Jita was only a minor trade hub back then, it was more of a mission hub boasting several high quality level 4 Caldari Navy agents. The closest place I can think of to pre major hub Jita is Lustrevik with its multiple lvl 4 agents and minor trade hub midway between a couple of regional hubs.
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So which is it?
Are these “trade hubs” designated by player action (as volume of trade) to which CCP then confers special “trade hub” status, or are they immutable arbitrarily designated by CCP?
What is the threshold of player activity for designation as “trade hub” by CCP?
What was the designated Caldari “trade hub” before Jita?
Was it always Jita?
Was there even one?
Why was Yulai not conferred designated “trade hub” status?
Its a CONCORD Assembly system, not Empire strictly.
I also just read CCP removed gates from Yulai?
Why did they do that?
Was Jita itself not just a agent hub, before it became a designated “trade hub” and had its agents removed?
What about Minnie space.
Are both Rens and Hek designated “trade hubs”?
If so, why are there two so near each other, when other Empires only have one?
The rise & fall of tradehubs is an Evolution of eve itself. Yulai was a CCP designated tradehub, as CCP linked it with the 4 main factions through the supergate highways.
But various smaller tradehubs existed, used by players & centered around lvl 4 agents (you can still see this ingame, where high level agents are clustered together, there is more trading activity too)
Once Yulai supergates fell, trade hub landscape shifted hard, Jita became one of the big winners, along with Amarr, Dodixie and the double minmatar tradehub Rens/Hek
But Jita kept on gaining trade volume, along with Amarr (but not as big as Jita), forcing CCP to take action to keep their servers run smooth, so they removed agents, removed belts & removed production means, simply to allow people to trade smoothly, as market-orders put a large strain on the servers.
So in short, if the major activity was trading, agents, belts & production means got removed by CCP to keep the servers running smoothy without the need to implement population caps (at Jita this failed at one period, giving way to large queues for ships that tried to enter Jita during weekends)
And why those systems became tradehubs? Players & chance.CCP wasn’t involved in the making of them, players choose it. CCP just accommodated the players once the trade hubs grew in strength.
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I suspect that a single, all-consuming trade hub caught CCP, if not by surprise, then as an unwelcome development.
I say this with the following two bits of trivia.
High-sec ores vary by empire.
The different empires use different components on the larger ships, and different fuel for the jump drives.
I suspect CCP would have broken up Jita, like a monopoly, if they could figure out a way to do so that wouldn’t backfire spectacularly.
I wasn’t playing yet when Yulai was a trade hub, or if I was, I wasn’t interested in travel, yet. I’ve only read the in-game fiction that was written to justify the action some years later, (something about smuggling.) It certainly SEEMS like that might have been CCP trying to spread out trade, and failing miserably.
As it is, Jita has emerged as the biggest. It’s the network effect. The value of a network is proportional to the number of nodes on that network. Sometimes that results in inferior choices winning, such as VHS over Betamax. When enough more people were using Jita than any other system, that became the De Facto, rather than De Jure trade hub. Then it was just a matter of CCP doing something to keep the game running smoothly.
I don’t know if CCP would still like to remove Jita as the One True Tradehub, or if the game has evolved enough that it fits with their current plans going forward.
What where/are “supergates”?
What are the requirements for a system to be designated a “trade hub”, and hence subject to different ruleset?
At a guess? Enough more traffic than the average system that it needs its own server full time.
They don’t exist anymore.
They linked Yulai directly to each of the 4 races regions. CCP removed them.
This is easy to research Salvos. Go do some homework. Or pay us.
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That would apply to many nexus link systems that currently not designated as “trade hubs”, as well as the question whether those metric conditions should also apply in LS/NS, designating the system as a “trade hub”.
Im not convinced it is a result of player activity. Its a CCP choice.
Maybe your definition of “traffic” is too limited.
For CCP’s purposes, “traffic” would be anything that added load to the system, and not just a database string of ships going through a gate.
Edit. And yes, they chose the easy way out of making a separate ruleset when the regular one didn’t fit the situation, and then applying that separate ruleset where it would relieve pressure on their most taxed servers.
It was not my conjecture, it was yours.
I assumed by “traffic” you meant player activity in the system.
Did you mean something else?
No. Player activity. All player activity. At least all player activity that couldn’t easily be removed to a separate server, such as, probably, chat and market.
Supergates were gates that spanned large distances on the map: Yulai connected Caldari, Amarr, minmatar & Gallente space with itself. Then CCP changed it & Yulai died as tradehub, as it was no longer the crossroad of 4 factions/regions
Requirement fo a system to be a tradehub: major activity is to be trading; which is the case for Jita, Amarr, Dodixie, Hek, Rens and several smaller hubs that are more specific (FW has a few tradehubs, specialized for them, to offer quick ships & equipment without shipping it from afar)
To get the ‘special ruleset’, you first need to trade so hard, as to break the normal system operations, something the major trade hubs have done in the past in one way or another (not sure about Hek/Rens tho, their dual status could actually have saved them from server-overloads, never payed attention if they got belts/agents still there)
The ‘ruleset’ you claim was merely a needed response from CCP to keep the servers running smooth, as market orders put a big strain on the servers. So if more & more people are trading in a single system, it tends to put a big load on the servers. To make sure people can play smooth, agents, belts & production means got removed in order to prevent the final solution being used: player population limits (they were in place at one point for Jita & even for Amarr at times, leading to large queues at those system gates during busy weekends)
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To which “hub” systems exactly?
And has Jita not caused the same problem, as a megalithic trade hub that eclipses all others, even in absence of “supergates”, as was the apparent reason for removing them so as to prevent Yulai becoming a Jita?
I was going to post this not as a reply, but you gave me a perfect opening,.
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That is a model for efficiency, not for dynamic/competitive game systems.
Go do your own homework Salvos. Or pay me.
It wasn’t direct to the regional hubs (many of which are still the same as they used to be), but created a superhighway between them (and from Yulai as a central trade location). It was direct to each race regions, so moving between regions and their hubs was fast.
It’s the driving force behind one, seemingly non-superior choice, winning out over all others. When enough people jump on THAT bandwagon, as in the case of VHS, the alternative, Betamax, potentially a technically superior choice, loses. The same happened with Jita over all others.
The players choose the “join” the “network” with the most nodes for maximum profit.
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Which would make it rational to encourage diversified hubs, rather than the Jita monstrosity.
They didn’t link to hub systems, Yulai was the tradehub. And yes, CCP learned from it. CCP broke the main tradehub. Players said Screw you CCP! We’ll make a new central tradehub! Bigger and better then you could ever envision!
And CCP realized it was better to let players do their thing, rather then force yet another direct intervention.
Lo and behold: Jita emerged as player response. Why Jita? Blame the Achura, mainstay of the players were Caldari, so Jita won out.
Yes, but players refused it. Even when the pop limits were a thing, people didn’t abandon Jita. they just began using the adjanct systems for trading (you can still see this in effect! Various systems adjanct to jita have a high trade volume & can be considered part of the Jita trade hub)
What also killed (and is killing) other tradehubs is the professionalization of ganking. Transporting large amount of goods between tradehubs is a risk, so to minimize costs, you move it to the place where it’ll sell within the turnover production rate, so you don’t end up with useless stock. And Jita is biggest.
As said, Jita is the biggest hub, with a tradevolume eclipsing the entire cluster. Amarr follows far behind Jita, but still eclipses all other trade-places, making it a strong secondary trade hub.
Then you get Dodixie, Hek & Rens, tradehubs that have withered, but won’t die off completely due to the standing systems that can prevent players entering Caldari/Amarr space.
However, if those 3 lose enough trade-volume, a FW tradehub could take over. they’re small, but got a constant turnover thanks to FW players buying at them for convenience.
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Rational, yes. But the pressure from CCP would have to be great enough to overcome the players choice to flock to the system with the most customers.
And too much pressure, or the wrong pressure, could have deleterious effects in other areas of the game.
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