EVE General Discussion

That's a good question.

I'm going to go ahead and say a trade hub is whatever system CCP says is a trade hub. Other than that they're not really defined.

And also, what happens if, say Jita, becomes unpopular for whatever reason and everyone moves their business to Perimeter or something? Does CCP remove all the citadels in Perimeter to Jita?

It might be good to have an official definition to avoid long term screw-ups and rage.

Mr Epeen

"Location! Location! Location!"

Trade hubs tend develop from major mission hubs, well connected systems, or otherwise anywhere there is a concentrated population.

Every region has a trade hub, and often more than one.

Example: Amarr is a fairly lousy mission hub, but it is within 4 jumps of I think 5 regions (Bleak Lands, Kador, Kor-Azor, Tash Murkon, The Citadel). Penirgman is arguably the secondary trade-hub in Domain, as it is a very active mission hub, but it isn't as well connected.

I have to correct you a little here. The original trade hubs Yulai (replaced by Jita), Hek and Oursulaert developed because they had plenty of stations with loads of factory slots. Skilling for a Mark V was considered to be a Long Ass Time (took more then a month!) and as such avoided. The best place to buy a BS was Tush-Murkon Prime with it's 20 odd belts.

In these luxurious times where you can move many BS at a time location and tradition is more important then factory slots that don't have a queue of 3 weeks.

What constitutes a ”trade hub”, I suppose, is a tug-of-war between sellers and buyers. Initially sellers select a place, and then buyers accept the place – or don’t. Funny, back in the dawn of Eve time, Yulai was the centre of New Eden. The empires used to have ’super gates’ that landed from the different empires in that now isolated Genesis system. It truly was the centre of the universe. Then CCP removed those super gates, and things changed.

Dodixie and Jita became interesting to sellers because they were highly valued mission systems. Back then, Dodixie and Jita had the best level 4 agents for their respective factions. It was natural for traders to congregate where there was a ready supply of buyers. Amarr is an anomaly, because it was never the good mission system in Domain – that was Penirgman. What Amarr does have is connections to five-six regions. Kador, Tash-Murkon, Khanid, etc are all within a few systems travel there.

So, the initial impulse to start a trading hub was pragmatism. Traders went where there was a large population. Then the traders goods pulled in more buyers because of the well-stocked stations. Then it became a convenience for both buyers and sellers to operate in one particular station. This has been repeated across New Eden. Emperor Family Academy in Amarr, Federal Navy Assembly Plant in Dodixie, Caldari Navy Assembly Plant in Jita. And so on.

Now with Citadels, everything might be upset again. Or it might not. Because traders have never had the power to determine a trading hub. They pragmatically went to where there were enough buyers to get a start. Then it snowballed. I see now big dreams about replacing Jita IV-4 with player owned trading citadels. It seems that this ignores that there’s two teams in a tug-of-war. The buyer team may not want to visit five different stations just to fit one particular ship. And so, elasticity will determine again, as it always has, what constitutes the main trade hub. Jita IV-4 has some advantages beyond min-maxing compulsives who dream of finding the perfect variable to win Eve.

"Trade Hub" is in Eve an unspoken and generally agreed title bestowed upon certain systems for any number of reasons, some of those some players have already revealed. It should probably stay that way, especially the unspoken part. The moment it becomes "official" is when people come out of the woodwork claiming otherwise. People are like that.

Jita is likely the absolutely very closest thing to an official trade hub if any system has earned that title, if only for the inherent daily population levels it typically sees. The centralization and wide diversity of the market and sheer massive quantity of that block of Empire's, indeed a big chunk of all Empire, movement of goods being mostly tied to even a very specific station within that system is the main reason most people say that Jita is not only A major trade hub, but THE major trade hub. It may not have Yulai's old super highway gates, but it still acts almost like a heart within New Eden. Officially, it's just another system (hence no super gates or the likes) that happens to have a lot of freakin' traffic, people-wise and ISK-wise.

The other major hubs are technically just as critical and central, just not as crowded as Jita happens to be. People tend to lean more on what the crowd does or what's the trend at that moment, and Jita is sort of a runaway trend as it were. It use to be that 1100-1200 was a lot even for Jita back when I first arrived in New Eden in 2010. Now, Eve may have and like has grown in overall population of characters over the years since then. Still, 2000, not a mere half that, is the norm today.

A citadel trade hub would be shot out of space quickly, because it would generate a ton of ISK which would unbalance the game towards the owner. A Jita replacement would make IWI comparatively look like paupers. No power block could accept such a thing to exist. IMHO markets on citadels will be nice but DOA. Either they don't generate the trade volume to be profitable or they get profitable which makes them primary targets. Every module cost in Citadels and IMHO markets are about 100M Isk per month. So you need to create 10B Isk of trade at 1% tax just to earn your costs without defense, building etc.

if i see citadel trade hub outpost in high sec, every day will put 10% of my trade profits as bounty on this citadel owner.

Maybe it has something to do with where the level 4 mission agents are and that many flock to those stations for that reason. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't that happen to Oursuleart....they moved the level 4 agents and it started to become quieter.

And this will achieve ?? besides you making less profit ?

In the UK, it used to be when a town gained a Cathedral.