Market Discussions

Equilibrium Mineral Prices


I published this several years ago, so long ago that nobody remembers it. Due to a recent thread, I figure is probably a good time to revisit this topic.


[1] This solution assumes that miners will maximize their income by mining the best ore available. As a guide I created an ore income table to help miners determine their best choice of ore.
http://www.bsacse.amxg4.com/ore.php


At equilibrium, supply must equal demand. No assumptions there, as that is the very definition of equilibrium. Solving the demand side is too complicated as we have thousands of items. However, the supply side is fairly easy to solve given [1]. By equating the ore income we can find that:


[a] price_of_Pyerite = price_of_Tritanium * 667/416
[b] price_of_Mexallon = price_of_Tritanium * 7,875/832
[c] price_of_Isogen = price_of_Tritanium * 392,717,417/14,176,032
[d] price_of_Nocxium = price_of_Tritanium * 385,043/4,576

Equilibrium_Hourly_Income = Mining_Rate * price_of_Tritanium * 600,000/333



These numbers are a bulk park and should be used with caution. Patches and ccp changes can affect the outcome. How long will it take for markets to reach equilibrium is another story.

That is such a nice piece of info you created there..

Might be cool if it more clearly showed the data source and mineral values used. Might even make it possible to put in people own values, to get both the "official" and a private version?

This brings another nice question. Would it not make sense to ask ccp to put in industrial info. Yields on mining ship read outs, fits? So its showed cycle times (average) and total cubic meters per cycle? This would really be useful in unison with your data.

Yes I know, people can just make their own spread sheets and calculations. That is just equivalent to saying people can just test drive their own car to get its top speed and general performance.. EVE should develop to a bit less spreadsheets in space, and make these types of data simpler to operate.

I've uploaded the spreadsheet (I know, another spreadsheet) I knocked up after I ran out of space on the back of my phone bill:

http://dl.eve-files.com/media/1204/minerals.zip

(thanks to chribba for the hosting!)

It's in OpenOffice .ODS format which should be openable by just about any Excel-a-like.


As it's set up just alter the values in the yellow boxes (mining isk/hr and mining m3/hr) - everything else is either static ore/mineral values or calculated figures.

The reason I chose Omber over Kernite is that Omber has a better Isogen yield than Kernite. If Isogen were to spike, Omber will be the ore to mine.



@Caleb Ayrania
The values used came from ore's refining yileds (Ri), batch size (B), and unit volume (V).

The ore income (I) is given by:

I = M * B * Sum(Ri*Pi) / V,

where M is the mining rate, Ri is the refining yield of mineral i, and Pi is the price of mineral i.

Notice that when you equate income, the mining rate (M) drops from the equation.



For example Veldspar yield 1000 units of Tritanium (R1) per batch, Scordite yields 833 Tritanium (R1) and 416 Pyerite (R2) per batch. By equating the ore income you get the following equation:

333 * 1000 * price_Tritanium / 0.1 = 333 * (833 * price_Tritanium + 416 * price_Pyerite) / 0.15

solving for price_Pyerite gives :

price_Pyerite = price_of_Tritanium * 667/416



You can get the rest of the values by equating income from Plagio, Omber, and Pyro to Veldsvar.

That's actually a damn good point.

I guess what I was getting to as I referred to "the omber problem" is that the mineral weights simply don't mathematically line up for all hi sec minerals:

If veld_income = scord_income = plag_income = pyrox_income = kernite_income = (eg) 200isk/m3
... then omber_income simply cannot mathematically also = 200isk/m3

I haven't run the maths but I suspect this also means that if:
veld_income = scord_income = plag_income = pyrox_income = omber_income = (eg) 200isk/m3
.... then kernite_income simply cannot mathematically also = 200isk/m3


Will get a chance later tonight to rerun with kernite and see if that is indeed the case.

Yeah, like all miners run around doing nothing but chasing the perfect ores in empire. Serious miners, multi-boxers and fleet ops where the real m3 will come from now that bots are under seige will not chase the ISK they will take on the volume targets in empire where they can vaccuum up an entire belt in 30-45 minutes while someone is setting up the bookmarks for the next move.

Fail assumptions....Again another graduate of Obamanomics.... living completely in the academic and not a single day spent in the trenches with any real experience on how things work.

Java

Because Mining is what the cool kids do...

The problem with assuming that isk/M3 of all hi-sec ore (excepting either Kernite or Omber) will balance out is that the supply basket will not match the demand basket.

If we assume that in terms of isk/M3 Veld = Scord = Pyro = Plag = Omber/Kernite, then 30.03 Trit (1m3 refined veld) must equal 16.68 Trit + 8.33 Pyr (1m3 refined Pyr), and so on.

If this is true, then we can generate a basket containing 1m3 of generic hi-sec ore which will contain:
(Omber) 11.67 Trit, 2.74 Pyr, 0.68 Mex, 0.20 Iso & 0.02 Nocx
(Kernite) 11.63 Trit, 2.66 Pyr, 1.00 Mex, 0.16 Iso & 0.02 Nocx

The above baskets normalize to give us:
(Omber) 530.15 Trit, 124.62 Pyr, 30.86 Mex, 9.29 Iso, 1.0 Nocx
(Kernite) 528.16 Trit, 120.90 Pyr, 45.48 Mex, 7.30 Iso, 1.0 Nocx

Compare that miner supply basket to a normalized manufacturer demand basket containing the 12 battle ships:

253.54 Trit, 64.13 Pyr, 15.52 Mex, 3.96 Iso, 1.0 Nocx.

As you can see, this demand basket contains roughly half of the Trit, Pyr, Mex, & Iso of the supply baskets.

While this basket is not a true indicator for the broad market, and miners won’t all move in a perfect heard or cherry pick ore, I’m predicting significant upward pressure on Nocx vs. what the generic supply basket would indicate.
This upward pressure could be offset by 0.0 mining while Crokite is in favor.

Re-thinking it, what I posted above is actually hogwash.

While it is usefull to indicate what ore miners will favor while seeking equilibrium, it doesn't have squat to do with what the long term equilibrium price of ore will be. As long as enough miners can keep on Pyro then equilibrium of hi-sec ore can be found.

For those not familiar with the Omber issue - there is a L3 Storyline mission that trades 6000 m3 of Omber for a +3 implant. That tends to cause an interesting floor on Omber, though I've wondered if the cost of a +3 implant would rise instead. *crossing fingers*

This occurs also with the +1 and +2 implants (Veld?), but those are easily mined by any character. I'm guessing the +4 is also gained this way, but I've never seen one of those storylines.

I've gotten a level 4 equivalent a few times, and it required kernite, which adds the same price floor idea to that particular ore as with omber.