However the Greedy Goblin is considering a cartel for Highsec Poco's come Rubicon.
As we run more than one wormhole PI based corp, in more than one wormhole, highsec customs offices are a threat, both to our members, and to the corp incomes. Our income derives from a mix of POS space rental, and a choice of either monthly fixed rent or PI tax; as well as a buying program.
My best guess is 5% long term drop from reduced taxes (both base costs and skill based), with significant volatility until then. I expect prices to rise post Rubicon both from additional demand, as well as initially higher NPC and Player based taxes, with the tax take falling as pilots gain skills to reduce NPC tax, and player corps drop prices to become competitive with each other.
Higher taxes on highsec customs offices is good for our corporations. Cartels would be interested in keeping taxes high. I have some advice to those considering such an endeavor.
Consider the order of priority of planets to obtain.
You are planning to control all the planets in highsec? Really? Do you know how long that will take?http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Good_Planets
Even if you "only" manage to control temperate planets in the main hub regions, you could maintain a (highsec) monopoly on Industrial Fibers.
Similarly Lava planets for Silicon
While on the surface, it appears that owning Gas would be a control on Oxidizing Compounds, or Barren for manufacture, there are a lot of Gas and Barren worlds in Eve.
http://evemaps.dotlan.net/region/planets has a list of planets to target.
Cartel Defection
In game theory, there will be 'defectors' from any cartel. I see the most common defection will be granting select players cheaper tax rates based on standing. This will be invisible to most of the cartel; though alliance diplomats might be able to check various customs offices tax rates by setting alts to various standings (from deep red to deep blue).Defection of extraction based planets is somewhat limited; as extraction PI has diminishing returns with too many pilots.
There are no diminishing returns on manufacturing PI.
Bashing NPC customs offices
People get tired after hours and you miss significant damage done from forgetting to reload ammunition. Drone + Laser glass cannon boats are best for POCO bashing. That said if you currently have T2 large blasters but only skills for T1 small lasers, you work with what you have.A glass cannon boat is fit for maximum DPS, with tanks only an afterthought. Of course, pay at least some attention if you see a large spike in local.
Energy Collision rigs, Energy Burst Aerators, Heat sinks, Drone damage amplifiers, Cap rechargers (until you are cap stable), and of course pulse lasers. Be aware that not all boats can field a full set of highest DPS meta lasers, you may wish to fit slightly lower DPS guns that have much easier fitting requirements.
For lasers, faction crystals are cheap and reduce the time taken for a bash, and don't need reloading often, but may not last an entire bash (depending on fleet size).
Ungroup guns. On recent bashes, I noticed that not all of my faction crystals were burning out at the same time. Just because you lose one gun should not mean you need to lose others.
Watch your fleet members, especially those that are ammo based. Target them if you see their guns go quiet. Most industrialists startle amusingly when targeted. I sometimes still startle when I target others.
During the initial land grab, be aware that others are grabbing land too.
Ninja POCO's.
Do you want to really upset someone? When you see a large bash occurring, keep a cloaked large industrial or Orca with customs office gantries and upgrades in storage.When you see an attacking force destroy an interbus customs office, drop yours before they drop theirs. It takes only a few seconds before you have a fully upgraded customs office, requiring a reinforcement timer to destroy.
I believe anyone using this tactic will be immediately wardecced, but some corporations would enjoy someone else paying for their highsec wardecs.
Good stuff. I am also intrigued by Gevlon's POCO Cartel idea, but I think it will be so large and widespread by necessity that it will be impossible to maintain any discipline. Still, I will cheer for it as I haul my PI goods out of my wormhole to sell at inflated Cartel prices. :)
ReplyDeleteThe very low extraction rates and the use of high-sec planets for factories as the main profit drivers lead me to believe that what you will see is that any new players using high-sec for extraction will completely stop. Low sec and 0.0 players that are already using POCO's owned by allied groups will simply begin doing their factory work locally instead of using high sec space.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the cost of a gantry + upgrades comes out to about 100-110MISK per POCO plus whatever costs are associated with the time and ISK invested in taking down the NPC office. If you assumed 1 million ISK in taxes a day that would be a 3 1/2 month payoff period for the office before seeing 1 ISK in actual profit. I suspect there will be a handful of very valuable planets and an entire galaxy of left over NPC custom offices.