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No one is going to use modules to transport minerals now with a 55% maximum efficiency rate. I don't think you have fully understood this change.

Maybe the proper thing here is for CCP to post (repost?) their vision statement on what system security is supposed to mean, and their first order effects of the differences between high, low, null, and w-space they expect to see. There needs to be arcs in both directions between all spaces that players of all ages decide to take because every region should excel at some things. (And no, Concord alone is not enough for hisec)

I'd also like to see what, exactly, their vision is for retaining new players past the first few months.

There's lots of subscription money available, but if their entire vision is forcing newbros into null within a few weeks of creating their accounts, I don't see how they would expect to retain it with such a narrow available player base.


Examples of design decisions that negatively impact new players asymmetrically is the extra minerals on T1 production, for example. The module refining change here is another thing that really only significantly affects new players.

I agree mining is terrible, but the "fix" to mining has to involve more creativity than "force everyone to null"

If they just targeted the current compression modules for a nerf, we'd just run a script and find the new hotness. It'd be an endless cycle of retaliation until everything in eve is significantly larger than its constituent minerals.

Ripping the bandaid off all at once and saying "reprocessing values for all scrap metal is capped at 55% of its constituent minerals" does the deed in a much more elegant fashion.

funnily enough, i lost at least three tanked macks to ganks exactly this way...

Very interesting changes and certainly something that needed to be looked at given the complete lack of design flexibility offered by the ease by which 100% refines can be reached currently. So generally in support of these changes, but a few points I'd like to pick up:


Skills for POS arrays

Having POS arrays disconnected from the relevant skills seems to be the most inconsistent and undesirable of these changes. Unless you have access to an upgraded outpost, it means that specializing in reprocessing is simply a matter of putting up a POS array rather than investing skill points.

If this is a technical limitation of the existing POS code then guess it's something I can live with for now, but I'd like to see a clear intention that the skills will be applied as/when POS code renovation makes it possible.


Scrapmetal Processing

Can certainly see why this is desirable. The effects on mission runners and mineral supply have already been covered in the thread, but I've not seen much mention of the possible impact on manufacturing demand and market clearance.

There is a potential impact here in terms of the ability of the market to adapt to oversupply of certain produced items. Right now, if someone drops a big sell order of an item at just below mineral cost that massively oversupplies a market, then someone is going to buy that up very quickly and reprocess it back into minerals for a profit. After these changes, that oversupply would pull down prices for longer as it would rely on either local consumption or a bulk trade shipment back out to another region to clear the oversupply.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as the current reprocessing path mutes the supply messaging from the market a bit. But it will be a change in market dynamic that will be interesting to see play out.

Of slightly more concern is the impact it will have on the disposal of loot drops. If this change leads to significantly more loot drops reaching market as items rather than minerals, then this could be detrimental to the manufacturing of those goods (bear in mind that while meta 0 drops were nerfed, other meta loot can be considered a substitute good, especially if prices drop enough). We've seen this before where items are available as both mission/loot drops and via player industry - if the volume coming through the NPC route is significant, then it can damage or completely prevent the viability of the player industry option (think back to the transition of T2 materials from agent rewards to POS manufacture). Would hopefully only impact the rarely used modules, but still not ideal from my point of view.

Rather than an argument against the reprocessing changes, I see this as an argument to reform of loot. My favored solution to this would be to move away from NPCs providing virgin items completely, in favor of the sort of "trade-up" model used by the loyalty store.


Ore/Mineral Compression

I am entirely in favor of compression being done via the "compressed" item types rather than through fortuitously-resourced modules. However, I'm not entirely convinced that just improving the existing Compressed Ores is enough.

While others have correctly identified that the market will adapt to supply the demand for Compressed Ores that will be generated, I'm still concerned about two other consequences of this change:

1. Once you have reprocessed ore into minerals, there is no way to get it back into a compressed form. This will discourage people from reprocessing ore until the last possible moment to avoid that loss of functionality, making it essential to co-locate refining and manufacturing facilities.

If this means that most trade in minerals occurs as Ores rather than Minerals, it will greatly obfuscate the market value of minerals (which would then need to be derived as a composite from the prices of Ores that supply it), which in turn obfuscates the valuation of everything else in Eve that is composed of minerals.

This also makes little sense from a physics point of view, and I can't see a desirable game design reason for this restriction.



2. You can only transport minerals in the ratios defined by the ores.

This will limit the ability to ship the mix of minerals you need, rather than a mix that is imposed by ore compositions and the availability of particular ore types. This could potentially lead to some ore types becoming more valuable than their constituent minerals simply by virtue of having a more favorable mix of minerals for common purposes. While it is true that module-based mineral compression was limited to the ratios defined by the modules, there was far more flexibility in this due to the much larger variety of modules, making it much easier to match supply and demand.

This is likely to lead to surpluses of some mineral types building up in a given manufacturing location as a result of the mismatch between the ore supply mix and the manufacturing demand. The desired outcome of this excess would be trade between this location and another part of Eve where the ore mix yielded a different surplus. However, with no way to get the mineral back into a compressible form, trade in these mineral surpluses would be discouraged.

What I would like to see to resolve this is the option to compress minerals directly, i.e. add Compressed Tritanium, Compressed Pyerite etc to the list of compressed item types, with compression ratios competitive with the ores.

The compressed ores would likely remain the favored option for bulk transport to take advantage of the better reprocessing available in null for the initial ore reprocess and avoid a second reprocess in the chain. However, I think the compressed mineral types would still have an important role to play in facilitating movements of minerals to offset the limitations of the ore compositions.

Rorquals still pass the best mining bonuses, and they're still eminently useful as a logistics vessel. I have two rorqual pilots, myself, and I have never used them for compressing. I use them all the time to service POS in remote, stationless systems, and to erect POS because of their ability to cloak.

CCP also said, in the devblog, that they recognize that the rorqual is having its niche intruded upon, and that they are punting on the issue for now. They were up front about it and are willing to endure the pain point to get the much-needed change through.

I'm not so keen on putting compression into stations, one of the things I like about these changes is how it provides actual benefits for using the more vulnerable in-space facilities in high-sec. The sort of hands-off level of outsourcing you are talking about would be better served by buying the compressed ore directly.

My concern with throughput for high-sec compression is more about the availability of moons in relevant areas of high-sec. My preferred solution to this would be a personal deployable for compression. Much smaller cargo than the compression array and a non-zero reprocessing time, so that the POS module retains an edge, but with the advantage that it's much easier for players to get involved and scale up capacity to the level that's required.

I'd be inclined to make it not deployable within 150km of an asteroid, to prevent it messing with the dynamics of hauling at the mining-op stage (and to leave a window for the Rorqual to have that impact if it is ever changed such that being on-grid with the miners is viable), though it could still form part of a mining op as a stop-off between the belt and the station.

Sure, it still won't mean it is worth YOUR time to compress the ore, but then it isn't worth your time to mine it in the first place and that hasn't stopped you so far



Probably will be an obscene number, though no more obscene than the amount of hauling that is currently done to get that ore from the belt to a station to begin with, and that seems to get done without any issue.

Nope it Is not a stupid excuse. CCP have already followed this exact method you suggest to nerf compression ratios before, and if they do it again then module's will just balloon in size for little reason.

It was never intended that modules where meant to be refined in this way for transport, and as soon as CCP figured out what was happening they have taken numerous steps to try and rectify the situation over the years. They have done as you suggest and increased the m3 of module, and they even bought out a brand new ship (rorqual) to try and encourage people to use that instead.

Unless they balloon modules to ridiculous sizes, then they will never fix the problem with mineral compression. With this change though they have finally nailed it once and for all.

the new order takes on skiffs and even orcas. i know this first hand because i'm not always on the receiving side.

There is no reason at all to make these changes. It only serves one purpose. Pull people out of highsec and lowsec and put them into nullsec. That is it.

There is no economic benefit to any of this, there is no gameplay benefit to any of this, and they are making a ship that takes a long while to get into effectively redundant outside of a clone boat.

What problems do you think this changes in the game? Other than encouraging taking ore to null refining it and the carting it back to Jita. That is the ONLY benefit, it doesn't change anything about nullsec mining/refining.

If you want to promote mining in null, nerf plexing and passive moon goo farming to levels that make mining appealing as a source of isk generation. Until you do that nothing changes.