I resoect the majority of folk who answered and appreciate the time they took to answer, but I mustve not phrased my question very well because I still dont get why it costs more when its free to do and anyone can do it.
I would have thought the downside to be that it means there is no other sensible (economical) thing to do than sell the compressed ore, and so therefore the most economical thing to do would be buy uncompressed ore compress it then sell it.
To compress you first need access to a compressing service. Those arenāt everywhere and due to the size of uncompressed ore it might be hard to haul it to a compression service.
If the uncompressed ore is sold (= available market service) in a system where you can compress (= reprocessing service) and compressed ore sells for more than the uncompressed ore, then yes, you can make money compressing for free with little effort! I doubt you can buy a lot of uncompressed ore this way though, usually the only ore sold uncompressed in such a system is (1) sold because itās not enough to compress yet or (2) sold by newbies in tiny amounts.
Also if it were profitable in large enough numbers, people would already convert uncompressed ore to compressed ore to make ISK, so it probably wonāt be profitable for long.
People do this whenever the normal ore is cheaper, so the normal ores that you would be able to profit off of are quickly eliminated.
Most ore is compressed at the point of origin. Thatās the whole point of compression, to make it easier to move your crap to market, or to refine. Youāre going for volume at this stage. Sure, you might be able to sell your regular ore at a hub for about the same price or a little higher to people who desperately need the uncompressed version specifically for an NPC who doesnāt know any better, but youāre not going to sell a lot of volume that way. Most people are too old and crusty to try to wring every cent out of every ore chunk no matter how long it takes.
The value in compressed ore isnāt monetary. Itās like fast food. You go to a place and get some crappy burger when you could have made a better one yourself, and you know that, but the whole point was not having to make it. Thatās the value you paid for. Ore is the same way. The value isnāt the money you pay for it, or are paid for it. Itās the 9 other trips you donāt have to make to carry it.
Ill have a look next time Im on for any length of time.
Its just to me, compression seems to undermine (no pun intended) other areas to the point that compressed ore is aways worth more than anything further up the pyramid.
Regular ore, where I was, was more expensive. If it has ever been the other way around it hasnāt been while I was there to see it. Thatās not to say it canāt be true today as opposed to when I was last in a position to care about such things.
Probably mostly new players. Compression is an obtuse feature if youāre new. The difference between an NPC station and a player owned structure is not exactly clear, either and so āhow do I compressā is a popular question once people do learn itās a thing.
We were talking about value. So how can compressed ore be both cheaper on the market (in my experience) and more valuable? Itās more valuable because you can move 10x the amount and therefore use or sell 10x as much. However, because compression comes at no cost youāre not going to see an upcharge for compressed ore in any competitive market on a per unit basis. The value weāre talking about is a savings in labor, not a price increase.
In exchange for saving a merchant 9 trips, the station owner not only gets nothing, but also aides the merchant in evading having to pay for the original compression service (Refining!) at their station and fattens someone elseās wallet whoās running the exact same service module for the same fuel cost.
I am somewhat out of touch with current affairs and I intend to stay that way, so Iām not going to check current prices to see if what I said still holds true. Iāll just take someone elseās word for it if they know to the contrary. Even if it does not, though, I canāt imagine thereās enough fiddly ore rocks to compress to make much money being put up for sale at a reasonable rate to be worth a personās time. Iāve been surprised before, but Iām still skeptical.
TL;DR Compression adds value in the form of labor savings, which is not monetary, and so you canāt compress ore at a trade hub to make it more valuable because a majority of the labor of transporting it to the hub is already complete and now you canāt get away with a convenience charge.
Doesnt the estimated value on any given units of ore increase when compressed? I was under the impression the standing advice was to compress it and sell it rather than sell as is or process it for sale or building.
So then if you are right, you cant make a profit by buying ore right off the market, compressing it and then reselling it?
Fair.
If this is the case then I dont understand where the benefit is in selling compressed rather than refining and/or building with it.
Iām going to quote the person who replied to me earlier:
Individual ores of the uncompressed variety are, at least sometimes, sold at a premium, but probably at very low volume.
Selling compressed ore is good because it is the most space efficient thing available in game. Raw ore is larger, and the refined minerals are larger. People hauling the ore off to null where they have superior refining facilities are going to want compressed ore as opposed to minerals or ships or whatever that they can build themselves because it is the most efficient use of their time. People who donāt use ore, though, are probably going to be best served by compressed ore if they want a buyer quickly for a reasonably sized haul.
If you are able to add value to the ore yourself at the point where you obtained it through manufacturing, then thereās no real benefit to compressed ore. Just do your thing as you normally would with whatever kind ore you got.
Iām not sure if Iām helping. I did not expect to be talking so much about a topic I donāt really feel invested in and so I may be speaking aimlessly without a position to try and prove.
Yeah though to be fair this is a game rather than real life, so I kind of hope people could be different. Dunno why Id think that, but yeah your probably right
Also, why do alliances need a passive ISK income? One of the reason the old moonmining system went away was, that CCP was (and still is) against large passive ISK generation.
And I agree with them. Alliances should get majority of their income from active sources, not from passive ones.
Taxes are not a part of what the change in moon mining were meant to address. The mining of the material requires people to actively mine it it under the new system. Under the old system it was collected passively. Taxing compression does not remove players from space.
Iāll give you the benefit of the doubt and not assume you are just angling not to have to pay for a service you use and instead assume youāre against large alliances collecting lots of taxes, but thatās exactly what compression, especially for free, enables. Small parties on the fringe operating structures where ore is mined have their compression service used and are paid nothing. Large alliances in the central hubs of space have their refining service used and collect a tax. Then they have their manufacturing services used and collect more tax. Then they have their markets used and collect more tax.
I mean this as a serious question, and not at all in a snarky way.
What is the beneficial impact of compression as a separate system as opposed to just resizing minerals so that the reprocessed output has a volume comparable to the compressed ore?
I understand well enough how compression benefits centralized industry, but other than changing the location that tax is collected for refining I canāt think of anything that compression specifically brings to the table. There could be an abuse loophole here that Iām not seeing and if there is Iād like for someone to point it out for my (and everyone elseās) benefit.
Because you gotta be paying attention (not you, but people in general)
Sometimes The. Big null group. Buy up all the ore in trade hubs And it causes the price for compressed ore to spike In other areas. People not aware of the. Sudden change my. Biggest haul was. About. 1.7 bill isk worth of ore I bought. At. A place near amarr In the system of ( trade secret ) I compressed it and sold it for 2.4 bill I didnāt even think a about it. I bought everyoneās oreIn the surrounding market, compressed it and sold it
The personās rituatu( med size engineering complex) didnāt see a dime of it Super easy Have not been that lucky since
) I compressed it and sold it for 2.4 bill 
I didnāt even think a about it. I bought everyoneās oreIn the surrounding market, compressed it and sold it