The point rather is that when there are too many customers then the best way to regulate it is to up the price a little, because that’s also the time when one can safely increase prices and because it always has the risk of driving away costumers, which in times of a too high demand isn’t so bad.
Also lets not forget who profits from these services. It is often traders in high-sec who look to improve their standings. PvPers care less for it and it’s also only interesting for those in high-sec.
The people who are then providing the service will very likely welcome it, which means there’s a chance they stay longer with you and some may be less reluctant to join in. It means you care for them as much as you care for your customers.
3 bil is roughly how much it costs to take a new character, buy skill injectors, max out social, connections and diplomacy; buy dogtags, hand in dog tags at a data center; and buy the hand-ins for your chosen faction’s Cosmos missions, getting you from 0-7ish faction standing.
Granted… this errand takes more of your time (about 6 hours) and requires more effort (100+ jumps) than having someone else grind corp standing for you, but faction standing is better. Not trying to blow up anyone’s hustle but… folks should know their options.
Edit: Also, you can’t do this with every corp. For instance The Interbus is its own faction. So it requires old fashioned grinding. Same thing with Guristas, or Angels or any pirate faction
faction standing gain through datacenter incurs negative faction gain to factions opposed to the one you gain faction standing (ie, derived negative faction)
I might have to contradict my earlier comment. I missioned for a couple of hours today and the isk balance went up 100m. But when I cashed in the loot, salvage and LP, the balance was over 300m. Was I lucky? Was I unlucky? I’ve just started a missioning database to keep track of precisely what I’m earning in practice, not theory. When I’ve got enough data over a decent amount of time, I will post the results. I mission in a Golem, which is not the fastest marauder, but I think it balances out by collecting all loot and salvage. I need the salvage because I use it to manufacture my own stuff. Saves time-consuming trips to Jita and being offended by the presence of thousands of peasants.
it’s easy to gain and maintain positive Faction standings with all Empire Factions just by doing their Data Centers, then you can work for any of their high lv agents without having to build up Corp standing.