Market Discussions

Just a few thoughts about the winter patch:

- The winter patch will bring us, among other things, player owned customs offices, a supercap nerf and a buff to the dread. What should we expect from that? It would seem logical that :

a) immediately after the patch there will be a highly significant need for customs offices (no brainer). It will be a sellers market for the first 6-8 weeks after the patch

b) 6-8 weeks of re-kitting will mean that we will have a significant drop in the amount of PI being done in 0.0 and wormholes and therefore a high probability of price increases for PI products of all types for a short time. Personally I'm speculating on the high-volume items like POS fuels to take a big jump in price for a while.

c) people are already starting to stockpile PI products as well as the items needed to manufacture customs offices, which will soften the landing somewhat as they take their profits. It also means that if you're not already stockpiling then you're fishing behind the net.

d) There will be a permanent complication and cost involved in doing PI in the "good" space, which will mean that some products will shake out at a higher equilibrium price than we have now because people will have to make money (for a 10 planet WH the capital layout for infrastructure might be on the order of 1-2 bil) before they can start to ramp up production. You might think, so what, you can make that back in a month... but many eve online players don't think that far ahead.

e) It will provide 0.0 alliances with another steady source of passive income that will increase their already huge budgets. Look for increases in demand for "shiny" ships and capital ships. For people making captial components and hulls as well as T2/t3 components and ships, I would think profits will increase on the 8-12 month timeframe. Look for inflation in this area as the money supply in the power-house alliances increases.

f) Due to the nature of PI (you can't take planets with you) and the money they will generate for 0.0 alliances, look for a change in the behaviour of alliances. Since the changes to SOV, alliances have become much more mobile and less " attached" to their "home" space. You can see that by examples such as the DRF migrating from the bottom to the top of the universe and Morsus Mihi just packing their bags and going somewhere else when the ISK grinding became difficult. This change might signal a return to alliances wanting to to fight more vigorously for their space because the financial consequences of falling back will be more severe. I'm, therefore, predicting less mobility in 0.0 over the 12 month horizon which will mean an increase in the demand for jump-bridges and LO, POS structures and station modules.

The supercap nerf:

LOL... the supercap nerf does nothing to address their main role at the moment... structure bashing. However, it is not without consequence:

a) Initially I would suspect that more supercaps will be destroyed than we've seen in the past. For people making SC hulls this is good.

b) There *may* be a revival of the traditional BS fleet if SC actually turn out to be vulnerable to them. Look for possible increases in BS and module prices, especially the short range heavy hitters like the Gallente and Amarr ones.

c) Personally, however, I think the SC nerf is going to be a storm in a glass of water and I don't expect much more from this than a few attempts from major alliances to find an answer to the SC and that everyone will conclude in 6 months time that the nerf didn't go far enough.

d) The changes to the log-off rules might actually have a more significant effect on SC losses than the nerf itself. The logoffski won't save you anymore.... This will have an unexpected effect, since entities like the DRF will probably dock their supercap fleet and turtle up while they focus all of their energy on RMT and trying to find a new exploit. This will be another force moving to return 0.0 to a more static mode.

The dread buff:

Personally I don't think that we can speak of a buff. Yes the dreads will become more mobile and may make more damage but the dread is an overgrown battleship..... The role of structure bashing has been taken over by the super-cap and that's not going to change.

The role of the dread should be as an anti-supercap weapon. What a battleship is to a carrier, for example.... but since the dread is a cap and the SC will retain their anti-cap abilities, what I predict is that there will be an initial blip in the market as people buy dreads (especially the Moros) and then they will lose them to SC blobs and not replace them again as it will turn out that the dread *still* sucks, even with a significant numerical advantage, over the SC. the thing that would have saved the dread from being useless is a seige timer of about 1 min. As it is, 5 minutes is an eternity if the field is crawling with SC and there's no chance of survival. Buy a rifter or even a drake for a throw-away one-shot weapon... but there aren't that many people who are going to buy throw-away weapons for a billion isk.

What does this mean?

a) all of you poor sods who invested in inventories of the Moros and modules are going to get burned.

b) The dread is still a dead-end weapon. alliances will field battleship blobs to fight super caps. Invest in that.

c) it will be 12-18 months before CCP makes a proper intervention in the role of the dread and for the forseeable future it's not worth owning one or worth making them.

So... that's my crystal-ball moment for today. I'm looking forward to hearing feedback from others

T-

dude, they had this expansion, it was called dominion. look that **** up.

:P

Supercarriers will still be very much in demand IF people still want to take space from other people. 10 supercarriers can do the sov grind of 50 dreads or 300-400 battleships, so as long as people are taking and losing space, they will be used.

Some people have been throwing around the idea that buffed dreads and nerfed supers will lead to "suicide" dread fleets burning down supers. I am doubtful, but if it is plausible, a few quick victories like that will lead to a massive demand for dreads.

Naw, not for lack of wanting though.

Meh....

Dunno... but what I do know (I was in Widot at the time) is what Widot became very introverted and self-important and failed to help the NC with any meaningful form of support at all.... They were like the people who stand on the sidewalk and watch car accidents happen without doing *anything* to help the victims... it was disgusting.

What I also know, since I fought in NC fleets every day during the DRF invasion and have a good ear for the rumour mill is that some of their people put up a hell of a fight... I have the utmost respect for some of them and I'm sure they would have fought like IAC did against -A- until they were living in safe spots and grinding out kills in interceptors....

Their leadership, on the other hand, didn't have that confidence and was talking about moving to NPC space before the DRF got anywhere near H-W. That fight wasn't lost in the trenches and morale was good until about a week before the fail-cascade.

And when Morsus Mihi did throw in the towel, not entirely but certainly in part due to being left twisting in the wind by their BFF's, it was only a matter of days before WIDOT folded and the DRF won the North.

The point i'm making here is that the DRF was willing to move it's whole lumbering apparatus to the north (just look at where White Noise is living now) and it had little to no impact on their RMT and ISK grinding. We all assumed that their internal economy depended on holding drone space but we were wrong.... Holding space isn't the the nature of the game anymore.

T-

today's friend is tomorrow's enemy

coalitions in EVE don't tend to be very stable.

I think that all involved alliances/corporations would continue to expand their supercap fleet in anticipation of the eventual break-up.

Pointless question. What if something that won't happen happens? Who cares?

yar we know its not DRF anymore its gotta have a new name like NRF or some shiats

@OP: isn't your "speculation merely just a recap of EVERYTHING that was said in the other thread? hell some of it feels like word for word.