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i'm going to give you the short version

unviable manufacturing in pos and outposts has nothing to do with security problems or location or anything like that. i see some in this thread making guesswork with ~guys in real life economy~ analogies but they're ignorant and wrong

manufacturing or refining in highsec is simple as 'train a skill > get some standings (for refining) > find a slot' and you have perfect free refining and perfect might-as-well-be-free manufacturing/research

there's no point conquering two solar systems, building and upgrading two enormously expensive outposts and paying expensive sovereignty bills for two those systems to do what any scmhuck can do in highsec for free. especially when you can only build one outpost per system and you could be building a gallente outpost instead

same with pos. why invest and face ongoing costs for a structure others can destroy when you can refine and build in a highsec station for free?

the only thing starbases and outposts offer is decreased manufacturing time which does not make up for the ongoing costs and logistics issues

there is no way to improve other refining and manufacturing services (without nerfing highsec) without increasing refine rates past 100% or decreasing the mineral cost of manufacturing in those locations. which effectively lets outpost or starbase owners to print minerals

so we have the resulting problems

1) a person who wants to build ships or mine is forced into highsec npc stations because those stations make everything else unviable
2) there's only one degree of success for producers - a highsec station. there's no point trying to advance from that or challenge yourself
3) there's really no point in working together
4) outposts and starbases cannot be improved beyond highsec npc stations without breaking the game

a game should be designed around fun and an mmo like eve should create reasons and opportunity to succeed to a greater degree in whatever type of gameplay a person wishes to pursue. in eve this is supposed to involve exposing yourself to other players which creates emergent gameplay

(a starbase is easily managable by one person because in highsec you never need to defend it but that's another problem)
(actually in lowsec a research pos is likely to be ignored too)

what's absolutely imperative in my view is to improve the industrial game and extend it into starbases and outposts while making sure highsec npc manufacturing remains viable for casuals and newbies. if someone for whatever reason does not want to play with others (why) or expand beyond npc services, they can stay there, but they can't expect to succeed as well as the people who have the motivation and ability to take risks and win

i think it's more like expanding industry to create many degrees of success ranging from highsec npc stations to nullsec starbases and outposts to drive real gameplay


yes there needs to be a degree of security and viable npc facilities to fall back on

Stuff gets made, stuff gets unmade, this is the cycle of life for Eve Online.

no, the point of anything in eve online, including money, is to serve the players. comparing it to real life via ~well nullsec is like somalia and so should be poor~ or ~there's less industry in warzones~ analogies is stupid. eve can't be like reality because reality isn't an entertaining and worthwhile game


yeh research is in a different place but it's still not actually driving gameplay. noone drops caldari stations afaik and next to noone drops research pos anywhere but highsec. even there it doesn't drive gameplay since your average research starbase is a solo-and-my-alts affair that gets pulled down in the 24-period of a wardec

the only reason i want to see raised manufacturing prices in highsec is to make other methods of manufacturing viable, never for lore reasons. lore is a lower priority compared to gameplay. refining should be better in starbases because player owned should trump npc owned. i liked mara's 'make refining into slots and rent it out' thing.

might also be interesting to see a mobile refinery you can stick in a belt, better than station but worse than starbase


i'm talking mechanics as gameplay drivers. and people don't go out there to produce because highsec npc services make it pointless



no 'suboptimal plus inconvenient' is very much unviable in this game and never a reasonable option
people will do 'suboptimal plus convenient' or 'optimal and inconvenient'
and anything sold at a markup in lowsec or nullsec was invariably hauled there, not produced there
why are you going on about isk=success i assumed you'd know this
when i said 'no point working together' i was talking about the uselessness of manufacturing starbases/defending research pos/building in nullsec please remember context
yes there are other industrial activities that are fine in low/null but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have viable local mining manufacture or research
and the margin for owning and working a starbase/working in low/working in null should be made high enough over npc to warrant the risk because the game should serve the players and drive gameplay



exploration sites are mostly fine yes but industry is not

So, why doesn't any of what you say actually happen? I mean, if it's all that simple, null sec should be chocked full of production, right?

People follow the path of least resistance. That path is almost always high sec. and as long as it's so easy to do in high sec and so easy to move stuff around, it will always be like that.

It's bad though, it makes the game "small" and centralized and snuffs out a lot of the game play that you'd get by having the game be about "multiple localities".

Very nice. Thank you.

Any chance of similar graphs for mining and moon mining?

That would actually be nice, I'll check



We might do similar graphs for mining, trading and moon mining yes, there will be fewer system labels though

Is ther eany way to get total numbers by security also listed somewhere?
Ie : Security Level - # of systems at that level - Isk produced - # of minerals used
1.0 sec - 35 - 899 billion isk - 19 trillion materials used

Something of that nature to help really describe the manufacturing by game play area,
For the most part it wouldn't disclose anyones secret nullsec manufacturing hub but it would give a better indication of manufacturing in null vs low vs hisec

Dracenhof, I agree with most of what you suggest, except this:

Remember, High sec is where people start - a rookie must be able to set up industrial production in small scale, and millions of ISK just for rent is not available to a rookie. A modest increase in fees, perhaps, and less than perfect yield from refining and production, more likely, but keep the rookie in the game. And the carebear, who prefers to live in High, too.


Now, this was exactly my point. So maybe there is common ground to be found. Tell me, when people move to null, what is their main motivation? Is it to become successful mass producers of ordinary commodities? I don't think so. There are many things more exciting to do and many efforts more lucrative. Those are the upsides motivating people when they leave high. There are downsides, too, like less safety (which by many will be viewed as a plus), and an important one being that supplies are harder to get. It is not in any way impossible to set up production, as Soldarius shows, but most people find other activities more rewarding.


Important point. I honestly don't know if there are trade hubs as such anywhere in null, but I would guess that at most there is intra-corp or intra-alliance hubs. Any open shopping mall would be ringed with pirates, and visiting one with goods in your cargo, either coming or going, would probably be quite suicidal. Security IS an issue.

In null, I would suppose that the primary reason for setting up production would be to keep you yourself and maybe your corp supplied. And, of course, to produce commodities that are best or only produced in null, which you would then haul to high in order to sell. In high, your will buy what you need but don't produce yourself. If that turns out to be almost anything, then so be it. Frontier economy. To make bulk, marketoriented industry easier to do in null, you would have to improve market security. But then it wouldn't be null anymore, would it? And if your goal is to become entirely self-sufficient - then what became of player interaction as a design principle? I don't think CCP are developing towards the ability to be self-sufficient in this game, on the contrary.


This is true, but I would hate to see that as a suggestion. It would make everybody's life more miserable, high, low and null. The objective here is not to spread out production in a mathematically exact proportion to population, area or sector or whatever. It is to make people able to play in the way they prefer, with all that entails of upsides and downsides. This is the balance CCP must maintain, the balance between upsides and downsides in all sectors. It is not to the goal to "force" everybody out to live in null - that is not "better" or the end objective in the game, as there really is no "end objective". Therefore when some things are better done in high, such as bulk industry, that is exactly as it should be. Other things are better done in low or null or sov-null - fine, I must accept that as one of the downsides of my playing style that I cannot do that. You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to be an industrialist in null, you can be - it is "viable" in the sense that you can produce and get your products to markets, but it is definitely a challenge, and you can probably make more ISK/hour in other activities. But ISK is only an in-game currency - what the game really is about is setting your RL self some challenges and striving to succeed, is it not?