Wednesday, 2 October 2013

Proposed change to PI in hi-sec ... the dev blog.


I got to read the new dev blog on PI last night.

For me there are two important parts, I'll highlight them here:

1. 

The NPC tax will continue for hi sec POCOs (as we want low sec POCOs to still be competitive). The tax rate stays the same, at 10% for export and 5% for import. This is then in addition to whatever tax the player owner sets.


2. 

New Skill: Customs Code Expertise
We are introducing a new trainable skill, Customs Code Expertise, which will reduce the NPC portion of the tax rate, but 10% per level (so at level 5 the NPC export tax rate will be 5% rather than 10%). Again, this skill only affects the NPC portion of the tax, not the player owner tax.


My reactions :

WTF! Seriously! Normal NPC tax on top of the player taxation! 

Normally I would applaud a skill like the new Customs Code Expertise but it’s not gonna help that much. I really think its not worth it, but that wont' stop me from adding it to the skills list.

Although the blog does say it will be adjusting the costs downward for the npc taxation so that the 10% cost after the expansion will be lower than the 10% cost now. New skill or not its really the player tax that is going to kill it for people.

At current prices the gantry needed to setup a poco costs 71 mill. 71 mill per planet.  So say 2 characters each using 5 planets, that is equal to 710 million. And you then need a player base to defend them. That kind of outlay is unrealistic.
There goes the semi-passive income, the smaller player/corp and small industrialist based players are going to be affected the most.

I can see a lot of larger entities claiming planets. 
Goonswarm already owns half of nullsec, whats to stop them from setting up a hi-sec PI division. I even read that RvB are going to take a whole regions poco’s (as for what they will do with it...).  
If there can be ice interdiction and alliance agreements to choke moon goo markets then controlling hi-sec PI is a longer term bigger project to wrap around.

Still, there is a chance that the planets I have won’t be touched, very slim chance, for a while.
Will have to wait and see what benevolent overlord swoops in. I know it wont' be me.

I'll definitely be getting the most out of my PI until the expansion hits.  
One thing is for sure, my cautious side is to the fore, my gut tells me to horde PI materials from now till the expansion hits and sell them when prices spike.

It's a very good conflict driver in the game and a great way of mingling hi / low and null sec interests. At least initially until it settles down into the usual null sec affair.  

The Dev blog seems final so unless there is a massive uproar from hi-sec carebears (there won't be) its pretty much set in stone.
 
The dev blog:
http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/player-owned-customs-offices-in-hi-sec


Updated :  Some interesting reading in relation to this:

http://merchantmonarchy.blogspot.ie/2013/10/hi-sec-pocos-dead-on-arrival.html

http://mabricksmumblings.blogspot.ie/2013/10/we-need-better-than-double-taxes-and-no.html

http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/1niili/devblog_hisec_pocos/

http://www.eve-search.com/thread/282800-1/page/1

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3680837

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3677663

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