Warfare & Tactics

Supply and demand

The prices above are for individual modules, not 5 run blue print copies.

Supply of DED modules is pretty constant while for LP shop items you decide whether or not to produce them.
On the demand side DED 100mns go on supers and ratting BS, so supply can be short there.
Also look what else you can buy for those specific factiontags instead of gettting a 5 sales per month item. And how many of those tags are being sold on the market and how nice a handful of people have that market cornered.

I think this is the best answer.

I saw that only one person was selling the tags in Hek. After I checke out deve-central.com, I see that 1 - 1.5 million is actually the market value for those tags all over highsec. Which goes to your other point; the tags are likely used in some high demand items. Either that or they're just really rare. I'm going to look around and find out what other item(s) they're used for, and how many of them are required for each one.

I'm not trying to convert my LP and tags into ISK. I'm looking to actually buy fittings and ships for myself, which is disappointing because the microwarp drive is the single most impactful fitting if I went with a faction one instead of T2. My conclusion is that since the fleet issue 10mn MWD costs more than the best deadspace one, the fleet issue MWD might as well not exist!

With that said... I think CCP needs to reduce the number of these tags are that are needed for this particular item. I'm assuming that the general intention of the loyalty points market was for people with loyalty points to buy faction fittings for themselves. No one's going to buy the republic fleet 10mn microwarpdrive with the exorbitant amount of highly valued tags that it requires.

Think about it. The 100MN module requires that 54 times, somebody went through the trouble of looting relatively high-value "general" tags because they though it was worth the effort for the money. The 10MN module, by contrast, requires 339 lootings of relatively low-value tags. You are depending on more people doing more work for less pay per effort. So obviously it happens less, and whoever goes through the trouble of actually collecting these tags is going to sell them for as much as they can get.

Figuring out the tag nonsense on the LP Store has always been more trouble than its worth for me. Too many different Ranks, then they add levels of ranks to that. Some tags drop in FW Missions, some drop in FW Plex. It doesn't seem like there's any rhyme or reason behind the number or levels of tags required for different items.

CCP could really improve the accessibility of the LP store / market by streamlining and eliminating some of the chaff.

What they need to do is split everything into four categories, with four ranks of tags.

Here's my rough draft:

Novice Items: In the 10,000 LP range and below. Buy with one type of tag found only in Novice plexes and Lvl 1 FW Missions

Small Items: In the 10,000 - 50,000 LP range. Buy with one type of tag found only in Small plexes and Lvl 2 FW Missions.

Medium Items: In the 50,000 - 100,000 LP range. Buy with one type of tag found only in Medium plexes and Lvl 3 FW Missions.

Large Items: In the 100,000 LP range and above. Buy with one type of tag found only in Large plexes and Lvl 4 FW Missions.

Hah, no CSM for me thanks. And ya, I'd definitely make sure different value items require different numbers of tags.

A lot of the supply-and-demand issue in those costs is how those particular items fit in the current meta.

Gameplay currently favors cruisers, which use the 10mn prop mods. These move in volume, sales are guaranteed, prices are high. The 100mn, meanwhile, is meant for battleship-size vessels, who don't see nearly as much usage currently. Volume, movement, and therefore prices, are lower.

Like the idea on first glance

The relative rarity of the tags is the driver here. Unless it's changed since I last checked (which was, admittedly, several years back), the tags for the 10MN units are more likely to drop in level 3 missions, while the tags for 100MN units are more likely to drop in level 4 missions. Since far more people do level 4s than level 3s, there are far more tags from level 4s on the market. With far more supply on the market, prices drop a lot.

I use Republic Fleet ABs on some of my battleship fits, and I've noticed the same discrepancy there with their 100MN and 10MN units as well.