Science & Industry

Those are not the original values, they are far more recent values used in insurance (accounting for the increased value of low ends). The initial values that the game started with (and which was enforced by npc buy orders at first) were;

Tritanium - 1 isk
Pyerite - 4 isk
Mexallon - 16 isk
Isogen - 64 isk
Nocxium - 256 isk
Zydrine - 1024 isk
Megacite - 4096 isk

And the prices were relatively near this for a long long time. When i actually mined back in 2005 or whatever omber was the big deal because isogen had broken the 80 isk barrier. Zydrine was the first real bottleneck, it pushed 3k at one point iirc.

Easy access to high ends through 0.0 colonisation, drone region addition etc along with the massive need of low ends for cap/super cap proliferation has broken this completely.

So trit is 6 times its initial value, pyr and mex 3-4 times their initial value, iso and nocx 1.5-2 times their initial value and zydrine/magacyte half thier initial value. Broken? hell yes.

All that you say is true, except of course that we are working within ccps parameters. They set the mineral values for ships and mods, not the players. Ccp added demand for low ends (capitals, supers), and continue to do so. If the next fotm class of ships they intoroduce are high end heavy that will adjust the balance (will need a lot to make up for caps though . Due to the rather dubious way ships are built demand has no real effect. Most ships use the same sort of ratios of each mineral so customer choice has little impact (this apoc made of trit is too expensive i will buy this geddon made of megacyte). And if you are going to get a cap ship you gonna pay for alot of low ends whatever.

I am also pretty sure i covered your other point with "colonisation of null sec"....

Ok but the only ships (cap) ships that require a lot of low end minerals are not built in high sec anyway.
So why are all of those low end minerals over suppling high sec? That only makes them cheaper.
The bulk should stay where the production of cap ships are. Now that does a few things it makes them scarce in high sec and hard to reach. And drives the price up. Unless they are way oversupplied at the cap ship source as well?

Demand has a huge effect. If you are an industrialist demand plays a large role in your choice of shop locations. And not just for sales but for the entire supply chain including ores.

Again I can see why CCP set the cap ships to use a lot of low end ores because they are made there.
Ships that are made in high sec use mostly high sec ores. But I am still talking about ratios. 100,000 trit is used for every 1 megacyte in the high sec market. If you supply to that market 100,000 megacyte then in order to use it up we need 10,000,000,000 trit. That is where the demand comes in. Suppling enough high sec ores for the amount of low end.
There is a mismatch right now in that way too many low ends are waiting to be used. Maybe a cap ship war will use them up?

If all things were equal, I would agree with you. Fact is they aren't. There is no Arkonor in highsec. The skills are easier to train for empire ores over null ores. The materials to build ships and the ships that are available are not provided by players. It is ALL provided by CCP. Therefore, CCP needs to balance the ores.

This game is great for it's market system and supply and demand but don't for a second think it is a reflection of free market economics. All of those arguments really don't hold the weight people keep repeating them think they do.

So you do not think the markets in eve work? What do you think would happen if every industrial builder mined all of their own minerals? I.E. Nobody bought any minerals off of the market ever. When you mine ore who do you sell it too? You refine it then put the mineral up for sale? Or do you dump it on the highest buy order? Well if every builder mined their own there would be no buy orders. And who would buy the sell orders? What happens when your stuff sits on the market and nobody buys it?
Then the next guys puts his stuff up for sale below your price right. Still no sale. Then a third guy puts his up for sale below that.
Now the original guy drops his price below the third guys to get first sale. But still no buyers. And down it goes etc...
This is basically what is happening with null ores. They are way over supplied and the users of that low end ore are not using it as fast as it is coming to market. So the new seller undercuts the older seller. Down goes the price as every seller tries to be THE guy the buyer buys from. Meanwhile the builder is building items for his market. He knows what sells and what does not. SO he makes the stuff that is selling well. Almost all of it requires so much more high sec ore and he CAN not get enough of it from the market. It is almost always sold out as his competitors are also building stuff and they all need that high end stuff. So the price goes up. Miners respond by mining the ores that pay the best. Working as intended. What CCP can not control is what people mine and why? CCP is allowing the market to set the reward for the different ores which it is doing. And the fact that miners are complaining about it indicates that it is working.


Eve has a very real economy. But it is based upon time savers mostly. People will pay quite a bit of premium if it saves them a bit of time.

Why should they? Because the system for the game they set up is not acting like they set it up. Now people can keep going back and forth on "the market" but the fact is, the game is created so that ABCM ores are rarer, harder to get, and get you more isk per unit than Veldspar and Scordite. This is how the game was created. I'll go back to my first post, I didn't train for years to get into a hulk with T2 crystals, a rorqual alt and all the other things I need for null sec to earn less than those in high sec with perfect refining, no tax, and concord protection.

There are those that say "adapt" or "QQ" but here's an example of why I think CCP wants me to make more in null over highsec. Here is the description for Arkonor:

Here is Scordite:

So right now, Scordite, the ore for those starting out in their career is as good as the one that will sweep me from rags to riches in no time? Really?

That's my issue. And while people continue to harp up and down about "the market", the system we play in is not only controlled by the market. CCP probably has more of an effect on the market than anything else - right now is a case in point. With the removal of drone poo, new mining ships, and removing T1 drops, they completely upended the mineral market.

The replies to calls to balance ore usually fall within the following replies:

1. Nullbears are mining too much and have tanked the market for high ends - blame yourself.
2. The market determines prices, not CCP. Get a clue.
3. There are huge cap losses in nullsec
4. It's too soon.

On reply 1 - We have been hidden belts in null/wh's for years now. So I find little in that argument for why prices are out of whack. That seems to be coming from people that want to blame null miners for their own loss in profit while they reap the rewards of the new price structure in high sec.

On reply 2 - See above. CCP has far more control than a cursory reading of wikipedia's supply and demand article will help some understand. I never said EVE didn't have a market economy, it has a great one, it's just that it's a GAME and it is always going to be controlled by CCP. You can't go out and find new ores, you can't create new technologies, you can't create new ships, you can't find efficiencies that didn't exist before. Only CCP can do that and that "knowledge" is passed to us for everyone, not just the people who researched or innovated a new idea, to benefit.

Reply 3 - Perhaps, but we've had huge cap loses in the past and prices stayed relatively stable. It wasn't till the removal of drone poo that the prices went crazy.

Reply 4 - This is probably the only one that has any weight. It's possible that there are stockpiles out there still from drone poo that people still haven't used that need to be burned before we get to the real supply. Also, the new ships, while I don't think drastically change much, will have an effect that has yet to be fully measured.

So personally, yes, it might be a bit early and I bet CCP is probably still waiting it out because they have all the data. Changes to mining are mostly done? I'm not sure. But in 6 months we will know more. I for one am not anticipating much of a change to the prices and that's why I would like to see ore re-balancing as an option in the future. Not just an instant "no, it's markets" reply from those in high-sec that I know are having a great time with these prices.

OK

More people are doing it. It's not the individual that matters; collectively, people mining in Nullsec are producing more Nullsec ore than they used to. That leads to prices dropping. My guess is that this is because there has been an increase in the number of people mining in Nullsec (as opposed to an increase in the output of each person).

There is no "new price structure," there's just been a demographic change. Less (or the same) HS miners and More Nullsec miners.

I would agree with this if I saw prices slowly changing over time. However, we had a dramatic price shift all in the last few months. I'm not convinced that's due to more people mining in null/wh's because we would have seen this happen over several years. Additionally, if this were true, Arkonor would also be tanking in price but it's not. That to me is an indication that the refining values for the ores compared to their availability are not balanced in the way the game was created.

What? I don't even ....

"Low end" ores are trit and pyr producing ones like veldspar and scordite. Cap ships use far more (about 40% more) trit and pyr in relation to high end minerals than other t1 ships do, driving up the price of trit and pyr. All the easy logistic tools ccp have added to the game along with silly inconsistencies like mineral compression make moving low ends to lo sec and null very easy. Thus no one actually needs to mine low ends (or ice, lol) there and can spend their time mining the high ends. As 0.0 is now full of refineries and mining sites this leads to an over supply of high end minerals being shipped back to empire (in all those empty jump freighters) thus depressing the high end market.

So, the mineral imbalance is caused by;

CCP continually adding ships that require more low end minerals comparitively speaking
CCP continually adding things to game that make logistics easier
CCP not nerfing mineral compression
Too many people with easy access to high end ores in null.

The last part of this is caused by;

CCP allowing stations to continue being added to null without any way to reduce the numbers
CCP adding upgrades that boost the numbers of grav sites meaning 0.0 mining is easier and safer
CCPs broken sov system meaning 0.0 alliance form massive blue blobs meaning people can mine 50 jumps behind the lines.

So yeah, its ccp thats doing it.