The mechanical difference between setting up a freelance job for Arkonor versus Veldspar highlights exactly why grade-zero ore is a massive administrative and financial sink for highsec industrialists. This change is just another direct benefit for nullsec with zero consideration for the effect it has on highsec operations—even when developers are being told directly about the damage it causes.
Number of jobs needed to cover Arkonor vs Veldspar (examples)
Unified Group Model (Arkonor)
[Job 01] Arkonor Group Order
(Covers all variations under 1 Group)
Capital Investment: 1,000,000,000 ISK
VS
Fractured Grade-Zero Model (Veldspar)
[Job 01] Veldspar Grade 0 (Raw)
[Job 02] Veldspar Grade 0 (Compressed)
[Job 03] Veldspar Grade I (Raw)
[Job 04] Veldspar Grade I (Compressed)
[Job 05] Veldspar Grade II (Raw)
[Job 06] Veldspar Grade II (Compressed)
[Job 07] Veldspar Grade III (Raw)
[Job 08] Veldspar Grade III (Compressed)
(Requires 8 jobs for this single ore)
Capital Investment: 8,000,000,000 ISK
(1b for each job is simply to show equal values, use any number you feel represents your wallet scale)
The price impact on third-party sites (Fuzzworks effect)
This structure completely destroys how ore values are calculated across the game’s economy:
The Arkonor baseline: Because Arkonor does not have grade zero, it maintains a stable, unified group profile. Third-party index sites pull direct, unpolluted data from market orders to give a true reflection of the ore’s mineral worth under a single group tier. Nullsec keeps its streamlined, protected loops.
The Veldspar: When a site tries to calculate a group average for Veldspar, Grade 0 dilutes the math. Grade 0 loses literally half of its baseline mineral value compared to legacy rocks. When index sites blend this trash-tier data into their group averages, it completely skews the overall market valuation.
Highsec operators are forced to risk eight times the capital investment just to put up freelance orders, all while third-party pricing metrics are rendered inaccurate by low-yield Grade 0 noise. It breaks the efficiency of local manufacturing networks while nullsec continues to operate with absolute mechanical convenience.
(If this is one dev with the idea for Exordium plus gzero ore, BoB help us…)
I don’t understand why “compressed” is in the mix for Veldspar but not Arkonor? From what I can see it’s a 4:1 outlay (not 8:1). I do see your point about the various grade ores, though.
Feel free to clarify if I’m missing something here.
The Arkonor group option includes all variants, compressed and non.
They are basically complaining that they cannot do the same thing with Veldspar because if they use the whole veldspar group, people can fill it with 0-grade ore that is probably worth less than their purchase price (based, I guess, on some third party price index that probably excludes 0-grade).
Instead they have to make individual type orders so they can price the veldspar-0 appropriately.
Appreciate the clarification, thanks (I don’t use Freelance jobs, so I was just curious). Isn’t this the same issue with arkonor? ie: they could just fill it up with 0-grade? Or am I missing something?
Uh, no one said you needed to have 8 billion worth of veld if you don’t want it. You can just put up for less in each project.
Even before they added Grade 0 though, you have mission ore that qualifies as veldspar as well that is worthless that gets turned in, you needing multiple was required.
Funny. Didn’t notice Pyroxeres 0-Grade yet. Not sure if it is live in Exordium. Didn’t see it in the belts there…could be a faction thing.
Also it has a typo in the name “Pyroxeres__0-Grade”…there is one space too much…and it doesn’t have a compressed variant yet. So it might be not live.
But i remember to search for 0-Grade ore when Exordium did open…and Pyroxeres 0-Grade was not in the game then. So it seems they plan to add it and make the new space much more “worthless” than it is already.
Alright…i see it in the market…makes me wonder why it has the writing error in the name and is not compressible…or maybe it is compressible but those blocks can’t be sold on market because the item is not listed in the market…
The obvious solution is to collapse all ore types into one compressed type according to its efficiencies. Not to do that was a design error from the beginning.
Yeah i really don’t get it why they didn’t do that. It is so obvious.
They keep the different “reward ores”/incentives.
The compression math is fundamentally no different from the fraction math they have right now, as in “leftover does not get compressed”.
Simplified data modell.
Easier market modell.
And much easier for players to actually use (you can do industry calc on one input and don’t need to consider fringe types).
Yeah, and especially since you cannot do anything else with compressed ores than to refine them, it absolutely doesn’t matter where the block comes from… they could all refine the same but higer grade ore results in more compressed blocks // or requires less stacks to compress…
Prices on the zero grade ores should be unstable. Mined in extremely small quantities and rarely brought out of Exordium. Sporadic market sales will cause sporadic sale prices. Nothing stable there.
How many players experience issues with their freelance operations due to 0-grade ores? How many players are setting up jobs for mining Veldspar any-grades? Why would they? Veldspar refines into Tritanium only, the least-valuable and most plentiful mineral.
I don’t think the zero ore is having any impact. First of all we don’t mine zero grade here, the boss told us, not to bother mining Exo region. She said the area is under the watchful gaze of FC, and they said no excessive mining there. Whatever excessive means?
Secondly Im looking at Eve Tycoon and this is what I am seeing there.
ORE
Sell Volume
Buy Volume
Veldspar 0
23,950
23,200,000
Veldspar I
33,150,000
1,846,680,000
Scordite 0
507,560
33,560,000
Scordite 1
76,220,000
1,333,440,000
How are unavailable and unwanted ores corrupting the market? If they are being mined at all, the volumes reflect how much they are being mined. Based on the sell volume the numbers tell me, V zero is being mined at less than 1 tenth of a percent compared to HS veldspar. S zero is mined at 0.67% the rate of HS scordite. I would be shocked to hear the new region is responsible for the mining economic collapse.
The final reason, we don’t use free lancers for what we can do for ourselves.
Grade zero moves a lot of highsec mining over to lower priced bots and groups in .5 space. Maybe this is CCP’s plan to change the play style because it’s boring and full of bots.