Science & Industry

i can force our members to lick my boots?

i gotta get on that

(the above quote has been heavily edited for brevity)

This type of strawman argument was very effective ten years ago, but with the increasing sophistication of forum users, more and more people are starting to recognise it for the nonsense that it truly is.

Frank, when you get home, go to the Eve radio archives and listen to the entirety of the interview, if you can stand it that long.

Bottom line, the game designer gave zero solid information, and no hard numbers, about the upcoming refine nerf to high sec.
But keep in mind, this is the same guy that said "I want to make ice the oil of Eve", and look what happened a month later to the high sec chunk of the ice industry. Or how, he was going to make a "slight change to RP income", which resulted in a 80-90% nerf in RP income.

And as for manufacturing, he talked in very oblique terms about a complete overhaul of industry that would extend well beyond the timeline of one release. But if you look at the past track record of what the null sec cartel lobbyists have screamed for on the forums, and then match that with the nerfs that followed to high sec income, it is certain that this will be very bad for high sec. (Just like Ice mining, ore mining this year alone).

Listen to the interview. He made it clear that no place should have perfect refine. He did not differentiate between pre and post skill refine. He said everywhere should have some element of waste.

Wormholes already deal with a 25% waste, regardless of skills. That is of course, incredibly unfair.
Some null sec stations as you pointed out, with the proper modules and skills , achieve perfect refine.

So any attack against refine waste is aimed squarely at high sec.

What assets of yours are at risk when refining shtuff in highsec?

Seriously, a Nullsec NPC outpost requires 20 billion in costs, and can be usurped by the nearest supercapital fleet. A POS, while not costing multibillions, is still a moderately costly asset that can be attacked at any time... These vulnerable assets should be the creme-de-la-creme of refining, not some safe highsec station!!!

Reward players that put their assets at risk... it is that simple, and currently, with regards to industry, our game is backwards:
Manufacturing: Best (as in most accessible slots) is in Highsec
Refining: Best (as in least waste, and ease of accessibility) is in Highsec
Same with all the other S&I stuff... easy access to materials, production lines, and safest logistics...

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by "deep sov network", but you can do the mining in many areas of space with relative safety:

1.) You can use bubbles to your advantage (mining at a belt or site, simply anchor a bubble 100 or 200 or 300 km's inline with the entrance hostiles are most likely to take.

2.) You can bubble the in gates to make it hard for people to arrive.

3.) Don't mine at zero

4.) Have an intel network (eyes to warn you to get safe).

I hunt ratters/miners in nullsec all the time, and those that employ these tactics are fairly hard to catch!

The hardest part about nullsec mining is getting the ore somewhere you can sell / use... It's the logistics involved in moving large quantities of ore about that is the true difficulty, but maybe that's what you meant..

I keep reading phrases like "the key to nullsec industry" and schemes to improve mining in nullsec. Some people seem to be confused that mining is the key to industry. Not even close.

Nullsec can be competitive with highsec in raw materials gathering, yes. Null is and likely will remain the primary source for moongoo. It is reasonably competitive with highsec in ore and ice mining. It has a huge competitive advantage over highsec for extracting planetary materials, though few nullsec "industrialists" actually seem to bother.

Where null cannot compete with highsec is in manufacturing. Especially in T2/T3 manufacturing, but even for T1 manufacturing null is iffy. To manufacture stuff, you must have a ready supply of raw materials. Corpmates running erratic mining ops between wars are a possible, if rather iffy, source of minerals. To make T2 items, though, you need whole a laundry list of odd PI and moongoo derived items; for invention you need datacores, for more expensive items decryptors. In most cases, gathering up all these materials in nullsec simply costs far more time and effort than just buying stuff off the market.

And this is why highsec manufacturers will always have an advantage over nullsec manufacturers. They can site their operations close to the markets. As long as there is a highsec, where carebears can fly relatively safely, that is where the game's major markets will be. No nullsec manufacturer, who has to arrange logistics through jump freighters or whatever, to get that last item or two on his raw material list from a highsec market will ever be as competitive as a highsec manufacturer working 3 jumps from Jita.

All this talk of "fixing" nullsec industry by making ore easier to gather in null than high is pretty ********. Having easy to gather ore is never going to "fix" nullsec industry. The only thing that will fix nullsec industry is to make safe places people can congregate together at to swap the bits and pieces they have for other bits and pieces other people have. In other words, turn parts of nullsec into highsec. Which seems to rather defeat the point of null.

QFT.

Messing more and more with high sec is good, the less players will be interested playing over there or playing at all is obviously good for Eve and CCP.

Or not, but who cares really?