Market Discussions

I was sitting here looking through the Blue Ice threads, and a thought occured to me.

If they actually did kill all the bots, what would happen?

We all know how mind-numbingly boring and unenjoyable ice mining is, that's why only bots do it. So if they were able to crack down on those bots, what would take up the slack? With POS fuel being as cheap as it is, mainly due to the bots that keep actual humans out of the ice game, everyone and their parapalegic sister has their own POS.

Since there are these thousands of POSes being run on cheap bot-made fuel, we have a lot of people inventing and driving T2 prices down. As a result, people are using T2 as throwaway PVP ships since they are so cheap.

If those research POSes are too expensive to run due to pricy ice, T2 prices go up.

So I find myself wondering, is CCP really trying to kill the ice bots? Or do they tolerate them because they keep the EVE economy running in its current state?

TL;DR CCP likes bots.

Yes, you would sell off your stockpile, but there is no way the actual humans can take up the slack for all of the bots. So despite that initial stockpile selloff, I have trouble seeing the human miners be able to maintain supply even close to the current level.

I'd guess much the same as happened when Unholy Rage took place last. The individual markets affected would change according to changes in bot preferences over the last couple of years.

Whilst I'd certainly wish for speedier and more complete elimination of botting (something which, realistically is always going to be an unachievable target) I don't think I've enough tin foil just yet to conclude that CCP likes bots.

you would just see mining to be more lucrative.

My point was more that CCP has reached a type of middle ground with the botters. As long as they stay out of RMT (or at least aren't too obvious about it) the bots lubricate the whole system. The few people who complain about not being able to ice mine profitably are far out-shouted by the people who like cheap POS/Cap fuel, and CCP gets to make more money off subs.

I am not saying that CCP condones it completely, I just think they have reached a point where they say "What's in it for us to go after the last few bots?"

then there would be no bots for us to murder

very sad

the incentive is the broken human beings who enjoy mining can't do it because it's botted to ****

Making it harder to move mass quantities of ice/minerals from jita to ANYWHERE in the galaxy would make bots virtually useless. Sure, people could bot in null sec but it would only effect the local area, not the entire game.

Honestly, Nerf jump freighters, it'll change the game in fantastic ways. Suddenly players spread out everywhere instead of just mining in high sec to support all the 0.0 players that are too busy raking in billions of isk to bother mining their own minerals/ice.

Suddenly, nullsec powerblocks with JBs and the people and infrastructure to run freighter convoys every other days keep raking in bilions of ISK, and small alliances who can't will have to lose half of their combat pilots to dig rocks. Surely a great way to balance the game.

That's why you also make 0.0 resources scalable like high sec (missions for everyone who wants one!, sorry only ## anomalies, hope you don't want too many people around) and have sov based structure HP scale based on system activity.

It's not about balancing the game, it's about encouraging 0.0 alliances to want people using their space. Currently it's detrimental for any 0.0 alliance to let anyone else use their space and they have no need for anyone that isn't helping with sov warfare.

Having people in your space mining and ratting should be preferable to running freighter convoys and it shouldn't be detrimental to the 0.0 sov holders (which it currently is).