EVE General Discussion

This post will explain what ISK sinks and faucets are. But first, I'll introduce another term.

ISK pool:
A total amount of ISK in the game. It represents the sum of all ISK from all characters in the game.

ISK faucet:
Any activity when you get ISK that didn't exist in the game before. ISK faucets expand the ISK pool.

Common ISK faucets (the list is not complete):
- NPC bounties
- Mission rewards and bonuses (when they are in pure ISK).
- Selling criminal dog tags and navy insignias to NPC buy orders. You can recognize NPC buy orders by looking at the "Client" column in your Market Transactions window. If your client is an NPC corporation, that's an ISK faucet.
- Selling Overseer's Personal Effects to NPC buy orders.
- Selling Sleeper Components to NPC buy orders (for example "Sleeper Data Library");
- Ship insurance payouts. Even if you did pay for the insurance, the amount of ISK that you get when your ship is destroyed is greater than the amount you have invested in the insurance itself;

ISK sink:
Any activity that removes the ISK from the ISK pool. If you spend some ISK and that ISK does not get transfered to any other player, that's an ISK sink.

Common ISK sinks (the list is not complete):
- Skill books. When you buy a skill book from an NPC sell order, the ISK is removed from your wallet and transferred to an NPC corporation. Transferring ISK to an NPC corporation effectively removes it from the game;
- Clone upgrades and installation of jump clones to NPC stations;
- War declarations. Each war declaration requires tax to be paid to CONCORD;
- Loyalty Point (LP) stores. When you buy something from an Loyalty point store, you may spend ISK (ISK Cost in the LP Store window) in order to get your desired item;
- Planetary interaction taxes in high security space. A part of the taxes you pay when you import/export something to/from the planet goes to an NPC corporation;
- Ship insurance investment if your ship doesn't blow up during the length of the insurance contract;
- Upgrading Factional warfare systems. Factional warfare systems are upgraded by donating ISK to an NPC entity at the Factional warfare infrastructure hub;
- Industrial jobs in empire space stations (research, manufacturing, copying of blueprints,...)

Some more complex activities and borderline cases (not a complete list):

- Mining.
Mining is neutral (is not ISK sink or faucet) when you use your mined minerals to produce anything but ships.
Mining is an indirect ISK faucet when you build a ship with your mined minerals, that ship explodes and gets insurance payout.
Mining can be even an indirect ISK sink when you sell you ore/minerals on the market and pay the transaction tax to the SCC

- Salvaging.
Salvaging is neutral when you build and use rigs from salvaged materials.
Salvaging can be an indirect ISK sink if you sell salvaged materials on the market and pay the transaction tax to the SCC.
Salvaging is NOT an ISK faucet as there is no way that you can get any ISK from an NPC entity for any activity related to salvaged materials or their products.

- PLEX and Aurum.
PLEX and Aurum are neutral if you buy them for cash and spend them directly on activating game time or buying from the Nex Store.
PLEX can be an indirect ISK sink if you sell PLEX on the market and pay the transaction tax to the SCC.
PLEX is NOT an ISK faucet. Although you get a significant amount of ISK by selling a PLEX, the ISK that you get will always come from another player.
Increasing the volume of traded PLEXes is actually an increase of the ISK sink as more transaction taxes are paid to an NPC entity.

- Factional Warfare missions and complexes.
This is a more complicated activity that can be at the same time an ISK sink and an ISK faucet.
When you get a mission reward (or time bonus) from the agent, that is an ISK faucet.
When you pick up and sell navy insignias from the wrecks to NPC buy orders, that's an ISK faucet.
When you use the tags you have gathered directly in an LP store and pay some additional ISK in order to cash out your loyalty points, that's an ISK sink.
If you exchange your Loyalty points for anything other than a ship/ship blueprint and pay some ISK during the cash out, that's an ISK sink.
If you sell what you get from an LP store on the market, that's an ISK sink (since you pay the transaction tax and the ISK you get comes from another player).
The only way to turn your Loyalty points to and ISK faucet is to exchange your Loyalty points for a ship or ship blueprint, since insurance is an ISK faucet.



Here's a nice and simple graph made in Paint
http://dl.eve-files.com/media/1312/sinksandfaucets.jpg

I'd argue that player bounties are a pseudo sink, since it's highly unlikely that all of bounty ISK will ever be payed out.

-Incursions

Every HQ site completed is 1,260,000,000.00 isk and 280,000 LP added to the economy by Concord.

These sites are completed every 5-10 minutes once just a couple of fleets gets to work in a system.

What was the point of this thread anyway? More then half of the competent eve players already know this..and if u did it for the new bros then cheers,but i seriously doubt they even care about such things..

Welcome to game design 101, do you want a cookie?

/me gives Antihrist Pripravnik some cake.

Resumed:

Theres a LOT more faucets than sinks


.. which is good.

Correct... Don't know why I was thinking ISK