If you're still reading this CCP...

We all know the prices will go up, the taxes will go up, the ability to get product out will go down, cost of control will go up, and the risk of ships will go up.
Prices up = good for PI guys, bad for pos guys and indy guys. Demand falls of course. Pos's are retired being unprofitable.
Taxes up = good for Control guys, bad for PI guys. There goes PI profit.
Product logistics = risky to non-existant, bad for PI guys. Barring any other problem, if product is stuck, it is worthless.
Cost of control/ships = high. Bad for PI. Even if the fight for PI is worth it (high prices), the taxes are low, and the logistics is free, the cost of losing ships and buying the PI control center easily and quickly removes all profitability.
Let alone the effect on demand for retired POS's with higher fuel prices and for other indy activities.

If CCP can limit the maximum tax rate, prevent PI logistics disruption, and increase the amount of product the colonies can process and extract, this might work OK. Increases the product per colony will actually allow people to care (more ISK) enough to fight over it while helping reduce product cost so that the infrastructure which uses it doesn't collapse. If CCP wants more fighting over PI, increase the 0.0 yield and processing ability while decreasing HS product yield. Don't do anything else.

Yes, still reading! I am also compiling a list of issues and concerns that you voiced in this thread. Really glad to see all the opinions, ideas and deep thoughts presented here, thank you.

Yes, still reading! I am also compiling a list of issues and concerns that you voiced in this thread. Really glad to see all the opinions, ideas and deep thoughts presented here, thank you.

This is a space flight sim.

i guess i could reduce my production cost and work on the mentality ' the pi products i make myself are free' but pi is boring, this change makes it more boring, yay structures to move build and shoot, cos the game needs more of them right.

And dont be surprised if after one or two month you have crowds of people whining for another nerf ...

dropping competion means rising prices and that's exactly what will happen there....

... This is just a free ISK blank check for big blocks.

OH yes, I agree that it would make sense to be able to find out remotely if there was already a CO in place, and what the tax rate would be. I think the justification of "I like the exploration aspect of going and finding out" is just lazy programmer-speak for "It would be pretty hard to implement". :)

I'm fluent in lazy programmer-speak :)

Players Customs Offices are great, but CCP needs to add some protection against griefing.

Some group just want to screw someone else and decides to mount a gang and kill all COs in region. Few caps or bunch of BS can reinforce all COs in region in few hours (will take around minute per CO). Next day it will be impossible for defenders to defend all of them, so around 50-80% will get killed.

To attack CO it should require attacking side to first deploy their own Gantry to start "siege" working one. Anchoring and onlining time should be like 30 mins total - enough to alert some defenders so we can have battle, and short enough to not make attackers bored.
After working Customs Office is destroyed attackers can activate their own, which they used to start sieging process. Or if they want they can unanchor it.

That means griefing will be much harder (but not impossible), but if you want fight for control over planet it will change nothing, as you need your own Customs Office anyway.


Suggestion

1) There is no CO at planet: Anyone can anchor and online Costoms Office Gantry.

2) Once placed and upgraded to Customs Office it goes active to use and invulnerable.

3) To attack CO attackers need to anchor and online their own CO Gantry. It can be attacked immediatelly, and time to online should be short (15-30 mins - just enough to alert defenders so they can organise fleet)

4) When attackers Gantry onlines defenders CO goes vulnerable and can be attacked.

5-a) If attackers CO gets destroyed defenders CO goes back to invulnerable mode.
5-b) If defenders CO gets to 25% shields it goes invulnerable, as well as attackers CO.

6) After reinforce ends and defenders lose their own CO attackers have option to upgrade it from Gantry to working CO (and collect isk from taxes) - it then goes invulnerable (going back to step 2);
or they can unanchor their structure, leaving planet without CO (going back to step 1).

--edit--
There still can be only one working CO at same time. If second Gantry is anchored it cannot be accessed from planet - its used only to make active Customs Office vulnerable, (ie by breaking energy link with planet that makes shield inpenetrable).

The side-issue is that if you can see where all the POCOs are, then you have a list of targets to destroy. Since they have no defenses (instead of being setup like a POS tower), being able to find them remotely so easily is going to put big target marks on them.

They *do* need to be visible in the S&I window, and searchable - but I feel that the ownership details need to be hidden, and possibly you are only allowed to see POCOs which you can currently use. That would require spying where you slip someone into the corp/alliance in order to find out where there POCOs are, or you slip into the system and use d-scan to figure out which planets have POCOs and go to them to see who owns what POCO.

ive already started reducing my manufaturing structures, decomissioning 2 large towers, the cost now is not made up by the speed increase of production. im now moving to an station where i can outbuild any of the local compertion and basicly save about 13mil/day on my production costs.

this thread is full of tears *rofl*

this game is a MMO - MASSIVE Multiplayer Online game: You are NOT suppose to play ths game all allone...
You SHOULD interact with other ppl, join corps, join allys....
So stop ******* crying because you cant get rich anymore doing PI ALL ALLONE, having a POS ALL ALLONE, you are NOT suppose to...

Just stop crying, be constructive like allot ppl are in this thread and eat what comes or do something different.

PI is not the main part of eve...

Kinda surprised this didn't get more attention since it seems like the best solution in this whole thread...

in HS nothing changes
in LS still need to bring along a gantry if you wanna blow them up
in null same but add a sov check (will be ignored in NPC space)
in WH operates the same as LS since there is no sov

(snip)

I agree with you, its funny cause if theirs any goals here to have the efforts of the CO holder to see some monetization rewards in this as a landlord, they could only effectually ever be realized in high sec.

In fact, i would even go as far as saying they should allow CO's in high sec to have owners, but the tax rate always stays the same, just the sticker on the CO can be fought and won so someone gets to stick their hand in the cookie jar should they want to.

The problem with this feature only ever comes into play if you analyze the controls the CO owner can impose. Take the controls away and just have all CO's have a flat tax and this system might be win.

Also for us it will be a new way tax the corp members... it will be a good tool for the industrial corps...

Given the goals of increasing player to player interaction and making PI taxable, the fundamental problem is making the taxation profitable enough to be worthwhile, without flipping the economy ass over heels. Any investment has to have a reasonable payback period, otherwise why bother with it or risk the investment since, with the CCP plan presented, the PCO is destroyable.

If the customs office costs 80 mil ISK to make, and takes months to recoop your costs, who would do it? You could invest 80 mil ISK in so many safer ways and have more income that a PCO. What's the incentive to attack it? The opportunity to invest 80mil ISK and wait months for a paybeck? Other than lols, I don't see it happening. PCO's would be something that just isn't used much by players and neither of the initial goals are met.

I really think that any solution must:

1. provide income enough to be worthwhile
2. have incentive to both attack and defend the source of that income
3. not dramatically effect the economy (ie quadrupling the cost of PI materials would be too dramatic)
4. closely related to # 3, but worth mentioning separately, allows PI production to be fairly painless, fairly low income vs other activities. I don't think the goal of this change is to dramatically change PI itself.

The above solution does not do all of those. It's simply a mechanic of installing and fighting over a PCO. It might be the part of a solution, but it's not enough as a whole solution.

At this point, I'm pretty firmly in the camp that having destructible PCO's just won't work the way they want it to. In the absence of numbers that players don't have access to (like how much income is possible from a various planets of various resource levels), making PCO's like outposts (conquerable but not destructible) makes the most sense to me.

If the average life span of a PCO is a month before it gets blown up, and it takes 2 months to earn the initial investment back, how long before people stop putting up PCO's?

I really think that any solution must:

1. provide income enough to be worthwhile
2. have incentive to both attack and defend the source of that income
3. not dramatically effect the economy (ie quadrupling the cost of PI materials would be too dramatic)
4. closely related to # 3, but worth mentioning separately, allows PI production to be fairly painless, fairly low income vs other activities. I don't think the goal of this change is to dramatically change PI itself.

No drop, the items are just destroyed.