EVE General Discussion

So, 'faucets' and 'sinks'.

I've noticed there have been a number of people both on the forums and in-game throwing these terms around without really understanding what the concepts are behind them and it's been bugging me. I've heard the nonsensical statements that 'PvP is an ISK sink', and that 'moon mining is a huge ISK faucet', and I can't help but want to smash my face into the keyboard repeatedly.

So, what do they mean? In simple terms:

Imagine the EVE economy is a giant basin. The water within this basin is the total amount ISK within the game: whether it's floating on the market or in our wallets, it really doesn't matter. It's the value of all player-manipulated ISK (not items, I'll explain why in a moment) in the universe.

An ISK 'faucet' (a faucet is a tap for us Brits) is a metaphor for something that adds 'water to the basin' (in this case, ISK to the economy).

An ISK 'sink' is a metaphor for the opposite, the removal of ISK from the overall economy.

Items, minerals, ships, modules, etc. that are not NPC-sold are simply mechanisms for transferring ISK between players. It doesn't matter if an alliance trades in 250m ISK worth of moon minerals, they aren't injecting any ISK into the economy at all. The trade merely moves the ISK from one entity within the 'basin' to another entity.

Why isn't PvP an ISK sink? Because you transferred your ISK to someone else when you bought your ship, so even if you lose the ship that ISK is still in the system.

The only real ISK 'faucets' are the things NPCs pay us for. NPC bounties and mission rewards are the most obvious and most common examples.

Conversely, the ISK 'sinks' are also NPC-oriented mechanisms such as taxes, contract fees, alliance and sovereignty fees, clone upgrades, NPC station jump clone installation, skill book and BPO purchases and even NPC-sold trade goods.

(I've been overdosing on Maru videos and coffee, so does any of this even make sense?)

Update: This morning I talked to someone in-game who said he found it easier to think of the concept in terms of ISK creation and destruction rather than injection/removal. NPCs are the only entities in EVE with real 'ISK-printing machines' and 'ISK shredders', and the rest of us just play with the ISK they've handed out to us.

I still like the idea that we're all just rubber ducks in a basin squirting water at each other while a tap's running above us, sometimes bobbing us below the surface of the water as we ply those ridiculously rich sources of NPC-given riches, and a swirling vortex threatens to suck us under below us from taxation and capital ship skill books... But maybe I'm weird.

Good content on the GD forums!?, has hell frozen over?, are Tau Ceti Federation back in Deklein??, what has brought forth this madness!

It's refreshing to see there's still intelligent people on these forums.

That being said, the people who should read the OP are probably the ones that won't...There's no cure for The Dumb.

Nice post OP :)
Thoughts on pvp being a sink/tap ? I mean, when your ship gets popped there will be someone who collects the remains(be it loot or salvage or both), that player wold technically get isk. How much isk, well that depends on the ship/loot.
Then again, you sunk an x amount of isk to get the ship+insurance, its a nifty system.

Think its interesting how this stuff balances around :D

I think OP miss insurance payout for T1 ship, that's the isk faucet

what you mention is getting a small amount of material back from said blown-up ship

I have to admit, the insurance concept is something I'm struggling with. Before the insurance changes it was definitely a faucet, since you could buy a ship in Jita, insure it and then suicide on undock and you ended up with more money than you spent (and that money came from NPCs, so was artificially injected). Nowadays? I really have no idea since I haven't looked in detail at the insurance payouts vs current ship costs, or even how base insurance is calculated now. Is it based on a fixed set of mineral values or is it dynamically based on current mineral prices for example? Either case could be exploitable and could either be a minor faucet or sink depending on how it goes I suppose. I imagine someone more intellegent than myself has the numbers somewhere.

Thanks for the kind comments btw guys, I wasn't actually expecting that.

As mentioned on your post on the other thread, i'd like to pour my thoughts into this, hopefully i didn't get them wrong.

Insurance, imo, can be seen as an isk faucet only and only if the insured ship's destroyed. Otherwise, it's almost or on most cases an isk sink due to insurance loss :

• Expired
• Repackage your ship
• Trade your ship to another player
• Put your ship into a corporation hangar
• Sell your ship on the market
• Put your ship inside a contract.
• Suicide attack someone in High-Sec (players destroyed by CONCORD do not receive an insurance payout).

On a global scale, imo (personally don't have an accurate statistical data regarding this) insurance are closer to an isk sink instead of a faucet seeing a lot of ships can go on and never got destroyed and thus the insurance'll have to be renewed (or left expired), same as the other stuff listed above. So, it should, at the very least balance itself out.

Ah excellent points there, thank you. I've been wrestling one-dimensionally with the thought of insurance payouts but I haven't really taken into consideration the situations where insurance is voided by mechanics besides CONCORD ship loss. Looking at the list you presented I would also have to side with the belief of it being a minor ISK sink, though it's likely a negligible thing one way or the other in the grand scheme of things.

edit: I'm wrong, it's actually a provable minor ISK faucet, I'll add another post later with the relevent thread info so it doesn't get lost here.

Any time we've seen any numbers on it, it has been something along the lines of 110–120bn ISK paid out and 50–60bn sunk into contracts on a daily basis.

Meh I don't care about the size of the ISK Faucet / Sink. I think Insurance should go because it is a lame mechanic. An ISK Safety Net for the weak.

For new players in the first few months sure keep it in on T1 stuff. But after that if you can't afford your own Drakes and Abbadons then boo hoo I eagerly await your T1 Cruisers.