Science & Industry

POS compression is the most basic of POS activities. In fact I would argue that it is in fact a means of entry into POS ownership and use. Although the convince of station compression would greatly assist in my particular efforts I do not believe it is the appropriate action to take.

I'd agree that making it easier to compress ore, would make POS based compression next to pointless. The only way to avoid that would be to add a cost which is unavoidable. Like a percentage cost taken, whenever you compress ore in station. 5% say. (maybe 10%, and standings can reduce)

Ditto with adding it to a ship or mobile structure, unless it's inherently lossy.

The UI hints I like. Yes, it's kind of 'dumbing down Eve', but I think it's handy for training newcomers, and people do never bothered looking.

Consolidating ore types is also a good idea. Complicated to get the numbers working out right, but not hellishly so. When I've dipped my toe into the compressed Veld market, the basic sold quickly. The dense is still sitting. Because the volume is too low for people to bother looking at.

I'd agree that station compression would probably have an associated fee. I'd say an isk cost rather than a materials tax, as sinking more isk is always a good thing. The starbase compression module, of course, would be free of this fee. I'd also entertain the notion of having the station compression service only available in empire, or perhaps only highsec, to incentivize use of the starbase module (and rorqual!) in lower-security space.

Having station compression does not completely obsolete the starbase compression module. Many systems in empire do not have stations, which would allow a savvy miner to set up a starbase in this system to ease his or her logistics in a way that others can't. This goes doubly for nullsec, where the costs of a (small) starbase are much, much cheaper than an outpost for any reasonable length of time. And, of course, you can't forget wormholes.

Not to mention the following:

http://i.imgur.com/nCFLg91.png

I believe that even with station compression, you'll still be able to buy ore from people in geographically remote areas at a cost advantage. Adding station compression in empire doesn't threaten this.

I think partly we need to distinguish between the re-education of people from the old to the new eve and the expected long term steady state. Based on that


1) While definitely a way of speeding up adoption in the short term, in the long run it has significant impact on the steady state. I personally agree that ISK fees would be a better long term counterbalance than loss of ore. The scale of fees would need to be such that compressing low-end ores in a station doesn't exceed the increase in value so this may be fairly marginal. An option of paying compression fees in LP instead of ISK may add some variety and increase take-up in the "my time is free" market segment at the cost of reducing the ISK sink. You could add further incentives to using "proper" compression via POS or Rorq by putting a cap on station compression batch size or requiring some form of payment in items. Sure the station will compress it for you but you'll need to provide them a janitor first so that it can tidy up afterwards.

As an alternative have stations offer an "ore plank packaging" option. It doesn't turn ore in to compressed ore but it puts it in to a courier package like container which contains much more ore on the inside than its external measurement. Make this efficient enough that it slightly beats moving minerals but less efficient than moving compressed ore. As a container you wouldn't be able to move it via any service that re-contracts to haulers (e.g. Red Frog) and potentially it wouldn't fit in to freighters or JFs. You could however haul it yourself more conveniently in a miasmos or normal industrial. You would also be able to break it open anywhere to convert it back to normal ore and then sell or compress. This would allow an individual to experience some of the convenience that compression offers while leaving a definite niche for proper compression. If you go down this route give each and every player a voucher for a 10,000 m3 container conversion. Minimal in ISK terms but a lot of people will try it out simply because they have a voucher so they may as well spend it.


2) This purely attacks the adoption speed and allows the ore processor to make an informed decision. I can think of absolutely no reason not to add this. The display should also include not just the ISK value comparison but the m3 value comparisons. People are partially habituated in to an "ore bulky / minerals compact" mindset and so refining might be as much a way of making things easier to move as trying to keep some of the value.
An interesting side question here is what other values are worth showing? The value of the raw ore and of the minerals received on reprocessing are obvious enough. Comparing this with the market value of the relevant compressed ore would be the basic new addition. Should it also include a value for "best reprocess possible at this facility" so that people get a gut feel appreciation of the value of the reprocessing skills and implant?
In terms of effort this also seems like an easy option. It's recently written code and all of the values it needs are already available.


3) This is more of a long term change than adoption speed I think. Back when the compression blog first popped up I posted to ask about simplifying the compression to a single type of product per ore. I was coming from the angle of simplifying buy orders so that it remained comparable to current mineral buy orders in slot consumption. At the time people pointed out they liked the option of the higher grade compressed ores for the extra transport density they could get if they were picky about what they bought. For the real bulk users 10% extra ore per m3 is a reduction in the number of jump freighter loads required.

While I personally like the idea of simpler supply lines I can understand why some want the option of spending more time purchasing and less effort moving. Now what might be nice (though hard for maths) is to have the station compress things to "basic" ore. POS modules compress it all to 5% compressed ore. Rorqs compress it all to 10% compressed ore. Doing that might need compressed ore to be converted in to something that is simply smaller than uncompressed ore and is exchanged on a 1:1 basis rather than 100 ore -> 1 compressed ore. This would also help the Rorq with its absurdly small fleet hangar that fills up with odds and ends of ore during a strip mining operation.


4) As a possibly more radical / additional option. Change the way POS / Rorq compression works. Instead of insert in to hangar, compress it, remove go to approach within 2,500 meters, use the compression service in the same way as a fitting service, compress ore in your own ship. On the POS side it would ideally be accompanied with an access setting of "everybody" on the module so that's probably less useful. While a nice thought I suspect this would quickly get outweighed by the effort involved in coding it in to the game. And it would also need people to anchor the compression module close enough to the forcefield edge. But what it would allow is for somebody to collect up ore from across an area and do a drive by compression with a freighter.

Ore compression is fine. If people can't find enough of it, the simple reason is that they do not pay enough for it to be an incentive (basic market rule and all).

The whining about the lack of compressed ore is basically people who want to buy compressed ore at the ore price +1 %. That is not going to happen. Set up a buy order at a good enough price and people will compress the ore and do the logistics for it.


Edit: simple fix for people that have "problems" to get compressed ore: set up a regional buy order for ore and go and compress it yourself. To bothersome? Well that is the extra that needs to be paid.

Do not change ore compression.

If you absolutely must, simplify the three ore types into one compressed type, but otherwise do not touch anything. The system is fine.

*Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal.

A lot of the contrary opinions posted here are primarily from the mining side of the equation. My perspective is more from the producer's side -- there is simply not enough compressed ore on the market to satisfy even minimal levels of production. Consider the scale at which a miner works and a scale at which a producer works -- the producer needs many factors of magnitude more compressed ore than a miner, or a compressor-for-hire deals with on a routine basis. What seems like a lot to you is a drop in the bucket for us.

More proof that the mineral market is fundamentally broken is the price of highend minerals. Highend minerals are reaching historic lows, with zydrine at 400 and megacyte below 1000. This is due to one, simple reason -- you need a large number of lowend minerals to soak up highends, and there aren't enough lowends to go around. Furthermore, with highsec miners (traditionally the largest producers of lowend minerals) reprocessing their ores locally, the problem is exacerbated -- the primary consumers of lowend minerals (nullsec) can't feasibly use the minerals due to their bulk.

Making compression ubiquitous and easy helps both the miners, who sell the minerals, and producers, which consume the minerals, work together to even out this imbalance.

go try to buy a reasonable amount of compressed mexallon and isogen at any price whatsoever