Market Discussions

With the latest dev blog, looks like with the buffs to industrial command ships, drone mining can actually be a thing. One of the "The Three Pillars of Mining Foreman Gameplay" is "Contribute with powerful mining drones". All of the industrial command ships (including the new Porpoise) will be gaining a mining drone yield bonus.

Mining yield wise it will go like this

Porpoise = Barge
Ocra = Exhumer
Roqual = Exhumer +

Not accounting for drone travel time. But they will be more or less like this. Now the question is, will these buffs be enough to sway the market in any significant way? Not counting Excavator’ Mining Superdrones, think the prices of the other drones will change, up or down? Will builders keep up with the new demand? Will there be new demand at all? I was thinking of buying a few drones before the supposed "spike", for myself since I have an Orca, and to maybe make some profit on the market.


My thoughts on why it might increase:

1. It is new. People would want to try it out.

2. Most of the Industrial command ships are pretty tanky. Might become the new super carebear ship. Orca might become the Mackinaw/Skiff hybrid miners always wanted.

3. Clone states are incoming. So a lot of new players. And what I've noticed is that a few new players mining in a Venture have mining drones instead of combat ones. And since Alpha clones can't use mining barges or above, there might be a few of them who try to min-max their yield.

4. People lose drones all they time. Whether it be forgetfulness or trying to escape an attack. There might be some disposability on them. So there will be a somewhat constant demand.

5. Not many people make mining drones (currently). It is a pretty niche market, since mining barges mine so much more, the boost from drones were minimal. So it will be hard to at least initially keep up with demand.

6. When buying mining drones, you don't just buy one. They usually buy at least 5. 10 if they want spares.

7. People buying them, since they think the price will increase, thus increasing the price in the process.


My thought why it won't:

1. People in mining command ships are small as it is. Orca is a 1 billion ISK ship. Even with the new 50 million ISK Porpoise, they won't be a huge amount of buyers. Drone miniers will only make a percent of the mining in EVE.

2. Multi box mining is still more profitable. And mining boosts don't carry over to drones. Multi box mining is essentially the OG drone mining.

3. Drone travel time is still an issue. They won't be mining nearly as efficient as a mining barge or Exhumer.


What do you guys think? Will mining drones be a fad? Tell me your reasons why the prices might go up or down.

There will be a short term demand spike, but there will probably be a large supply spike.

If mining drones cost more to make I would be speculating now on the precursor components.

That's true. Mining drones, even Tech 2 aren't too expensive to make. and right now there is a decent profit margin actually. I'm thinking the market will catch up to demand soon. Especially if manufacturers start now. I think from now on there will be a more lively mining drone market. Maybe even in the future they will even add a mining drone barge (with maybe slightly less yield than a typical barge, but it buffs the drones range and speed to make up for that, so the ship can mine from where ever in the belt).

Do you think that there will be an effect to high sec ganking? Since Orca ships are tanky, and receiving a defense buff, think it will be worth it to gank the mining drones for disruption? It would require a less expensive ship to do, but there would be no form of profit from that sort of gank. Unless they intentionally sold mining drones in that system for profit? But I what high sec gankers will do. I'm worried about bot miners or AFK miners using them as a Skiff-Mack hybrid.

I'm a Zoidberg, I bought a civilian mining drone BPO, made lots of drones but nobody buys them ahhhhh huuuuu.

Nah I'm kidding, I use them for my own purposes, but yeah, civi mining drones won't sell very well