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They also remove risk from people living in the same space as sov holders. It makes no sense for someone living in NPC space right next to sov space to pay nothing and get a completely unassailable refuge while players who are paying for and defending their space don't.

Yeah, but the Sov Holder get their name in pretty lights and can say it is theirs while the person in NPC null can make no such claim. Fair trade off.

I am all for free markets, but even in free market societies there are rules and laws. In the case of EVE online, giving players such free access to this isk sink is a bad idea. I know the idea is to inspire people to employ market hubs, but in so doing you are creating a monopolizing situation only a few people can compete with and the monopolizer will eventually ensure no one can reasonably assault them except those doing it on principle alone - and those players are hard to find in any sufficient number.

Lucas, you really are too vocal on these forums and that's not meant as a compliment. You honestly mean to say that the guys who live in NPC space have the advantage? Let me fix your comment for you since you don't seem to understand how sov space works.

"It makes all the sense for someone living in NPC space right next to sov space to pay nothing and get a completely unassailable refuge while players who are paying for and defending their space get the ability to upgrade their systems with more higher level anoms, more DED sites, mining belts, WH connectors (I'll give you this one since it's broken in it's current form), instal JB networks to travel faster within in their space, can install cyno jammers to protect their capital assets, get discounts on POS feul requirements, have free repairs and reprocessing, tax free manufacturing, etc., but at the risk of being evicted."

TL:DR "Eve Online - Bringing Risk vs Reward since 2003"

And thus Lucas proved that he was for the good of the game, as long as it was his game, and no-one else's.

In other news, is the stress getting to you, Lucas? Maybe you should relax a little :).

Not quite, but claiming risk vs reward in EVE involves one side having a completely indestructible and unassailable home while the other has to get out and restart the services periodically while running the risk of losing all access to their stuff is dumb. I'm well aware though that you are one of thsoe players that would literally agree with anything if it was against "the blobs" and I can see why you can't see reality through your bias, so you are forgiven.

Completely chilled here bro, just over my way language like that is used for emphasis as well as outrage so I can understand the confusion.

Hah, ok. Sov space provides no upsides, and all the downsides. I understand now.

Nevermind:

I have an (incomplete) list of initial assumptions and conventions of the "do you want to build an empire*?" post, which I think we should try and agree on *before* we go into the real detail. (If only to save the from the work of copying and pasting individual sections of reasoning.)

Preface(s)/Initial conventions:
1) This isn’t going to be a “How to create a monopoly, where monopolies are defined by Teckos’ strict use interpretation of economics jargon”, because not only will this post fail those categories, but it will also provide a long rod for Teckos to beat me with.
2) The ‘monopoly’ I am going to create will be a monopoly of supply, as it were: the aim is to be the only owner of a ‘market-citadel’ in an area.
3) The build time of Citadels will be similar to the build time of Capitals, with the appropriate build time for Larges being equivalent to Caps, and XLarges being equivalent to Titans: ~12days and ~36 days respectively. (For the most efficient builders)
4) There are only ~25 systems worth setting up in, (where Citadels are paid for by the broker’s fees incurred if the market was to be listed at 3.5%). 2 of these systems are ‘un-Citadel-able’.
5) There are an unknown number of theoretical systems where the value of a citadel’s market-location creates a market that repays its cost.

Initial assumptions:
1) Players will wish to move to a Citadel where the fees are lower than NPC stations.
2) The pull-factor of ‘market-Citadels’ is separate and distinct from any other features a Citadel might have/provide, and enough to draw players in and of itself.
3) The prospective downsides of a Citadel do not render it unattractive to players.
4) Market traders (Market Makers) will be persuaded to move to Citadels despite the initial challenges to moving them (I’m willing to accept this based on the advantage to the first mover. I’m [as far as I can tell] understanding correctly the system of visibility and availability of market orders.

Ignoring the fact that you can't tell with the last one, what do you think?

Ok,

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=6396606#post6396606

is the post I'm basing the maths on. I posted later that there were 25 actual systems after sorting through duplicates. The 'broker's fee relisting' is from the current Eve market data feed, where the sell order value of each station is multiplied by 3.5%, and compared to the equivalent value of each Citadel. This gives us an estimation of how many Citadels could be paid for by a system, if the entirety of the market was relisted.

As for the Sov vs Non-sov comment, like the original thing, it was meant as a sarcastic joke.

Suggest a better method then.

Also, are those figures with my maths, or just with "this is what the sell orders total to currently"?

First off, let us clarify the risk issue.

There are different types of risk when living in NPC NS and Sov NS. In sov NS you put quite alot of assets at risk in that a station could be flipped and then deadzoned. One could try to get stuff out if there are enough blues that also have jump clones there, but that may not be sufficient. Best case scenario is to fire sale the stuff which will let you recover part of the ISK value.

In NPC sov space this risk is not there. However, you do have the risk of a new group showing up and moving into "your" station. This cannot happen in Sov space. Yet, I should hasten to add, well kind of. One possibility is a hostile group could, at least theoretically speaking, drop a citadel in hostile space, much like towers were dropped. Will this happen? I don't know. Probably at least not in the early stages of a NS war.

Aside from that, as far as I can see the remaining risks are not all that dissimilar. The Devs have not said NPC NS is going away. They have not said the stations are going away. To be honest, I think removing those stations would be a bad move and hard to square with keeping HS NPC stations (although I suppose those could be removed too, but again I would consider that to be a bad move too). And to be quite honest I don't think they will remove HS or LS NPC stations as asset recovery depend on the latter for NS and HS for HS citadel destruction.

And lets clear up some other foolishness: The B0tLrd Agreement was NOT a monopoly. It was a NIP. For it to be a monopoly literally ALL NS rental space would have to have been controlled by the signatories of B0tLrd, and even if this were the case, monopoly pricing might not be very feasible due to NPC NS which people can farm in as well. So while this agreement shows an example of two NS entities agreeing not to "take each others renter space" it is not a monopoly.

Now, OTEC was to a large extent a cartel that may have behaved much like a monopoly. However, even there the pricing decision is not that straight forward, IMO. To be quite honest most people have...well, to be charitable, a horrible understanding of some of the most basic economic concepts. For example. People....they are forward looking. They try to figure out what will happen in the future. So keeping this in mind, lets try a simple example.

You are running the pricing for OTEC. You are producing, keeping the numbers simple so don't get your panties in knot if they aren't "realistic", 1,000 units of technetium (tech for short). You could sell it all and make say 100 ISK/unit or 100,000 ISK. Or you could restrict how much you sell, say 800 units and earn 150/unit or 120,000 ISK. Further restrictions will increase the price, but not as much as you reduce how much you are selling (e.g. you can sell 700 but only earn 155 ISK/unit or 108,500 ISK). But you also know that CCP is quite well aware of tech prices being very, very high and being the one and only moon goo bottle neck. Being a forward looking person do you....when do you try and liquidate your entire stock? If you wait until the CCP announcement you might be too late--i.e. people might stop buying for the period of time until the patch.

Further, how do you know the other members or your cartel are holding up their side of the restricted output agreement? One of the problems with cartels is there is a huge incentive to "chisel", that is sell more than you are supposed to sell and earn even greater profits. For example, suppose one of your partners also produces 1,000 units of tech and by restricting to 800 the price will still be 150/unit. But if he sells all 1,000 units the price drops to 125/unit (for all parties BTW) and he ends up racking 125,000 ISK which is more than selling 800 units. In fact, when game theory is applied to this game the number of potential outcomes (equilibria) is extremely large. So even though you are trying to create a cartel to drive up prices and thus profits, it does not always work very well. Then there issues of having one player who has lots of tech moons acting as an eforcer--i.e. if the price drops below a target range the enforcer floods the market driving the price to very low values "hurting" himself and everyone else. Then we get into the credibility of the threat and reputations.

As for monopoly, everybody keeps running around asserting this as if it is a fact, however, creating and maintaining a monopoly is far from easy. It actually takes...you know, work (go back and read the stuff about OTEC to get an idea). If creating and maintaining a monopoly were as easy as eating a pumpkin pie we'd all have a monopoly. We don't, so it isn't. The historical record in game and out of game supports the notion that monopolies are not the norm, and when they are the norm they tend to be backed up by a very credible threat of violence...which itself is work.

I think its a bit of both myself, a compounding effect. Some traders sell a bunch items there for the cut in taxes then buyers buy those and the buyers want something else and other traders see the demand and move in then more players move in and so on and so forth until there's a thriving market. Some people have been overly simplistic in thinking of traders and buyers as if it as one then the other when really they build on each other.