Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I've been trying to understand how the Ore refining rates were devised. I think it suffered from doubled up rarity reduction. Both by count per batch and by count per m3. Fortunately, one of those was basically undone by having rarer minerals used less in production, easing the demand side of the supply problem.

Spreadsheet I'm going to reference: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av49RIDL-V7zdHNyVzQxOGRUVDZDeUc3czVsN0dJVVE#gid=4

Based off of the NPC Mineral Prices, the ores priced out as (160k m3 or 99,791 m3 for Mercoxit):
Veldspar 9,639,639.64
Scordite 16,046,786.79
Plagioclase 17,626,769.63
Pyroxeres 18,688,048.05
Omber 21,878,290.00
Kernite 25,050,037.50
Jaspet 26,989,359.00
Hemorphite 29,591,064.00
Gneiss 32,094,061.50
Hedbergite 36,102,656.00
Dark Ochre 38,545,078.13
Spodumain 46,119,675.00
Crokite 61,309,314.75
Bistot 104,945,332.50
Arkonor 153,904,653.75
Mercoxit 173,308,266.81

Using Today's mineral prices, they work out to:
Veldspar 33,015,765.77
Scordite 35,711,812.31
Plagioclase 33,952,683.66
Omber 16,890,704.35
Kernite 29,003,607.25
Pyroxeres 32,648,672.22
Jaspet 30,394,215.63
Hemorphite 28,232,493.56
Gneiss 14,386,668.68
Hedbergite 30,807,048.38
Dark Ochre 24,105,720.70
Spodumain 13,129,501.88
Crokite 28,701,380.40
Bistot 33,250,543.25
Arkonor 44,978,002.39
Mercoxit 34,377,901.27

The Ores have nearly all normalized to m3/hour in the high 20s to low 30s. Some of them are hopelessly deficient and will never be competitive.

On my spreadsheet on the Jita-NormalOre tab:
The first section is the as-is state.
The second section has modified refining amounts, the low-sec and null-sec ores are grouped by their best mineral. The high-sec ores are simply grouped together.
The low-sec and null-sec ores have had their outputs modified such that each group has a value that should keep them above the high-sec yields by around 2, 4, or 6x. This was done by increasing the yields of all the minerals except the highest two for each group. Mercoxit simply gained the lowest 4 minerals. The values 2, 4, and 6x multipliers was not chosen completely randomly. Based upon the NPC Mineral prices, the ratios were closer to 2.4, 6, and 7.
The low-end mineral baseket of the Megacyte family was not diverse enough and ended up flooding the few they had. So I substituted the ratios of minerals these used from some high-sec ores.
Spodumain's lowends are based off of the current Omber mineral ratio.
Bistot's lowends are based off of Pyroxeres' current mineral ratio.
Arkonor's lowends are based off of Kernite's current mineral ratio.

These values should preserve the rarity of the mid- and high-end minerals/ores. Improve Nullsec's self-reliance for minerals. And Improve the Risk/Reward of mining in the various regions. Spodumain also becomes an awesome ore to mine.

After this modification, the ores would value at with today's Jita mineral prices as:
Veldspar 33,015,765.77
Scordite 35,711,812.31
Plagioclase 33,952,683.66
Omber 25,968,022.60
Kernite 29,003,607.25
Pyroxeres 32,648,672.22
Jaspet 65,281,518.02
Hemorphite 69,995,722.41
Gneiss 57,365,158.06
Hedbergite 55,974,623.24
Dark Ochre 67,696,204.10
Spodumain 107,477,872.83
Crokite 70,187,083.35
Bistot 134,629,716.22
Arkonor 124,310,929.46
Mercoxit 187,936,067.35

If the mineral prices normalize to the expected ratios, the High-sec ores would be equal to each other roughly, Mid-grade ores would be worth 2x the high-sec ores, ABS ores would be worth 4x the high-sec ores, and Mercoxit would be worth 6x the high-sec ores (per hour).

Thanks,
Drox

It would be a very bad market/day when the ores would fall to what you describe. My new yields increase the low-ends heavily to enforce the x2, x4, x6 valuations. I did not increase the top 2 high-ends of each of the ores to ensure those minerals did not have a significant increase in supply.

The values of the Ores after the highsec minerals crash to 0.01 isk/u and the others are half current value with my modified refining rates:

Veldspar 48,198.20
Scordite 40,133.03
Plagioclase 14,101.42
Omber 6,061.55
Kernite 5,166.09
Pyroxeres 4,961,161.04
Jaspet 12,153,776.63
Hemorphite 13,930,163.08
Gneiss 5,475,818.22
Hedbergite 11,966,051.82
Dark Ochre 12,077,248.83
Spodumain 6,479,177.96
Crokite 14,377,870.88
Bistot 32,034,260.20
Arkonor 22,530,310.38
Mercoxit 17,290,963.58

Drox

I figured it was mostly the high-sec ores that were driving the rational balancing act.
I put together a more likely crash state:
Tritanium 0.93
Pyerite 3.13
Mexallon 11.86
Isogen 31.76
Nocxium 227.26
Zydrine 256.53
Megacyte 831.76
Morphite 360.36

Veldspar 4,497,401.99
Scordite 6,682,764.57
Plagioclase 6,716,869.87
Omber 8,572,268.42
Kernite 7,284,603.05
Pyroxeres 7,864,557.23
Jaspet 17,534,776.18
Hemorphite 19,721,953.29
Gneiss 17,595,626.93
Hedbergite 20,697,763.02
Dark Ochre 14,865,556.80
Spodumain 35,905,013.35
Crokite 15,506,273.90
Bistot 35,924,729.82
Arkonor 35,979,215.92
Mercoxit 35,979,215.92

The interesting thing about this result is, Empire would end up being the importer of all minerals instead of an exporter. While I hate this idea as a high-sec miner, I think it is in line with the Bash High-Sec income policy CCP seems to have.

The reason for my suggested change is to ensure the price disparity between the security ranges. If the prices do fall within the same values between all ranges, the high-end minerals have tanked while the low-ends did not. And that's unlikely to happen due to the high supply of the low-ends. (When it happens in my current spreadsheet, the high-end minerals go negative.)

Anyway, that's all I've got for this insanity.

I punch my currency button to get 2 decimal places and to differentiate from the other numbers. I'll save your eyes and do a search and replace for $ before posting.

I used the NPC values to establish what the designers had in mind for relative ore valuation. That was all of their purpose in this.

Drox