Market Discussions

Nice map, and pretty helpful. The changes I'd recommend is adding a legend to show the routes through low-sec (it took me a bit to notice that) are different from the high-sec routes. Likewise, since both the major trade hubs and the low-sec paths are in red, changing a color to differentiate. You could put the major trade hubs in light green or yellow and they'd show up better.

Overall, good job, and a valuable asset in playing the markets for non-station-traders.

Looks nice. After looking at it for a little bit I start to wonder where the "center" is and if it would be Jita. (Looks like its either Jita or Dodixie). But I'm guessing someone would need to apply some graph theory to it and that's a level of mathematics way beyond me.

How are systems evaluated for inclusion? Heimatar has 4 systems, The Forge has one. Does a system like Perimeter really do less business than non-Rens Heimatar systems?

http://i.imgur.com/dgDjt.jpg


I fixed your map for you.

If the map is of major and minor hubs, on what basis are systems being designated minor hubs? What exactly is the map showing? We all know what the major hubs are; they've been listed on Ombey's maps for years and years. We all know that they are considered hubs because they have the most trade volume in their region; thus the term "regional trade hubs." If the goal is to list the minor trade hubs, how is a system designated 'minor'? A certain volume of trade? A certain number of jumps? Whatever it is, how is it possible that Lustrevik has more of it than Perimeter? Why is it that there is no Forge minor hub?

Actually not a bad idea to mark the common gank points like Uedema

LOL!!

On a more serious note tho, you may wanna re-check your regional hubs buy touring the regions and checking where the goodies really are. If you already have and this was your conclusion, stop what you're doing and dedicate to mining and mission running.

Are those your only criteria? You're missing a couple biggies I could give you. And how do you decide what ranking each system is? Personally I would only give categorical ranks for each region because trade hubs are determined by agent access first and geographic convenience second, with few exceptions (or rather, they are determined by access to missioners first and access to traders second, systems like Jita and Amarr being exceptions). As such, a region can have many major trade hubs if there are many people in many systems, and the existence of lowsec systems with active markets complicates things and requires definition.


If you want, I have a somewhat exhaustive list of Regional, Major, and Minor Trade Hubs for all the Empire regions, my criteria being yearly movement and average number of orders. I also have a seperate category for "Supply Hubs," one-sided hubs that really aren't used for trading but are used for resupplying nullsec and lowsec entities. I am also debating on redefining some hubs as mining supply hubs, since systems like Ordion seem to get the most movement out of mining supplies. I will not define mission hubs, as most trade hubs are mission hubs.

One thing I do that may be problematic is how I categorize systems. Every region has either one Regional Trade Hub, the biggest hisec system, or two Di-Regional Trade Hubs, the biggest hisec system in each piece of hisec in a region divided by lowsec. As a rule of thumb, Major Trade Hubs will either be in the top 50 trade systems or will maintain an average of over 1000 orders on market, and Minor Trade Hubs will be between 1000 and 500. The problem is that I categorize them relative to each region, so a relatively unpopulated region will still have a major hub with maybe only an average of 700 orders on market, and a minor with only 400. In some cases, there are clear jumps in activity between certain systems, so I will sometimes draw the line between Major and Minor at the gaps.

Now that I think about it, there's no way you can fit all 167 of my hubs on that map, too...

Thanks for effort. Looks like a good resource for new traders.

Here is trade data for the top 5000 stations in Eve (from Feb. 2012). Hope this helps in deciding which systems to include in the final version of your map. Have fun :)

Ranking values that no site seems to give are:
- Total ISK in buy + sell orders (along with a 7 / 30 day avg)
- Total ISK that traded hands per day (or sum across last 7 or 30 days)
- The first number divided by the 2nd number to get a feel for how fast the market moves