Science & Industry

The volumes involved with the trade in Guidance Systems and Robotics are much higher than other level 3 commodities if you look at the monthly volume column in the following table:

                                           Single Stage (20)          Two Stage (6)             Buy Volume             Sell Volume         Monthly Vol  
(55)  ......Biotech Research Reports     -28,999,668   -4.04%      -4,101,710   -1.95%        38,041  56.21%          45,370  67.04%          67,672
(56)  .................Camera Drones      -9,122,859   -1.62%      20,482,125   14.09%        44,387  48.69%          13,697  15.03%          91,161
(57)  ...................Condensates    -271,112,444  -46.17%     -27,050,274  -22.20%        75,835  31.06%          56,072  22.97%         244,126
(58)  .......Cryoprotectant Solution     119,311,947   19.16%      12,647,993    6.02%        49,508   7.71%          93,645  14.58%         642,407
(59)  ....................Data Chips      60,641,227   11.69%       9,861,767    6.01%        23,082   4.67%          55,622  11.25%         494,596
(60)  ...........Gel-Matrix Biopaste     102,529,362   13.65%      92,336,473   56.37%        85,169   9.52%          90,634  10.14%         894,266
(61)  ..............Guidance Systems      28,561,762    6.35%      20,356,434   16.53%       283,871   6.24%      13,853,987 304.60%       4,548,324
(62)  ......Hazmat Detection Systems     111,642,757   16.03%      58,329,854   31.69%        49,354  42.04%          26,184  22.31%         117,389
(63)  ............Hermetic Membranes     149,119,964   20.64%      63,716,716   32.22%        86,079  28.79%          36,827  12.32%         298,948
(64)  ........High-Tech Transmitters     -49,125,176   -7.60%      45,791,580   34.33%        49,082  30.70%          18,973  11.87%         159,895
(65)  .........Industrial Explosives      15,004,030    3.70%     -24,158,612  -16.09%        32,928  13.89%          42,416  17.89%         237,106
(66)  .......................Neocoms      39,805,110    7.10%      45,161,859   33.48%        54,603  61.02%          12,500  13.97%          89,490
(67)  ..............Nuclear Reactors    -231,006,476  -33.83%     -29,550,280  -17.90%        29,783  17.44%          67,590  39.58%         170,773
(68)  ............Planetary Vehicles    -445,052,732  -53.46%    -113,124,640  -49.32%       410,494  61.50%       3,073,798 460.49%         667,512
(69)  ......................Robotics     201,603,875   35.48%      88,887,587   62.56%       750,877   6.11%         434,599   3.53%      12,294,631
(70)  ................Smartfab Units      99,360,865   17.02%      44,399,734   27.66%        68,272  27.03%          39,374  15.59%         252,546
(71)  ................Supercomputers     -13,496,763   -1.73%      28,419,261   14.12%        78,892  23.37%          38,335  11.36%         337,587
(72)  ............Synthetic Synapses      57,986,360   12.57%      30,120,028   23.97%        39,965   6.78%          50,972   8.65%         589,187
(73)  .Transcranial Microcontrollers      48,586,712   12.81%      31,174,959   32.08%       174,702  23.72%         127,057  17.25%         736,581
(74)  .........Ukomi Superconductors      36,198,218    8.02%      30,941,131   26.82%        34,259  12.97%          16,885   6.39%         264,226
(75)  ......................Vaccines      74,255,468   14.44%      13,189,228    8.08%        49,621  29.27%          33,818  19.95%         169,523

The monthly volume of robotics at 12 million just dwarfs all the other commodities. Why is this?

Another weird thing is that the inventory of Guidance Systems is a lot greater than Robotics. So, for example, even though the monthly volume is 12 million, there are only currently 400k for sale, but for Guidance Systems there are 13 million for sale.

This.

Guidance Systems are use in T2 Drone manufacturing and Robotics are needed for POS Fuel Blocks.

POS Fuel is always in demand and if you go through T2 drones like I do, you're thankful for the Guidance System manufacturers.

seriously mate, just spend ten seconds thinking before posting and you won't post guff like this.

guidance systems are a P3 item. they used to be P2 back in the day when they were sold by NPCs. i guess there are still some people out there sitting on huge stockpiles. that might explain the amount that is available on the market. high demand is explained by T2 drones, like others have already correctly pointed out.

I don't think we'll ever exhaust the stockpiles of guidance systems.

They are that huge. Some people really went overboard.

I don't remember there being as much mention of robotics, though I believe there are more uses for them (or were).

Take your statement, right there, and expand it to apply to any and all of Droidster's threads, and you have begun to touch upon the raison d'etre of life's mysteries.

Guidance Systems are sometimes used to build Tech-2 Drones.

How do you find out what a commodity is needed for?

There are indeed substantial remaining stockpiles of Guidance Systems that date back to pre-PI NPC trade. Our alliance put away 5 million units prior to the PI roll-out in 2009, of which we still hold around 3.6 million units. Another guy has listed 15 million units for sale at stretch prices in 5 low-sec systems in the Forge for years, patiently waiting for prices to rise to their player-driven fundamental value. And that's just a couple of examples. We began releasing small quantities into the market a year or so ago - 10,000 to 20,000 units per week - as the market began to approach equilibrium in the product.

For a bit of history, prior to PI, there were no "Pn" designations to these goods, they were simply NPC trade goods, sold by the game in some stations and bought by the game in others for (usually) some margin of profit. Guidance Systems were largely ignored, they could be purchased from NPC sell orders for around 420 ISK per unit and sold in other stations to NPC buy orders for something higher - who knows, it was not the most compelling NPC trade.

A much better NPC trade in the early days was Robotics. They could be bought for something like 6,800 ISK or better in selling NPC stations, then shipped a few jumps to sell for around 7,600 ISK in NPC buying stations. Back in 2003, if you could move 60 - 80 thousand units of Robotics in a few hours (in an Industrial... there were no Freighters), that was a hugely profitable day. Making 15 - 20 million ISK per hour back then was just sick..... outrageous good ISK back then. Robotics trade got a bit of a nerf in late 2003 or so, but trade in that and other NPC goods continued to offer a modest way to make a profit, as it still does from a limited number of products today.

Then, some years later in 2009, along came PI. Those studying the PI system on the test server were able to see how various NPC goods were being classified into P1, P2 and P3 goods, and also examine the mechanics for how they would be built. With that information, it was a simple matter to speculate on where prices on planetary goods might go. In our case, we looked at the process for extracting Planetary Raw Materials, and we made an assumption: if anybody's going to extract this stuff, they'll have to earn around 3.00 ISK per unit to make it worthwhile. From that assumption, it was easy to derive unit pricing for improved PI products, without even considering production costs, taxes and incremental labor, as P1: 450 ISK, P2: 7,200 ISK, and P3: 48,000-72,000 ISK. With that set of assumptions, scanning the list of then-NPC goods, Guidance Systems stood out as the obvious candidate for huge price increases, as an NPC good priced at 420 ISK, set to become a P3 planetary product. Nothing else was close, though there were some other good plays.

Thus the reason for the major stockpile of Guidance Systems. Robotics were not stockpiled as heavily, because, at an NPC price of 6,800 ISK, there was not as much upside, and there was risk associated with the Raw Materials price assumption. The later introduction of Guidance into the production requirements of T2 drones has helped to create a steady demand, which, over time, has drawn down the now ancient NPC stockpile.