POCOs - are they shaking things up?

[OrangeAfroMan]

I have a feeling CCP missed an opportunity here. Are POCOs becoming tension points between anybody? Are they being used by small groups to force pew? In my experience, no...

[Takon Orlani]

It got some hilarious solo dread ganks.

...posted from a potato.

[Sponk]

Are POCOs becoming tension points between anybody?

Kinda. The problem is that they're not really defensible, so while it makes sense to reff a poco to extort good tax rates, replacing it with your own just leaves you vulnerable to the same level of griefing. Still, it's probably a lot more contested in lowsec.

Are they being used by small groups to force pew?

I have never seen this. They have too much HP to be worth shooting, and the reff timer means you have to come back the next day fr another fight.

[OrangeAfroMan]

So you're saying they're not defensible enough to be worth the effort to retain or pillage and replace, yet have too much HP (and RF timer) for small gangs to bother? That's essentially been my experience, I feel like CCP really got them wrong :/

[Ampoliros]

mmm, i feel like we've gotten a few fights out of them but i'd be hard pressed to name them offhand, so i could be mistaken

the length of the rf timers really makes it kind of a hit or miss proposition, at least in higher-class w-space. If you hit them, you might as well be hitting the whole system as the rf timers are just as long and the time/player commitment is just as great

[Shin_getter]

So you're saying they're not defensible enough to be worth the effort to retain or pillage and replace, yet have too much HP (and RF timer) for small gangs to bother? That's essentially been my experience, I feel like CCP really got them wrong :/

I feel players are just demanding things that CCP can't deliver, that being other player's behavior which is pretty hard to begin with. We could be seeing "charity poco" of 0% tax rates for just about everyone become common in the long run if the above is right.

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Fighting, to retain ownership or otherwise, is really a very expensive thing if you add up the carebear math. An player hour is worth 50-100m, and a 5 man gang is burning a tengu a hour in opportunity costs (the spaceship flying around time I undock is free~ free I tell ya) not adding in potential ship losses. Its just not worth it for a structure that is worth only 65m and doesn't make a lot of money to begin with. It might be the case that it is impossible to reward carebears enough to defend stuff, without "breaking the economy" as a side effect.

Hmm, let me do some more carebear math here to see what numbers would it take to have it add up:

Sample pvp environment:
Lets assume 1 RF per week, requiring 5 man gang to defend 1 hour (including form up, logistics etc) at 80% success chance: The average ship loss is 100m per fight.

Man hour costs: 100m/hr/player

POCO Life Expectency
sum (k=1 to infinity) 0.8^k*k = 20 weeks

Costs:
Defense costs per week: 5*100m + 100m = 600m
Tower costs must > defense cost * success chance (otherwise simply replacing is more economic)
Tower costs must > 480m (including install cost of logistics/etc)
Tower costs, amortized across its expected life time:
Tower costs > 480m/20 = 24m per week

Required Profits:
It must cover all costs and supply a profit on top of that:

Profit require for continued operation: >624m per week, or 2.4b/month. This is about the same as a dyspo moon.
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This is a extremely crude calculation and feel free to improve upon it with better numbers and models. That said, one can see how a few assumptions result in a picture that profit seeking carebears operate by.

Of course, most players are nowhere near this good at accounting and many do things like "minerals I mine are free", while those especially good at accounting often never undock (undocking is usually very unprofitable unless its a titan/multiboxed to hell) and the sociopathic would just theft/scam. You can nonetheless add in fudge factors to take into account of them (eg: pvp costs nothing because its fun) and see what results you get.

[Sponk]

Don't get me wrong, I still approve of POCOs. I just don't think they're the kind of structure that small gangs would kick over for a fight, or for economic victory.

They're more like small staging POSes. You clear it because you're being cruel, not because it will make you rich.

[RoemySchneider]

:prenerfed:

[Tyrus Tenebros]

I feel players are just demanding things that CCP can't deliver, that being other player's behavior which is pretty hard to begin with. We could be seeing "charity poco" of 0% tax rates for just about everyone become common in the long run if the above is right.

I didn't check your specific math, and I don't think any players do the specific math either (there's value to the entertainment of a fight for some who put up POCO's for example), but I think you started off on the wrong foot claiming the end result is a "charity POCO."

If anything the end result of an indefensible situation is that nobody will put up POCOs -or- that the opposing force which makes it indefensible will put up POCOs at the tax rate the market will bear.

Until, ofc, somebody who can force them out comes along. But it's semi-stable unless it's perceived as profitable and/or a "why not" venture,

If no single group in an area is stable enough to maintain a POCO, none "should" be erected in the area.




All of that said, a cursory look at the PI market shows that many of the players involved in it are not of the highest mathematical intelligence and will put another one up regardless.

[Shin_getter]

uh, I was just following the pattern of the above post and not really thinking about it.

My own analysis tells me it is really not worth the effort of putting up pocos if anyone is shooting at it at all, economically, as pi is not worth that much. The revenues needs to increase by leaps and bounds for it to be worthwhile. Its like miners in highsec: it simply isn't worth the effort into protecting them since combat pilots are worth dozens of mil per hour and no miner could afford them.

In eve-o, attacking is "cheaper" then defense as well. Since attacker have more choice in when and how, while defenders are reactive which is more boring and annoying since it rarely fit with rest of their situation. (ship/char/time/feelings and so on)

What kind of dynamic this will absolutely end up might require me to draw a game theory matrix or something crazy like that.... but that is a lot of *effort* Also, eve players are not perfectly rational so that line of analysis might not work at all~ So I'm leaning towards following traditional wisdom (what other people say is happening) here.

[kyrieee]

We've gotten a couple of fights from them and I think they were a great addition to the game.

[whispous]

We've gotten a couple of fights from them and I think they were a great addition to the game.

[Tsubutai]

They cause (or are the setting for) a lot of mid-scale fights in lowsec. I'm not sure it makes sense to call them small gang targets per se (you're not going to knock one over or into RF with 10-ish shield BCs...), but for slightly larger stuff, they work just fine.