Market Discussions

@ 11 minutes CCP stream from today

Just wanted to get a few thoughts the future of Ice. I am sure there are large stock piles . I brought it up in TS and I was surprised by the reaction. Some said it will drop like a rock others said it will skyrocket. I think it will go up then drop like most things post expansions. I hope to find the small window where it hits its peak. Any thoughts ?

I think a lot of people are holding a lot of ice

As to where the price will go?

I think eventually it will settle at a higher point than now, but, it will be up and down all over the place for a while until it settles, as initially "OMG Ice Mining" will drop the price, then it will be better to mine something else, so the price will rise, so then people swap back...rinse and repeat.

At some point there will be a happy medium where enough ice is supplied to keep people happy, and the price is right for the miners.

Mynna wrote a post here Mynna Writes About Ice and Stuff

And I wrote a less smart one here: OMG ICE!

I dont think it will dip for long...people bore of things they dont like doing :p

*some* ice belts wont be

And in those systems, people will get bored of "OMG I only got 5 minutes on the ice"

I dont think ice will be sparking conflicts in null. The moons might be, although, it only takes 1 afk cloaker to put miners off mining, and with the increased need for ice from null to ensure current supply levels, that could be more annoying than it is currently.

Oh, I dont think they will be popping in 5 minutes, I just dont think people will like not having ice available all the time.

I think Osmon etc will have some adjustments due to the sheer volume of miners there, and I know they are respawning every 4 hours, but, it could be frustrating to log in just before it depletes.

Of course, my advice in that situation would be "go to a quieter system", but, miners, like missioners are creatures of habit ^^

For our next trick, we'll get 20 cats to stand still in a straight line.

I am prepared to wager the princely sum of 5000 interstellar kredits in opposition.

We had these incursion cats doing that for about a year then it all fell apart lol

@Vincent Athena - Chasing the spawn is going to result in a lot of down time, and the guy who cheats and skips 5 anoms ahead and gets to mine in one place till you get to him wins.

@Daniel Plain - Incursions have a mechanic that force players to form at least fleets, if not full communities due to not wanting sucky players in your fleet. The incursion communities then provide the leadership to make a deal. Miners have no such communal pressure. The closest thing would be the orca booster alts, but there are just too many of them around and they are to easy to train. The incursion mechanics also provide many ways to grief people who don't play along, whereas the only thing you will be able to do to ice poachers is suicide gank em.

@Rhivre - Afk Cloakers only work when you are very risk averse. If Ice starts going up, you will reach points quickly where loosing a hulk or two to the the cyno bomber becomes a bargain to keep your 50+ man mining fleet humming. At even higher prices, the motivation to stage counter drops or otherwise retaliate against those who mess with your isk printing kicks in. Will it get that high? Hell if I know, but the higher it gets, the more likely emergent behavior is to emerge. How high does ice need to get before suicide ganking your competitors for the highsec ice becomes cost effective?