The OP is spot on.
The economy went topsy tervery when CCP lost its economist (9/10).
No no no no no. The battle cry is “death to trading consortiums”. 
CCP has since then created new gates to connect places on the map for “reasons” and made a big deal about it, a backdoor from Tash-Murkon to Stain, an isolated hisec island they un-isolated, etc. Currently there is no longer a hisec connection between the Amarr and the Caldari. CCP can make new connections if they wanted to, connections that are far more useful and beneficial to gameplay than the interventions they did make for some mickeymouse reason.
The spice must flow 
For nullsec and wh players it doesn’t really make a difference if Jita is the only place to do business. They can reach it almost any time they want, to get goods or do deliveries. But at least a second major trade hub would be nice, from a global business perspective and without lining the pockets of certain groups with transaction taxes doing so. Cutting out the south of the map from the major trade hub entirely via hisec was and is dumb. We did it to ourselves, sure. or rather it was nullsec groups that don’t care either way if there is a connection or not. That this also concentrates people even more into cal/min/gal hisec space than before the loss of Niarja is also not a win.
The mineral price index suggests there’s more to it. If you go into production for combat reasons you quickly reach a point where simple reprocessing cannot supply enough isogen.
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That’s the case for most mats. Have enough demand, and the supply won’t match. I have 10s of mats that I daily need, not sourced enough in Jita.
Exactly. Which drives the MPI, among other things. Which is the main driver for the outrageous prices for just about any significant hull on the market. Lining the pockets of players by doing generous drops during events like the last one we just had, so they can stock up again on a few hulls, can hardly be called a healthy, let alone a player driven economy. Scarcity and redistribution were even dumber and far more devastating than allowing the loss of Niarja.
So the conclusion is we never got past scarcity ?
+1 Hek must become the new Jita.
Nah, the conclusion is that the prices of mats are too low, and the market is inefficient to make supply and demand match.
It could also be that demand is too high ^^.
The goal of the market is to allow consumers to acquire what producers produce at a price they consider acceptable.
I personally believe that the lack of market slots, as well as the limited duration of orders, is a major factor in the reduction of market efficiency. Also, the ability to manipulate the market and the 0.01 isk warriors.
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In highsec you have mining fleets eating moon goo 24/7 and selling it in the markets.
Absolute 0 scarcity (scarcity never was a thing btw)
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No short and direct one.
Amarr > Rens > Hek > Dodixie > Jita
46 jumps or so, all through hisec. Although with insurrections coming out soon who knows, may be some of the systems in Tiat or Barvigard constellation will become lowsec.
Once again, there is pure HS route, just not a short one.
True, but it can supply a lion share of it. The rest you can get from lowsec or jspace.
True that. I for one have learned the hard way that certain material markets are highly sensitive to supply changes (PI is a great example of this - even a single account added to “PI market” with L4 skills (meaning 15 planets) can have big impact on the prices, as the demand and supply are very sensitive there).
The main cause of the prices of hulls being high is isogen… and people like me sitting on untold tens of millions of isogen and refusing to release it on the market. As soon as even one releases significant part of it the prices will crash.
I agree. As a bonus: it is roughly equal distance between Amarr and Jita. And it is 0.5 
Material prices are not too low in general. The problem is that some materials are oversupplied whilst other are undersupplied. Chief reason is that many people refuse to even enter lowsec, not realizing just how much time (and by extension isk!) they waste on veldspar and hs moon goo.
Yeah. The only scarce resource is time. BTW even quick check on how much isk is in a venture/covetor/retriever of ore gives you quick answer: mining in hisec is a waste of time. Omber/Kernite are at least 3 times the value of veldspar, which is best regular ore with value at the level of brimful moon rocks. Glistening rocks match jaspet (worst low sec ore).
Mining gneiss is ~70-75M/h (~25M per retriever) and it can be easily done in jspace… people don’t do it because of “what if I lose my ship”. What indeed… you can mine dozen of hours in hisec or one hour in jspace and get the same isk. One hour to cover the cost of a mining barge, after that is pure profits. Or 6+ hours to do the same… (assuming t2 b-type crystals and decent skills in both cases).
People are not rational, if they were they would stop mining as much in hisec and start mining in lowsec or jspace.
If they refuse it, that means it’s not yet worth enough for them to bother.
From their point of view, you are the one not realizing how bad it actually is.
Maybe if the price of mats would go up, they would consider it interesting.
Yup, I’ve taken that one quite a few times. The new route has several choke points, instead of one on the old route.
Now, by comparison, I can get to jita in under 5-6 jumps usually from anywhere in nullsec, because we make sure we can, without choke points. Why Jita ? Habit, and more and more convenience as it is the only place where you’re almost guaranteed to find stuff. In a game with 5000 k-space systems …
More like a cub share if you’re building a freighter or a dread, which is why the isogen is undersupplied on the market, hence the MPI, hence the bloated prices on just about any hull. Or did they imagine we’d stop building what keeps our space defendable ? Imagine again, I’d say. CCP had all the advance warning, but they didn’t care.
Please don’t. Isogen is good business right now, lol. Because I can.
Sure, if you’re into R4 moon goo trading. The thing is, there shouldn’t be any moon goo mining in hisec in the first place. It’s still grandfathered in because of Upwells in 2016.
The scarcity of material movements has not stopped, because obtaining them has become a pain that most people try to circumvent/delay/outsource/try to buy. No movement of certain materials = scarcity. And a substantial amount of time is invested in obtaining materials that go into the changed blueprints as well. One side question would be if there are enough players to support that level of variety that is required for the market to function normally again, with regular supply and demand to meet the demands of the altered blueprints. Because if people stockpile and speculate the only answer is to have others fill the gaps while still others find/mass produce the new materials.
Lowsec Mining is an illusion. The Charts linked in the Monthly Economic Report clearly show it.
Those people who can live in Lowsec have little interest in Mining at all.
Those people who would like to mine simply cannot survive there, apart from some ninja-mining ops here and there.
The problem is that Lowsec is HotdropLand™ and a single unknown char in local, even if he is only 3 days old can be a CynoAlt that just busts your whole Miningfleet by throwing 12 BlackOps + Support on it from 10 jumps out. And dare you fight back, they will wipe out whatever you bring as well with the backup they have available. If you set up a Citadel, they burn it. If you anchor a POS, they raze it. If you live out of an NPC-station they scout/camp it to bust you once you field anything of value. Been there, done that. Constant and easy hotdropping completely destroyed all the spirit and the flourishing live we once had in LowSec.
And while some people are able to calculate the risks vs rewards, they simply have no interest to serve as helpless cattle feeding the hotdroppers lust for cheap and easy curbstomps.
This means, as long as CCP doesn’t touch all those precious instakill toys of the rich vets, the newbies won’t be able to enjoy living there. And if there are no newbs, there is not much mining. If there is not much mining of LowSec Ores, there is not much Isogen. Simple as that.
Solutions are possible tho, the Gas mining amounts show that there are ways to get resources out of there:
- create Ore Sigs instead of Anos, so those can be mined and with attention and Dscan you will notice if someone tries to scan down your fleet.
- make some of the Ore Anomalies gated (Lore: abandoned Empire Mining Outpost whatever), so you can’t open Cynos in there (so, no BlackOps, no Cap Escalation). Miners could go in there and even bring combat support ships to repel small roaming/skirmish attacks, but still have ways to evacuate at least parts of their fleet if the local spikes.
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Well…that’s just nonsense. Several of my alts had Dodixie as their home station and one still does, and I’ve not encountered any problems buying ships, modules, ammo, etc. Which equally means traders shouldn’t have any problem selling them. I’ve not had a single instance where I’ve had to go to Jita instead to buy something.
In fact I have had the reverse, where a certain type of quad laser was not available at Jita but was available at Dodixie. And I’ve had numerous instances where Amarr had the cheapest instance of something.
The reason the Jita market is larger is quite simply because more people join as Caldari, probably due to better attributes.
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Let me misuse this thread to complain again about the lack of reasonably priced Hecates in Jita 
Folks, the materials for 20 Hecate build from one BPC fit into one single BR load. My production costs are still well below 55M a piece.
No need to touch the toys of anyone - you overlooked the simplest of all solutions: undo the lowsec monopoly on isogen (anoms across all parts of space would be a good move, makes mining more interesting again for everyone).
The isogen choke is worse than r32 ever was, especially in combination with the blueprint changes. The “let’s buff lowsec” idea was a dream, not a realistic plan founded on player behavior.
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That would also be the worst of all solutions, because CCP created this monopoly with the intention to make LowSec more valuable and interesting again for groups to move and settle there. And I really like that approach. If you give up this monopoly, the Isogen would simply be mined in the already incredibly safe null, high (to a degree also WH) environments and Lowsec would still give not much reason for industrial groups to settle and live in.
Give people living in Lowsec more options to avoid being riskless insta-curbstomped by a magic teleporter from lightyears ago and more people will go there, trying to claim it’s riches.
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If the monopoly proves detrimental to the game - which it has or we wouldn’t have this thread - it needs to go. Isogen as a means to upgrade lowsec never was a viable, sensible plan to begin with. The (pvp-)risk averse will continue to live in hisec, the others - who are organized for the combination of industry and combat - will continue to live in null/wh/poch where they can maximize on far more than just isogen.
q.e.d.
I’m sure someone could organize some nice renter space in lowsec, if that’s what you want. While I totally agree that lowsec needs a reason for existing and be populated, busy, fun and rewarding, it is now clear that that is not done via anchoring a mass consumed mid-tier mineral there. What other solutions for lowsec ? Ask a game designer who has put has mind off isogen perhaps ?
I disagree, the idea itself isn’t bad. Each space has some monopoly, lowsec should have one as well to strengthen it’s relative position. It only is not working as intended because the supply that CCP gave the players to mine simply cannot be mined because other factors are way too overpowered against those who would want to mine there. So, instead of simply thrashing the idea, rebalance those factors or create ways to counter them.
Some Ore Sigs that one would have to probe before engaging and some gated Anomalies you can’t enter via Cyno would in no way disturb or threaten the PvP dominance of the big groups, it would be taken nothing away from their power. They could still go hunting, they could still doimnate their pocket of space in terms of industry (structures) and group/capital warfare. They just can’t catch anyone + instantly + easily. And they don’t need to.
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@Syzygium @Wadiest_Yong Lowsec may be unattractive for the risk averse but I’m slowly making my home in a Losec system, a constellation that leads straight to Null, and I do like being there.
Not many people in systems makes risk-taking engaging and fun.
I do mine in Lowsec to dab into light industry but unfortunately I cannot find the blueprints I want. Right now I manufacture Antimatter charges, Catalysts and Assault Damage Controls but Mining and Industry aren’t what I really play EvE for.
I don’t know about Scarcity or Niarjia(whatever) as I wasn’t there to witness the devastation, but to me Lowsec is very viable.
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I don’t disagree that the core of that idea has merit. Only do not do it with a mass consumed mineral that goes into highly relevant bp’s. Expecting a good size of the player base out of high, null, w-space and pochven to relocate there to make it worthwhile and feasible is one of the flaws. They do to some small degree, but only to meet their own demands, not to put surplus on the market. The infrastructure cannot even be built there to support the work - it would all become transport transport transport (with lancer dreads on top now for good measure, yes, they even compounded the problem recently).
Sure, I spend a good part of my time in lowsec now as well, for isogen. But as you probably have experienced as well, there is no level of continuity possible in lowsec to support the demand of basic materials needed. The time factor is very much in play here. You can fill up one barge/exhumer and then often have to hole up again, at least if you try to solo. Put out a few hulks and before you know there’s going to be neutrals taking a sudden interest (can’t blame them, lol). In other words, neither infrastructure nor player base are sufficient to make it work. And if one were to change the infrastructure rules (a kind of sov.bis), it wouldn’t be lowsec anymore but a halfbreed low/null.
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That is true. No solo player can sustain operations to meet demand. Only corporations mining in Low could do that. But I’m not trying to, I’m just learning the game at this point.
LOL I do not doubt that for a second. That is why I will stick to my Endurance unless I’m invited into a mining fleet, then maybe I would use the bigger slower tagets more expensive mining coffins.
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