I have been trying to do some PI lately but come across the problem of high taxes when importing/exporting items to and from a planet.
I spend a lot of time for relatively small returns, and the owner of the POCO in the system I am in makes 30% of that for literally doing nothing.
PI is a great way for new players to get involved in industry instead of just mining and T1 production, but it isn’t really done much, mainly I would say, because of the large fees which make it very low income.
A solution would be to have some kind of degrade mechanic which requires some periodic action of the person who owns the customs office. Maybe they have to visit and flick a switch - just so that it keeps running. Some players who own them may not even be playing any more!
For PI to work I need to periodically visit my installations and maintain them, so why does the customs office owner not have to do anything…?
If the POCO action is not taken then the POCO should fall into disrepair and an interbus CO should be spawned in its place.
The way it works right now is stacked against the hard working little guy and makes the big corps money for doing nothing. It takes money out of our pockets and lines the pockets of the billionaires.
Plenty of cheap POCOs out there. Just go somewhere else. Scout out your PI system, don’t just set up wherever you want and cry about it. Or if you really must do it in that specific system, blow up the POCOs and install your own.
Why would we need degrade mechanics or something like that when you could just use your thick fingers and write a mail to the poco holders to inquire if they could set you blue so that you have lower taxes and in return you supply them with PI stuff? If the holders aren’t playing anymore, you could also just war dec them (if in high sec) and shoot the pocos or just shoot them (if in low sec) to get rid of them and to place your own. Moving to a different system also works.
There are plenty of ways available to you to fix this perceived problem and there is absolutely 0 need for yet another annoying, frustrating structure maintenance whack-a-mole-button-chase. If none of the available avenues appeal to you, you have no right to expect cheap taxes.
You can bypass POCO taxes by using the Command Center launch feature.
While it has certain drawbacks (limited to batches of 500m3 with a cooldown of a minute, no imports just exports, launches to random spots around the planet rather than to the POCO), it is a way to circumvent high POCO taxes.
Launching via Command Center has a static 15% tax.
Pretty cheap if you otherwise have to pay 30% tax. The main hurdle is that you now take more time to launch and pick up all your goods, and that it takes time to expedited transfer the goods from your storage/launchpads to your command center. It should help to have multiple storages with upgraded links to your command center to minimise the cooldown time there.
If you cannot get a cheaper tax elsewhere or by talking to the POCO owners, perhaps give the command center launch feature a try?
I always said it and I stand with it: POCOs should require fuel (not much, not to create significant costs attached to it, but to add the requirement to actively refuel it at least once a month) to make it exponentially harder to maintain them without actually living in and controlling the area with real active players. Something like the Omega&Friends POCO Cartel in HighSec is an economical desaster for the game and that it is even possible is one of the most absurd game design flaws.
As a former POCO owner, I’m not sure if this is realistic. The fact is that most POCOs don’t make much money. I had mine right next to Rens, back when Rens was an active trade hub. I don’t know what POCO prices are today, but back then they were around 100m. It took about 6 months on average to recoup that investment and start turning a slight profit, with reasonable tax rates.
Set taxes too high and nobody uses them. Keep them low and the isk just trickles in. Adding an additional expense for fuel could make them completely non-viable.
I think the only ways to make money from POCOs are to own buttloads of them around Jita, making a very small amount of isk for each one, or to use them specifically for your own PI.
That 30% tax planet can’t be THAT important. Blow up the POCO, find a different one, or ask for a lower tax.
I enjoy 1% on most of my PI. And if I actually decided to move with my alliance I could have 7% POCO tax in HS. Taxes from POCOs/Citidels don’t make the big $$$ ISK. You would litterally need thousands of people utilizing your citadel (OFTEN) at like 10% tax to maybe make fuel costs.
I didn’t create this character to be poor now.
Can’t believe some people are so lazy to actually make change in New Eden.
The Launch option is a good one and I will use that for the expensive final product exports from a factory planet. It doesn’t help with the material imports though.
‘Just blow it up’ is not an option for a small industrialist - which are the people who generally do PI, as the margins are so low. Declaring war and having the resources to take out an alliance owned POCO is way too expensive in skills, ships and war fees.
I dont think there should even be a fuel requirement - the owner should have to turn up periodically, and do some maintenance or something - or face degradation.
Ultimately I have two points to this argument;
There are of course solutions, some better than others, but the most effective end up making PI not really viable for the small guy which is what I think this mechanic was aimed at. So these players just go do something else, and we all suffer due to less supply and therefore higher prices.
Making money for doing nothing goes against the spirit of the game! There should at least be some activity involved in making the tax $$ for the owner.
I have known very powerful HS PI moguls. Knew an old vet who restarted his massive robotics PI operation all in HS. Made “tons” (billions) of ISK and still enjoyed other activities such as missioning/exploring.
PI is a scaling operation. It’s not a primary source of income. It has always been a passive source of income for the time I have been in EVE. I am rich because I do incursions, PI, and t4 abyss sites. I pretty much outwork you in all aspects of ISK making.
I have access to cheap POCOs? Why don’t you? All you implied is your poor and lazy to relocate your supply chain PI. Sorry to be harsh but that’s what it comes down to. Join an Indy corp that advertises this and enjoy the benefits. Relocate your supply chain and start over if you don’t want to destroy the POCO.
You know EVE is a game with zero regulations? There is no FCC to save you. There is no big government fighting for the little guy. This is a dystopia. The big indy groups will ALWAYS CRUSH the small guy.
You never told us WHY a 30% POCO is so important. You didn’t indicate you’re in an established corp who would help you. All you did was slander a good 75-85% of EVE players who are billionaires. So, my assumption is you’re a solo person who likes PI and doesn’t want to move to a different part of New Eden. I am being harsh because industry in EVE is harsh!
But they’re not making money for doing nothing. They are making a very small amount of money by putting an asset in space which is vulnerable to attack.
The irony should not escape us that PI itself is basically passive income.
Would take years for a POCO to make the ISK it costed to build and put up. It’s all an ISK sink. People put up POCOs not to make money but for strategic reasons.
You did read that I explicitly said that the fuel cost should be absolutely insignificant? Like 1 block per day. Thats no cost you even consider as a POCO owner. The point is that you need to put in 30 new fuel blocks manually each month to keep them running. That is no problem for a small corp living in the area, even for 10 or 20 POCOs in their constellation. But it basically not doable for thousands of POCOs each montht with a POCO-Holding Corp that is simply protected by some huge blob which makes war declarations against the owner completely illusional.
If the system (POCOs) are not broke. There is no need to fix it. Change for the sake of change I always say.
As the system works. No regulations. No govt telling you how many POCOs you can own. It’s group vs group and the biggest group will control the most. As the nature of EVE.
I don’t see what is wrong with that.
Destroy the poco’s (spying, mercs, direct conflict), join the group to get favorable poco tax, or barter your own individual deal.
There is no system to protect “the little guy” in EVE. That’s what makes EVE so sinister and appeals to many people like me.
The HighSec Wardec mechanics are wrong with that. They are effectively protecting the big guys from the small guys because the structure requirements prevents asymmetrical warfare and ensures the owner of the POCOs must not be present to protect them. In case of any war he just crushes the war HQ of the offender, which is even a lot more costly than a POCO and thats it.
Also all this rubbish about “no rules” “no regulations” “no protection” is pure nonsense, HighSec is Empire Space, the rules of the Empires apply and the Empires can decide any time to “tax” POCOs with StarbaseCharters for example or put any regulations on them they want. Also strawmen, nobody said anyone would tell anyone how much POCOs he can own. The only limit would be your personal will to maintain them manually (by fuel runs) and your ability to execute this job throughout many or even remote systems. You can have a thousand POCOs if you are willing to refuel a thousand POCOs each month.
This I 100% agree with. One of the biggest mistakes CCP ever made was to tie wardecs to structures. In doing so, they chose to eliminate a rich tapestry of highsec conflict and diplomacy, large and small. And yeah, they also made it much more difficult for the little guy to put up POCOs or whatever.
We told CCP that this was a bad idea at the time. They created a discord to have a lengthy, ongoing discussion with all highsec content creators about how to reform the wardec system. Many good alternative ideas were presented. CCP chose to ignore all feedback and go ahead with it anyway. The lobbying of null-bloc CSMs won out over common sense.
Unfortunately, the current wardec system is wildly popular with nearly everyone who doesn’t live in highsec, so I doubt anything is ever going to be done to fix it.
sure, it enables Nullsec to safely milk all of HighSec via POCO taxes and Market Stations. For years now. The amount of ISK flowing from HighSec to the already rich-beyond-imagination Nullsec Alliances - for basically no effort - is insane. Why should they not love such a concept?
I read up on it, watched a couple of videos and decided I wasn’t going to do PI, not the way it’s set up now anyway. It costs too much to set up and the returns aren’t worth the hassles.
Well, I can agree with that to a degree. In all other spaces you can - as a local resident - pretty easy run so many skirmish assaults on the local POCOs until the holding alliance gives up protecting them every day again, or you can come to an agreement for a reasonable tax with them.
My main concern is that I like clear and easy understandable rules/standards for game design which make it easy for new players to understand how things work.
A POCO is obviously a Corporation-owned Structure in Space that offers reinforcement timer and is able to store assets of multiple characters at once and offer taxable services for multiple characters at once. It should simply be in line with all other corp-owned structures that do the same, like Upwell Citadels and POSes, Ansiblex Gates etc… They all require fuel, they all need to be manually refuled every so often to keep operating. POCOs should not be an exception here, as said, the fuel costs should not be so high that they become non-profitable, it is the refueling process and the attached logistic that is the important part of the design.
I am a person who likes to stay in line with the ideas OP mentioned.