Minerals... The Perfect Storm

In the 2000 movie 'The Perfect Storm' a confluence of several large weather systems all at the same time merged to create a massive storm in the North Atlantic that claimed several lives. Since then any time an event happened where several rare events coincided to reinforce each other it has been referred to as a 'Perfect Storm'. What we are seeing today in mineral prices in EVE is an example of such an event.

Here are the following elements:
1. Large ISK faucets: With incursions introduced last year, combined with ever more productive ratting from higher skilled/equiped average players, ISK per player is on an upward trend.

2. Mass Bannings: CCP Sreggs and team have started mass bannings of bots and RMT traders who operate, among other things, huge fleets of mining ships extracting minerals. The influx of minerals into the markets from these operations is reduced.

3. Proposed Rogue Drone Changes: Rogue drones are going to be changed to have bounties instead of dropping minerals. The influx of minerals into the markets from these operations is reduced.

4. Proposed T1 Rat Drops: Wrecks from rats will no longer have the relatively mineral rich T1 meta 0 loot. The influx of minerals into the markets from these operations is reduced. Edit: Just confirmed that meta-0 items to be replaced by one unit of metal scrap. This refines to less tritanium than most modules and no other resources.

and the icing on the cake...

5. Hulkageddon: Starts later this months. With the huge backing of the angry goons this should be the biggest Hulkageddon ever! Miners beware! The influx of minerals into the markets from these operations is reduced. Lost ships (ganked and gankers) will increase the demand for minerals to facilitate replacement.

The end result is that speculators are predicting a massive drop in the supply of minerals, which coupled with a cash rich player base, will result in a massive spike in ship and other product prices. We have seen 2x increases in battlecruiser prices already. Other ship classes are also showing similar increases. Ruptures for example are now priced above 10 million ISK. Since insurance payout adjustments lag the market in increasing the cost of loosing a T1 hull has gone from very small to now as much as 50% of the purchase price.

The effect of this on the game is dramatic. Expect players to become a lot more cautious with their suddenly expensive ships. For example I recently lost a Diemos on a roam with my corp. It will cost me almost twice as much to replace it. I am considering purchasing a cheaper ship like a stabber fleet issue, that will still fit the same gang doctrine but not impact my wallet.

At the same time that time honoured and ridiculed profession, mining, has suddenly become much more lucrative. Expect a lot more mining fleets in empire and out in 0.0.


This effect will be most pronounced on new players. A 10 million isk rupture, a 70 million isk Drake will completely change the new player experience, for the worse.

Of course the CCP in-house economist must know about what is happening and could predict these changes. He has several possible tricks up his sleeve that could ruin a speculator's day. He might delay one or both changes to the loot mechanics. I don't think that will happen however. What I think we might see very soon is a change to the amount of minerals per hour mining. Either increasing the refined amount of minerals per unit of ore and/or increasing the mining yield of mining lasers both would negate some of the effect on the overall market, while still making mining as a profession viable.

This is an interesting time for the EVE economy. Personally I think these changes are long overdue. The loot mechanic of getting minerals just always felt wrong. By making mining a viable and important profession again, messing with botters, things will eventually achieve a new, better equilibrium then before. I just wish I had the forethought of stocking up first.

Tidbits from the Quarterly Economic Report

The new Quarterly Economic Report is out and it contains quite a bit of interesting information. This is a 'MUST READ' document for every EVE player as it not only provides a nice summary of information that can be gleamed from in-game, but it also give some information that can not be gathered from any other source. This quarter, I can happily report, Dr. EnjoG is concentrating on PVP stuff so there are some nice little goodies in it. These are my comments on what is contained.

1. Eve Population Drop!
For years the EVE population grew steadily. However this trend seems to have stopped. Although the trend is still slow growth, the reality is that after each spike the population is dropping. With the recent disasterous Tyrannis expansion we now have it dropping to pre-expansion levels. No wonder CCP is finally listening to the CSM on what players want.

2. Skill points matter (new characters need not apply)
This I think is the most disturbing graph I have seen. Basically it shows that new characters with < 10m SP and even with < 20m have pretty much no chance in PvP. It shows that players with < 10m SP account for 24% of all ship losses, yet make up only 2% of all kills. Considering that 10m SP corresponds to around 9 months of play this is very disheartening. I can sort of understand the < 5m SP characters doing so poorly (but not as spectacularly poor as they seem to be), but if even characters with nearly 9 months of time devoted to the game can not really participate in PvP, then there is a problem. EVE really needs to do something to improve the PvP game-play for inexperienced players. I am not saying that they need to nerf SP, but rather they need to provide a mechanism (like making factional warfare not suck for instance) for new characters to actually have fun doing PvP.

3. Minmattar Rule ... Gallente Drool
Looking at the Measures of Success section we see the trends for PvP ships. What strikes me is that Matari ships have 5 (Hurricane, Vagabond, Sabre, Rifter, Thrasher) of the top 10 ships landing a final blow. Two of the other ships are pirate faction ships that are effectively Minmattar ships with added bonuses to Gallente skills. Also there is not a single Gallente ship in the the top 10.

4. The Rise of the Super-Carrier
It seems like Super-Carriers are getting a bit out of control. Ever since the Dominion patch boosted their effectiveness greatly, they are now the de-facto blunt instrument used by large rich alliances to steamroll their enemies. Their massive DPS with fighters and bombers means that they can decimate a field of ships from capitals on down. With a massive tank they can usually survive simply by logging off when caught unprepared. As a result the number of ships being produced greatly outnumbers then number of ships being destroyed by a ridiculous margin. In July, August and September about 45 super carriers were destroyed, and about 480 produced! I know personally for my alliance this may cause a lot of grief. No-one I know wants to play Super-Caps online, yet that is the direction Null-Sec may be heading.