EVE General Discussion

instead of saying "Come to Rens to make it better" you should really have a convincing argument. Do you even know why it is the weakest of the 4 major hub? do you know what it is lacking to make it better?

Lets review points on some of what a hub needs or make it desirable:
-Easy access to lowsec for jump freighters, and ship combat areas.
-Advantageous Jump Proximity to large swaths of Nullsec/Low regions.
-Plentiful competitively priced materials (Mineral, Ice, Salvage, PI, Moon materials)
-Variety of nearby Missions for feeding Salvage, Meta modules, and faction gear.
-High security rating to limit the ease of ganking.
-Close Access to multiple other regions for market trading.
-Lack of competition that can offer much of the above more competitively.

Unless I'm mistaken, I believe a big contribution to the Hek's competitiveness is the plentiful faction gear and the need to supply faction warfare with gear. It having closer proximity to Jita than Rens also means some supportive market interchange between the two becomes easier than the same arrangements with Rens. On the other hand, Rens has a slightly better proximity to the outer Null areas and traffic flow than Hek, but probably not enough to matter.

In my opinion to make a strong Minmatar hub will require Rens and Hek traffic either joining forces with closer proximity or moving further apart. Hek cannot become a main hub because of its low security status, but its activity is fed by location based activities so it cannot really move. Rens on the other hand, while it has a decent location, it is not great. So my conclusion is that in order to "Make Minmatar great again" Rens traffic would need to move.

Possible other locations that could work for a trade hub are:
-Eystur (1 jump out of Hek, good access to Metropolis region and decent access to Molden Heath + could easily suck up all the traffic in both regions)
-Eram or Elgoi (3 or 4 jumps from Hek, 5 or 6 from Rens. Great distinctive access to the Low and Null sec outer regions)
-Sasta (unfortunately in Ammatar Mandate territory and also likely terrible mission and station access in immediate area, but I don't know the area well. 3 jumps further from Hek than Rens and located on a main 'Safe route' to Amarr.)

Rens, Hek, and Dodixie barely add up to Amarr in both number of orders and value

http://eve-marketdata.com/station.php?step=Rank

Biggest problem for Rens is that before the alphas there was barely ever over 100 people there during my time zone (20:00-02:00 Yulai) 3 trillion ISK but a population more like Stacmon local chat. Even when I was brand new, I realized Dodixie was better than both Hek or Rens.

How to make it great again? Was it ever?

"Any one person"

I'm calling upon people. I hope this grows on it's own. Hek, Rens, Teon... whatever. I'm just trying to help out the Rustlands :P

Rens has been a shithole for 5 years+ and nothing is going to change that.

Initially it was popular because of agents - then CCP moved most of them out.

Then it was popular because Uplingur (Derelik) was only 3 hops away & that used to be the low-sec staging post for much of the null-sec south. Nice & easy jump in for JFs, market hub 3 hops away.

Time moves on & its popular because of Factional Warfare - back when that wasn't FarmFest.

Now? There's not a lot of reasons to use Rens anymore other than habit/having shitloads of crap there you can't be arsed moving

everytime i go into minny space i always lock my ship

No, it's prudent.