Player Features and Ideas Discussion

This paper will cover the following:
A) Supply and Demand in EVE
B) Broken Rails
C) Infrastructure and All-Region Wide Economics
D) Gameplay (AKA the big part everyone should read)

I'm going to go over a comprehensive analysis of the economic system in EVE and how it affects the general player, its impact on the larger player base as a whole and gameplay, ways to improve on it.

The whole sales pitch in EVE revolves around Supply and Demand. In scope, this is a great concept, but the way it practically plays out, is completely broken due to the way mechanics are laid out for it to work. Let's take an example.

Something common, like Veldspar. You would expect this item to be in its lowest prices where its highest concentrations are found, with the highest prices being in far off systems, where other ore types, much more rare, are found, but not so much of the more widely used ores common in highly secured Empire space.

This does not happen in EVE.

In fact, the system is so broken, you find Veldspar at its highest price point, right next to the hub where the highest concentration of Veldspar spawns. The same pattern repeats for Plagioclase. I go to the Veldspar system where there is no Plagioclase in sight and do these guys want Plagioclase? Nope. They want Veldspar.

Do the guys with the station right next to the Plagioclase want Veldspar, since it's farther away and there is less supply right next to them? Nope. They want Plagioclase. They have the highest prices for Plagioclase in the region, and Veldspar is not in high demand despite it being farther away and in less quantities near the base.

This is not a shortage of supplies, but a shortage of labor.

Broken Rails

In EVE online, you don't really have a market simulation, you have a labor simulation, due to the factors that I'm going to go into next.

Supply and demand on broken rails does not work. Which means, even if supply is sufficient, the constant "sinking" of it breaks the idea of coverage from the point of origin, and time instead becomes more valuable than the resource being harvested itself.

What is "broken rails"? It's when a supply chain is broken at some point, due to whatever reasons and the supply will never be able to reach its destination. You would think, well, wouldn't this make the supply all that much more valuable? The answer here is no, because in practicality, it doesn't work this way. Broken rails is still broken rails, which means it is impractical to try the same thing over and over as the value continues to increase, to the point where goods have a preferred means of remaining stationary. Stationary is bad in any economy.

When the risk of moving the goods outweighs the need for goods, you have a lot of market apathy and stagnation. A true market is when there is lots of activity, as opposed to a labor market where prices are not dictated by a supply and demand dynamic. In the end you may argue it works out about the same, but the actual workings of the market are polar opposites.

The main reason for the bottleneck is gatecamping, and the way the game tanks its own economy by allowing it to be tanked in the first place, so the Supply and Demand mechanic never ever leaves the ground and we have to suffer through a labor market.
Resources are not so much scarce as they are -time- effective, which means their transport over long distances is offset by local labor in "hubs" where the highest prices in the region are the stations at which said ore spawns at. This means, that there is no distribution of said goods. They stagnate until the need for goods outweighs the risk of moving them. This is not dynamic.

There is no distant mining hub where a rare ore type spawns, for example, and it relies on the infrastructure of players to slowly bring it to outlying systems in incremental coverage that gets more and more costly depending on how far away the transport comes from because it is this mechanic that makes the good valuable, because this infrastructure is broken. Goods never make it through the transit. When was the last time you saw Isogen for sale in a 0.9 security system? It doesn't travel to those systems because that is unnecessary haul and thus risk. Highsec belongs to the labor market, and that is safer to bring down than to haul lowsec ores to highsec in order for them to end up in outlying stations. The greatest offender for this is gate camping, but really not limited to. Basically any freelance miner or resource harvester is going to be fair game and treated as if they were a military target. Yet these players are crucial to the game and should be protected by the game in some fashion.

Treated almost as a civillian sector.

The demand for lowsec ores never rises in highsec systems because those systems are labor systems. They move the ore down, not up. An ideal market provides a very large coverage of a good, at increasingly more costly prices the further it has to travel. Yet this demand for rare ores in highsec space is never so high as to ever be present, at these exponential prices. Why is this so?

Infrastructure and All-Region Wide Economics

Again, we go back to EVE having more of a labor simulation, which means there is more demand for someone to go to the hub and mine the ore for 30 minutes, than there is for the ore to arrive in highsec space as it would if the region was under a dynamic market which is an expansive market, usually marked by a large region coverage of a rare good at increasingly astronomic prices. But this does not exist. The prices are very similar, almost borderline, until it is spiked by need outgrowing risk. Where there is no growth from the primary node hub, there will be no demand outward.

So what happens when a PVE flagged player encroaches upon a corporation's turf so to speak, since they cannot be attacked? Well, they have to follow their corporation's license and they will have to buy a permit from the respective player ran corporation to operate within their territory. Furthermore, goods shipped out are liable to a 50% withholding fee. Which means, for example, if the player mined X amount of resources, half of those resources would end up in your corporation's station, and they would only be able to leave with the remaining half. This is on top of them having to pay your corporation for a permit to even enter your space, with an operation permit having a higher fee for this type of player.

Now, they could still be attacked by hostile NPC beacons honing in on them, so their personal protection is entirely on them or at the discretion of the corporation's space in which they are operating in.

That's right, this means that you can openly contract your own miners to harvest your resources and half of those would end up in your corporation's control, while the members of your corporation can pursue other interests, while some can remain behind optionally to defend any public outstanding mining operations if they want said income. If not, the miner's own safety from said NPC incursions is entirely on their own liability to said personal incursion.

In short, what this does:

Protects the relays of goods from one system to another, without the loss of overhead from destructive "suicide gankers" who mainly harm the game's economic mechanic for their own personal gain, to a resonable extent in the hands of freelance players not in a corporation.

It does not eliminate the practice entirely but adds a very crucial layer to the game's own economic mechanic by providing a controlled layer of transport which should further the coverage of goods through the use of the "solo" player, who can be their own "entrepeneur".

Lastly, a PVE flagged player cannot attack other players or members of their own NPC faction, unless they flag themselves for war, in which case they are a vaild target to the opposing faction and are still liable to NPC aggression.

What this really does:

Facilitate a faster cycle of large scale PvP engagements or even small scale skirmishes, away from gates by protecting resource management and even increases a corporation's own resource stock pool without sending out its own miners to harvest it, allowing it to focus on large scale conflict by contracting out labor to civillian operated sectors by way of permits.

Makes a player corporation with lots of territories feel more powerful when issuing permits to other players to operate within their claimed space or to even enter for prospecting. This applies to data sites resources as well, not just ore. (But not items such as blueprints or implants since these can be seen as personal drops, and vied as such by way of permit.)

Makes territory even more coveted due to the resource bonus that can be gained from ownig it due to contracting "PVE flagged" "freelancers".

Give an endgame to solo PVEers who have perhaps never considered taking up EVE before or even contend with its advanced mechanics due to their natural adaptation to a more PVE experience without harming the experience of what it means to be in EVE for players, with the focus shifting more into the actual space and away from gates, traffic, and the harassment of miners, who are crucial to the game's sustained PvP engagements.

Less focus on "labor camps" for primary source of a resource, to a greater coverage, and a progression towards real "supply and demand" as opposed to warp to gate and tank X amount of resources when you pop, if you transit. Which can still happen, but if your corporation is focused on it and does not allocate enough resources to prevent the occurance, the corporation is liable.

If only, you, or your corporation ever had to send out parties to mine rocks for 30 minutes, because "hey guys, we're a bit low on -insert mineral-", you should support this idea!

If you hate mining, and have had to do it on behest of someone, you should support this idea!

If you hate the idea of labor camps in EVE, you should support this idea!

If you have PVE friends who want to start EVE but don't like the idea of PvP, you should support this idea.

Addendum

**A 15 day cooldown should be set on a player leaving a corporation before they can flag to become a PvE flagged freelancer to keep the system honest since this borders on its own profession.
**Freelancers mining in fleets are subject to the same rules as a player in a corporation (not protected from enemy players) but are still under threat from NPC incursions targeting them but at a reduced chance due to a security bonus provided by being in a fleet. Safety in numbers. Usually.

long and rambling, pointless, disorganized, unsupported by specific facts or examples, you never clearly define the problem you're trying to solve, and your proposed solution is a complete re-imagining of multiple core gameplay mechanics such as aggression flags and the introduction of completely new mechanics like NPCs spawning to target players that are mining and hauling.

Pro-tip: brevity is better. People pay attention to what you have to say more.


- The reason for the time/labor sink is because that is the only true limited resource in the game... and thus the only thing of true value. Asteriods respawn, rats respawn, meta-mods are created out of "thin air." And players are inherrently lazy... which makes this all the more valuable.

- In all those words you never actually explained why the current system is bad (unless you are a carebear and this is an elaborate "sealth nerf all nonconsensual combat idea")... only that it doesn't conform to RL economic theory.

- This idea will never fly. NPCs of almost calibre can be easily swatted away by players with even a little bit of organization. Your idea for a PvE/PvP flag will just make it such that industry will always be safe.

- This idea reeks of Trammel Server in Ultima Online. And we know what ultimately happened with that (short lived player surge followed by plummeting prices on in-game goods as everyone farmed without fear and a slow death for the game as a whole).

Like the others said, look speach for a short point, i don't think suaside gankers hurt the econemt in any way, just a gaming aspect,
but i do agree i would be a good idea to move form labor controled econemy to control it whit scarce resources, less ore in the belts, forceing pll to spread out more!