Wednesday 2 October 2013

Highsec Customs office revisited

There have been some updates on highsec Corporate Owned Customs Offices : otherwise misnamed POCO (player owned customs offices), but I assume COCO sounds like a fashion designer or maybe a misspelling of certain drinks and food.
  • Highsec POCO can only be attacked while at war.
  • Highsec POCO can not be transferred while at war, or with war pending.
  • Base rate reduction to PI, reducing tax.  This ranges from 11% for advanced commodities to 20% for basic and refined.
  • Highsec POCO to still have NPC tax, with the new Customs Code Expertise skill enabling a NPC tax reduction from 10% to 5% on base rates.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/player-owned-customs-offices-in-hi-sec

Ok, now I have parroted the CCP announcement (a lot of bloggers do stuff like that), here is my take of semi-random thoughts.

There will be a short term spike in PI as players stockpile customs office gantries and upgrades, even if they make little sense to put up for the average user.  This may spike even higher when Rubicon drops, depending on how flooded the market is by stockpiling speculators.

The reduction of base rates is a nerf to POCO owners; but does somewhat make multi planet PI more attractive where players are currently paying tax.

EDIT : http://evehermit.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/should-have-seen-that-coming/  I think Interbus tax at 17% on exports, so this would drop to around an effective 8.5%.  If this does occur, I need to re-think the value of below for PI farmers owning your own customs offices; and it's ultimate effect on end prices.

There is little value in pure PI farmers owning or even using a highsec POCO over an interbus one.  POCO's are too expensive to put up 'defensively', and for those without the means to defend, simply become a war target magnet.

After the initial land grab; there will still be highsec Interbus customs offices available, just like they are still available in lowsec and wormhole space.

The best value for a highsec POCO is for it's 'shoot me' between these times value.  Owners of customs offices can set within a 2 hour window when their customs offices will be vulnerable.

The next value I see for a highsec POCO is for existing large nullsec alliances to attempt to drive PI prices up by putting their 15% tax on all conveniently placed customs offices.  At roughly 1B ISK per system this seems to have a very poor return on investment.  Targeting all Temperate for Autotrophs/Industrial fibers, or Lava for Felsic Magma/Silicon makes some sense.  No point in specifically targeting Gas for Reactive Gas/Oxidizing Compound as there are far too many gas planets.

POCO owners that charge tax will be able to see who, the value and timing of PI collection.


Forget ice; Industrial Fiber interdictions anyone?

Finally, there might be some value in advertising to highsec PI farmers.  Some of them will click on the customs office to work out who owns what, and read the odd corporate bio.

Highsec PI farmers will get Customs Code Expertise, often to 4, reducing their tax rate to (approx?) 6%. Combined with the drop in base rates; for many players, export tax on Processed commodities will drop from 50 ISK/unit (500isk * 10%) to 24% (400 ISK * 6%), and export tax on advanced commodities will drop from 135,000 ISK/unit to (1,350,000 * 10%) to 72,000 ISK/unit (1,200,000 * 6%)

My guestimate is that the price for demand limited items like Bacteria and Biofuels will fall from roughly 90 ISK (1.8 * tax of 50 ISK)  to 45 ISK (1.8 * tax of 24 ISK).  As I said before, I don't see supply limited items falling anywhere near as much.

I do see some attempt to strangle cheap supply on Temperate and Lava planets, pushing the value of Industrial Fibers and Silicon up.

My expectation that the long term prices for advanced PI will probably drop by 15%, being a combination of more advanced PI being manufactured in highsec at lower taxes, and falling prices on some (but not all) components.


No update on attacking Interbus customs offices. I still think you should be tagged as suspect when attacking one.

4 comments:

  1. The new interbus taxes for high-sec POs are definitely a potential windfall for high-sec factory planet operators. So if you can avoid paying a corporate tax there's definitely potential for a bigger profit.

    Using current prices and the new tax structure my best performing model planet goes from 360 Misk / month up to over 900Misk. The 0% tax version comes in at 1300 Misk.

    Which prompts a logistics question. How much income do you trade for easier logistics. At present you have two choices, either high-sec 1 jump away from Jita or somewhere else (like a wormhole) with longer transport chains and a low tax rate. Assuming all the 1 jump planets are hard to work with in practice due to POCO ping-pong or high tax rates, how far out do you need to go to get a good low tax rate and is it even worth staying in high-sec?

    ReplyDelete
  2. My reading is that highsec wont come in a 0% variety; you will still need to head to low/null/wh for that.

    You will be able to get either 5% (1/2 of 10% concord) or 8.5% (1/2 of 17% interbus) + any player corp taxes on top of that

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah. It looks like it'll be the 10% base for high-sec plus whatever corp set tax.

    Is Foo Signature Industries still recruiting? Your post seems to have vanished. I'm keen to try and do some Wormhole PI to compare to my high-sec stuff.

    ReplyDelete
  4. The NPC tax rates are not the problem. The Corp rates and Denied access are the problems, expecially for individual players who simply want to play the game without being involved in wardecs all the time.

    This was a BAD move for hi-sec and ultimately will cause single players to leave the game or stop running PI, thus limiting the EVE experience, and diminishing all the amazing things this game offers. Leave it for Null and LO, but Hi-sec CO should be run by Concord, giving EVERYONE the right to use it at minimal cost, instead of only those who belong to big corporations with the means and personnel to handle constant wardecs. I suspect somebody at CCP was not thinking clearly when they came up with this idea. Sadly it becomes more and mroe obvious that CCP has ZERO clue about it's player base and what is important to them ALL, not just the big corps and coalitions.

    ReplyDelete

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