EVE General Discussion

And ring mining will help reduce that concentration, just as there is a concentration in some other activities. More than just incursions are getting a look over.

If you are not willing to see things in their entirety, then CCP will be nerfing you from today to your last day on Eve.

sO THAT'LL BE A nerf on moon goo finally when it gets implamented? who knows I doubt even CCP does. How long until ribbons start being salvaged in NULL or HI SEC?!?! I hope we get a sleeper incursion to spread out that faucet in the near future!!!

go back & listen to the Q&A's at fanfests & you'll hear people asking why there's no moon mining in WH's... its been in the forums too. Alliaances are SCREAMING for worm hole stabilizers too

Wow, so much focused on statistics that mean little

Everyone looks at inflation and the amount of ISK that people can make preforming various activities in the game and points a finger at the other side implying they are at fault. The economy of EVE is actually fairly simple, you have 4 boundary regions, ISK producers, material producers, ISK extractors and mineral extractors. ISK producers are almost exclusively centered around bounties, material producers are mining and ratting, ISK extractors are almost exclusively centered on transaction taxing and material extractors are almost exclusively through object destruction (player).

If you decrease the cost of bounties, you will not solve the inflation problem... at all. Doesn't matter whom you target (null, low, hi, WH... its irrelevant) Inflation will accrue slower, but will not be removed from the game. To illustrate this point, lets look at 2 people who represent 2 major groups of characters in the game, the miner/indy pilot and the combat pilot. Lets assume they are pure in their respective roles

The indy pilot can get all materials required for manufacturing through the material generators, at no cost of ISK. This is the input. He can use these materials to produce all of the good within the universe, costing again, no ISK. A full allotment of armaments are produce to be sold to the combat pilot, without ISK cost for the indy pilot.

The combat pilot uses ratting/missoning to produce his ISK to trade with the indy pilot for goods. This is the ISK generator, it also produces materials, but we'll leave those out for simplicity sake. The combat pilot engages in combat which invariably results in destruction of ships, i.e. PVP. This is a material extractor. The materials used to produce the ship, in general, are gone from the game.

The indy pilot receives the ISK from the combat pilot in exchange for the items. The items can be/will be destroyed, removing those materials from the game. However, the indy pilot with no ISK cost for producing the items accumulates the ISK generated from the combat pilot. The only source of extraction for ISK are through other NPC functions, such as taxes, brokers fees, insurance (which is usually an ISK GENERATOR), NPC seeded items..

Materials don't quite have the same problem since everything created by players (costing materials) can be destroyed by players (removing the materials from the game). No such mechanisms for ISK exist. It is a fundamental flaw that CCP has failed to recognize/do anything about.

Now this simplified example isn't the EVE universe exactly, but it is close enough to illustrate the issue at hand. The real problem isn't the rate in which ISK is brought into the game, but rather how quickly it is removed. Reduce ISK income by 10% and you will eventually result in a 10% reduction in ISK removal (initially higher until combat pilot isk reserves begin to decline a little bit with still higher cost of ships vs income), which is a stupid move since ISK removal is a percentage of ISK income in the first place

The core problem is that people can only spend what they have, thus taxes, broker's fees, these things only remove a percentage of ISK exchanged, thus they only remove a percentage of ISK generated in the game. To stop inflation ISK Generation has to be approximately equal to ISK extraction if you have perfect fluidity of ISK within the market (i.e. ISK is not overly concentrated in specific demographics) or proportional ISK extraction rates for concentrated demographics.

Production and market participation is rarely free.

Production from a pure standpoint has a fixed start-up cost with no running costs. A indy pilot must purchase the BPO's to produce the BPC's. Everything else is provided in game and is free. What you may be refering to is a mixture of combat aspect of the game and optimization, i.e. indy pilots purchasing materials from another person who produced the materials for free to increase their efficiency at a specific task, basic principles of trade here.

But when you look at this from a control volume stand point, minerals and materials are injected into the game with no cost of gaining them (there is no ISK removed from the game).

-Broker fees and transaction taxes are already covered (they are both taxes, pushed them to the left they are the same as an income reduction, doesn't effect the settle point).
-Highsec POS's are optional costs that do not equate to 100% ISK reduction, or even a significant fraction of it. They are also taxes, no manufacture is going to spend more on manufacturing than they will get in return willingly.
-Manufacturing costs are taxes, see above.
-Research costs are initial costs, same as with purchasing BPO's to research. They do not effect the steady state solution.

Edit: forgot about your loss of assets, that's combat. Any interaction that results in the destruction of an item is combat, it does not effect ISK at all, unless you can shoot someone and do ISK damage...

Heres a graphic of what I am talking about.

Materials
Miner gets minerals -------> Manufacturer builds items ----------> combat pilot gets blown up --------> materials leave game forever

ISK
Combat pilot kills rats-------->Pays for items from manufacturer--------->Manufacturer buys minerals -------> Miner makes money


In the case of materials, at the end of the progression through the production process, the materials leave the game, absolutely. Its a fairly simple system, but an effective system that has self balancing. ISK on the other hand does not. The miner and manufacturer always sell at a profit (who wouldn't), which means that ISK doesn't leave the game.

There currently exists no circular recycling system for ISK, all costs associated with manufacturing/ect result in a reduced profit. Reduced profit means less total income remaining in the game less total income remaining can be shown to be the exact same as reducing income (attacking the combat pilot, the source of ISK), which reduces the pace of the game, requiring more farming for a single hour of intense game play. But in the end, it is still a ridiculous inflation rate.

Edit for your edit: Taxation is always a percentage of the income, you cannot currently be taxed more than is generated in the game (there are no loans to NPC's to remove more ISK than is injected...). Most exchanges are limited to 2 taxation brackets, the purchase of materials for manufacture then the purchase of the item by the end user. There are cases when items are repackaged and sold again, but this is far from a reliable means to count on ISK removal from the game, and still doesn't solve the problem of wholesale removal of ISK.

I have not proposed a solution outside of a means in which ISK leaves the game at a proportional rate to how it is generated. At the end of the ISK progression, there should be a way to "delete" it, like materials. Don't get my wrong, I am not saying miners should be charged, or anyone should be charged, I am saying that the "for profit" system has a problem if everyone is making profit at the end of the day. ISK is not a zero sum game.

Taxation compounding is a geometric series and is bounded from below by zero, not equal to it and the probability density for repeated transfers of an item approaches zero at a much faster rate than the taxation series. Almost all current sinks are optional sinks with self regulating mechanisms currently. Sov, most alliances claim sov on a limited number of systems, the most useful, to maintain their sov bill. Manufacturing in empire space vs null sec vs WH. A corp can become entirely self sufficient, i.e. without isk, operating in WH space, minus the pos fuel requirements.

Most of the sinks/removal techniques are optional things, splurge items. Alliances will be choosier about their Sov systems, people will be less inclined to manufacture at a pos in empire space, less people will purchase LP items, ect.

Ultimately the inflation that CCP wants will require the final leg of the ISK progression to make almost nothing (he of course will not be the only one, supply and demand says that taxation/income will be spread equally among all parties with profitability forces making people shift from farming rats to mining/manufacturing) since that is the accumulation point.

It would be much easier to institute a mechanism to "delete" ISK as materials are deleted, it could be fine tuned to manage the inflation rate at something appropriate (this is similar to what the Fed does in the United States, directly controlling the amount of money that is placed in circulation)

very good point, it's really the core problem of the isk faucet. material will disappear very fast while isk doesnt