Science & Industry

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QFT. try better next time

well. your variant can only work if people who mine are the same people who manufacture. Which is not usually.

I guess the more possible outcome is:
- either ore gets compressed and hauled to empire, then refined and sold. So empire gets low-end minerals imported from 0.0 with high-end ones. Thus increasing supply (and making high-sec miners get less reward).
- or ore gets refined in 0.0, then 0.0 needs less low-end minerals but high-end minerals are still get exported to empire (people get ISK). Thus decreasing demand for low-end minerals in empire (and make high-sec miners get less reward).

Yeah, actually reading things that you quote might be useful.

At the moment, you are required to import vast quantities of low ends from HS because of the fixed mineral compositions of Industry sites. That is, of course, if you actually bother to build anything in Null, but I digress.

Adding some Super-Veld would simply allow you to build locally. You simply cannot transport valuable quantities of low ends in a JF or Rorq (unless you compress it via Railguns). Do you really think anyone's going to consider compressing vast amounts of Trit to sell in HS once CCP fixes the assembly line issue?

By the way, later in the paper, Dr. EyjoG mentions that HS mines 8 times the volume that Nullsec does. So even if transport were cost free, HS's got nothing to worry about.

None mines lowends in 0.0, becouse theres none there buying them on reasonable prices. So everyone mines ABC, export to highsec, import lowends to 0.0....

Of course theres issue of getting minerals... But somehow i fail to see how this is issue CCP has to fix, when it clearly just issue putting alliance money there for reasonable orders to buy lowends so its worth mine them. Considering system upgrades gives you infinite grav sites to mine out...

The Total amount of Trit contained in all the hidden belts is about 36 million units. Those hidden belts contain about 24 million m3 of Ore.

So about 1.5 Trit per m3 of ore mined.

During that time you collect 1.5m Megacyte, for a 24:1 ratio of Trit to Megacyte.

Let's look at a Drake. At perfect ME (or ME 1000), it requires 2,444,556 Trit and 839 Megacyte, for a ratio of 2914:1 Trit to Megacyte. A perfect ME Archon (with ME 100 componants) takes 51,550,043 Trit and 16,100 Megacyte, for a ratio of 3202:1 Trit to Megacyte.

So, with regards to building stuff locally, Nullsec produces well over 100 times (121 for a Drake, 133 for an Archon) more Megacyte than what local Trit can use.

These ratios are hardcoded into the game, and a decent Indy corp will very quickly strip the regular belts dry in the process of getting the Industry level up.

There is currently no viable alternative for manufacture in nullsec besides importation of low ends on a massive scale (or, simpler yet, importation of finished goods).

EDIT: Almost forgot. Ore numbers from Bloodtear, Build costs from IPH, Calculation services provided by Texas Instruments.

Maintaining Industry 4 requires mining 6 million m3 per day. Industry 5 requires 12 million.

Regular belts do not refresh anywhere near fast enough to keep up.

There was a few discussions about this I have participated in in the past. What seemed to be the best solution, At least to me, was to significantly increase the low end mineral yield in some existing null sec grav site ores. We do not need a super veldspar with massive yield.

All of the null sec ores except Bistot already contain trace amounts of tritanium. While Bistot and Spodumain contain pyrite. How ever the amounts are to small to have any impact. Just increase those values while leaving the high end mineral count as it is. What this would result in is a larger supply of low end minerals in null sec.

I would say multiply all those trace amounts of low ends by 10-20. Spodumain has for a long time been the worst null sec ore to mine. Now Geneiss is about the same, around 80 isk/m3 while the next lowest null sec ore is Dark Ochre at 184 isk/m3 and Arknor is way up at 265 isk/m3. I use m3 rather than units as each ore has a different m3 volume but strip miners mine a set m3 per cycle regardless of what ore you are mining. Spodumain could be the super ore that was suggested in the CSM minutes. Even though Spodumain is one of the worst ores to mine in game currently, it gets most of its value from the megacyte it contains. You could multiply the tritanium and pyrite contained in the Spodumain by 100 and it would still not become the most valuable ore.

Making these changes to the ore compositions would be fairly easy for the developers to do. Since all these ores are already abundant in null sec grav sites, the sites and belts would need no changes at all. One of the mid level sov grav sites that is very easy to get contains a single massive Spodumain, if spodumain had its tritanium and pyrite content multiplied by 100, that alone could be enough to generate a good supply of tritanium and pyrite in null sec.

Combine these ore changes with a basic 10% refinery in all outposts and it could make all the difference. I say a base 10% refinery as currently only the minmatar outpost is worth refining at. Any of the others, even with full teir 3 refinery upgrade, only get 30%. A base 10% refinery would be useless, but fully upgraded would be 40% which is easy to get a 100% refine at.

Another option which I actually like better would be to remove the 75% hard cap on the POS refinery. You should be able to refine at 100% with good refining skills at a POS array. The POS array is already gimped enough by its limited run time and volumes. Having it able to refine at 100% with maxed skills would still not make it even close to as good as refining at an outpost. A POS refining array has a long cycle time, and limited volume it can refine per batch. While an outpost can refine an unlimited amount of ore instantly. That alone is enough of a difference. There is no need for the 75% refining cap.

Increasing manufacturing slots would be nice but really is not needed. Null sec manufacturing can be done at POSes fairly easily. it would certainly not hurt the game at all though to have 10-20 times the number of manufacturing slots available in null.

Currently we do have access to all of these things in NULL. However it is null sec, these things should be available to a lesser degree than in high sec should they not? Well I believe this where the problem comes in. So why is industry in NULL so dormant? Well, since the availability of jump freighters moving stuff back and fourth from high sec is fairly easy. Considering the added risk involved in manufacturing in NULL, it does not take much for a manufacturer to be better off building in high sec and just moving the goods out to null, or better yet letting the null sec dwellers come and get them.

To be continued

TL;DR: all this talk of changes to nullsec mining and refining is completely irrelevant. give an efficiency bonus to t2 production/invention in lowsec/nullsec.

the supply and transport of lowends is a problem if you're doing capital construction or other such things in null, however I don't see this as a particularly important problem for two reasons.

1. People will continue to compress/import what is needed and continue to mine what is most profitable. For capital production, compression and massive trit importing will never be replaced by mining veldspar in 0.0
2. lowsec and nullsec need to be adjusted to make them more attractive to t2, t3, and booster production, which don't rely heavily on acquiring mass quantities of low-ends.

The stated goal (IMO) is to make more steps of the t2 manufacturing process happen in low/null. To that end I have a few ideas.

The current state:

1. complex reaction products are made in low/null and sold in highsec trade hubs
2. research, invention, component construction, and t2 final construction all happen in hisec, because its safer, easier, and closer to the consumer.

Solution:

1. Assemly arrays for t2 construction components receive a 0.98 material need multiplier when anchored in lowsec or nullsec.
2. Assemly arrays for t2 ships/modules receive a 0.95 material need multiplier when anchored in lowsec or nullsec.
3. Invention slots in mobile labs get an extra 1.10 multiplier in the success formula when anchored in lowsec or nullsec. This is not the same as adding 10% to the success chance.

Objections:

1. Wouldn't this drive t2 producers in hisec out of business?

Absolutely not. My logic is similar to the "T2 BPO's are irrelevant" argument. Right now probably 95-99% of all invention and t2 manufacturing happens in hisec. The voracious demand for t2 ships and equipment cannot be satisfied by BPO holders or low/null producers, so the supply curve is dominated by the hisec producers. From what we know about the EVE playerbase, thousands of hisec producers are not going to pack up and relocate to low/null to respond to this change. The majority will simply exit the market if the profit margins get too small.

2. What's to stop the profit margin from getting too small for hisec producers?

This could only happen if the vast majority of the volume of t2 manufacturing has been outsourced to nullsec and lowsec. If this actually happens, that would be a good thing, as the same amount of actual manufacturing would be happening, but people would be doing it in a more interesting place and more things would be at risk. However, this won't be the case: nullsec or lowsec will never be able dominate the volume of t2 produced. Because low profit margins cause people to leave the market or to start stockpiling finished goods, it is very unlikely that the equilibrium point reached will make hisec t2 production completely unprofitable. As it is now, some things will be more profitable to invent than others, some won't be profitable at all. Furthermore, if the supply of t2 goods is increasingly based in lowsec/nullsec then the market is more exposed to things blowing up in low/null, which is a good thing.

3. What's the need for this?

Well, moving t2 invention/production out of hisec is a stated goal, and this is an attempt to do it with market forces while keeping hisec t2 production both viable long-term and as a profitable safety valve without introducing new bottlenecks in production/invention.

Furthermore, this change is needed to make invention/t2-production worth doing at all outside of hisec. Lowsec and nullsec has all of the increased risk and cost for ultimately the same or smaller profit margin. A concrete efficiency bonus is the only incentive worth having (extra station slots won't really cut it, unless you also punish hisec, which will cause unnecessary crying from t2 consumers and producers alike).

Lastly, having an efficiency bonus means that nullsec/lowsec t2 production will almost always be profitable if you don't get your pos knocked down or your JF DoomsDayed. They will be insulated from short-term market fluctuations and the necessity of babysitting buy orders, since they have a significantly thicker profit margin. This encourages small-time producers as it frees them from a tremendous headache. As long as their supply lines keep moving and poses stay working (and their space defended), they can turn a profit. They'll still get benefit from finding the most profitable thing to produce, but they'll have to switch their production lines less often. Because off the lower efficiency, hisec t2 producers will have to react to the market more quickly than lowsec/nullsec producers will have to (hisec t2 producers already need to do this however).

4. Won't these changes be hard to implement?

No. Existing labs/arrays could be changed to detect the sec status they are anchored in, or new ones could be seeded which only are anchorable in low/null. CCP is probably smart enough to do this smoothly, and without crashing the market for existing mobile labs.

guessing you didn't read the OP?