EVE General Discussion

You should probably move to null and do some industry, you don't seem to picking up on this, at all.

When someone says "production costs are too high" it's because myself and a few others are using all the affordable lines and that guy has nothing but rediculously prices production lines they can use; therefore "production costs are to high" FOR THEM.

I'm aware of what people are saying.
There are many issues the industrialist face in null sec, capacity is a big one, and capacity is what determines production cost for the majority of builders in null.


I'm not trying to tell you they're wrong.
I"m the null industrialist trying to clarify WHY so many null industrialist are saying what they're saying, as well as explain why fixing those issues will not fix null industry.

If you incease the capacity so that industry actually supports the numbers in null sec today, all you will get are a bunch of guys LIKE ME.


Here's an example.
You don't see guys who are able to play right after downtime complaining about a lack of asteroids in high sec; you see guys who play at peak US hours complaining about it.

Those of us that play when the servers come up are able to strip entire belts clean before the rest of the world has a chance to play.

That's what happens in null when you build. Those of us who play during the day are able to control the production lines more efficiently to ensure that we're getting the best lines. Then a bunch of people log in later in the day, go to instal a job, and find that all the affordable production lines have day long Q's.

Those guys are going "WTF CCP, it costs me hundreds of thousands more to run a job then it does a single person in high sec" because the only lines available for them to run jobs on are all stupidily priced. Who wants to use a line that charages you 20k to install and 10k per hour to build and sell? No one, and most of the lines in null are that sort of line, not 1000/ 500.

Those guys, if they're not able to actually do production due to line costs, aren't ever reaching the point where they will experience what I and many other do.


It's like 1000 people take a luxury vaction, but have to jump through hoops to get to the destination. 900 of that 1000 never makes it to the destination, so they're issue ends at "I can't get there". In the meantime, 100 of us have got there and we're like "it's a shack in the middle of the ghetto, wtf?"

If you only fix the problem most people have, getting to the destination; without actually fixing the destination itself, you just end up with 1000 people complaining about the destination instead of 100.

Most people don't actually get to see what happens when you're actually able to get into production in null sec.
That's where I come in.

…and to build on that, you (Aren Madigan) need to at some point understand all the different costs being discussed and where they play into the overall scheme of things.

We have slot costs (low if you have your own oupost, high if you rent slots from someone else's, generally zero if you're on a POS). We have transport costs. We have added materials costs (with additional transport costs layered into them). We have risks. We have facility procurement and install costs that have to be amortised. We have running costs that have to be balanced out. That's before we even begin to look at the difficult-to-measure stuff like labour and “fun”.

Even if your actual production line cost is very low, the rest of them can be waaaay up there, which affects what you can do reasonably do with the finished product.

Looking at costs alone, we have a clear imbalance: for high, the above costs are zero or so close as to make no difference (the 1000/333 install and rental cost of an NPC production line is lost in the noise of market variations). Thus we have that question that has been repeated throughout the thread: how do you compete with “free”?

Capacity is a different imbalance: for high, we have systems with 6-700 of these free lines. For null, mechanical limitations mean you get that many equivalent slots per region and trying to improve the number massively raises the costs. Thus we have another oft-repeated question: how do you compete with (effectively) infinite availability?

Natsett provides an example of why you can't look at either of these separately: fixing the costs does nothing because there won't be enough capacity to benefit from the improved balance. Fixing capacity does nothing because the costs are still imbalanced.

…and then, of course, there's the fundamental problem of actually being better than a free and infinite baseline to begin with, since you deem in unacceptable to alter that baseline.

Interesting that you use the Wild West as an analogy. Consider how the Wild West is now. Largely peaceful, and an excellent location for industry. Or look at the mines and factories set up in Africa and the formerly wartorn bits of Asia.

And there's definitely corps that live in various lowsec systems. But its a bit like a criminal or vigilante gang laying claim to a city neighbourhood. You can't be too open about it.

"In other words, taking it from behind by the big guys. See, this is something I have a problem with, the massive blue landscapes of null. Null was supposed to be about competition, not the Illustrious benefactor / godfather / overlord. :)"


Welcome to Null Sec, you won't get sympathy here kiddo. although I get what your saying that there is a marked difference between cooperation and being somebodies chump.

Never at any point misunderstood that once it was explained, just got confused when someone called it cheaper when its those added costs are what make that not true. This all has been largely and clearly explained. Hell, can't even call POS production costs zero simply because of the fuel costs. There's a reason I've mentioned both cost and capacity balances in some of my posts, even if my earlier ones did not because I wasn't entirely clear on what was going on, I was more wanting a specific explanation to that one statement. All you needed to explain is where specifically null is cheaper and why. That would have answered my question. A question that I don't see the answer to in people trying to "explain" to me when the explanations being given are the exact reason why the statement confuses me.

I'm actually saying that if Nullsec had unlimited production lines, the overhead from stuff that cannot be changed (risks, transport, amortized station costs, etc) about Nullsec is still too high to compete with HS's unlimited, free, risk free, and convenient production lines.

So even if CCP buffed the hell out of Nullsec, I'd rather manufacture in HS unless there was an accompanying nerf to HS.

Because a majority of players do not exist in highsec space. The highsec majority you're talking about is characters. This means that a large portion of the highsec population is actually constituted by players who are living it up in null (and low) and have no problems with the risks and PvP that come with it…

…and yet, they are eschewing null in this particular area. Massively so. If players who have no problems with living in nullsec choose not to do it in a given activity area, that activity is screwed up. High is drawing them away from the area they actually operate in.

We saw the same thing with ISK grinding: everyone + dog were doing L4s in highsec because it was by far the best way of doing so (by virtue of being infinite, safe, logistics-free, and at the same output level as anywhere else… sound familiar?) until they introduced some enhanced null and low-sec ISK earners — anomalies, sov upgrades, FW, even incursions (although they largely got beaten by highsec incursions) — at which point players happily moved their ISK-grinding highsec alts out to these new null and low grazing fields. And then straight back into high when anomalies got overnerfed.

The increased rewards certainly helped, but they were still not out of the realm of possibility of what you'd get from highsec. What really changed was availability and logistical ease: there was immediate access and enough for all comers. The extra rewards simply scaled with the increased risk of the space. Oh, and inidentally, L4s got a bit of a nerf at the same time…

Kusomonmon has 300; according to the static data dump (which isn't particularly reliable for these things) Branch has 100. 304-QS have none listed in the data dump.

The odds of CCP actually doing these proposed nerfs is something to consider. Shoot for the moon I guess.

Because, while it's a related issue, it's largely separate from what's required to fix nullsec industry (which most of us view as separate from extractive activities like mining).