Science & Industry

All the juicy estimates for the TLDR among us:

So our lowerbound is:
2.16mil cynos
4.53mil JBs
38.95mil towers
Total: 45.64mil/day

our upperbound is:
5.76mil cynos
19.76mil JBs
41.86mil towers
Total: 67.38mil/day

Highsec bot miner daily yield: 11.4mil - 18.24mil
Lowsec/Nullsec required supply: 27.4mil to 55.98mil
Jita daily ozone volume: ~60mil / day


Explanation of estimates:

Towers:

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This is a CCP dev twitter post a few days ago:

"4 days ago 69.07% of starbases were online, today at 16:20 that had dropped to 64.95%. That's a thousand less online towers."

based on these numbers:

4.12% = 1000
1% = 242.718 tower
100% = 24,272 towers (15,765 online)

After some debate we estimated tower size ratios as being 25-15-60 for small-medium-large towers. Each fuel block takes 3.75 ozone to build (150 ozone yields 40 blocks). For 100 towers with our ratio estimate, they'd consume (25)*10 + (10)*20 + (60)*40 fuel blocks = 2950 fuel block per hour for every 100 towers. 15,765 online towers = 157.65 sets of 100 towers = 1.744mil ozone consumed per hour = 41.856mil ozone a day for towers. This is our upper estimate.

But a fair number of towers are faction towers (getting 10% and 20% fuel bonuses), and a fair number of towers are in sov'd nullsec with 20% fuel bonuses as well. We estimated 10% of towers were faction at 10% fuel bonus (lowering total tower ozone consumption by 1%), and 30% of towers were nullsec with sov bonuses (( 1 - .3 * .2) * total) = 6% more ozone removed from consumption. Leaving us with 38.95mil ozone a day. This is our lowerbound estimate.


Cynos:

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We estimated based on the number of cynos we saw burning in the galaxy map which we set our highend estimate at 100, and our low-end estimate at 50. High end estimate assumed people were terrible and consumed 400 ozone every 10 mins, while lowend was 300 ozone every 10 mins.

This lead to:
Low-end = 50cynos *6/hr * 300 * 24hrs = 2.16mil/day
High-end = 100cynos *6/hr * 400 * 24hrs = 5.76mil/day



Jump Bridges:

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We first counted the number of JBs in the CFC network spanning 5 regions, with 53 links (106 JBs). We then extrapolated this number out to all the other sovable regions (which I counted as 36 regions), to yield (106/5) * 36 = 763 JBs. This is the number of JBs we used for our high-end estimate. We set a low-end estimate at 500 JBs, since most regions aren't as interconnected as the CFC I assume.

We made a low-end estimate of 50 BSs/day, and a high-end estimate of 100 BS/day per JB, which we used a maelstrom for our example. Then using the formula for JB ozone consumption we showed that a maelstrom consumes 181 ozone for a standard 3.5ly JB, and 259 ozone for a maximum length 5ly JB route.

Thus our high-end estimates were 763 JBs * 100BS/day * 259 ozone = 19.76mil ozone/day
and our low-end estimate was 500 JBs * 50BS/day * 181 ozone = 4.525mil ozone/day



High-sec Bots:

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We estimate there are 500-800 mackinaw bots running constantly in empire. Further quantitative evidence shows that 83% of all highsec miners are bots. (though this evidence only truly proves 34.4%).

These bots are generally fit with cargo rigs, and cargo expanders in the lows, allowing 3 cycles (12 ice) to be stored before warping back to the station to offload. We estimated their cycle times to be 300 seconds for 4 ice, and a 4 min turn around (generally bots don't have boosts - although they could). Thus 1140 seconds for 12 ice, or 37.8 (38) ice/hr. The ice they can mine in highsec only has 25 ozone per cube, thus yielding 38ice/hr * 25ozone/ice * 24hrs/day = 22.8k ozone/day per bot.

Low-end estimate = 500 miners * 22.8k = 11.4mil ozone/day
High-end estimate = 800 miners * 22.8k = 18.24mil ozone/day



References (links don't seem to work atm, so here they are down here):

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Twitter post: https://twitter.com/#!/CCP_Diagoras/status/161937903155548160
JB Formula: http://www.eve-wiki.net/index.php?title=Jump_bridge
Bots frequency: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=56744&find=unread

Question: How many players mine for their POS fuel them self?

That was 5 days ago, FYI.

Except you'd make more mining anything else, selling it, and buying fuel.

To try to re-rail the thread...

Your estimate of tower sizes is the most delicate part of all those numbers. Without solid data, a huge part of the demand is unknown.

But what's your point? My only conclusion is that dark glitter mining in 0.0 must be happening a lot more than everyone assumes.

Except that current fuel block prices have no basis in reality. It's all driven by patch-day speculation and last-minute buyers who didn't plan ahead and are now caught short without any fuel blocks in their towers.

The underlying materials have not changed in price much.

If you were to use your own fuel BPO (researched to ME 40 and with Production Eff V skill), then your per-block cost would be (from overnight prices):

Amarr - 13.0k
Caldari - 13.5k
Gallente - 17.9k
Minmatar - 14.3k

EVE's market forces will very quickly squeeze that profit margin down to about 5%, give or take 10%. Probably within the next few days as sellers compete to get out of the market now that the bubble is deflating.

http://www.evemarketeer.com/item/group_summary/1413

don't forget there are null sec ice types with much different composition than high sec ice. there are ice types that are mostly liquid ozone, ice types that are mostly heavy water, and ice types that are mostly Stront, as well as a null sec version of each high sec ice with a higher yield. I used to mine dark glitter (1000 unit of liquid ozone per block) in null as it sold for up to 500,000 isk a block. big difference form the 80,000 isk a block I used to get for white glaze.

Yeah, you must have failed all your basic economics classes. But keep up the great work, "save" yourself that ISK!

This may be true, however, you are assuming we all wish to maximize profit. Right now, I am enjoying maximizing my time spent playing saint's row the third (fun game). I can easily ice mine while playing on my 360. I do not have to worry about switching rocks, moving to a bookmark, or any other hassle. Add in that I make the rest of my fuel with PI, using excess for manufacturing, and I make a good steady income while enjoying some time off from pvp, and don't feel i'm paying just to train skills.

So really, there are those of us who mine our own pos fuel. Whatever the reason, it works well enough for us even if we are not maximizing our income. It's just how we enjoy playing.

Whats a starbase?