Manufacturing fees are calculated as a percentage based on the system index, which is all well and good, interactive and immersive gameplay, player actions matter, etc. However, despite player structures having a variable manufacturing tax rate, manufacturing in NPC stations is subject to a 10% tax rate. There is no way to modify this tax rate with NPC standings, despite the fact that broker fees and refinery costs can both be lowered with such standings. Players might have little to no control over system indexes (for logistics reasons, sometimes you must choose station XYZ whether the indices are favorable or not), but standings are a way the player could proactively reduce their manufacturing costs just like traders and miners do.
Can we please tie manufacturing taxes to player standings the way broker and refining fees already are in NPC stations?
If you are just using it and the owner decides not to bother you are just screwed, so unless your in a corp that has a structure sometimes its easier jsut using public, not industry but i lost a 100m isk clone because the owner decided to offline the clone bay, then took down the citadel.
This makes sense, however, I think you could drive players toward those structures while still making NPC stations more interactive for players, and most particularly newer, less experienced players. Let’s say you’re a new player just starting out. You finish the training missions, wherein you learn how to run missions, mine, and do some basic manufacturing.
These activities appeal to you, it’s what you know so far about the game, and you want some ISK. You dive right in. As you run more missions, your rep with the corporation that owns your home station goes up and your manufacturing taxes at the station goes down. This is satisfying feedback from the game and makes it feel as though your various activities feed into each other, that you’re truly leveling up as a player.
Along the way, you discover player owned structures. Their taxes are lower, even lower than you could achieve through standings gains. Perhaps you move your manufacturing there. It is unlikely that you know the station owners at this point much less understand the war mechanics, but it’s possible you’re made aware of the risks and accept them anyway. Maybe you start thinking about owning your own station, or you join a corporation that provides such facilities.
Then again, maybe you would prefer not to manufacture at a station owned by another player. Maybe you prefer to play solo and don’t want to invest in placing a station everywhere you want to manufacture. For example, I like to bounce around in different areas of NPC nullsec, where I tend to have standings with the nearby NPC factions, but where I don’t necessarily want to maintain a Raitaru in every area I want to do a little manufacturing in. It would be nice to receive a tax discount with that NPC corp in the same way I get discounts on broker fees and refining costs, even if it’s not as good as the discount I could get from my own station.
From a game design standpoint, I don’t understand why CCP wants to drive players into their own stations at all. This is just another example of why the sandbox isn’t a sandbox. If players choose to manufacture out of NPC stations, that should be as interesting and rewarding as game balance can reasonably allow. I don’t dispute that the rewards should be better the more investment a player puts in, but why should the investment of running missions be counted as significantly less important than the investment of buying and maintaining a station?
You are not forced to use citadels. And 10% is not particularly high tax - especially when you consider it is based on system cost index to begin with.
Citadels are not for new players - they do cost quite a bit to keep powered. Well, tough luck. Maybe interact more with other people if you can’t find clone bay that can be trusted.
If you are working in a system with a 2% cost index the NPC tax will be 10% of that or .2%. If that makes a significant difference in your profitability, you’re building the wrong products!
The main advantage of working in engineering complexes are the rig and hull bonuses which can save you a little material and a lot of time.
Your options are NPC facilities - no bonus but no risk.
Public facilities - bonuses, low taxes, some risk.
Corporate facilities - bonuses, low taxes, some risk - depending of the corporations ability to defend its assets.
In Eve, you shouldn’t expect any reward unless you are taking some risk.
I’m not arguing that THE TAXES ARE TOO DAMN HIGH. I’m arguing that standings should provide a similar bonus to manufacturing as they do to refining and trading. It’s weird to me that standings decrease costs on the inputs and the outputs, but not the manufacturing itself. I admit it’s a relatively small thing, but it bothers me, and therefore I complained about it.
Manufacturing is inherently risky, even when done in NPC stations. You are making a sizeable investment for potentially no payoff. Players who manufacture in NPC stations should receive less reward than players who are maintaining their own stations, but there is still plenty of room to make that experience more interactive and rewarding. I’m kind of sad that the intro missions wherein you manufacture some items for the Empire war machine and turn them in were never further developed as manufacturing missions in the game, for that matter, but since those could potentially be done by never undocking and would literally involve zero risk in the manufacturing process, I can understand why CCP wouldn’t want to create them.
Indeed, could be any number of reasons, but I was answering the question from Steve about being pushed towards citadels, there are issues with it, and with the general consensus of “trust no one” in game. I dont want to maintain my own becuase I would not have the means to defend it. so now I dont drop clones in citadels as they can just, on a wim, be turned off… likewise i wouldnt entrust hundreds of millions of isk in a citadel for manufacturing, or even docking becuase that access can be cut off.