Tuesday, 1 April 2014

Low sec PI empire

I am referring to Sugar Kyle's(1) Public POCO Project


Sugar has gotten herself a POCOpire where she is offering insanely good PI tax rates, even to the general public. Lowsec extraction PI is better than highsec PI, and her general public taxes she is currently offering will be cheaper than the best highsec has to offer.  For manufacturing planets, access to market, and low taxes are all that matter.


The one drawback may be for the TCS POCOpire, the taxes may be too low, and the planets may become over extracted.  Wormhole PI extraction is superior (2), and if you want better PI extraction options, come and join a Foo wormhole PI corp. The Foo corps also have an option for a fixed rate per moth rather than ongoing taxes.

As an open response to Sugar's post, and because blogger comments are fine for short responses, please find my long winded essay below.

For me, my blog has been a net positive experience.  We have been attacked in part because of it.  Our defenders also came due to connections from my blog.  Many recruits to the corp have also joined because of my blog, and knowing who I am.  Yes we will be attacked again, but I feel blogging is a net positive(3)

Blogging is egotistical. So is journalism, yet we still read the blogs and watch the news.  Without that ego, there would be no out of game information to read apart from the occasional dev post.

Can the TCS Public POCO Project make ISK with low taxes?  I think your taxes are on the low side, but you don't have POS fuel to pay for.  When I had lowsec POCO's I charged more than  you currently are, but still 'cheap'.

The major damage for others seeing our stumbles is to our ego, but ... we like to think that our ego's are big enough for the job.  I also think our bruised ego posts often make for the better posts.

I would love to see you publish aggregated data (and you will have more API data if you charge a 0.1% tax to blues), but publishing the API details is dangerous to your clients.  From the corporation API, hostiles could see when pilots are hauling, and where they are hauling from.  Some information is fine, too much detail will have the effect of driving customers away (after they are consistently blown up)

What I would like to see TCS (or someone else) do is set up local buy (and sell) orders in the systems that the POCOs are in, or at least cover these systems with ranged buy orders.  The most dangerous part of the trip is negotiating gates.  Yes, Epithals can (and possibly even should) have 4 WCS, but a single stealth bomber can still lock an Epithal with far too much loot down.  Encouraging local trading (and there will be both buy and sell) will both increase the amount of PI done, and should be a profitable business on it's own.

New clients also want to know where your customs offices are.  I recall that you have mentioned Bosena but confirmation that these are roughly where the POCO's are would help me send lowsec PI recruits in the right direction.  (When they get hooked they can then join me in our wormholes).

(1) Sugar Kyle is also running for CSM, and deserves your vote.
(2) I fear I may be dubbed sir spamalot.  I am also jealous of the PI farmers TCS will get.  PI farmers are mine I tell you, all mine.
(3) Blogging does take time.  I have no idea how the daily bloggers find that time.

7 comments:

  1. Good points, thank you. Wormhole PI is much better and I think that it should be. However, lower low sec taxes can serve as a first step outside of high sec. I'm not wont to remove what is there but I do love making leaving intriguing. PI is a small risk (a lost T1 indy) with a good potential reward (Juicy low tax PI).

    The buy order argument is interesting.

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  2. Actually I can see one case where lowsec PI would be potentially the best PI in the game, and that would be when it comes to running factory planets.

    If there was a low-sec systems 1 or 2 jumps from the main parts of highsec with a good tax rate, I'd definitely consider setting up p4 factory planets on at least one PI toon.

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  3. Quixilva, shh. Don't tell them. Remember PI will be done in the foo POCO's paying the Foo corp taxes.

    Oh well.

    Yet another reason to set up buy orders in the TCO POCO systems.

    And yes, Foo corp pilots will be allowed to do this too. Not that I could stop it even if I wanted to. But just think of the additional hauling that will need to be done from your farming planets.

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    Replies
    1. The thing is, I haven't really found any lowsec POCOs that meet my criteria. Sugar's come close, but I'm lazy and they're probably too far from Jita for me to easily use them.

      For running Factory POCOs the tax rate is important, You'll need to beat the 10% that I can easily get in HS, and I shouldn't have to join your corp to do that.

      It's a thing I like about Foo's setup. In his case, a random pilot will get 5%, a member of one of the corps gets 4%, and if you bribe him sufficiently an individual pilot can get 0% :P The downside for running factory planets is that the POCOs are in wormholes, which makes the logistics too challenging.

      Sugar's base rates are more than acceptable, she could probably double them, and still have people use the planets. However, in general, lowsec rates are much worse than the combined highsec rates, which given the increased risk and distance is a non-starter for me.

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    2. How are they generally worse?

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    3. This reddit post sums up the relative state of high and lowsec POCOs pretty well:
      http://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/20tqry/poco_taxes_and_profitability/

      It seems I overstated things a little bit, the major player appears to be "The Weak and the Scrawny" with TWATS as a ticker and their rate is 10%.

      When I did a small search of lowsec systems near Jita and Amarr, the non-TWATS POCOs that I found typically had even higher rates.
      In any case, while I didn't do much of a search, I didn't find a single POCO on a Barren or Temperate planet that offered me a decent rate (< 4-8% depending on distance).

      Delete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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