Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Since i began my eve career as a miner i've always found the mineral trends to be a bit strange. The lowest end minerals always seemed to rise while the highest end minerals seemed to decline constantly. Now mining in Null sec, this has become much more apparent to me. When Odyssey came i thought it would bring great change to the trend, but i was wrong. Now i think i understand what's happening.

The problem lies in Asteroid Clusters.

There are 3 mechanics working together here that are the cause of the backwards mineral trends.

1: The Asteroid Cluster mineral ratio.
2: The Asteroid Cluster respawn mechanic.
3: Industrial Infrastructure system.

The reason:
First of all the mineral ratio of an asteroid cluster is out of proportion to the mineral ratio of building. Comparatively the Asteroid Cluster is High end mineral heavy and Low end mineral shallow. This means if you only mine in asteroid clusters you're going to have an extremely large surplus of megacyte and zydrine and (as of odyssey) be extremly lacking of mexallon followed by pyerite and tritanium.

Then, the asteroid belts in a Null Sec system are easily depleted so you turn to the asteroid clusters. When you mine out an asteroid cluster you are left lacking a large amount of low end minerals. But no worries, the cluster will respawn again within a few minutes and you can continue mining those minerals. Every time you complete this cycle you stockpile a larger and larger surplus of high end minerals. You will eventually have to make a choice; sell the surplus, buy what you lack and transport or mine in high sec. Now based on the value/m3 of the minerals the most obvious choice is to move the high end minerals to sell instead of the large volumes of low end minerals to null sec. Or at least a mixture of both.

Lastly the Industrial Infrastructure system not only encourages, but demands that you mine asteroid clusters to meet the demands of the Ore mined upkeep. This means if you are holding a high level Industrial upgrade you are perpetuating this cycle.

Change in Odyssey - With the change to ore composition in Odyssey it is now possible to mine for Tritanium and pyerite effectively while also obtaining megacyte. This means where people would have previously mined Veldspar and Scordite They will now be mining the more cost efficient Bistot for Pyerite and Spod for Tritanium. Thus even further perpetuating the cycle in systems where the clusters don't get mined out constantly and reduces the ratio of Trit and pyer vs megacyte even more than it had been before.

My solution:
Change the ratio of the asteroid clusters to mitigate the surplus of high end minerals completely to allow megacyte and zydrine to once again be in demand and not in surplus. Increase the tritanium and pyerite to around or above the average usage of production jobs at least. Mexallon seems to be doing well as a Null Sec mineral bottleneck so i would suggest leaving it unchanged in proportion. Also maybe create a nocxium shortage in null also to encourage low sec mining.

This may be susceptible to cherry pickers, but all you have to do is flip the cluster and a new one with it's high ends will respawn. As for total m3 of the clusters, I'd say leave it be just redistribute the asteroids as needed.

This would also solicit the removal of megacyte and zydrine from outside sources as it would become such a limited commodity.

Also Remove mercoxit from asteroid clusters. Limit it to regular asteroid fields and hidden grav sites that respawn randomly across nullsec after being mined out. This will greatly increase the value of mining mercoxit.

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The most important idea is not about the total amount of minerals, what is important is the ratio that you're forced to collect them in by using the Industrial Infrastructure Upgrades in a Sov system.

What does anyone/everyone think about this?

mexallon been dropping in value in highsec (amarr) like crazy like WHOA

If the value of the most expensive ores increases and the value of the cheapest ores decreases... don't you just encourage cherry picking of the high end ores and - as you put it - perpetuate the cycle of devaluing high end ores?