Hello everyone. We have a series of changes planned for our December release to discuss today. These changes follow up on the reductions in isotope volume and moon material volume released in Lifeblood last month.
Combined these changes work towards the following goals:
Stimulate the ice product markets which would otherwise suffer from lower starbase usage
Improve the balance of ice product consumption (increased isotope and liquid ozone consumption relative to heavy water consumption)
Easier trade of high value reacted intermediate materials for T2 production (with the goal of nullsec regions being largely self-sufficient by volume but encouraging trade of lower-volume goods)
Somewhat reducing the pain that can be caused by heavy jump drive usage and high stacked jump fatigue values
To organize the feedback I’ll split the changes into three related forum threads:
Reduction in the volume of T2 intermediate materials (This thread)
This will serve as the discussion thread for the planned changes to T2 intermediate material volumes
The changes to intermediate materials we have planned for December are:
80% reduction in the volume of all non-alchemy T2 intermediate materials (everything other than the “unrefined” stuff)
The end result of this change should be easier trade of T2 reacted materials across regions, which is especially important as some T2 moon materials are regionally distributed to encourage trade.
These changes will be on Sisi very soon for you to try out, so I encourage everyone to take a look and let us know what you think.
Thanks.
Given the decrease in raw goo volume does the intermediate market really need stimulating? Back before raw goo shrank the intermediate market was already pretty low volume and easy to influence in either direction. I’m curious why you think that making it roughly as mobile as raw goo (again) is going to suddenly stimulate the market.
For local production one rig and one service module covers both simple and complex reactions so there is no need to transport it between refineries. Reducing the volume does nothing again there.
Maybe somebody else will enlighten me but I don’t see this change having a major impact be it good or bad. The new mobility of raw goo fixes the basic flow of materials between regions quite nicely.
Good change, IMO. The previous design served (in a roundabout, probably unintentional fashion) to punish folks for not taking raws immediately to complex moongoo. Given the time-sink nature of reactions in the Lifeblood design, having the ability to move intermediates gives players with less capital the ability to occupy a small niche in the T2 production chain without incurring undue hauling labor for their trouble.
You move RAW moon goos you need loooong distances to your reaction farm/citadel, all of it.
You shove raws into your refinery slots and watch INTERMEDIATES drop out the other end.
You then scrape it off the floor, turn around and shove it into another refinery slot and out drops ADVANCED materials.
After you FINISH refining it, THEN you think about moving it to another structure for consumption or sale
So, if you setup an EFFICIENT reaction farm, then your movements of INTERMEDIATE materials will be ZERO or very close to zero compared to RAW or ADVANCED materials. The only edge cases I can think of would be cartels trying to control critical materials and industrialists who buy intermediates to fill holes in their stockpiles.
This change would have been more meaningful while POS based reactions were active, but since it all happens in the same structure, less meaningful.
This change will benefit the small industrialist the most and have zero effect on the large industrialist.
With reactions accessible to the masses now there will be more of an intermediate market mostly from the miners reacting their product directly. It probably won’t be a significant Jita market but i bet the trading in 1DQ1-A and other similar system will be significant.
ok but please consider rebalancing ice and the resources you get from the ice. You rebalanced ores a while back but never changed ice since the 10x surge in demand.
Year nice idea. Hauling would so be more comfortable and more reachable for small and casual content.
btw. why not change the container size by jettison cargo?
A Mackinaw can hold 28000m3 - 35000m3, but make always two Container when dropping. I drop always contis near 26000m3, so the benefit from the Mining barge bonuses is useless. When i pass the 26000m3 it generate a second container only fore some 1000m3.
The volume reduction is a huge bonus for T2 manufacturers who make their own advanced components. A Blockade Runner will be able to carry 5 times as much advanced moon material.
From what I read in the OP, the volume reduction is for everything not “unrefined”, so does this include advanced moon mats? If not, it’s indeed rather useless, as trade will likely happen with moon goo, and people will react both steps locally.
OP says intermediate materials so it looks like only the simple reaction materials. This is good because miners will be able to easily react the one or two minerals they mine and then can haul it to the nearest trade station to sell. For anyone just doing reactions for the final product it is indeed worthless unless you’re buying intermediates to supplement. Its also good for anyone specializing in unrefined reactions.
btw. why not change the container size by jettison cargo?