Science & Industry

Seems like no one is considering the economical disruption for high-sec miners if null-sec indy outfits no longer import low-end minerals.

As the OP stated, a decrease in demand from null inhabitants for low-end minerals from high-sec markets, means high-sec miners get less reward.

If we are going to give null-sec the "easy" button to have everything it needs to be self-sufficient, and not interact with the universal economy, then hell, let's put ABC ore in high-sec....what's good for the gander is....

Dave -

Supply and demand, it's ubiquitous

A loss in demand to import low-end minerals from high-sec, will cause high-sec prices to fall.

Your counter is that a JF would now fill up with high-sec gear instead of minerals...maybe, maybe not. It is optional.
And further, would purchasing gear instead of minerals increase high-sec manufacturing activity enough to offset the drop in demand of low-end minerals from null-sec? idk...

One thing is certain though, null-sec would be completely self reliant: all the required minerals to produce all mods, ships, and other gear it needs. Importing anything from high-sec would be completely optional. Maybe that's what you meant by "options"....

Not saying this is a horrible concept. I'm simply pointing out there are ripple effects to all markets involved.

So... which region of Nullsec has access to all types of Moon minerals again?

Maybe 0.0 has changed since I last visited but last time I was there it was more profitable to do things other than mine...so only a few odd indy corps did it with the exception of ice mining which was only done to keep POS's up. I remember seeing vast belts of un-touched minerals floating with no mining vessels in sigbt. If you can make more doing annoms and plexes than mining high ends and then buy your minerals why mine at all...I'm willing to be that if they put belts of all super veld and super scord in every 0.0 system more than half of it would go un-mined and most of it would still come from empire. Basically right now null is fed easy minerals from an army of clueless noob minions happily digging away in empire space...

oh no doubt high sec prices will fall: but why is that a problem? as i said, i think it's fair that non-empire mining makes more isk/hour.
yes, it is optional to fill up a JF with modules, but why would you want to fly an empty JF back to 0.0 when you could haul things back and make a profit? people always want things picking up from jita, null sec stations don't stock themselves. also i'm pretty sure null sec probably do already import modules, although i cannot be sure of that.

yeah, nullsec could be completely self reliant, and importing would be optional. however i don't think this change will lead to a situation where it will be *most efficient* for null sec to be self reliant. as i say, why clog up production slots making modules when you can fit a substantial quantity of ship's worth of modules in a JF in jita and then leave the null sec production slots open for the more sizable things, like ships?

sure i'm simply speculating but i don't think the fallout from such a change will be that bad *shrug*

The whole point of revamping null is to get players out of high sec and into null.

Currently most of NULL sec, although all under someones control, is mostly empty. Why? because you can not live there without the support of jump freighter bringing in stuff from high sec. There are many that do choose to live in null sec, but mostly hardcore PVPers that live in small pockets where the action is. Once into deep null, in some systems you can travel 10 jumps in any direction without hardly seeing anyone in local. But drop a blockade unit and you will quickly get hot dropped by a fleet of 50 supers.(slight exaggeration)

Players need a reason to go to null sec. 80% of players in EVE are not hardcore PVPers. but at least half like PVP, they just enjoy other aspects of the game as well. You can not force a player into low sec or null sec, most will quit first. You need to make them want to go there. If they can make comparable ISK, WITHOUT LEAVING THE SAFETY OF HIGH SEC, they will. But if null sec was the bountiful land where you could strike it rich, many more would venture out. Just like in the old west during the gold rush, when common people would leave the safety of the cities to head into the wild hoping to strike it rich.

We need the equivalence of a gold rush in EVE to encourage players to get out there. Once there they will see it is not so bad and stay, even after the gold rush is over.

But this brings another problem. If null sec was made bountiful, to try to create a "gold rush" the big alliances would just get richer, and continue hording the best space. How can we fix this? Well the true problem I see is the lack of restriction on space controlled by alliances. There is no need for an alliance to control 30-40 systems, while they only live in 3-4 of them.

Change this mechanic so an Alliance is restricted to a specified number of systems they can control based on the SOV management skill of the founder/C.E.O. For example An alliance can control 4 systems with an additional 2 systems per level of the sov management skill. At Sov 5 you could control a maximum of 12 systems. This would encourage powerful alliances to be much more particular about what 12 systems they control. No more 40 system alliances with half their space empty.

This would not only leave much more open space for newer, smaller alliances, but would encourage more conflict fighting over the best systems. Sure there would still be coalitions of alliances controlling much larger sections of null, but a coalition is less stable then an alliance, with no game mechanics holding them together aside from shared chat channels. Plus each alliance in that coalition would have a Max of 12 systems they would personally call home. These systems would actually be populated.

Encourage conflict, reduce unused space, and not only give high sec dwellers a reason to want to go into null, but a means of getting there without butting heads with the big alliances.

Have you heard about Drone Regions? Like 1-2 years ago these regions had "golden rush". I recall my first days in LoD. People were farming hordes like there is no tomorrow. They used 2-3 smartbomb BSs: warp to horde, clean it in like 2-3 minutes and move to next one. Some n00b warps in salvager ship and clear area. It was possible to make billions a day.
Result? People got rich. Was Drone Space overpopulated? It wasn't. There was lots of empty systems around.

Don't forget one thing about "golden rush", "wild west" and such legends. You can get people to try to grab these riches. But 0.0 IS NOT WILD space. It's like territory under mafia control. And every "fountain" you make will be taken by one of these bands. No one "small, new and restless" will take it anyway. Take a look to moons.

There is another thing people tent to "forget": there is no "sov 0.0" space. I mean this space heavily differs from system to system. Some regions are danger, some regions are happy 24/7 ISK farms, some regions almost empty. What does it mean?

It means that carebears (like me) always can find good place to live in 0.0 sov already. You just find some big alliance like goonswarm/test/maybe SF, move to some god forgotten system inside their territory and you have safe ISK havens.

People are not ants. People tent to choose their environment. And the main problem of 0.0 - bad environment. Personally i feel a lot better in high-sec. In NPC corp (without any leaders, corp ops, and such stuff). That's why i returned here.

CCP and previous CSM meetings have repeatedly stated that they wanted to move industry to low/null and that high -sec industry is "too good." A carrot-and-stick approach is needed, although at the previous meeting they were talking about restricting manufacturing (or raising the fees) in high-sec as if that would make a difference [1].

Maybe I should run for CSM because the folks there aren't miners, nor are they industrialists. I'm a small scale industrialist, and I make about 8-10 drake-equivalent-units per week [2], and I mine much of the minerals needed. So while I'm not feeding an alliance with huge amounts of ships, I'm the sort of little guy that helps keep my corp going. And it is really clear from the CSM minutes that no one there represents little people.

Mining in null-sec is a risk-versus-reward issue heavily weighted towards the risk end of the scale. For most miners, the risk of mining in the belts is too high due to the ease of losing one's ship(s) to passers-by. For them, mining in grav sites is what it takes to move the risk-reward ratio to a "safe enough" area to continue mining at all. In Fountain, the region of space that our corp rents, only 8 systems have mercoxit spawning in the regular belts [3]. Some regions of null sec have zero systems with mercoxit in the belts.

When mining is risky, then the calculus of mining aims for the most valuable minerals and purchasing the remainder from high sec. Making super-tritanium asteroids won't make much of a difference as I do not believe that they can tip the risk-versus-reward enough in the "go mine it anyway" area. A procurer consumes about 1/2 the minerals of a Drake, and each "Drake Equivalent Unit" takes about 9 man-hours to mine and about 60 seconds to lose. So whether that afk cloaker is afk or not, you have to ask yourself "do you feel lucky punk?"

You also need to consider the sort of people who love to pew-pew in null. The sort who love PvP are not the sort who are going to like mining. The people who enjoy mining tend to be risk adverse and that's why high sec is so full of miners.


TL;DR - Refining in null sucks. The risk-versus-reward makes much mining too risky to bother with.




Notes:
1 - One idea was to raise manufacturing taxes/fees for jobs, and this was quickly shot down by the blogging community by showing that manufacturing costs were a tiny fraction of 1% for ships. Even jacking them by 2 orders of magnitude would not get them to the area where they'd make a difference.
2 - By "Drake equivalent units" I'm referring to an approximate unit of measurement of minerals made into ships: 1 cruiser is approximately equal to 1 capital construction thingy. 3 cruisers is approximately equal to a drake. 6 drakes is approximately equal to a battleship.
3 - All the other systems have industry upgrades to where they now have mercoxit spawning in grav sites.

because if you can't hold sov, what's the point of taking it? where's the conflict driver? if you can't take sov you may as well just remove it entirely.

Because the Grav sites produce something like 120 times too much Megacyte if you manufacture without importing Trit. I did the math somewhere else, and each time you cycle all the hidden belts, you get 24m Trit for 36m m3 of Ore. Grav sites produce Ore in a fixed ratio.

The resource problem in Nullsec industry is that the requirement that you import huge volumes of low ends results in a situation where it's no extra work to import everything (because the 425 Railguns you're using to compress the trit to manageable volumes brings everything else with it). Which means that Nullsec miners might as well export everything because it's far easier to do that than try to fill the small imbalances that 425mm compression leaves their local industrialist with.