Intergalactic Summit

Technology has an impressive weight over a capsuleer’s lifestyle, over every move he makes in space and is determinant for his success or failure on what he is doing or plans to do.

Technology changes, thus, have an impressive influence over every capsuleer. And in New Eden, technology evolves fast, taking place by the needs of all of us, thus having an active nature, or even without our desires in some cases, passively happening.

I remember when probing, for example, was a very hard and time consuming activity. You had to deal with a complete art of aiming the nose of your ship to a moon without any navigational aid by the ship’s computers and firing a missile like probe in order to scan a moon for natural resources. Unless you got data from previous probing activities and mapping of a system’s resources made by other people, you would spend several hours until you could find something useful.

You had to pick different types and ranging probes to pinpoint a simple hidden asteroid belt or pirate complex and scanning it down with three or four probes was an art, heavily based on capsuleer’s skills of probes deployment as well as helping the ship’s computers to narrow down whatever signature you found.

In just a few years and because wormholes started to appear everywhere, giving access to a large amount of Anoikis systems for capsuleers to explore, probing today is absolutely easy and fast. Everyone can do it, and it is even enjoyable. What used to be a trademark of an explorer is now a common activity: with basic equipment and understanding, a rookie will find a wormhole somewhere in an Empire system and voilà. Combat fleets will find whatever structure or ship present in a solar system within very few minutes. Hiding, henceforth, have also became an art.

This just gives a small perception of how technology advances in a technology-oriented society have huge impacts over people’s lives. In the case of probing, in just couple of years you have, at the same time, expanded your means of production but also created the means to kill more, and faster.

Now here lies a problem, in New Eden.

Let us admit that most technological advances in New Eden ends up converging to a higher rate of destruction of ships and assets as a whole. Unless you increase production, goods will become scarce faster and as a natural consequence, inflation appears.

Inflation in New Eden is today an undeniable phenomenon. ISK is losing value every year. Prices are rising because goods are getting scarcer given a specific level of demand and this is happening because supply is not riding demand at the same pace. If technology finds means for a capsuleer to destroy faster, it is surely not finding means to manufacture faster.

It is a problem ranging all along the whole production chain. Miners get minerals from asteroid belts so those minerals can be employed on production. Same happens with planetary and moon resources: natural components are gathered and employed on different schematics to manufacture different goods that will be used on a wide range of modules, ships, structures and even fuel. If prices of final goods keeps rising, demand is not being followed up by production along the production chain and inflation is appearing.

You may think that your wealth has risen because part of your goods values more in nominal terms than others do. This could be true if just what you have or produce values more than the remaining of the economy, but it is false as prices as a whole are rising. You may be in fact losing wealth.

Let us take some examples of price changes in the last 12 months, collected in Dodixie and proxy for Sinq Laison regional averages:
- Myrmidon; 47,1 mill ISK -> 50,1 mill ISK ; 6,37% increase
- Hulk; 212,5 mill ISK -> 230 mill ISK ; 8,23% increase
- Megathron; 168,4 mill ISK -> 182,8 mill ISK ; 8,55% increase
- Gallente Control Tower; 273,7 mill ISK -> 304 mill ISK ; 11,07% increase
- Tritanium; 4,94 ISK -> 5,90 ISK ; 19,4% increase

Further investigation needs to be done in order to correctly link inflation to the fact that technological advances in New Eden has granted a greater and faster rate of destruction of goods, thus wealth, and how or why production is not following up. The ideal would be to collect data of the increase in the number of ships being destroyed not only in Empires but also in Anoikis, either by other capsuleers and Sleepers or Pirate factions, Sansha included. Nevertheless, my hint is that even if you cannot fully relate those things for the lack of good data, technology advances in the last years have not granted bigger and faster production. In this case, we would need, if not by higher productivity, a higher scale: more miners, more planetary colonies, more moon harvesting and POS production, more research and manufacturing and so on.

Measuring inflation is also a useful tool. I have addressed this issue to DUPO’s CEO Jeane DuPont couple months ago that it would be necessary to create an inflation index for each of the empires so we can better understand what is happening and find better ways to allocate resources. I am not aware if this work is being conducted already and if it is, I would like pretty much to know it. The basic problem to be solved in order to constitute inflation indexes is to find the correct basket of goods and their weights for a standard capsuleer but once this is found, measuring inflation on a monthly basis should be easy.

Mr.Vechtor, could you please explain us, why for making conclusions about economy in the whole New Eden you have choosen instead of the most prosperous and rapid developing business sector like Jita some Maker-forsaken trade hub for pirates and enemies of humanity like federals, and among trade products have chosen underdeveloped filthy gallentean designed ships?..
Tritanium, however, indeed means something.

Same conclusions definitely apply Vechtor and Ms. Kim.

Taking equivalent classes of ships and checking Jita as of now, comparing the last 12 months evolution of prices this is what we get:

- Hulk; 212,8 mill ISK -> 239,3 mill ISK ; 12,45% increase
- Ferox; 40,5 mill ISK -> 43,5 mill ISK ; 7,41% increase
- Drake; 48,0 mill ISK -> 47,9 mill ISK; stable
- Scorpion; 141,2 mill ISK -> 163,8 mill ISK ; 16,00% increase
- Raven; 174,9 mill ISK -> 181 mill ISK ; 3,49% increase
- Caldari Control Tower; 237,6 mill ISK -> 315,9 mill ISK ; 32,95% increase
- Tritanium; 5,07 ISK -> 5,98 ISK ; 17,95% increase

Caldari seems to be showing more inflation than Gallente during the last 12 months. Again, a wider and better basket of goods is needed and they need to be measured constantly, on every major trade hub in New Eden. But the logic looks sound: seems we are destroying quicker than we are producing goods all around New Eden...

Probably one of the main factors, yes, the population of miners and harvesters may be in fact decreasing somewhat.
For example, one of the things that also draws much of my attention is the rise in prices of Fullerites, which shows a steady and strong demand for Tech 3 modules not being met by supply side and having nothing to do with the increasing instances of HiSec piracy against miners as you mentioned.
Here are some examples from Jita, for the last 12 months:

- Fullerite C28; 5,2k ISK -> 8,5k ISK; 63,6% increase
- Fullerite C50; 3,0k ISK -> 5,9k ISK; 96,7% increase
- Fullerite C60; 285 ISK -> 1,5k ISK; 444,2% increase
- Fullerite C72; 6k ISK -> 11,1k ISK; 58,65% increase
- Fullerite C84; 893 ISK -> 5,7k ISK; 543,9% increase

There is an obvious imbalance between demand for goods and supply of raw materials and even finished goods.
You asked if we need more production: if your income is not increasing at the same pace of rising prices then you are loosing wealth so, yes, we need more in this case. Apparently, as Vechtor stated, technological advances are helping people to kill faster but not produce faster enough.

In contrast to these rising prices is the rapid decline of the various Pirate faction ships on the market however, the pirate battleships are noting very low prices currently, so it seems to be not only a decline of supply, but also shifts of ship doctrine usage?

Please do not confuse market demands for inflation. If an item is more in demand, price will rise, this is not inflation.
Inflation is the over supply of money.
The figures you are providing actually show that ships are cheaper relative to the minerals required to build them, and also don't properly take into account the changes in manufacturing and refining which have occurred in that time period as well.

Not quite. Inflation is a resilient change in the level of prices of a basket of goods.
If you have a chock on the supply side that changes the level of prices in the long run on a more permanent way, you actually have inflation, without necessarily changing demand levels or even the supply of money.
In addition, market imbalances that generate transitory rises in prices are naturally "corrected" if the supply of money does not change as you stated. However, if you measure that happening as we did, say, in a long period of 12 months, and for a basket of goods, then something is indeed wrong.

I unfortunately doesn't have a longer than 12 month time series for a basket of goods in order to make a better evaluation. If someone does know where and how I can retrieve it please let me know.



Wouldn't make any sense. One or few lazy people could in fact do it as a mistake but all manufacturers... doesn't make sense.

Commerce is my vocation.

Manipulation of the market is commonplace.

When done well it is hardly noticed.

We all know the tricks and the unaware or underprepared pay the price.

Of late there are other forces at work.

Don’t lose the trend to the details.

The market will tell you where we have been and where we are going.