TLDR : FW bonus to “broker fee” should apply to “sales tax”. In FW, players are supposed to upgrade their system with LP but the bonus is counter-productive.
o/,
Talking with some people in low sec especially market owners, there is something strange.
Running some tests selling and buying from some alts, here are the facts :
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What the game calls “market tax” in structure browser is not the “sales tax” but the “broker’s fee”
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''Sales tax" goes to the void, “Broker’s fee” is the only thing a market owner can input and earn.
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Faction Warfare systems have a discount to “broker fee” depending on their LP upgrade. So if people dump a lot of LP in the system upgrade, the discount to broker’s fee goes to 50% at max level.
So two problems :
1/ it’s misleading : let’s call a cat a cat and call “broker’s fee” by their name, not a “tax”
2/ the FW bonus is in fact a malus. True it lowers the market but it does it at the cost of players’ “fee” not to the NPC “tax”. Since this bonus also applies to broker’s fees in NPC market it drags down players’ owned market because as an owner you actually have to align yourself with the NPC station rate to which this “bonus” applies.
Suggestion : make the FW discount a discount to the NPC “sales tax” not players “broker fee”. It would have 3 advantages :
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PVP alliances could put a broker’s fee in their staging citadel and remain competitive with the NPC stations
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Traders could use low sec as a almost 0 tax, 0 broker fee should they choose to. After all it’s a lawless space so it would make sense. Right now the “bonus” to broker’s fee doesn’t make low sec attractive because in HS, market owners can put it at zero. A bonus instead to the sales tax could make low sec a special place “black market” feel place since it would be the only place where you can have lower ( NPC) “sales tax” in addition to lower ( player chosen) broker’s fee
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That is if you survive the gate camps !
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FW alliances would have a real incentive to upgrade their home system. Why upgrade your home system with LP to get a bonus to a rate that you can manually change ? And even works against you ?
Industry side :
The bonus applies to the System Cost Index installation cost which is good. It actually applies to the tax going to the void, not the citadel players’ tax. As shown before, the market “bonus” is the opposite and shouldn’t be so.
Lorewise :
The sales tax goes to the Secure Commerce Committee, a Concord Department. Since Concord allowed Faction Warfare in their “Emergency Militia War Powers Act”, it would make sense that the bonus applies to the sales tax fixed by their own department.
thanks for your feedbacks,
