Paying attention until my brain hurts

I’m still focused on PI – and will be until I adjust my infrastructure for the Rubicon changes. It might take me a while.

My previous PI setup had two Alts managing 6 planets each, running on a two day cycle. I balanced the extraction so that I gathered 12,000 units each of Reactive Metals, Precious Metals, Toxic Metals and Chiral Structures, and processed the same number of units into 450 Robotics.

I did extra bits and bobs with excess capacity, but that was the core of my PI.

The cost of doing business in Empire space was straight forward.

. You paid a 10% Tax to export goods via a Custom Office
. You paid a 5% Tax to import goods via a Custom Office
. You paid a 15% Tax to export goods via the Command Centre

The tax was based on a static value for the various tiers of PI goods. The old values were:

Tier – Type – Old ISK Value
P0 – Basic – 500
P1 – Refined – 9,000
P2 – Special – 70,000
P3 – Advanced – 1,350,000

For simplicity sake assume each cycle I exported 48,000 P0 from extraction planets, imported 48,000 P0 to factory planets, and exported 450 produced P2 units. The cost was:

48,000 x 500 x 10%
+ 48,000 x 500 x 5%
+ 450 x 70,000 x 10%

= 2.4M + 1.2M + 3.15M, or 7.75M ISK in taxes

It fluctuates, but on average over the years I’ve sold my Robotics at around 60K each – so for around 27M ISK. Take away the tax and selling costs, and I made around 19M profit each cycle. If I was diligent this would earn me 3.4B ISK a year profit. I wasn’t diligent.

With Rubicon things have changed. For starters the base value set against the PI goods – for calculating taxes, has dropped:

Tier – Type – Old – New Value
P0 – Basic – 500 – 400
P1 – Refined – 9,000 – 7,200
P2 – Special – 70,000 – 60,000
P3 – Advanced – 1,350,000 – 1,200,000

In addition you can train up a new skilled called Customs Code Expertise. This drops the taxes you pay through Custom’s offices by 10% each rank. I am going to presume the casual PI player will get this to Rank IV. That means the new NPC taxes you pay will be

. 6% Tax to export goods via a Custom Office
. 3% Tax to import goods via a Custom Office
. 15% Tax to export goods via the Command Centre

Now – if I owned the POCO on every planet I used, and set the tax to 0%, my costs will be down.

48,000 x 400 x 6%
+ 48,000 x 400 x 3%
+ 450 x 60,000 x 6%

= 1.152M + 0.576M + 1.620M, or 3.348M in taxes

I’m 4.4M better off, or I would make around 800M extra profit over a diligent year. Score!

But I don’t the POCO on every one of my planets. I am now reliant on using either some Interbus Customs Offices, which seems to charge a flat 17% tax regardless my rank in Customs Code Expertise, the very limited (time and size) 15% taxed export via the Command Centre, or a Player Owned CO with total tax rates (NPC and their own) that so far seem to average between around 11 and 16%.

I am also at the whim of other players. An Interbus Customs office can be replaced at any point in time, and players can change their own tax rates from 0 to 100% as frequently as they want.

I’m now struggling a bit with what to do.  Do I hope / trust the other players will keep their taxes at around the same levels, or do I change my method to only export P1 goods from planets I don’t own the CO on via the expensive – but consistently priced Command Centre export? Even the process of changing from P0 to P1 export really hits the volumes I will produce in the end.