I wanted a discussion about planetary production in hi sec, or more precisely the customs office.
Currently I went over a 100+ planets in systems every direction from my home station and everywhere customs offices were owned by players. On its own I wouldn’t care for it much, but the taxes set at these stations are ridiculous. The lowest tax set was 13%. In the majority taxes were set at 17% or 24% or higher.
None of these planets were settled, and no planetary interaction were going on and probably because of the taxes on these planets.
Most of these customs offices were set up years ago when CCP introduced player owned customs offices, and since then most of these customs offices were abandoned - sort of - because the owner corporations moved to nullsec or far away places in empire space.
You cannot negotiate lower taxes, because you will be ignored. And there is no mechanic i know which allows the safe way of buying these structures.
These customs offices have no fuel cost, has a ton of hp, and on it’s own it is very hard to destroy.
And even if you posses the firepower to destroy it, you have to be eligible for war, and most corps who would want to utilize a customs office are not.
So what would be my fix to this?
First off these customs offices should be operating similarly to citadels, meaning every customs office should use fuel, and should possess the same vulnerability mechanics player owned stations do.
And lastly all of them should go over the same abandonment mechanic citadels go through when not fueled and should be a free kill to active corps regardless of war eligibility.
There is an NPC export tax of 10% in highsec. You can reduce this by training the Customs Code Expertise skill. The player component of the tax is generally in the 5% to 10% range in my experience. This will leave you with a net export tax of 10% to 15% which is not unreasonable given that there is essentially no risk involved.
There are mercenary groups who will happily remove POCOs for a fee so you can anchor your own.
To justify a fuel cost, a POCO would need to provide an active service - not just a warehouse. The fuel cost would also be passed on to the players using the facility as higher taxes and most POCOs wouldn’t earn enough to be profitable. I don’t see this as a viable option.
The status quo works, the market is well supplied with PI products, there are more important things for CCP to work on.
there is the npc tax, which with training is 5%. That is ok. The 17% - 27%+ tax is on top of that. You pay 1/3 of your items when exporting. Now if you want higher material made you also have to import the items which costs an additonal amount then export again.
Most of your profit is taken leaving you a meager income at best, which in hi sec means most of the players will not spend time doing because there are more profitable ventures to spend time on.
The other problem with these customs offices discourages players to do planetary production and this state is calcified.
Customs office owners in this state are not encouraged to offer better taxes to attract players to the planet to do planetary production. And industrialists also not encouraged, because why bother with something which which not worth the hassle.
A citadel has severe costs to operate, and it is the operating corps best interest to attract players to use services via offering various service modules and favorable taxes.
Changing the entire system to hurt the owners if they not interact and maintain said offices then will encourage player interaction, boosts business, and attracts players to do a profession which no one gives two thoughts about right now (in hi sec anyway).
It would also replace and move these offices to the hands of corporations who actually would care about these structures.
If nobody cares, then wardec or pay someone to take the POCO down for you, then set up your own.
The problem I see with this kind of solution is that it is a passive one. Instead of charging in guns blazing or paying a mercenary group to do so on one’s behalf, the POCOs circulate by the complications of red tape, burdening the owner not with the defense of an asset, but rather an onerous upkeep and an obligation to please a customer base.
There are already two options to get better rates from a POCO. Negotiate, or use force. Unfair taxes are a conflict driver. Perhaps the owners don’t want anyone exploiting the planet. Maybe it’s reserved. If it’s abandoned, then it should be easy to clear out by yourself or by paying mercenaries to take it out, thereby creating content for them.
If the POCO rate can’t be lowered because the above is not feasible, then you can search for POCOs with better rates. I consistently see 13% where I am, and I make a decent return on these planets.
At some point they will probably refresh the POCO system to bring it in line with the Upwell line. Perhaps some sort of FLEX structure. If they don’t do it carefully, though, it will wind up crushing the viability of highsec planets entirely. Highsec planets have the lowest resource regeneration, lowest concentrations, and the added burden of a higher NPC tax. Planets anywhere else are objectively better and with a limit of 5 colonies there is a very good reason not to waste a slot extracting from a planet in highsec already. Add maintenance costs and the balance shifts more in favor of ignoring highsec planets completely, which it seems to me people already do.
declare war to owning corp and destroy the poco
hire mercenaries for that
use diplomacy to see taxes lowered
join the POCO owning corp
infiltrate the POCO owning corp with an alt, become a director, and transfer one night all their POCOs to your old corp
Move your ass
Oh? so you don’t want to be war eligible, but you want to force POCO owners to lower the tax…mmmmm… maybe if you don’t want to fight in a pvp game, you are in the wrong game?
