In the next EVE patch, Rubicon, highsec customs offices will be capturable by players (actually you destroy and build your own, but it's easier to consider as capture). The NPC owner that has all the customs offices in highsec set 10% tax. Players can set it to any value, but NPC tax portion will remain, affected by a new skill.
Players owning a Customs Office can tax the users of it or use it for themselves, locking other players out. This means personal profit. The lack of personal profit while creating content is one of the plagues of EVE Online. Anything that is interesting to any other player costs you money instead of providing to you. This means the activity cannot pay itself. WoW raiding is self-paying, if your guild kills the boss, you get loot that you couldn't get anywhere else. If your EVE alliance captures a region, you get nothing. You can later use the region to rat in it, but considering the amount of time invested, you are surely better off just renting some space from someone who currently owns it. The same plagued my own failed ganking project: it provided nothing for the gankers, we did it only for the idea of fighting morons and slackers.
POCOs are different. There is money in them. The exact value can't be known, as there are lot of POCOs in low, null and WH, so looking at the Jita volume of planetary materials gives you nothing. You can only guess. The value can be trillions and can be trivial. But there is surely money in it. The problem with POCO ownership is that there are awful lot of planets in highsec, each with a Customs Office. Highsec planets aren't too good for extraction, most of the planets are used for factories, combining low level materials extracted in null/WH/low into high level materials. For that purpose, the approximately 25000 planets are created equal. While proximity to Jita is a plus, it's not that big, considering the low Red Frog prices. As they transport 1B worth of stuff 18 jumps for 10M, setting up your planet 18 jumps from Jita costs you as much as 1% tax increase. This means that if you capture a customs office and set the tax higher than the NPC tax, you probably get zero customers or just ignorant noobs who don't know better.
The only way to get profit from highsec POCOs is monopolizing them, giving no other options to PI people than going to lowsec or stopping PI besides paying your tax. Monopolizing 25000 POCOs is totally impossible due to the size of the task. Grinding down 25000 NPC customs offices is itself an inhuman job, considering their 10+2.5+2M HP. That's 363 billion HP and you can't use capitals. If you use an 1600 DPS marauder to do the job, it will take 7.2 years to kill them all. And that's without player opposition. Other players can take NPC customs offices before you, and then you can only take it if you wardec them, meaning costs, reinforcement timer and the risk of getting into PvP.
However I see a way to create the needed POCO monopoly, that fits very well to the result I've found, that solo players are extremely effective: instead of an organized monolith, having an alliance of corps. The alliance just have a formal leader, there is no real alliance life. The alliance is just a price cartel agreement. Anyone can join, as in highsec, being blue doesn't let you awox. By joining you have to set the tax rate the same as everyone. Until every NPC and non-blue customs offices are taken, there is no conflict of interest between alliance members. There is no alliance level income, you take the tax from your own POCOs.
Now comes the nasty trick while such super-large alliance can be successful. NPC customs offices can be destroyed AFK by NPC corp Marauders, easy thing. Player owned Customs Offices can only be attacked if the player corp is wardecced. You can't wardec a player owned corp if it's in an alliance, just the alliance itself. Such act has high cost if the alliance is huge, protecting the alliance from wardecs for their customs offices. I mean it's much more profitable to simply join the alliance and accept the cartel price than setting up a max-cost wardec for the chance of taking some POCOs. Remember, if you use the POCO yourself, the tax rate is irrelevant as you are paying it to yourself.
What about PvP-ers, who wardec the alliance not because they want POCOs, but to get fights? Well, they won't get any. The in-alliance corps never fight. They never even undock, except in haulers for that one trip carrying the POCO to the planet. So for their max-cost wardec they get nothing but the opportunity to shoot customs offices. How can you defend your customs offices? If anyone wardecs the alliance, it makes the war available for mercenaries, so you can just join with your shooter corp and defend your POCO.
How does the alliance attacks customs offices owned by other player corps? It doesn't. If you want to take a POCO, you grab your out-of-alliance corp and wardec the owner. This corp shoots the POCO, and when it is destroyed, your in-alliance corp plants the new POCO.
In the initial period, while there are still lot of NPC owned POCOs, the optimal tax is below the NPC tax, so players will pick the alliance POCOs, providing some income. After all customs offices are player owned, the tax can be elevated to make it 20% including perfect skills NPC tax. It is high enough to provide decent income, but low enough to not drive too many people to lowsec customs offices.
Important note: this alliance can include nullsec alliances too. I mean the nullsec alliance makes a POCO holding corp that joins the alliance for its benefits and the nullsec alliance acts as the "shooter corp", destroying non-blue POCOs and defending their POCOs by joining to the war as allies.
One question remains: how to prevent alliance members attack each other using their shooter altcorps? There is no need for such prevention. If a member is so weak and overextended that it worth paying the max-cost wardec fee and risking allies entering the war, he deserves his fate. You need to be rational with your POCOs and if you overextend, simply sell some of your POCOs, saving the shooting and getting some money. I'm sure there will be some form of POCO transfer way, if no other then selling your whole corp.
What do you think?
PS: While currently I'm thinking about this POCO monopoly, this isn't a plan declaration yet. I'm looking for options, and that includes another highsec project or going FW or WH. While nullsec is the least possible option now, I even prepare for that:
Players owning a Customs Office can tax the users of it or use it for themselves, locking other players out. This means personal profit. The lack of personal profit while creating content is one of the plagues of EVE Online. Anything that is interesting to any other player costs you money instead of providing to you. This means the activity cannot pay itself. WoW raiding is self-paying, if your guild kills the boss, you get loot that you couldn't get anywhere else. If your EVE alliance captures a region, you get nothing. You can later use the region to rat in it, but considering the amount of time invested, you are surely better off just renting some space from someone who currently owns it. The same plagued my own failed ganking project: it provided nothing for the gankers, we did it only for the idea of fighting morons and slackers.
POCOs are different. There is money in them. The exact value can't be known, as there are lot of POCOs in low, null and WH, so looking at the Jita volume of planetary materials gives you nothing. You can only guess. The value can be trillions and can be trivial. But there is surely money in it. The problem with POCO ownership is that there are awful lot of planets in highsec, each with a Customs Office. Highsec planets aren't too good for extraction, most of the planets are used for factories, combining low level materials extracted in null/WH/low into high level materials. For that purpose, the approximately 25000 planets are created equal. While proximity to Jita is a plus, it's not that big, considering the low Red Frog prices. As they transport 1B worth of stuff 18 jumps for 10M, setting up your planet 18 jumps from Jita costs you as much as 1% tax increase. This means that if you capture a customs office and set the tax higher than the NPC tax, you probably get zero customers or just ignorant noobs who don't know better.
The only way to get profit from highsec POCOs is monopolizing them, giving no other options to PI people than going to lowsec or stopping PI besides paying your tax. Monopolizing 25000 POCOs is totally impossible due to the size of the task. Grinding down 25000 NPC customs offices is itself an inhuman job, considering their 10+2.5+2M HP. That's 363 billion HP and you can't use capitals. If you use an 1600 DPS marauder to do the job, it will take 7.2 years to kill them all. And that's without player opposition. Other players can take NPC customs offices before you, and then you can only take it if you wardec them, meaning costs, reinforcement timer and the risk of getting into PvP.
However I see a way to create the needed POCO monopoly, that fits very well to the result I've found, that solo players are extremely effective: instead of an organized monolith, having an alliance of corps. The alliance just have a formal leader, there is no real alliance life. The alliance is just a price cartel agreement. Anyone can join, as in highsec, being blue doesn't let you awox. By joining you have to set the tax rate the same as everyone. Until every NPC and non-blue customs offices are taken, there is no conflict of interest between alliance members. There is no alliance level income, you take the tax from your own POCOs.
Now comes the nasty trick while such super-large alliance can be successful. NPC customs offices can be destroyed AFK by NPC corp Marauders, easy thing. Player owned Customs Offices can only be attacked if the player corp is wardecced. You can't wardec a player owned corp if it's in an alliance, just the alliance itself. Such act has high cost if the alliance is huge, protecting the alliance from wardecs for their customs offices. I mean it's much more profitable to simply join the alliance and accept the cartel price than setting up a max-cost wardec for the chance of taking some POCOs. Remember, if you use the POCO yourself, the tax rate is irrelevant as you are paying it to yourself.
What about PvP-ers, who wardec the alliance not because they want POCOs, but to get fights? Well, they won't get any. The in-alliance corps never fight. They never even undock, except in haulers for that one trip carrying the POCO to the planet. So for their max-cost wardec they get nothing but the opportunity to shoot customs offices. How can you defend your customs offices? If anyone wardecs the alliance, it makes the war available for mercenaries, so you can just join with your shooter corp and defend your POCO.
How does the alliance attacks customs offices owned by other player corps? It doesn't. If you want to take a POCO, you grab your out-of-alliance corp and wardec the owner. This corp shoots the POCO, and when it is destroyed, your in-alliance corp plants the new POCO.
In the initial period, while there are still lot of NPC owned POCOs, the optimal tax is below the NPC tax, so players will pick the alliance POCOs, providing some income. After all customs offices are player owned, the tax can be elevated to make it 20% including perfect skills NPC tax. It is high enough to provide decent income, but low enough to not drive too many people to lowsec customs offices.
Important note: this alliance can include nullsec alliances too. I mean the nullsec alliance makes a POCO holding corp that joins the alliance for its benefits and the nullsec alliance acts as the "shooter corp", destroying non-blue POCOs and defending their POCOs by joining to the war as allies.
One question remains: how to prevent alliance members attack each other using their shooter altcorps? There is no need for such prevention. If a member is so weak and overextended that it worth paying the max-cost wardec fee and risking allies entering the war, he deserves his fate. You need to be rational with your POCOs and if you overextend, simply sell some of your POCOs, saving the shooting and getting some money. I'm sure there will be some form of POCO transfer way, if no other then selling your whole corp.
What do you think?
PS: While currently I'm thinking about this POCO monopoly, this isn't a plan declaration yet. I'm looking for options, and that includes another highsec project or going FW or WH. While nullsec is the least possible option now, I even prepare for that:
27 comments:
This is your best ideas yet. It might actually work out something like this in the end.
The only problem I see is the big null sec alliances will be the ones controlling it and making most of the profits.
They'll have all the best POCOs under control of their own members and charge exorbitant protection fees to anyone else.
I wouldn't afraid of that after the failed ice interdiction.
Having highsec pocos need PERMANENT presence. It's not enough to just grind them down once. If a nullsec conflict needs your people in nullsec for a week, you find yourself without a single POCO when you come back and can start over.
Not when you have to wardec say CFC to take your POCO back. And of course they'll just take it right back from you a few days later.
They don't need a permanent presence, the cost of the wardec will be prohibitive.
Instead the big alliances will carve out high sec territories charge exhorbitant monthly "protection" fees for "renters" to belong to a special corps made just for that.
Anyone not in one of their member corps who puts up a POCO in "their" area will have it blown up soon.
@MoxNix: wardeccing Goons isn't prohibitive, because there are always dumb goons to shoot at Jita. In the last 60 days GSF had 24 wars, only 1 of them started by them.
My idea is an alliance which gives no fights to anyone.
Setting the tax too high is stupid as no one will pay it. The PI bears always have the option to just switch mining or missioning.
The problem is, you'd never get anyone to agree to do it. Why would anyone want to go through all of that hassle to own a poco? So they may or may not earn a trickle of income?
Then even if you did, the big wardec groups would come to spoil the fun, and I doubt very much that any threats of allies will worry them.
If a big null alliance does take over the pocos, it will be cost ineffective to attack them. You'd have to pay 500m to wardec the Goons at the moment, then you would be able to attack their pocos, but only into it's reinforce timer, then you'd have to wait and come back, and Goons would know you are going to be there. When you add up all the fees, and the time, consider how much that poco would have to earn just to break even.
5 Dominix with Pulse Laser II (T1 multifrequency) and Ogre II or Sentries take out a highsec POCO within 60 minutes, capstable, no need to reload, completely afk (Sisi tested, shield recharge included!).
While there are a lot of planets in highsec, not all of them can be used as factory planets.
You can expect players to focus on those factory planets first.
(You'll get import and export tax on those while on extraction planets you'll only get export tax - but with 10% corp tax + NPC tax some may use rocket launch instead of export and you won't get anything).
And that's where an monopolizing alliance will fail.
Corp 1 may be lucky to catch 20 Barren POCOs while Corp 2 manages to get 20 POCOs on Gas, Ice, Storm Planets.
While both corporations invested ~1.5b ISK to build the POCOs, corporation 2 will have a hard time to make a profit if players choose to rocket launch their products because of the monopolized taxes.
Corp 2 can now leave the monopolizing alliance, making itself vulnerable to wardecs. Or they can simply lower the taxrate.
As long as the alliance leader isn't flying around everyday to watch the tax rates, it would take some time to recognize.
What you are thinking about is the same as monopolizing all miners to sell Veldspar at monopolized prices.
It won't happen.
@Anonymous: Veldspar can't be monopolized, because of two things what POCOs are not:
- it's infinite. Most veldspar asteroids just live till downtime as no one mined it out. While 25000 POCOs are a lot, they are far from infinite. Remember, after someone took it, it's his, you can't just go and take the next POCO.
- Concorde: if a miner gives me the finger, I can only suicide gank him. POCO owners can be wardecced.
The taxes don't have to be the same for every planet type, they just have to be the same everywhere. Some planets can be much cheaper than others. Remember, OTEC didn't try to touch other moon materials.
@Lucas: did you actually read the idea? Big wardec groups - unless they want to run POCOs themselves - have zero reason to mess with it. They won't get a single killmail fighting.
Goons won't be a problem and I'm sure they won't even try messing with POCOs. Why? Not because they are just a killmail waiting to happen in highsec. Not because the average Goon couldn't tie his shoe without an FC. Not because they just failed the interdiction. Not because last time they came wardeccing to highsec (Jade Constantine case), they came out begging to CCP to save them.
No. They won't touch POCOs, because a highsec carebear would self destruct all his ships, trash his assets and biomass his pilots before he'd pay a dime to a Goon. Remember! Highsec carebears are mostly not RMT botters like the null renters. They are real players who hate the Goons like the living Satan.
Do you know what was the most "serious" insult the ganked miners thrown at me? That I'm a Goon alt.
@Lucas
If the goons take a large chunk of POCO, just hang around and wait until the Goons wardec someone. Jump onto the wardec as a valiant defender and go shoot poco
Gevlon I don't think you understood what I said.
I didn't say the alliances would set high taxes. I said they'd charge high "protection" fees.
They'll simply charge anyone besides themselves who wants to setup a POCO a monthly fee so goons (or w/e) won't blow it up.
And yes wardec fees would be prohibitive when the fees + cost of a POCO are more than the POCO owner is likely to make off taxes before his POCO gets destroyed.
@MoxNix: if they won't run POCOs themselves, their threats are empty and no one will pay them. They wardec me? I call in allies who will shoot some nullseccers for killmails and after they are gone, I simply rebuild my lost POCOs.
They are only a threat if they immediately anchor their own POCO and actively defending it. Which they can't.
I really like this idea. Definately something I'd be interested in doing, seem pretty well thought and could work if you could get enough people to join you in this.
But this is still EvE so once the monopoly has been created, the corporations will more than likely start to go against each other for just that small bit of extra profit they might be able to get from this.
I disagree that the only way to get profit from hisec POCOs will be a monopoly, to be honest. Yes, as long as you do not hold a monopoly your "customers" will have the option of going somewhere else that charges less than you do, but you're neglecting to acknowledge that they may face opportunity costs for doing so.
Not every planet is equal in terms of what it can produce, how common an alternative is or how much demand there is to make use of it. Obviously planets close to trade hubs see a lot more demand as it means less travel time for industrialists producing for sale. Systems with higher security may also have more demand due to less risk of gankers. Additionally Plasma planets are always in high demand as they have a balance of resources that allows them to produce Robotics from a single installation, along with some other high-demand PI products. Barren and Temperate planets also see higher demand than most as they're the only ones that can host High Tech Production facilities, and Barren are also in demand as the only source of Noble Metals other than the rare Plasma planets. Going the other way, there is limited demand for any single Gas Planet as they are extremely common and their transport links use a lot more CPU/PG than other planets, while there isn't much that they produce that can't be made elsewhere easier.
Put all that together and a Barren or Plasma planet close to a tradehub will see a lot more demand than a Gas planet in the middle of nowhere; as such you can charge higher taxes on the Barren or Plasma world before your customers will be willing to relocate their operation. Applying a one-size-fits-all approach to taxation means ignoring outliers like the relatively small amount of Barren, Temperate and Plasma planets within a few to trade hubs, which could probably take 5-10% higher tax rate with little affect on the number of people using it.
That aside, the problem with your POCO cartel idea here is you haven't described how you'd handle an attack that intended to take over your POCOs. If you do manage to take over a monopoly and then another group declares war, destroys all your POCOs in an area (everything within 5 jumps of Jita, say, or RvB taking over The Forge) and then erects your own. This will break your monopoly - how will you respond? Mercenaries may be an option in the case of a small group, but given the combination of, say, RvB's size and aggression I doubt they could make much headway there and RvB aren't the only organisation with both size and interest in fighting who might be interested in POCO income.
For that matter, you're probably right to dismiss Goonswarm as being able to hold down a monopoly across all of hisec, but bear in mind that Miniluv operates exclusively in hisec space and specialises in high DPS hit and run operations - normally ganks, but they could bring the same basic tactics to bear against WTs attacking POCOs with BC/BS fairly easily. In that way they could certainly secure a notable area of hisec POCOs (a few constellations maybe) without any disruption to their standard Nullsec operations.
@Gevlon
"did you actually read the idea? Big wardec groups - unless they want to run POCOs themselves - have zero reason to mess with it. They won't get a single killmail fighting."
Yes I did. And of course they get killmails. If they war dec you and start taking down a POCO, you have to defend it. That's what they would be aiming for. And what chance would you stand?
"Goons won't be a problem and I'm sure they won't even try messing with POCOs. Why? Not because they are just a killmail waiting to happen in highsec."
And yet they run Burn Jita without a worry. Getting attacked by highsec players is not a worry. That said, goons probably won't bother, since there's not enough profit in it in comparison with the amount of effort that would be required. But remember, goons aren't the only big alliance. They are most likely to get taken by a big high sec war group, to create fights.
"No. They won't touch POCOs, because a highsec carebear would self destruct all his ships, trash his assets and biomass his pilots before he'd pay a dime to a Goon."
I think you need to go speak to the rest of highsec, because they pay goons a lot. People now rent from the CFC, they buy many things produced by the CFC, and they even hand over billions for the chance to be recruited into goons (which then doesn't happen). Do you really think that people would pay that much attention to their poco owner? As long as the rates let them make profit, most people wouldn't care who owns it
And I get it, you hate goons. You realise however that doesn't make goons automatically unable to do anything right? A single interdiction gets a lower number of participants than normal and you seem to jump up and down on that point as if that somehow invalidates all of their other achievements. Like forming the coalition that holds something like a third of all sov null space. Even the "failed interdiction" made most of us billions of isk.
@Anonymous
"If the goons take a large chunk of POCO, just hang around and wait until the Goons wardec someone. Jump onto the wardec as a valiant defender and go shoot poco"
Strangely I don't think anyone is worried. Sure, you could spend time reinforcing pocos and mostly providing free kills, but what would you really gain from that? If a null group takes over the POCOs, you can be damn sure that shooting highsec carebears will be the number 1 reason for doing it. It won't be for the pitiful income.
@Lucas: one thing can be told without doubt. Neither Goons, nor anyone else will get a single kill on highsec carebears near a POCO.
Why? Because carebears - by definition - don't undock into PvP. It is possible that carebears take POCOs from NPC but after they get the first wardec, they stay docked and lose it. Highsec PvP organizations like Noir, RvB, Marmite and maybe new ones will fight for the POCOs.
And Goons - or any other nullsec player - would be wise not to mess with them unless they want to give them free kills.
I still don't see why every POCO owner in this alliance would stick with the monopolized tax rate if he can make more profits by undercutting taxes.
Yes, in the long run, all could make more profit.
And just to give you an example: I will undock and try to get all POCOs in my home system and the adjustant systems, that would be 41 POCO. I don't expect to see much competition as these systems aren't frequented much by missionrunners or anything else, so my corporation is very "stealth" and I've never got any wardec within the last 3 years.
Now joining this alliance would give me no profit.
Instead, the more corporations are in this alliance, the more likely I will be part of a wardec.
Higher risk for equal reward.
Of course I could just create a new alt and a holding corporation. That way my main industrial toons wouldn't be endangered by wardecs.
But an alliance consisting of 75 "one-man-corporations" isn't that expensive to wardec - it won't provide "protection because of size" as you mentioned.
If you want to make ISK with the highsec POCOs, go and build a "wrecking ball corporation" offering to remove NPC POCOs to those who are willing to pay for it.
As I mentioned, 5 laser Dominix can take out a POCO in ~60 minutes... 250-300M ISK would be a good price.
That would came back to one of your plans of "paid fleetbears", those people don't willing to take part in nullsec politics but enjoy to have fleet operations.
First, a slight improvement to you plan. Assuming you are constantly under wardec, putting up new POCOs may be a problem. So don't do it in alliance. Create a throwaway corp for your POCO installer character. Set up the POCO. Then sell it to the intended owner. (POCOs can be transferred between corps.)
As for criticism: I'll reiterate what Hivemind said up there: the problem with your POCO cartel idea here is you haven't described how you'd handle an attack that intended to take over your POCOs.
You explicitly say you don't want to fight -- you are going to get owners to do it for you. Or not, if they don't. But you don't offer them anything other than slightly increasing the wardec cost. If they don't, you lose POCOs and probably the owner leaves your alliance, which is now worthless to them. So you become cheaper to wardec. Vicious cycle.
Also, correct me if I am wrong, but if your alliance is under wardec from griefcorps A, B, and C, and griefcorp D declares on you and starts killing the POCOs of your member X, then X has the problem that to defend its POCOs it must not only face D but also A, B, and C. So, joining you is actually a negative for small corps. It seems the only people you might get to join would be corps that desire highsec wars, and would want you to help trigger them cheaply.
Also, you've got a bootstrapping problem. Once your alliance is large, then you do indeed have an advantage (although hardly insurmountable -- relative to the cost of wardecs, POCOs are not cheap). But you have to get the size to get the advantage.
One more problem you might think on, though I am not sure it is huge. It is this: what if a member chisels on the monopoly? That is, you've decreed the highsec rate is now 12%, and everyone has raised their taxes. Except one group, who advertise they are staying at 10%, everyone come and use our POCOs! They are undercutting you -- what do you to? Kick them, is all.
So let me suggest a variation of your plan that solves all of these problems. That is, you do offer substantial services to your members. You offer to hire whatever mercs are necessary to defend their POCOs. Find the best mercs you can -- Noir? multiple groups? -- and get a long term contract with them, saying (1) that they won't wardec your alliance for any client, and (2) that they will be available to fight for you on call (other obligations permitting). Perhaps this is a billion per month. Who knows: ask them. It might be quite reasonable. Now you run as normal. You will want to charge a small fee per POCO, say, 1 million per month. (This is about 1% of its value; I should think that is cheap for decent protection.) Once you get 1000 POCOs, you make money. If you cannot get 1000 POCOs, you lose money. If the mercs you hire cannot beat some larger group that invades, you lose money. You are the capitalist here, with the big bucks to sling around. Use them.
you haven't considered market manipulation.
I see the big thing being people that own all the barren planets in a region, then have periods of time where they would make export taxes prohibitive.
would increase p4 materials on their regional market temporarily, while they dump stock, then drop tax to 0 afterwards to flood market.
if you could get a group to handle a large enough swath of barren planet pocos, you could actually manipulate it pretty well too.
its just like anything, the money is when you take goods to market, not the convoluted plans people have now.
then all you have to do is run fleets when someone attacks your poco, which shouldn't matter anyway, so long as it isn't producing p4, thats whats important
@Von Keigai: you have to see that the largest reason of wardeccing any highsec, PvE corporation is to get kills. The solution to it is not undocking.
Any kind of central defense group would ATTRACT wardecs instead of deter.
The main point is that by wardeccing the alliance, you can be sure only in one thing: the bill. You might get Noir to your head, you might get nothing but shooting a damn structure without anyone giving a damn.
While theoretically joining the alliance means you inherit its wardecs, it's irrelevant as you only care about war enemies in your range. Why would a POCO owner in Kador give a damn of a wardeccer who decced to attack something in Metropolis?
@Anonymous: If your one-man corp has 41 POCOs and it's average, than the alliance has 610 corps in it. Also, it can be demanded to have N pilots in your corp, just make dummy alts on your other accounts.
Various services like a wrecking ball can exists independently and need no alliance flag. You know, in highsec you can buy anything from the market.
"you have to see that the largest reason of wardeccing any highsec, PvE corporation is to get kills."
Yes it is, but you seem to be ignoring that it isn't the only reason to do so. You acknowledge that POCOs will be a profitable resource - if they weren't, why bother making a cartel to control them - but you're ignoring that that means there will be people willing to fight to pull down other players' POCOs and establish their own instead.
If you do establish a cartel capable of monopolising most of hisec with a reputation for not actually defending their POCOs if attacked you will quickly become a target for those who wish to oust it - whether because they want to set up POCOs for the tax revenue or because they want to be able to run their own PI in hisec without dealing with the cartel's taxes.
How will your cartel avoid losing most of its POCOs - and certainly its most valuable ones - to this kind of opposition? Particularly if said opposition is able to field a large military force on par with most mercenary entities, as the likes of RvB or Goonswarm are?
the largest reason of wardeccing any highsec, PvE corporation is to get kills.
This is true, currently.
The solution to it is not undocking.
This is also true. Currently. (Although it is not "the" solution -- it is a solution. You can actually fight and prevail, although this is quite rare.)
However, non undocking is not the solution for owners of POSes. They must, at minimum, take down their POS (and probably lose the slot). And it will not be true for you, because you have a valuable asset sitting out in space where wardeccers can shoot it.
Put another way: things are about to radically change. Currently, there is no point to wardecs other than to shoot ships in corps that don't duck wardec, and shoot POSes that don't get taken down. This will change with Rubicon because POCOs won't be able to duck wardec. As such, they are a huge honking target for any corp that wants to force conflict.
Your plan is deeply flawed. It is almost trivially defeated by any force that is willing to fight. All they need to do is find a POCO in your alliance and threaten to wardec the owner unless he sells you the POCOs at a low price. So what does the owner do? You won't fight for him. And he is small; he cannot afford Noir. If he is rational, he sells the POCO to the wardeccers at a loss. Pure profit for them. If he is irrational, he refuses. The wardeccers have plenty of money to wardec the alliance, so they do, and they kill every POCOs owned by their target first. Then they make demands of every other small corp in your alliance. The wardec is still live, so these guys had better sell fast. Or else.
Your plan will fail unless you will fight.
I see Hivemind already posted pretty much the same strategy as I did. In any case, that is what is in my mind when I tell you to hire Noir (or more mercs).
Anyone can form an alliance and compete to monopolize POCOs with your original plan. As such I see no competitive advantage for you. But in any case, any non-fighting alliance will be easily defeated.
However, not just anyone can pay whatever it takes to get a N month exclusive reserve contract with Noir. This will be very expensive if you can do it at all, and thus, very risky. As such, it requires a capitalist willing to risk multi billions of ISK and the spare time to organize the alliance. You seem to be fairly uniquely well suited for the task.
nice idea, but .. a cartel?!
you did crush enough glyph semi cartels to know better.
exploration destroyed. now PI gets "friendgated". what is next? *sigh*
better take a break again and play X again ... and wait for star citizen (which will fail due to overhype same with Elite)
Cartels have worked in the past because there has been military power to back them up.
Whilst I think the concept has legs, the implementation is a little out.
Firstly, I'd concentrate on monopolizing desirable planets - there is no need to take them all...just take all the most useful ones within a radius of the trade hubs..if the cartel pushes people further out then, and only then, expand your reach.. You can get a rough idea of how well used planets are by viewing them and turning on other planet's networks. Planets where advanced mats can be built would be good to take - the base mats are likely coming from high yield mining planets in null/wh space, and the value of the processed mats will be higher leading to greater tax. You would effectively be skimming profit off the top of the rest of the manufacturing chain.
Next, you will need to support this with military power. You are of course completely right that the primary reason for wardecing is to get kills but it isn't the only one. If you start to corner the market on PI mats in highsec you are going to make enemies...and those enemies will grind your POCO empire to dust if you are unwilling to defend it...and winning it back will be difficult (because once someone drops their own POCO you have timers to deal with..timers belonging to people who you already know are willing to fight).
The other reason you need military power is to enforce the rules of the cartel. You need to be able to have consequences for member corporations lowballing the alliance or otherwise undermining the will of the cartel.
You don't have to own this military power, but you do need to be able to call on it. Mercs would probably provide an expensive, yet low maintenance option for this.
I have more thoughts on this idea at my blog. It will take force.
Me, I think it would be fun to join a corp that defends this sort of alliance. Highsec war all the time. Big fleets moving around, grinding a POCO for a few minutes and then back off to hunting targets. Monster fights from time to time.
"What about PvP-ers, who wardec the alliance not because they want POCOs, but to get fights? Well, they won't get any. The in-alliance corps never fight. They never even undock, except in haulers for that one trip carrying the POCO to the planet. So for their max-cost wardec they get nothing but the opportunity to shoot customs offices. How can you defend your customs offices? If anyone wardecs the alliance, it makes the war available for mercenaries, so you can just join with your shooter corp and defend your POCO."
Which is it? do you deny fights because you think they want fights, thereby abandoning the POCOs or do you have your shooty corp join the war to defend the POCOs because you suspect that's what they are after and give them fun targets to shoot?
"which is it?" They don't know, and that's the point. Some POCO owners fight via shooter corps, others don't. You must pay 500M to figure out.
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