EVE General Discussion

There have been a couple of very good threads recently discussing the balance of industry between hisec and nullsec, with some excellent debate and copious amounts of data and examples supporting either side of the argument.

A factor or question that has come up a number of times, but then lost in the depths of economic arguments, is whether nullsec should be on par or better than hisec for industry, which, thinking about it, is a question that needs to be answered first, before discussing any balancing that might need to be done.

So here we go, should nullsec industry be the equal or better than hisec or is the open, risk free hisec industrial machine necessary to keep the forges of Eve burning? Is it simply risk v reward, or more complex than that?

Null industry should be at least comparable to High, if not marginally better.

Of course it should be better.

In terms of the risk vs reward, it should be better.

Null has its pro's and cons with risk, i.e. intel channels, the blue donut but pain in the ass AFK cloakies and BS rats do tip it slightly.

Also the lengths an alliance has to go to in order to manage that risk are huge. You need sov, which requires isk, grind and good diplomacy skills (or just a s***load of ISK).

Your average 30 man corp cant just say f*ck it lets go and mine in 0.0 today. If they did, the rewards would need to be significantly better.

You realize the result of this is entrenched stagnant null-sec alliances concerned with nothing but RMT profits.

Making null interact with hi-sec may be by design... and moving stuff around leads to destruction of goods which is a necessary part of EVE.

You can jump freighter goods directly out of jita to low sec and then on to null. Its rather riskless if you do it right.

Actually, you don't want /everything/ to be available to a single alliance. That means there are no conflict drivers. No resources you want to capture.

And if it's not all available, you then want middlemen with a 'neutral' ground for trade to get the materials you need, to build the things you need to defend your space, and to try and take other people's space.

What does industry have to do with any of this?! The difference is in the available resources between null- and high-sec.

When you do not want players to move null-sec resources into high-sec then stop them from doing it.

Part of your problem is you do not understand nullsec industry.

First issue is: You need three stations to do in nullsec what you can do in one highsec station. The outposts are broken down into the four races; the gallente have the most offices, the minmitar has the best refining, the amarr have production slots, and caldari research. That will require 24 mill a day or 720 mill a month. There's also the problem where the lines do get backed up. Even though they're kinda private the stations don't have near enough production slots to do anything in grad schemes and numbers to support those huge fights in the news. Not to mention there are industry upgrades needed for the good belts. So that's going to require a lot of man power to maintain as it decays without use. Also the stations need to be upgraded. Each upgrade costs minerals, isk, and blue print time. Here's a list.

Second issue is double taxation. Belt ratters get charged one tax for their income per payout; what ever percent that may be. However the industrialists get double taxed for refining and then again when the alliance buys the stuff from the industrial at the discount rate (tax rate).

Another problem is the logistics. The only way to get any fuel, component, or minerals moved is through a jump freighter. Not only are they god damned expensive too buy, the fuel costs cut into any hope of profit. They're a pain to move as well. And you have to use them to import and export to jita. No way can viators handle what a jf can do in a reasonable amount of time.

Those industry upgrades, that I mentioned earlier, actually increase the frequency and quality of the hidden belt. If a neutral pops into local (which they will regularly) the first thing they do is see if they can grab a belt kill. This means that miners gotta stop what they're doing every five to ten minutes. For industry to be conducted in any quantifiable manner, they need to mine for a good bit of time, rather than be interrupted every time. This is why hidden belts rock. Some chancer isn't going to ruin your day for a lazy kill. One roaming sabre can ruin a well planned mining op pdq. When you're in a grav site the neutral actually have to put in a little itty bitty effort to scan a miner's ass down.

The real issue is the amount of minerals needed to conduct an alliance's day to day business (cta, structure grinding, etc). This is why 425mm rails are bought so much. When you see a sov jf kill look at how many rail guns are in the cargo. The 425mm is the best item for mineral compression. Mineral compression is when, during reprocessing, nearly as many minerals are taken out of the item as were put in to produce the item being reprocessed. That costs money for the rails, for the production, for the jump fuel, for the cynos, etc etc.

All this is beyond the realm of highsec industry. Where a highsec miner's biggest issue isn't being able to afk mine in a few areas or the production line.



Before you even think of mentioning moon profit know that a) not everybody has access to tech and b) the profit margins on a non power block complex reaction are around one to two percent.