC, all planets belong to NPC so only NPC standings should define access, nobody should be denied access to the CO's, the only thing the owner can do is set the taxes and that is it]
- COs should be allowed to be exchanged by contract between 2 corps, If my corp wants to depart I should be allowed to sell my COs to other corps -> [more isk opportunities]

wormholes

- everything I said about low sec / 0.0 npc applies here but deactivation should be normal -> 75%
- also the sov is of nobody, access to the CO's should be universal, nobody should be denied access to the CO's, the only thing the owner can do is set the taxes and that is it -> [avoid small corps being cut out by bigger ones that dominates the wormhole]

---

More questions:

What happens if someone anchors a CO and never upgrades it, ever? do we have to go through the process of killing it before I can put mine in? is possible to create a mechanics were if the CO is not upgaded in 7 days, concord "removes it"?

What happens to CO's of corps that close?


Also a problem, I just make some accounting and each CO should cost ~100M! 100M investment in 0.0 by a big alliance is nothing, for small corps in low sec is very expensive, having in account they have to put up 5 or 6, please review this, make different versions depending of the location they will be anchored with prices that reflect this problem and help solve it, for example, a small ~25M for low sec, a medium 50M for worm and large ones 100M for 0.0, just an idea, no pressure...