Science & Industry

Hi there:
I used to play EVE 3 years ago and now I'm back.
One thing I don't understand is the mineral price.
The BEST ores ABCM in the old days seems doesn't worth mining at all.
People can make same (even more) isk/hr in high sec mining (mining kernite, pyro, and also scord)
This just doesn't make sense to me.
I think I missed the history of the mineral market change.
Anyone could explain this to me?
I'd like to know the story about this :)

thx

The change in insurance also removed some hard limits (payouts are no longer fixed but is adjusted based on a the value 'mineral basket').

Some events and other activities have been aimed at people involved in mass-mining in high.

The political situation might have a negative impact on the value of the ABCM.

So there's been several things the last three years that have had 'interesting' effects on the market.

There was also the removal of meta 0 items from loot, which was another source of minerals.
Also the removal of certain npc goods which refined into minerals that kept a ceiling on the prices.

Also in part because Nullsec produces ore/minerals in fixed ratios set by CCP (the ore available in hidden belts), which are somewhat ludicrously high end weighted (normalized to the usage ratio in an Archon, hidden belts produce something like 120x as much Megacyte as Trit).

part of this is due to large grav sites having no veld, pyrox, or plagioclase.
when it comes down to it, large grav sites are the only ones that matter.

NO,

Even if huge veldspar ans scordite rocks were added to the hidden belts in null sec A,B,C's would still get mined first.

What they need to do is change the mineral composition of existing rocks. For example Arknor has trace amounts of tritanium and pyrite. An insignificant amount, but if you increase those trace amounts by a factor of 10 they become a reasonable source of low end minerals while still retaining their high ends. Do this for all the null sec and even low sec ores. Spodumain and Gneiss could actually have their low end mineral content increased by a factor of 30 and still only have an average ore value. Hiddden null sec belts already have huge spodumain rocks, if they were to become a good source of trit and pyrite they would actually be worth mining for more than just flipping the belt.

Even if high end minerals stay cheaper and low ends rise the high end ores which would also contain significant amounts of low end minerals, will get a proportional increase in value preventing high sec ores from surpassing them in value. And when/if low end minerals drop in value then the high end ores will also drop. It would keep high end ores on top value wise, while still allowing their value to fluctuate with the market.

If the mineral distribution was fixed in this way it would not only drastically increase the available low end minerals in null sec, but increase the value of null sec ores in a way that will maintain a higher value than high sec ores. They would still be a need to import low ends from high sec for large projects like building supers, but an increase in local low ends would help stimulate null sec industry.

The short answer is that CCP wanted to make mining more attractive and a potentially viable career choice. This was attained with the current higher mineral prices although largely as a side effect of other unrelated changes which have been mentioned in earlier replies to the OP. It is open to speculation as to whether CCP knew or realised this 'cause & effect' would occur. My personal experience of management in other RL companies would suggest CCP probably didn't realise the mineral price hike would occur.

Other recent changes such as the mining vessel rebalancing and the apparent need to add 'extra material' requirements to ship blueprints have probably also affected mineral prices but to a lesser degree. I personally think the mining vessel rebalancing & 'extra materials' should not have been implemented but we have little sway in what happens.

On balance I think the increased prices for 'low end' minerals in conjunction with bot removal are good for New Eden.

Only point for a new player to mine in Null SEC is you'll get blownup unless you put up a 500 million deposit to join goons well I guess either way you get blown up but 1 of them you get blown up & lose 500 million ISK

Fairly big issue here actually. CCP's security team got serious about banning bot and RMT-type accounts. Thousands of accounts have been permabanned, most of which were either miners or drone farmers. A big wave of bans landed quite close to the removal of drone refinables, and it appears that most of those mining botters operated in highsec.

Quite simply it's hard to get enough real players mining in highsec to make up for all the lost bot/farmer output. Combine that with the relative inability of the nullsec fleet miners to shift output very much towards low ends, and you get current prices. It's certainly made mining more worthwhile for the small guy, but is so far out of whack that many people want CCP to revisit the math.