What is the reasoning/lore behind the fact that compressed ores take up less space than the minerals?
I mean shouldn’t it be the other way around?
You take the raw ores which have a huge % of waste materials, that are not needed for production.
Then you reprocess them and get the raw minerals which should take up a much smaller space. AND THEN
you can compress the minerals.
Wouldn’t it be cool, if the Orca and the Rorqual could reprocess and compress in space? (But you had to turn bastion mode on or something) and if you reprocess and compress in station you obviously have to transport the ores to the station and you have some sort of waste?
It is like a fishing boat which catches, guts, cleans, cuts and freezes the fish on the boat itself. Compared to a fishing boat which catches the fish and transports it back to the shore for processing.
Compression is convenient but it makes no sense! Mining and production and trading and transport would all have a lot more value if this nonsensical compression didn’t exist.
Isn’t ore is bulkier than minerals (i.e. a given amount of ore has a greater volume than the minerals that you’d get from reprocessing it)? So, I’d imagine that if given a choice between ore or mineral compression, most miners would chose ore, as that’s the one that’s a bigger pain to move. However, I don’t know why CCP won’t allow us to compress both, or the reasoning that went into deciding how much volume ore and minerals should have.
As for compressed ore taking up less space than minerals… well, let me introduce you to a concept called… video game logic.
The minerals use for making things in EvE are unstable in their pure state.
For example, pure Tritanium actually self combusts when exposed to oxygen.
So when you are seeing the volume for tritanium, you are also seeing the equipment needed to keep it from exploding in your hold.
You may ask yourselves: “Why can’t we just simply cyno out the bloody stuff, straight to a structure”. That would be convenient too. Less opportunity to get shot and lose stuff, and all that. Well, the short answer is: intentional game design. Same reason sir Isaac Newton is on the bench in this game.
Imagine you have a lawn bag full of 12oz pop/beer cans. Let’s say it’ll hold 150 cans. Seems like a lot, but if you crush them, now you can put about 400 cans in the bag.
But what if you melted those crushed cans into pure aluminum, and you got more volume of aluminum then you have in volume of cans?.
That’s the weirdness.
You should get less in materials (or at least the same amount) even if the ore is compressed - not more as you seem to do in EvE.
However, the explanation that you need special equipment to store the pure minerals because they are toxic, combustive, or corrosive, would explain why the volume of the mineral is more than the volume of the ore (compressed or otherwise) the minerals were extracted from, as you are also counting in the volume of the equipment.
From the lore:
Tritanium is a primary construction material in most structures and ships in New Eden. It is found in most ores, however is extremely abundant in Veldspar. Tritanium is an extremely durable material, and is also highly flexible. Unfortunately the material is very corrosive and as such cannot be used in a raw form within most atmospheres. Certain alloys and compounds are not nearly as unstable. Due to its high availability it is a cheap and accessible material for space-based construction.
–Gadget doesn’t think we are reprocessing TARDISes
Say you have 12oz pop/beer cans full of beer. Beer is mostly water and not compressable. Nonetheless you can compress it. Once you transport the compressed beer to your magic shop you all of a sudden can decompress it to wine which takes much more space then beer.
This is the system what we have now (you can compress ore, which takes less space then minerals you refine the compressed ore into). It just doesn’t make sense at all.
What other explanation do you need? Of all the things that don’t make sense in this game, because it is a game and doesn’t pretend to be a space sim, it’s probably the least important.
