Saturday, 14 June 2014

Small industrial corporations : CCP induced Tears and a (idealistically) hopeful wishlist

The Foo corporations bring respectable industry to Wormhole Space.  Occasionally, Wormhole Space will have firm words to say to me about this travesty. 

Despite being small industry based corporations, we have very limited API checks; primarily to test that a pilot has the minimal skills required to do industry in our wormholes.  Our required skill list is 15 days training on an unmapped, no implant newbie.

We have POS, Pocos, knowledge and mutual self defence. 

Our POS are not only where we refit and store our well/ill gotten gains, but also where we do industry.  Sometimes this is research and manufacture based around cheap blueprints.  Raiders: Move along, no loot to see here. 

As someone who is paying a lot of attention the development of the next few releases; Industry now, and later Corporation roles, I have hopes.

But then : "Tax rate at a POS makes no sense, since you can only install corporation jobs that get paid from the corporation wallet, you would only be taxing yourself." CCP Nullarbor on [Crius] Starbase feedback

This post is my tears in response.

Today

Today, I currently charge far too cheap taxes according to the following rules:
  • 10K/hour research slots.  This is where pilots put ISK into their own division, and then ISK is transferred to the master wallet by installing jobs.
  • 50m/month for exclusive division access.  One player per division (plus alts and first life friends). This is where player stuff is secured, at least until our POS are re-inforced.  This is organised by prior agreement, 'voluntary' player donations, JEveAssets to find those donations and an ugly spreadsheet.
  • PI tax according to one of the following:
    • 4% default POCO tax OR
    • 20M/month/pilot and 0% POCO tax based on standings with the POCO holding corporation. Again this is organised by ugly spreadsheets.
POS have risk; we might get blown up.  POS have costs, not only does a good POS cost 1B to put up, but they also cost 500M/month in fuel.  We are happy with these risks and costs; but someone has to pay the bill. 

When a corporation is 100% full, with busy PI pilots, I make about 20% profit over the cost of the POS fuel.  When a corp is 50% full, I make a loss.  I should be charging different taxes; but these are details.  For the time being I am happy that I can do this, even if I would prefer different tools.



The future


What CCP have to decide with the apparently Pro Industry/Pro Corporation changes is : Do you want to make it easier for small to medium industry corporations to grow?  Do you want to make it harder?





While I am what some would call a carebear, I still don't want everything to go in one direction.  I firmly believe that there should be 'interesting choices'.    Here is my wishlist for tools to allow me to grow my wormhole industry corporations.  

Revamp POS and corporation roles.  A POS revamp will cause CCP developer tears.  Have a tissue and a few months or maybe a few years or whenever we build our next type of station.  Let me build a (destroyable) station in wormhole space if necessary.

This is how I want CCP to revamp POS and corporation roles.





There should be two types of storage:
  • Larger communal storage.  This is where we put large bulky but cheap things.  Ore.  Unprocessed PI goo.  Way too many epithals.  T1 components.
  • Smaller secure storage that can contain expensive items.  This is where I put expensive things Blueprints, Battleships, T3 ships, Fully processed PI goo, Spare fuel.
When I add a storage array of either kind, it should simply add to the total available space for that kind.  Separate ship hangers from other hangers if you must.  Storage in individual arrays really should disappear.    I want to start jobs based on BP's and mats that I can access in the POS. 

While storage remains limited, (and I am happy that it does), I want to allocate a quota of storage to pilots or titles or some group. I want to tax pilots for access to this limited storage.

I would like to issue automated monthly bills to pilots in our corporation; and allow pilots to auto pay these bills if they desire to do so.  I want to be able to see outstanding bills that are owing to our corp.  This will allow me time in game running activities rather than time with my spreadsheets out of game.
Allow me to continue to tax on use of various modules.  I know module slot limits are going to disappear, but it is currently corp income; why remove this?  My question for corbexx (csm wormhole member) was : Find out how many corps currently charge for use of research/manufacture modules.  If corps are currently charging tax to members for slots; allow us to continue to do so.


I want to hide titles from the public.  Currently all you need to work out alts of many WH corporations is to look at their titles.  We use this against our enemies, they use it against us.  Pointless to use it against me.  Find a Foo in one of our corps and you have found me.  My spy alts are out of corp.

Give the CEO/directors access to personal hanger arrays.  When I pull a tower down due to an emergency, or even just because I want to change tower size or type, I want to at least know what I am about to destroy in absent pilots hangers; and preferably would like to be able to move stuff.

I want more than 7 discreet divisions per POS.  At least one division per title, but preferably unlimited 'divisions'. (a CEO can dream?).  Give me this and I will invite more pilots into wormhole space, because I can mix more untrusted newbies with paranoid veterans.  However, I can't even convince corbexx  why this is needed.  If you feel this is wanted, please leave a comment.  Similarly, if you feel this is a "Pants on head" idea, say so to.

Give us alliance bookmarks.  If this occurs, I will create alliances.  I have a pilot with Empire Control 5 waiting for an excuse to buy the Sovereignty skillbook.

In conclusion

I am adaptable; I will cope with whatever tools CCP gives us.  New 'tools' take time (and first life currency) to build.

If that means new POS and the corps to go with it; I will build new POS and corps.  There are however limits to the number of POS and corps that I am willing to build.  


7 comments:

  1. Eve Uni charges for use of it's research POS, so there's at least one corp for you. I like a lot of your other suggestions for improvement also.

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  2. A lot of good idea here.

    I have been much annoyed by Personal Hangar Arrays and I feel that with proper roles I should have access. I am the CEO! I would not install a thingie in my own POS that I cannot access. This can be something as simple as a command to eject all contents out in a jetcan, although ideally I'd want to be able to target the stuff on a per-character basis. (I have used a PHA in the past, but not any more. In large part for this reason.)

    I'll second your call for general storage in between a PHA and a CHA. The problem with PHA is there is too little storage, or too much if you only use it for small stuff; the problem with CHA is the divisions, which were never intended to be personal. I'd revise PHA as follows: PHA should have the same total volume as a CHA, with assignment to individuals of quotas they cannot exceed. And ideally allow me to tax individuals for their access/quota/storage, as you mention. CHA are still needed for sharing things among the corp, and don't need to be changed. Certainly I would not mind if they could get rid of the divisions, but that seems like quite the project to me.

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  3. Quik note: PHA vs CHA... PHA needs to go away, ALL PHAs should have max of say, 10 divisions (or some such# for x) BUT...

    -the number of divisions for EACH PHA should customizable. You can set the whole thing as one big division, or set 'x' number of divisions up to max#, then;

    -each division of each PHA can be INDIVIDUALLY set to access by roles and or by PLAYER...

    IE 4 PHAs: 8 Player/14 Toon corp

    #1 "Corp PHA" set as one division / set for all Corp & Alliance Look, Give & Take access - used for corp mods, packaged ships, etc.

    #2 "Indy PHA" set with 3 divisions /
    set 1st Div for Loot Drop / set for ALL Give - Director Look & Take only /
    set 2nd Div for Ores / set for all G&T access /
    set 3rd Div for Minerals / set for ALL Give - Director Look & Take only /

    #3 "Members PHA" set with 8 divisions /
    set 1st Div for Player 1 / set for Player L,G&T ONLY [Director L,G&T also?]
    set 2nd Div for Player 2 / set for Player L,G&T ONLY
    set 3rd Div for Player 3 / set for Player L, G&T ONLY
    set 4th Div for Player 4 / set for Player L, G&T ONLY
    set 5th Div for Player 5 / set for Player L, G&T ONLY
    set 6th Div for Player 6 / set for Player L, G&T ONLY
    set 7th Div for Player 7 / set for Player L, G&T ONLY
    set 8th Div for Player 8 / set for Player L, G&T ONLY

    The SMAs should be the same, fully customizable for # of divisions and each division customizable separate from the other SMAs, and of course... stations work the same way.

    IE maximum customization for Alliance/corp/personal storage and hangar space.

    And yes, this IS asking a lot... but dint they say they were basically ripping out then old Corp/Alliance Roles system anyway?

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. crap.... OK, re above... where I say PHAs need to go away... please sub CHA for every instance of PHA from there on....

    sheesh I gotta get better at proofing... or just start actually doing it.

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  6. You are saying you want CCP to give you the tools needed to successfully run a corporation? Why can't you play the way EVE is meant to be played? What do you think this is, a sandbox?

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  7. Our required skill list is 15 days training on an unmapped, no implant newbie.industrial polished concrete

    ReplyDelete

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