I have been surprised to find that hardly any PI materials are being bought or sold at Jita/Perimeter. It seems the industry is just plain dead.
I was wanting to do some typical Tier 3 to Tier 4 manufacturing, but I can’t get my purchase orders filled.
What could have caused this? The only things I can identify are:
A: So many massive wars keep blowing up structures? Maybe people don’t want to risk putting up new structures, because they’ll just get blown up? (Also loss of asset safety for un powered structures may be deterring them from being used.)
B: PI self sufficiency in Null? Nothing moves through Jita/Perimeter because that’s just “not where the action is”?
C: The recent implant blueprints? They use Tier 3 stuff. So maybe Tier 3 goods are getting used for that, instead of making them into Tier 4?
D: Lack of systems with low tax? I have noticed that in most of high sec, and most of low sec, the customs stations are owned by only a handful of different corporations. Maybe they are over charging for import/export and killing the margin, so nobody can make a profit at it?
I was also amazed how hard it is to get planetary command centers if you’re not in a system where NPC’s sell them. They must not be selling very well. Even if they’re tough to ship, you can usually mark them up a full 200% and people will still buy them to avoid the travel times.
Structures are a more expensive investment now that they require cores. I know that my alliance has taken another look at the amount of structures we had, and unanchored the less necessary ones. Fewer structures and lower fuel needs means less demand for PI, I guess.
PI is way too large to move out of and into null for any of the lower tiers. Maybe p3 or p4 is worth moving, the rest has too much volume for too little value.
C and D: I don’t know.
Indeed they are! They’re pretty hard to move, so I’d pay a lot just to have them if I want to install a new planet. Good opportunity to make some ISK, except you can’t haul a lot of value this way because of the huge size of these centers.
Used to have lvl5 PI skills but cbb shifting my set up around constantly because of depletion. Sooner or later I would neglect and have “offline” PI all over the place. So I pulled the skills via extractors and put that SP elsewhere.
I’ve been doing pi on all my null alts, and can’t find a lot of buyers, so I retooled for drone production. I don’t need to ship anything around except for drones to my local market.
A lot of my pi used to end up in jita, but it’s not worth the effort anymore.
It seems like, if people are getting out, that should present an opportunity to those that choose to stay in and tough it out.
Maybe after the markets readjust to the change in demand for stations? Even with quantum cores, some people will still need upwells enough to take the risk sometimes.
But if people are taking them down right now, and selling them off, that would put them in a state of over supply for now I guess.
PI prices have been falling for a year. Partly fewer structures - which require PI for fuel as well as components. Partly people reprocessing old POS components rather than wait for CCP to reimburse them or salvaging destroyed structures.
I make PI for personal use in T2 production. With the spike in morphite a few weeks ago, most of the products I make are selling below current production cost so my activity is way down until the market adjusts and it becomes profitable to make T2 again. If others take the same wait and see attitude toward T2 production, it will have a significant impact on demand for PI (now called Planetary Industry on Hoboleaks)