See, one step ahead
So youâre saying you already know theyâre different, but people are entitled to free compression anyway even though it costs the station owner to provide the service?
Right. Itâs the mod that consumes fuel, regardless of how many people refine (taxed) or compress (untaxed). Even with a service fee for compression, the owner will still have the extra fuel costs simply for having the mod, including when no one docks, compresses or refines. Hence: propose for a separate mod (of course with lower fuel consumption than the current combined one), and allow for balance as I suggested earlier.
From the perspective of someone using free services they are not different, no. That one of the services uses fuel is something the owner should have taken into consideration, not the service user. If the owner wants to backtrack he can expect opposition, lol.
Personally, I am applying Occamâs razer to the situation. No other service module offers a secondary service for free that is in direct competition with the paid service. I see no reason why it should be treated differently from any other taxable service, if ccp is going to allow the service at all. That it is treated differently is an irregularity, in my opinion, and rather than asking for an extra tax without a concession, people are asking for an oversight in a borked system to be corrected.
Any system that separates the two services would meet with my approval. A separate module with a fuel cost for compression would be fine with me. If what youâre saying is âStation owners who want to provide compression should have to pay fuel for the service if they want to tax itâ then I agree with that, too.
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Well, we agree on at least half of it. Now, as to the monopoly of the service, and a new risk free income stream, what would you propose there (as balanced compensation, to make it clear) ?
I donât think itâs risk free because thereâs a structure out there you can lose if someone doesnât like the rates you charge, or someone else will put up a competing structure with better rates, and your investment is just as useless if you donât match or beat their price.
If someone can monopolize the service, then theyâre doing so by military force, else itâs just a race to the bottom. If people are imposing their will by military force, thatâs fine. If people choose to haul their ore uncompressed because the tyrant of the area charges too high a fee, thatâs fine with me, too.
I donât expect us to see eye to eye, but I appreciate a better understanding of your position.
For clarity, were I to propose a solution to this whole problem, I would simply remove the service entirely and that would be my preference.
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Sure, simply setting up a structure is already taking that risk. However, the suggestion was a new revenue, without extra risk - yes, Iâd advocate for more opportunities for robbery, if it were me, type ess, should be fun but highly controversial with the risk averse I admit.
I disagree, a tough negotiation (as if what we say in these forums even matters) is not tantamount to disrespect, itâs just a level of intensity 
To clarify my position even further, I do not believe that anyone with some business acumen will think it worthwhile to maintain a structure simply for compression services. The fees would be too high. Moreover, compression is primarily important for the big boyz who build big boyz toyz and need to ship vast amounts. Second, with monopoly I mean that there is no npc run alternative, pushing compression into the same ball park as reactions (and we know how painful that is in hisec since the changes to t1 bs bpâs), which are also monopolized by structure owners. So itâs not so much about âmilitary forceâ (which any structure owner should have, btw) but about having alternatives in the game. I see no need for a new monopoly.
And to prove we do see eye to eye: I would even get rid of tethering on public structures, and only keep it on corporation and alliance related structures, where it can continue to make for some entertaining and challenging pvp situations on both sides. Same goes for repairing. I do not know what the motivation was to make that a free service, unless as an attractant for local business in the structure.
So you were joking, ok.
It wouldâve been less insulting if you wouldâve at least considered my point and answered it⌠unless you had no reply to it, which is surprising considering your post history.
Anyway, sorry for the knee-jerk reaction.
yup, admittedly with some poor timing.
Yes, itâs popular. We get the question all the time in rookie help channel, so at least they are using it. Dunno what the modalities of the announced gas compression will be, but it wonât become less popular when that happens.
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Actually no it is not, at least not before Upwells⌠Rorq pilots charged to compress your stuff.
And honestly, your arguments for NPC stationsâŚno compression should not be allowed in them ever!
And yes Compression Tax should exists.
Not to get more taxesâŚcause players are a fickle bunch, they will not pay for an office and tax on compression.
Office rentals to get compression is the stupid work aroundâŚif you can not understand then you are dense as well as dumb.
He means that he considers compression to be a service without a dedicated cost. It comes as a value add when you have reprocessing like onlining any module and bringing a station out of the abandoned state will enable tether without requiring any dedicated fuel cost for the service. I think of offering free compression as a negative and it is not a service I made much use of, so it had not occurred to me that it could be thought of as a value add, but for people who value compression as a service that they use themselves, I can see how this point of view is also valid.
Unfortunately Upwells are here so a discussion of what Rorq pilots used to do in the good old days prior to them wonât do us much good.
Since you quote me I will assume your entire post is directed at me. Rather than reacting to your ad hominems let me assure you I donated plenty of fuel to rorq pilots at the time to compress my ores.
Letâs do William of Ockham some more justice, shall we. Some of you may love this (looking at you, @Qia_Kare , but Iâm pretty sure you came to the same conclusion already).
The only reason the prospective tax collectors in this thread think they are entitled to a compression tax / service fee is because they think it is (1) an oversight by ccp, or (2) even a lazy solution (tax exemption) by ccp to a problem with separating out one service feature of a dual feature, fuel consuming module. The big argument is âit uses fuel, someoneâs gotta pay for that and it ainât meâ. No one denies that the module that formally enables compression consumes fuel.
Now, when I suggest that, using the same flawed logic, one could equally demand a tax for tethering and repairing thereâs the sound of cicadas on a beautiful hot day. Yet, there is no real difference with the compression activity.
Why not ?
Both tethering and repairing require the structure to be (1) anchored (2) cored and (3) fueled. So those are two âfree public servicesâ (that didnât exist before the introduction of Upwells) that consume ⌠fuel as well, even directly linked as structure functions, in a structure that always consumes fuelâŚ
So if fuel consumption entitles tax levying (the #1 argument for compression tax) why not for all possible public services ? Because for compression it is related to a module ? Why the difference in qualification, and wouldnât âstructureâ trump âmoduleâ ?!
Thank you brother William.
Are there ways out ? As many as you want:
- charge fees for every currently free public service (i.e., continue the logic)
- leave everything as it is today (i.e., be sensible)
- couple compression to the structure, not the module (i.e., invalidate the argument, possibly my favorite)
- take free public services (tethering, repairing, compression, âŚ) out of the game (i.e., the sledgehammer we all know)
- separate out compression as a new module (i.e., strengthen the argument)
- w/e
as long as there is an alternative and a compensation should ccp bless you with a new income stream. Risk/reward and all that.
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No, CONTROL o the structure allow people define the Terms of Service. There is nothing to do with âprospective tax colectorsâ because people are already offering access to the compression service for a fee. Why is so difficult to that enter you head?
Go make that complain in the thread were people are asking for tether/repair tax. HInt: is not that one.
Or rather, donât, because seems like you are just feeling entitled to use someoneâs else structure without accepting his terms. Parasitism at its finest.
Calling any poster a thick headed parasite is not constructive. Stick to the arguments of the discussion instead, please, and try to counter those because they wonât go awayâŚ
Sure, within the limits set by the devs - limits you want to see changed because ? One single good argument that goes a bit further than âit uses mah fioelâ (so does the entire structure, in case you havenât noticed, so it invalidates the argument, see previous post).
Sure, within the limits set by the devs, at structures with public access - etc.
I agree, we need compression tax.
Compression is a really useful service and it makes sense to allow players to ask for taxes as compensation for that service.
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Especially those miners who think the ore they mine is âfreeâ
We should have a base NPC tax like how pocos are. 10% in Empire space down to 5% with the skill? Having a compression tax is a great idea but needs to have an NPC base tax or everyone will just spiral to the bottom to 0% tax. Econ 101 guys.
Iâm going to regret trying to take another crack at this since I have no stake in the outcome and nobody is going to change the gameâs policy on the basis of anything in this thread but oh well.
The reprocessing module is a unique case among service modules. Every service module without exception will enable the basic free station services. These free services do not compete with the moduleâs taxable and therefore profit generating function. A person repairing or tethering at your station wonât impact your revenue from a market, reactions, or manufacturing. Markets, reactions, moon mining, and reactions also do not enable any non-taxable services unique unto themselves, but more to the point they do not enable a secondary free service that negatively impacts the revenue from one of its other provided services.
All ore that is mined is going to be reprocessed somewhere, and only that final reprocessing location is going to receive any RoI from the mining of that ore before it is reprocessed. Providing compression just allows a person to more easily shift the income generation from the collection of ore from the location it is obtained to the location that it is used.
If we wanted to be completely absurd and make this what I would call an apples to apples arrangement, we would make market modules âcompressâ finished goods for free so they could be sold elsewhere. Manufacturing would compress minerals for free to be used in manufacturing somewhere else and so on. These new free services would certainly be a boon to some, and some would say indispensable if they wanted to operate competitively once they had gotten used to their existence like people have with compression, but it is hard to deny that such services divert wealth from small local markets to larger markets.
The inexorable linking of a taxable service with a mutually exclusive free service makes very little sense and it is only done with reprocessing. No other module suffers from this sort of handicap. People ask for taxation because itâs the most obvious solution, but I imagine theyâd be able to accept just being able to control who can use it. You donât need compression to manufacture. Uncompressed ore works just as well if you donât need to ship it far. The difficulty of logistics is what causes small local markets to emerge, and small markets are my preference.
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If you donât want to be seen as thick headed donât ignore what people are explaining to you over and over:
You are opposing to what is already practice, people being charged to use the compression service. If they pay office rental just to use compression than is effectively the compression they are paying for.
AS asked twice: why you donât oppose to people being charged in the current system but do oppose streamlining the process? No answer from you so far, do you expect the question to just go away?
You need to present an argument first. So far you only tried to divert to a discussion about different services. If anything you made an argument to make possible to charge for those services too But that is a moot point, since that is not what the OP requested.
And it seem you just want to smuggle that into the discussion to make an appeal to the negative reaction people might have with a tethering/docking tax.
First, the âlimitsâ set by the devs is subject to changed based on feedback (as the one presented in this thread)
Second, the current system donât prevent the owner to charge or deny the service.
The structure provides a service the clients are willing to pay for. But if that is too cumbersome to setup and manage then they will not get the service. The current system also let the client more vulnerable to scams, which in turn poison the well for legitimate offers of the serivce.
And again: who owns/control the structure set the terms. Other players can comply, find a competitor offering better terms of not use the service at all. If the same reasoning can be used for fees to tether, repair or docking that is not an argument against fees for compression, rather an argument to allow fee for tether, repair or docking.
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Makes perfect sense to me. Your argument has won me over. I was against the Compression Tax but your explanation makes it clear to me that whoever owns the structure should be able to dictate who uses the modules and for how much. There should even be different tax rates depending on standing.