Science & Industry

Somebody butt hurt by the "free mineralist"

Move to blueprints that have a prerequisite higher than "industry 1" and this problem goes away.

But, from a business perspective, it's correct to seperate the actions out.

So, here's what our industrialist did:

1) He went and mined 100k Trit, and make 365k ISK worth of value
2) He built a bunch of ****, which he then sold on the market for 250k. He quite literally destroyed 115k ISK of value in this step.

Net profit? 250k. But building his **** for 250k was a stupid decision. Not saying he's not allowed to make said decision, but it is a bad one.

Hey look! A dead horse! Everyone go!

Buy all Caracals, reprocess, sell minerals, collect profit, repeat.

You are confusing "free" (as in "at no monetary charge") with "worthless" (or "worth less than market price").

Ore you mined yourself (or received as a gift) is technically free. You don't (usually) pay ISK for it. You (or somebody else) pay cash for the privilege of you being able to play to get that ore, but that's a different story and it (normally) involves no in-game ISK. Ore in this case (self-mined or received as gift or even can-stolen) is, as I said, TECHNICALLY "free", since you PAID NO ISK (you still paid something else, but again, another story).
Then again, so is ISK. You (generally) don't pay ISK to get ISK (with a few exceptions, oops, another story), so technically, ISK is almost just as free too.

What ore IS NOT in either of those cases is worthless or worth less than market price (adjusting for regional prices, hauling costs, various fees or whatnot - but, again, yet another different story).

...

So, to recap : ore/minerals you get yourself ARE free, but they're NOT worthless nor worth less than market price.

HOWEVER, some people might value some other things you can not see even higher than that, and it's hard to put an ISK pricetag on "fun".
Who's to say those people don't find selling stuff below material worth to be "fun" ? I've seen stranger things happen. And afterall, most people make ISK to spend in order to have fun, so... see where this is going ?
If you want to profit from their "having fun", DO NOT rage about how they kill your market - instead, buy their cheap stuff and either refine it or relist it at whatever price you deem "appropriate".

In the end, we can probably all agree it's a bad BUSINESS decision, and if the person in question CLAIMS to make more profit that way, he's usually dead wrong. But it's not always about a business decision, and it's not always about maximum profits, as weird as that might look to you or me.

Yes very true that what you value your time at can make the minerals you afk or semi afk mine basically free. the fact remains that if you sell stuff you build below your regions mineral value you would make more isk just selling the minerals. So your argument that minerals are free if you akf or semi afk mine them means nothing.

If you are mining minerals to manufacture stuff for your own use then fine. your time may be worth less than you would have needed to spend to buy the stuff.

But if you are doing it to sell i.e. to make isk than selling items below there regional mineral value you are losing money. you would have more isk at the end of the day if you just sold the minerals.

The fact that you afk mined the minerals and consider the minerals as free is irrelevant. regardless you would still be making more isk selling the raw materials than making them into modules and selling what you made for less than its raw mineral value.

If you are just doing it to try out the manufacturing part of the game than the more power to you. just remember that all that stuff you put your time into making is most likely getting bought just to reprocess it back into minerals as you sold it for less than its mineral value.

If you seriously want to get into manufacturing it takes a lot of isk to get set up properly. You would reach your goal much faster by just mining and selling minerals while you train the needed manufacturing skills than by selling stuff you made at less than mineral value.

A GAME with a player controlled economy.

It only make sense that it would stir up debate just as the real world economy does.

just nobody kills themselves when they lose billions in a game.

Many players do take it very seriously. And will defend there opinions.

That is what debate is all about. Many people enjoy debating just as many enjoy mining regardless of the return.

Yes a player driven economy. But still a game. The key factor there is that people will do things that don't make financial sense because they don't care. They don't care because what they are doing gives them enjoyment.

In general, from what I've seen, serious industrialists don't even bother to mine, as there is no way for them to mine enough minerals to feed their industrial machine. In that sense you could argue that people who mine their own minerals for building are wasting their time.

But some people like making things from start to finish. And maybe they just enjoy the thrill of seeing their item sold. But they don't enjoy playing the market game, and as such sell their items low to just get it sold. They don't care because it still gives them enjoyment.

I'm sure many traders laugh at me for selling billions of sleeper loot to buy orders in jita. But I don't have an interest in maintaing sell orders. I am sure I have thrown away billions in potential profits this way, but who cares? I have gotten enjoyment from the aspects of eve that I enjoy, and bypass the parts that feel too much like my real job.

Not trying to stop the debate by the way. Just offering a viewpoint other than "those people are dumb and don't understand math"

The Minerals that I mine are Free to me. I say that because I did not buy them. They are in space and no one has ownership to them. Once they are in my cargo bay on my Orca no one can have them unless my Orca gets blown up or I use them or sell them.

take your "ores are not free" dogma to another part of the universe. I ain't buying it.