princess minervia wrote:Now that we have had some time to reflect on the PI / POCO changes in this latest update, I would like to suggest a few tweaks.
1. SET THE NPC TAX RATE TO ZERO WHEN A PLAYER CORP SETS UP A POCO. Lets think this one through for a moment - why should Interbus (the NPC) get ANY tax at all once their customs office is destroyed? It makes no sense - it is akin to paying rent to a 0.0 corp for a system they no longer control. It also makes the Hisec POCOs much less profitable for the player corps that have invested the 100M or so necessary destroy an Interbus Customs Office and set up their own. Interbus deserves NOTHING, NADA, ZERO from planets where they have no customs office.
2. APPLY CUSTOMS CODE EXPERTISE TO POCO TAX RATES. I was not a big fan of this skill in the first place, but if you are going to say that training this skill gives you such expert tax knowledge that you can avoid 50% of the customs duty at level 5, then go ahead and apply it to POCOs as well. Player corps can set their tax rates with the sure and certain knowledge that anyone who cares a whit about PI will be training this to level 5 anyway, and it makes the skill consistent.
3. TAX FREE PLANETARY LAUNCHES. Throughout history, there have been those daring individuals who seek to maximize profits by evading customs duties - they are called SMUGGLERS. The planetary complex you build, full of your own people - should not be sending ISK payments out every time you do a planetary launch. Instead, keep the ISK and take the RISK - make the planetary launch tax free from NPC and POCO taxes, but make the pickup of such a container in orbit a suspect-flagging offense, and make the materials in the container appear as loot in a smugglers wreck when destroyed. This motivates both smuggling and tax code enforcement by corps with POCOs --
Flame on.
1.) Absolutely NO. If I can setup my own POCO in highsec, and remove all taxes for important & exporting to it, then there is very little incentive to setup a POCO in lowsec or nullsec. Highsec POCO's are much harder to destroy (no caps, need a wardec, etc), and while highsec planets produce less, many, many POCO activites aren't centered on direct production, but for manufacturing higher tier goods from lower tier goods. The tax helps balance using the little-risk highsec activities from the much higher risk lowsec/nullsec activities. If you need a RP reason, its to pay for concords protection of your POCO.
2.) The skill is fine as it is. No change needed.
3.) What are you smoking? Smugglers get PAID for moving goods. You have to pay to move goods from your planet surface to some orbital pickup point, and if they call that a tax, so be it. Your not landing on the planet in your iteron, and it is silly to not to expect to pay for transporting goods from the surface to its pickup point. Furthermore, the pickup point is usually in a "safe" location, which means you don't have to worry about some cloaked combat person waiting for you (they have to probe you first).