EVE Information Portal

Darin, that is nice analysis and right to the point but you are missing one little detail.

All major players, CCP, 0.0 alliance leaders (usually in CSM), CCP media and marketing, want meat for the meat grinder that is 0.0. They want new player in 0.0 as soon as possible, not solo mining in highsec. They should mine/rat in 0.0, lose a ship, buy another ship.. all that. Spin the economy. Create big fights of "I was there" type. Nothing bad with that in essence, is actually nice because helps lost noobies integrate into EVE universe.


BUT the problem with actually implementing that is in current mindset of people "on the ground" in 0.0, those old vet players (managers, CEOs of small corps) that have their alts doing industry for good margin to finance pew pew and usually in position of power wich they use to exploit new players with fees and "protection money" without actually protecting and/or close the doors to greener pastures (you can't use R32/R64 moons even R16 sometimes). Which leaves new recruit valuable only as cannon fodder for fleet fights. If real industrialist corp comes to 0.0 staging system, what will old vet do to get iskies, you know the middle management type, too small for alliance money to big of a ego? Will he PvE? Will he mine?


How many people that are renting space from 0.0 alliance got reimbursed by that alliance for their loss because small enemy fleet managed to get into their system they are paying to be protected. Whole 0.0 situation is ridiculous right now. New players grinding to pad the pocked of second life bosses. No wonder lot of people don't want to go to 0.0 even if it is "bigger profit" on paper but from other side are pushed from high sec with this and similar moves and what will they do... they will stop.

I would just like to remind you all that your mining and reprocessing skills would not go to waste in GoonWaffe. Please contact a GoonWaffe recruiter for details!

actually literally every factual basis for his theory is wrong

1) every 0.0 region was seeded with three conquerable stations, one of which is a 50% refinery. it was only when outposts were introduced that 0.0 started getting much worse refines than highsec (and outposts were introduced in a patch), so obviously the "0.0 deliberately has bad refines" is wrong because originally it didn't

2) he has absolutely no idea how to calculate mining profit: mining profit is not at all 20x higher in nullsec. this is because mining is by m3 and nullsec ores are significantly larger than highsec ores: while each unit of arknor may be worth much more than each unit of veldspar, you get far more units of veldspar with the same setup than you get units of arknor

basically he wrote an entire essay on design principles of a design he doesn't know the first thing about

New guys can now take that full 100% by selling the ore directly, which will be in high demand as it'll be what people in nullsec will compress to do their own production. And, once that new player skills up, the gap between what a max mackinaw with orca boosts makes mining veldspar and what a maxed mackinaw with rorqual boosts makes mining in nullsec (where the highest value ore is actually LOWSEC ORE) is barely 50%.

Darin, your analysis has a fatal flaw. The value of ore has nothing to do with its market value. Its real value is based on its mineral content per m3. Using current Forge prices and a 50% refinery with max skills+4% implant, the order of ore values (including refined mineral value/m3) will be as below come Crios:

1. Vitreous Mercoxit $388.26
2. Magma Mercoxit $374.96
3. Mercoxit $354.40
4. Crystalline Crokite $327.28
5. Glazed Hedbergite $284.12
6. Monoclinic Bistot $275.39
7. Sharp Crokite $275.18
8. Vitric Hedbergite $271.74
9. Prime Arkonor $270.83
10. Radiant Hemorphite $270.27
11. Triclinic Bistot $263.05
12. Crokite $261.78
13. Crimson Arkonor $258.80
14. Vivid Hemorphite $258.40
15. Hedbergite $257.69
16. Pristine Jaspet $254.99
17. Bistot $250.39
18. Hemorphite $246.67
19. Arkonor $246.06
20. Pure Jaspet $245.41
21. Obsidian Ochre $237.28
22. Jaspet $233.06
23. Prismatic Gneiss $232.90
24. Onyx Ochre $227.12
25. Iridescent Gneiss $223.28
26. Massive Scordite $218.32
27. Fiery Kernite $218.28
28. Viscous Pyroxeres $218.00
29. Dark Ochre $216.73
30. Solid Pyroxeres $212.93
31. Gneiss $212.65
32. Condensed Scordite $208.85
33. Luminous Kernite $208.19
34. Pyroxeres $206.65
35. Bright Spodumain $200.26
36. Scordite $198.78
37. Kernite $198.67
38. Gleaming Spodumain $196.64
39. Rich Plagioclase $195.61
40. Dense Veldspar $188.82
41. Azure Plagioclase $187.25
42. Spodumain $184.51
43. Concentrated Veldspar $180.14
44. Plagioclase $178.64
45. Veldspar $171.46
46. Golden Omber $170.67
47. Silvery Omber $161.59
48. Omber $154.27

So the spread is not anything remotely close to 20:1. It's 388.26/154.27 ~ 2.5:1, and that if you're actually mining Omber, the absolute worst ore in the game. Even Veldspar is worth more. Kernite is somewhat better, and Jaspet is much better. One of the most common nulsec ores, Spodumain, is one of the worst. This means it is entirely possible that a miner in nulsec could be making less than a miner in hisec.

Until now there was literally no point to training those refining skills unless you were a miner using T2 crystals. Level 5 spec skills could have been removed completely from the game and no one would have noticed. This is a broken mechanic.

CCP has simply fixed an obviously broken mechanic. In addition, they took the opportunity to set it up so that they could make tweaks to the system later.

Overall, nulsec ores are worth more, which is as it should be. But the spread from best to worst between hisec and nulsec overlaps far more than it used to compared to say 4-5 years ago.

Hi Soldarius,

I was not working with Crios values. They are untested, not easy to verify, and subject to change. I didn't need to illustrate Crios data in order to put the highsec refine nerf in context, because we were provided with overall, percent data (the -2.8%).

Thank you for the time you took to write that up and you are right, the value or the ore itself has nothing to do with anything - it's the mineral output that makes it valuable. The rocks themselves are worth nothing if their refine was not profitable. Some correlation must exist otherwise, they would not have said value. This value is only derived from refine.

Since I am not very experienced with the quantity of the various ore needed to fill up an ore bay, I just used the tables provided to derive the actual value ratio, between highsec and nullsec space. I was not working with Crios values to illustrate current differences in the quality of space available.

Because actual mining conditions can also vary greatly I did not believe that analyzing further would lead to a more "correct" ratio than comparing relative ore value, from which you can extrapolate mineral value with a reasonable degree of accuracy.


Otherwise, some assumptions to consider, would be:
The general miner in highsec is often solo, does not have Orca support and is generally a newer player. Some, of course do engage in fleet mining, and with multiple accounts if solo.
The situation is reversed for nullsec.
Nullsec mining assumes you plan for a larger ore hold quantity, and some degree of co-operation, not exempt from Orca support in which case the values scale much more closely to those provided.
Which rather balances out the space scenario, leading back to the actual value of the ore. (And by that I mean its refine).

I mean, as a different example, let's look at the current refine for a batch of Arkonor, and say we have a close race between a refine of a batch of Veldspar.
Arkonor is: refine quantity: 200. You get 10k tritanium, plus, 333 Megacyte, and 166 Zydrine.
Let's quickly translate that into ISK: Trit assuming 5 per unit, 1650 for Megacyte and 750 for Zydrine.
50,000 (Tritanium) + 550,000 (Megacyte) + 125,000 (Zydrine) = 725,000 ISK, per batch.

Let's look at Veldspar. It takes, 333 units to refine, and you get: 1000 Tritanium. Boy, that is quite a sad and lonely number. Let's put that into the calculator, let's see, 5 per unit, 5000 ISK per batch. I didn't even need to use a calculator. Now let's convert this into ratio.

725,000 : 5000. Becomes 725 : 5, simplified further becomes 145 : 1.
So, the actual mineral worth is.. well, 145 : 1 value comparing Arkonor to Veldspar.
I'm sure glad I didn't use that ratio.

You see? All this becomes much more messy if you want to put that ratio into context.

Using the ratio of the rocks (Isk per unit) allows for a much larger representation of different mining scenarios. Which is why I elected to use that ratio overall.

Even assuming fleet mining in highsec, the actual value of the ore, which is tied to its mineral refine, does not change. Again, I was referring to the google doc posted by Steve Ronuken. I'll link it here: (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mZSNGLaxi1A-Q818nApcJ2kNJOfnJmhcAcYn-mulzEU/edit?pli=1#gid=211067312)
Google Doc
Market value tends to put the unrefined ore, at a slightly lower markup than their total refined mineral quantities per batch. This is true in almost every situation unless there is a mistake in the buy/sale order for said ore. People aren't buying the rocks, but the minerals contained in such rocks, and thus price accordingly. The refined quantities assume 100% refine, based on current tables, not using Crios data (due to the highsec refine nerf and because a change cannot be fully compared against itself. It cannot exist in a void.)

The highsec refine nerf, needs to be illustrated using current data, to illustrate how silly its proposition is. And how largely irrelevant the spreading out of 5000 ISK is, assuming perfect skills and a 4% implant, (the veldspar batch), versus how much more sense it becomes for the 725,000 ISK value of the Arkonor. (Using current prices as an example.)

Thank you for taking the time to post that data.

Hi Steve!

Thanks for clarifying that. I was working out some numbers offline trying to incorporate the m3, I got around a 3 : 1 ratio for Arkonor vs Veldspar, though I don't think your sheet is entirely without merit for working out some ratios as you can get a good sense for the sheer scale of the economy.

Like one of those things, that time does not care for how you managed to attain it, "this is the comparative worth", type of thing. Like gold. It could take ten times longer to mine the same amount of gold as say, lead, but its comparative worth would still be that of gold to lead, or something akin to the Isk per unit values in your sheet.

At least that's how I'm trying to relate abstract values. But applied values, can be very different. Yet every statistic can be useful for some purpose.

Excellent sheet, very nice work.

Here's an overview of future ore quanties (pre reprocessing) calculated to current prices (Jita, sell/min) set to ISK/m3. Scordite is referenced as 100 % for comparison.

Edit: Added two columns. Values when reprocessed in 50 % base station and 60 % base outpost. Both with maximum yield possible. Reference for the percentages in both columns: ISK/m3 of Scordite which is reprocessed in a 50 % station.

0.0 was seeded with 50% stations

when they made outposts maybe they thought that 35% was good enough because (at the time) a/b/c was so valuable

but that's a decision they made in balancing outposts when those were added (and virtually all of those decisions were wrong and a big part of this patch is reversing them), not a holistic design plan for mining

and, the thing is, steve's chart points out how garbage nullsec is. taking out Mercoxit (because it works differently and you can't compare direct isk/m3 values), the top three ores are:

Hedbergite
Hemorphite
Jaspet

all lowsec ores. Nullsec is garbage for mining: crock, the most valuable null ore, is approximately 18% more valuable than Pyroxeres and Kernite, the most valuable highsec ore. That's it. Not 20:1, not 3:1 - 1.18:1. That's garbage.

the only reason to mine in null is if you really want to multibox the hell out of something: you can stick ten or twenty multiboxed miners in a grav anom and isboxer them easily while you can't run 10-20 ratters or the like

zydrine and megacyte do come from null, yes, but they're horribly oversupplied. you're not any better mining in null than you are in lowsec. more to the point, even if you ignore that the best ore is lowsec, it's still only 30% better than mining in highsec.

so assuming the best possible ore in nullsec (again, a lowsec ore), you get a 1.3:1 ratio: a very, very far cry from the 20:1 or even 3:1 ratios Darin Vanar thought nullsec mining had.

back in The Day zyd and mega were worth a lot so people did actually come to nullsec to mine crockite. those days are loooooooooooooooooooong over, they've been circling the drain since the drone regions.

also nullsec belts are sort of garbage and what you actually mine are grav anoms: on one hand, you can keep cycling them in the same system, on the other hand you're getting a broad spectrum of ore not pure a/b/c. this is actually the worst offender about why zyd/mega are so oversupplied: these belts oversupply z/m but it's not like you can just mine the nocx and mex ores instead, you have to mine the whole thing so you don't get the effect that "ore X is overmined, so people stop mining it and mine undermined ore Y"

essentially mining in null isn't any more profitable than mining in highsec. it's just really a question of if you prefer to make about the same amount of money with bubbles on your gate and an intel channel, or by being in an npc corp in highsec.