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Do we have any official data on where minerals are coming from at the moment in terms of High/Low/Null and Ore/Reproc?

All I have found is a chart apparently constructed from data posted in the forums in 2008:
http://jestertrek.com/eve/blog/2012/mineralcompo-stack.png

If the above chart in any way reflects the mineral supply situation today (Ie. Tri/Pye/Mex/Iso 43/61/60/56% coming from loot) then almost halving the supply of minerals from mission loot is going to have a big impact. It means in the long term more mining and missioning (CCP expects new player growth?) will have to be done to maintain the status quo depending on how much the increased yield in low/null will offset the reduction. Kind of in the dark here, if anyone can point to info on the relative size of the mineral economies of low/null/high that would be useful.

Now maintaining the status quo might not be a good thing. Perhaps CCP is aiming to have a market where catastropic battles such as the recent one will be felt as shocks to the market - that would be good imo, interesting and realistic - because judging by the released data, the last battle barely caused a blip in the market.

So assuming that loot as a source of minerals is significant, and this mineral source is drastically reduced, in the short term the increased demand over supply for minerals will have to be met from existing stocks. After stocks are depleted to a level CCP deems acceptable they could increase the reprocessing rate as they wish.

I am surprised that an increase in mineral costs of the big ships isn't being announced alongside the cut to reprocessing. Instead of placing the responsibility of fixing the glut of minerals in the economy on newer players - limiting their income and reducing their choices of activities in the game (and probably jeopardising their retention), CCP could also increase the mineral cost of the higher end ships.

I'm not sure if it's already been asked (I am not going to read 80+pages).
But now that all Outposts have the same starting base refinery then doesn't that make the Minmitar station near-useless untill upgraded.
It has limited offices and factory slots in comparison to the other stations.

Will it have additional factory slots or offices etc to make up for the boost your giving to the other stations ?

First of all, like I wrote earlier, low sec, and especially null sec, are literally BATTLEFIELDS. High end facilities are very unlikely to be developed in such conditions. Workforce there would be terribly expensive, if any would volunteer. That is why high-tech industries tend to prosper in stable environment. Would you build a computer factory in today’s Syria or Baghdad, or in the US, UK, etc...?

Second, we are not simply talking about POS being slightly better than High sec, but rather giving them a HUGE profit margin.

Third, industrial centers tend to develop closely to each other and to their workforce pool. High sec is supposed to be patrolled by CONCORD and empire police due to its relative population, while low sec is supposed to be scarcely inhabited. Would you open a factory in the middle of a desert, or near important cities with some other industrial centers?

It’s the same here... Low sec and null sec are “cowboys’ playgrounds”. And yes, I spend much more time in High sec, though I make some research in Low sec labs and often mine in WH space... I understand that you live in low/null sec and that you want an advantage on living there.

However, besides being unrealistic, giving such boost to null sec corps will give another edge to veteran players, while, again, hindering the prosperity of new players. I’ve been playing for four months now, and I still consider myself “freshmeat” in null-sec. I know some players active for over a year that won’t venture in null sec for similar reasons! A “green” newbie is about six months to a year from being null-sec worthy (unless buying many expensive ships and stuff using real life money to buy PLEXes and so on). So, does gameplay really need to boost again low sec and null sec? Don’t think so...

I however know that some predatory fleets comb through low/null sec looking for easy prays, and that such players need newbies and/or characters that are not combat trained and/or cargo ships to be forced into low/null sec... My best guess is that CCP listened to their complaints and wants to feed them new targets... After all, a “dishonorable player”, like they call them, usually has some alts, while newbies mostly have a single character or only has a second character on the same account like I do. Five accounts players brings in more money to CCP than newbies...

A more realistic way to make low sec more appealing is to lower ores amounts and variety in high sec... Hedbergite or Hemorphite mining anomalies in 0.8 or 0.9 is another nonsense to me for the same reason.

Refining is hardly as high tech compared to say chip/computer production. It resides is at the bottom of the industrial chain and is far better compared to say, pumping up and pressurizing gas, or oil refineries. Pretty dangerous to do close to population at a large scale. Scale does brings efficiency, and how better to represent that by a higher yield?

That said, you want refining placed where you can have a base supply or as an alternative a port or something that connects to the buyers. There are plenty of refineries in not too stable regions/countries. Middle east anyone?

Here is a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oil_refineries

Where I live there are one of the largest refineries in Europe, and rest assured the industry is placed on the other side of the river, away from the population, but with good access. It would be stupid to build living space nearby it, a simple leak or a fire would be a disaster!

Lets talk other resources, like solid minerals...more comparable to EVE ores. During mining, most the mass is useless rock, some metals for example are measured in grams per KG! In extreme cases this forces processing close to the far-away mining site. Not only does the mineral containing rock need otherwise expensive transportation, it also poses a huge waste and pollution problem . It such cases it is easier to bring high-density fuels and electricity to the mining site and at least pre-process then to ship the raw ore..

At a higher level industrial development goes like this:

First easy accessible resources are taken, meaning not far out and in stable (or new) environments. As more and more of it is used up, it gets harder and harder and more expensive to acquire. You see this in RL with oil, which more and more we get from deep sea operations, where before a simple hole in the ground was all that it took.

Over time more resources must come from unstable and/or dangerous environments where none had looked before, all enabled by higher prices. There comes a stage where few places have an obvious advantage in either having a good supply or just being the only ones left.

Now we enter conflict areas, inherently unstable but for the right price, industry will come there! Many resources our modern technological society is based on comes from such places of the world. Conflicts are started, or kept going just to keep access. It is rare that facilities are destroyed as that is exactly what an opposing force want to get control over.

I certainly wouldn't cal the middle east, Libya, Congo or Afghanistan stable places, to name just a few.

This might be of interest to read: http://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/solutions/mining.html

I assume you are referring to outposts and not your typical POS that you can anchor in high sec too. The difference of the high sec POS refining and max skilled NPC mining is so small, it will not make that much of a difference in the end.

This leaves us with outposts, which are in a sense the player equivalent of achieving control and with it stability. It can only be contested if they are loosing a larger war. Outposts are also new tech compared to the classic NPC stations. It is not unreasonable to expect good yields there.

Is this a problem? I think you and a few others are overreacting after looking at the numerical difference in yield. It is there, but it just one in a longer list of parameters that determines if it can be exploited and by how much.

One is of a logistical nature. To truly exploit it, you have to bring the ore in there first and then either do something with it at that location, or ship the bulkier minerals to another location for sale or production. Production capacity at an outpost is not enormous and even if they quadruple it, it still is not sufficient to affect high sec markets in that way.

Null 'industry' is short of large volumes of titanium and thus it has to be flown in as compressed veldspar from high sec. These minerals will not go back to high sec after refinement with that high yield. Most likely it goes to ship construction which then get blown up in null itself.

High end minerals are another matter, null is rich of those and after refinement at the excellent yield they can easily brought to high sec in the same ships that bring in compressed veldspar. High sec lacks such ores and thus the minerals in it. This means there is no competition there. High sec would on its own never have sufficient access to them and null doesn't use it all up them-self. It is more valuable to bring it to high sec market then to sit on it!

So far none has been disadvantaged, do you agree?

Some panic that low sec capital ship manufacturers will be hit and that this form of production will in the future exclusively come from null. Or so they present their case anyway. There will be locations where this indeed happens, but not most. Production in null near prime located outposts will be limited and a lot of industry will simply use the same refine rates, available to the low sec producer too.

Building capitals takes a lot of time and to scale it up, you need a lot of space. This is harder to deal with in null then in low sec where almost every high sec adjacent low sec system has stations with plenty of production capacity for a well sized capital manufacturer.

As I look at it this way, some low-sec manufacturers will have to maybe move if situation too close to competition, but for the most part they will do just fine and have an easier time dealing with the logistics thanks to compressed low end ores.

I live in low sec and sometimes high sec and most activities available there. I never liked null much before, but did not really give it a real chance either. If you just drop in there alone, in the wrong place, sure roadkill it is. But that is certainly not the case in low-sec thanks to NPC stations.

I believe your argument was that null had to big a boost and that this was not justifiable (my take of it). You even wend as far as to state high sec must be the best. Since I have currently no industrial adventures going on, i have no immediate benefit from a null or low-sec boost. But these changes certainly make me feel like having a go at it once more. It's a gain, not a loss in my view.

As far as vested interests go, i am impartial.

That does not mean I do not know things and do not desire a better EVE. I have done several years of large scale production, like 15 freighters every 12 days at its peak. I know the sores...they cause me to stop doing it eventually. The biggest pain was hauling the required amount of low end minerals. I know the market dynamics involved too and because later i did for a time do large scale mining, I do know that side of the game just as well.

Combine this with a few macro facts about mineral exchange between null and high-sec and I can with high certainty see how changes will affect the whole and how to adapt best. To me it seems that naysayers are not equally informed and often their wording oozes anti-null attitude, most notably towards the Goons. Bitter that they loose something (which is debatable) and that this evil other group gets preferential treatment somehow.

This all seems pretty good to me but (TM) I have some thoughts re: refining.

Why not just scrap (lol) all the ore refining skills? Give ppl the SP back they spent on some of the most boring skills in the game. (Surely it would just be a case of shoving it in a machine and having err nanobots munch it anyway?)

Re: t2 mining crystals, create a mining laser skill under Gunnery (funny, but actually coherent with other gunnery skills)

Re: reprocessing as a career path... this makes me cry a little for humankind. Just a boring pointless timesink margin-grind advantage only the dullest of older players will enjoy, somehow. Yes it's on a par with broker relations and accountancy (my friends already find that one hilarious) but at least they are actual skills.

The highsec POS yields seems especially bad given that you are apparently trying to promote refining as a career path. I'm really not sure what that's about. This will drive demand for hisec POS but unlikely to drive conflict (nothing worth stealing), and there's also the slight issue of thousands of massive toothpicks floating in space around hisec moons atm.

It will be interesting to see what happens to a variety of prices. There's a lot of moving parts here -- it seems very risky, will be interesting to see what happens. I'd be tempted to rollout piecemeal but Hey, go nuts!

I still have a couple of pages to read, so there is the odd chance of the idea having already been posted, but here it goes...

For some reason, the refining rates are uniform across ores (at any particular refinery) at the moment. Why?

How about this:

1) for hisec ores, the maximum efficiency you can achieve is the same everywhere (hisec, lowsec, nullsec)
Note: I would be all for making it harder to achieve in hisec/lowsec by requiring better standings / skills / implant

2) lowsec refineries get a bonus for refining ores most commonly found in lowsec (kernite?, jaspet, hemorphite, hedbergite)
3) nullsec refineries get a bonus for refining ores only found in nullsec

This would make sense enough lore-wise (for me, at least), as refineries would be likely to excel in refining ore found in their area (or, put differently, refineries specialized in a certain type of ore would likely be established close to the corresponding ore source).

This would give nullsec enough of an advantage and make importing compressed ore from hisec a viable replacement for 425mm railguns (nullsec refiners wouldn't have to bother with NPC standings and could do with inferior skills and/or no implants).

This would also throw a bone to lowsec, which is kind of being overlooked in this fight between hisec and nullsec.

Hisec would stay pretty much the same as it is right now (well, except for the harsher requirements for "perfect" refine).

There would be no incentive to ship ore (except the rare types) from hisec to nullsec just to have it refined there, with the resulting minerals being shipped back to hisec - which, I believe, we will all agree is not exactly exciting gameplay. As much as I understand hauling needs to be part of the game, I don't think we currently have too little of it.

And most importantly... it would make nullsec, lowsec, and hisec DIFFERENT, rather than best / worse / worst, refining-wise.

tl;dr: Malcanis' Law: "Whenever a mechanics change is proposed on behalf of ‘new players’, that change is always to the overwhelming advantage of richer, older players."




Given the option between unlimited station storage and a very limited capacity POS module, which do you use? Station, of course. Anyone that says otherwise is a bald faced liar. Your example is completely incomparable to the station/POS differences being discussed because of the practically limitless capacity of station hangers.

Should we now bring up the number of Research Labs currently in use in hisec as a replacement for the total and complete lack of research lines in stations? Those are pretty important. Or perhaps the fact that Drug Labs and Reactors cannot be anchored in .4 or higher sec space? Should we then allow boosters, moon reactions, and hybrid polymers to be made in nul/lowsec stations, too? What do you think would happen to all the moon reaction farms? I'm pretty sure they would disappear overnight.

As for the importance of compressed ore, we can draw a direct correlation to the amount of mineral compression currently being conducted using meta 0 modules and the likely amount of ore compression conducted, since that is what it is designed to replace. This brings me to...



Given the choice between free and unlimited compression with an unlimited amount of storage and all the other perks in a station vs a limited storage and isk/hr costing POS with no other perks, which would you use? The station ofc.

If station compression is enabled the only place people will use a POS is where stations aren't easily accessible such as w-space, hostile sovereign nulsec, or deep unpopulated nul like certain areas of Outer Ring. Hence, my statement that the Compression Array will be DoA in hisec.

Running a Small POS with a Compression Array is about as easy as it gets and it can be done with just a blockade runner, though in hisec it will most likely be done with a T1 industrial. 2km3 for the POS + 6km3 for the array leaves at least 1km3 for fuel, assuming you are max cargo expanded. Literally drop ore in, press butan, get bacon. When the hauler goes out to deliver the ore, it comes back with fuel.

But I think I can understand why goons seem to want station compression. It has nothing to do with entry barriers for newbros, since a newbro can simply sell the ore on the market for mineral cost, thus getting the full mineral content value of their ore rather than refining it and losing a significant portion of the value to poor skills and taxes.

It has to do with the fact that station compression will allow a single nulsec market alt to acquire everything he needs for a massive production effort such as supercap/titan production or hundreds of Megathrons without ever having to interact with anyone except their own jf and cyno alts, thus allowing them to cut out the extra costs and losses associated with the current mineral compression scheme.

Large-scale mineral consumers will not want to pay someone else to compress their "minerals" for them. Nor do they wish to run back and forth dozens between station and POS just to get their stuff ready to move. That will cost them even more than what they are paying now as either direct isk costs or opportunity costs. The most logical alternative for them is to advocate for station compression and claim it will be a quality of life improvement for everyone.

Goons' advocacy of station compression will cut out an entirely new subform of industry and take profits away from well-organized mining corps and PI manufacturers, and dump them right into their own pockets. It is in fact a counter to smart industrialists that put forth the effort to do things right and favors those that take the easy way out.

It will also run counter to the risk vs reward paradigm by allowing for zero risk compression in already overly utilized and overly endowed hisec stations while generating larger rewards for less effort in more secure space.

The only thing that would make super/titan production any easier would be if you could produce them in stations.

your entire multi-foot post can be summed up as "i disagree with station compressing because it will reduce the use of pos compressing"

that is the point: pos compressing is just too awful to be used as a routine matter due to the absurd number of freighter round-trips it requires to compress ore

if the pos compressor can be made better great, otherwise it should be an additional option for station-free systems that offers people a new choice instead of being "the proper way to compress"

nothing you say actually addresses the mind-numbing tedium of gankproof roundtrip ore hauling