EVE Rubicon: Player Owned Customs Offices in Hi-Sec

Hello Capsuleers!

I am CCP SoniClover from Team Super Friends here to tell you about one of the things we’re adding this winter. It’s a little thing called Hi Sec Player Owned Customs Offices (POCOs). With the tl;dr version out of the way, lets dig into some details.

Lets start with a quick overview of Customs Offices for those unsure of what they are. Customs Offices are structures that orbit planets and allow players to import and export goods between the planet and space. There is one in orbit around each planet in the EVE universe. They are heavily linked to Planetary Interaction, and allow for a more secure, larger transfer than manually launching goods from the planet into space for pickup.

After EVE Online: Rubicon comes to EVE on November 19, all Customs Offices in empire space (0.5 security status and above) will become owned and operated by InterBus, an NPC corporation. Anyone can shoot at InterBus Customs Offices, if one is destroyed, players can put down a gantry and build their own Customs Office in its place. You can read about how to anchor a Customs Office here. Again, this will apply to all Customs Offices in high sec, in all systems and all security bands, but existing restrictions on Customs Offices will remain (like in the Jita solar system).

Once a POCO is in place, players can make a legal attack only if they’re at war with the owning corporation. Attacking without an active war on the owner will bring CONCORD intervention. Customs Offices will now have a value on Kill Reports, meaning for instance that if the owning corporation has a bounty, then destroying their Customs Office will pay out bounty.

Because of the importance of wars in taking down POCOs, we’re putting in a restriction on when ownership of a POCO can be transferred and to whom. A corporation that owns a Customs Office cannot transfer ownership if they are at war or have a war pending. This does not apply to transferring ownership to another corporation in the same Alliance as the owner (as the war will still cover those).

POCOs in hi sec will give the owner the exact same controls as POCOs in low sec – the owner can set the tax rate as he wants and can have different tax rates based on standings. This includes denying access. While this can be used to stifle imports to a planet, it can never stop you from exporting from the planet, as you can always launch directly into space. This, coupled with the fact that is doesn’t cost a great deal to set up on a planet, means that while high sec POCOs can disrupt your operation this change can never shut it down completely.

The NPC tax will continue for hi sec POCOs (as we want low sec POCOs to still be competitive). The tax rate stays the same, at 10% for export and 5% for import. This is then in addition to whatever tax the player owner sets.

New Skill: Customs Code Expertise

We are introducing a new trainable skill, Customs Code Expertise, which will reduce the NPC portion of the tax rate, but 10% per level (so at level 5 the NPC export tax rate will be 5% rather than 10%). Again, this skill only affects the NPC portion of the tax, not the player owner tax.

Tax Base Change

We’re also adjusting the tax base values for commodities. These have not been touched since they were adjusted based on market values in November 2011 and are a bit out of sync. We’re reducing the values for all types, as follows:

These two changes (new skill and adjusted tax base values) mean that the NPC portion of the tax is going to be less than it is right now.

We have a few other things up our sleeve for Rubicon, so keep an eye out for more dev blogs from Team Super Friends in the near future discussing those. Until then, take care.

-  CCP SoniClover

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