PI Redux

I recently moved back to the same chunk of space where my PI installations are.  I never took them down, so I decided to visit those command centers, clean out the warehouses and reemploy my minions of production.  Mostly I wanted to see if my predictions of doom and gloom were actually true.

Well, they mostly weren't.  The reactivated planets are pulling in a nice little profit, even with the new taxes.  I think it may even be more profitable than before, but I can't be arsed at this point to dust of the spreadsheets and try and do the analysis at this point.  However there is still the sticker shock of looking at that export fee!  <<834,456.00 ISK>> to get a small pile of plasmoids, yeouch!

The export fees do represent a little bit more of a barrier to casual players who may be cashed-strapped though.  Getting your planet set up costs a few millions, usually, and I wonder how many players have set up a planet and then come to pick up the goods only to be oddly disappointed and discouraged by the taxes...  Perhaps the costs could be defrayed by installing a planetary shuttle structure and shifting costs to the actual running of the PI structures (like manufacturing)?  You sacrifice a little PG/CPU to skirt the NPCCO/POCO by running a private shuttle network?

Regardless, I was partially wrong in my assessment of the changes to PI, but the whole system could still use some work in order to be enjoyable.  I wonder how Dust will interface with PI?  That could be interesting indeed.