Market Discussions

EDIT: Change confirmed as real and planned for live - https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=320187#post320187

Big bold letters bit: There is already an enormo-thread running in general on the rights or wrongs of this possible move. That thread contains much wailing, gnashing of teeth, a few tears and several references to realism (arguing for realism in a game which sees immortal clones fly through space, in an alternate universe, with a flight model that violates both Newton and Einstein's theories, at faster than light speeds whilst firing laser beams at eachother).

Any MD thread should really be concentrating on market effects rather than duplicate the arguments of right or wrong.

So, on the test server it would appear that no insurance payout for concord kills is being trialled.

Baselines:
What quantity of raw materials are currently destroyed by suicide gankers (that is destroyed by the gankers + those gankers then destroyed by Concord)?
What quantity of isk is piped into the economy by NPC insurance paying out on suicide gankers and on their victims?
How much of a disincentive is suicide ganking to botters?

Question:
If this change goes live, would it result in more or less suicide ganking? How much more or less?

Effects:
If less suicide ganking were to occur, would we see a surfeit of minerals due to less ship destruction and less of a restraining force on botters? Likewise, would we see a mineral deficit if more ganking were to occur due to this change?
What effect on the economy of removing the insurance ISK faucet to suicide gankers and their victims?


I figure all I'm asking is for folk's best guess at the baselines as without knowing those we won't know the extent any change may have on the market - it may turn out that suicide ganking, whilst talked of often is actually such a small proportion of mineral destruction and isk injection that any change would be negligible, lost in the general market noise.

I'm struggling to see how this proposed change could result in more suicide ganking occuring, although I do recognise an argument that it would give victims a false sense of security which could lead to an increase.


Having thought about it some as writing up this post I've shifted from thinking that this could put a significant dampner on mineral prices (admittedly at a time when other forces, new BC production for example, are strongly driving up demand), to thinking that any market effects will be negligible. Which kind of makes this post somewhat redundant, but I've typed it now and I love the sound of my own keyboard, plus I'm open to being convinced otherwise.

Finger in air guess: 1 in 100 ships destroyed are as a result of gankage. If the insurance changes cut that in half then we're talking a move from 1 percent of mineral destruction to 0.5 percent of mineral destruction and arguably neither here nor there - actually the effect would be even smaller, as typical suicide targets and agressors are small, BS or smaller, whilst general Eve ship destruction can include much bigger beasts.
Finger in air guess two: At any given time there are 100 players running incursions or missions for every 1 suicide ganker/victim. Incursion/mission runners, over a given time frame inject at least as much, and likely much more, freshly minted ISK into the economy as insurance payouts for ganker + victim.

Ergo, suicide ganking changes, if implemented as apparently suggested on the test server, will have no appreciable effect on the market. As M*A*S*H taught us, suicide is painless. What a pointless post this was :o)

There is only 1 thing that will be effected, it is the common, poor pirate, otherwise all ganking remains fun and if done right, quite lucrative.

PRO TIP:
Form fleets and have a fun, social, coordinated and profitable gank!


The loss of say, a typhoon class battleship would only mean the ganker with a zero wallet balance will not be able to buy another ship until they acquire ISK from places other then ganking itself, its really that SIMPLE.

Responsible pirate alt: This is highly unlikelly from stopping me when i just want to have fun.


I lose well over 100M in ships per week and sometimes, if not most of the time I forget to even insure my ships, ask around, most people also forget.

The developers are simply taking out an ISK faucet, which is good for every one.



What I don't like:

I am going to dearly miss flying my dramiel in nulsec =(

The big thing will be that the ships used for suicide ganking will change and that there will, at least initially, be an increase in the number of suicide ganks taking place immediately after the winter expansion is released.

As it stands at the moment a Thrasher will take down a Retriever and any t1 industrial that is fit solely for cargo. I haven't checked for Thrasher on Covetor or Catalyst on anything yet. Destroyers are also receiving a damage boost at the same time which will mean that it is possible. Again I haven't run the numbers but I'd guess that with the destroyer changes anything with a combined EHP of 4.6k or less (Mackinaw level) on their weakest resist will be soloable. In a Destroyer......

When it comes to the larger targets I expect that there will be a significant decrease in the number of BS used with many opting for the tier 3 BCs once the initial rush for them has died down and the prices normalized. For the more savvy ganker then the weapon of choice is likely to shift to Stealth Bombers. They've always had high damage output but the fact that T2s weren't worth insuring meant that the insurable T1 BS were used instead, since it will be a straight out race for highest damage/isk then they're back in with a shout.

I doubt that there will be any real rise in the "safe" value of cargo in a given ship and actually a real drop in some cases. However I do expect that people will think that it is safer to do so and will therefore carry more making drops more attractive.

"It will mean a bit less ganking, especially for new players who cannot take the financial hit"

A gank Thrasher weighs in at under 1M isk. Run the tutorial agents and you have around 10M. Run the Sisters arc and you got another 12M. Those figures are just on bounties/mission rewards and do not include selling any loot or salvage.

Ganking is possibly one of the more lucrative activities for a brand new player.

don't you typically need more than 1 person to successfully do a suicide gank? Otherwise, I'd be willing to try it :D

How many Tornado's will it take to gank a Tengu with 2*Navy Invul. and a medium deadspace booster?

A Golem with a XL Gisti X-type?

I see it as a wash - the increased DPS from the tier 3 battlecruisers combined with them being cheaper then battleships will basically break-even with the removal of the insurance payout.

So if you couldn't haul more then 1B in a freighter pre-patch, I don't think that number will change post-patch due to the removal of insurance.

(Without the removal of insurance, I would have expected the break even point to move down to about 700-800M before a freighter gank became profitable.)

Nah, this isn't the forum for learning from undocking. C&P, W&T thataway.