So I just reactivated after a year, and picked up some serious LP missioning.

But now I'm looking at how to best convert that LP into ISK, and it seems that the value of LP has dropped considerably over the past year since I left.

I sort of remember getting around 1.6mil isk/LP for Ministry of War, but now when I start adding up prices for tags and isk to redeem, there does not seem to be anything worth more than about 850k/LP.


Has LP value really dropped that much or is my memory of how much I got a year ago just plain bad?

No offense, but you clearly haven't taken a serious look at the economics of LP stores. Incursions do in fact provide a greater supply of LP, but that LP isn't optimally used in some random LP store. Incursion runners might cash some out for personal use that way (yay, more MIMAF), but it isn't having a major market effect.

In fact, I'd argue that incursions are actually doing the opposite: they are flooding so much ISK into the system that more people are paying higher prices for faction mods quite happily. And if you look at the actual numbers, this is the case: the market price of faction mods hasn't dropped and in most cases has trended upwards (just like, you know, everything else). The reason that the LP conversion rate has dropped isn't in the sale price, it's in the associated costs: tags.

As more people want to cash out LP, the demand on the limited tag supply is stretched -- in some cases to a breaking point. Most mission runners won't run anti-faction missions because getting cut off from half of high sec is unappealing to them (especially as they consider themselves already cut off from anything outside of high sec). So there they are, churning out LP left and right but buying tags if they actually want to turn it in to something shiny. Tag prices go way up, LP conversions rates go down.

Now, tag pressures are not constant. I already kind of alluded to this. As tag pressures grow on one set of tags (sending conversion rates down), they tend to be alleviated a bit on others (which shifts the "good" conversion rates to new items). Playing tag markets, either independently or in conjunction with LP conversion, is actually quite profitable. But it's something most people don't want to take the time/effort to do (even though you really oughtn't factor it too highly into your ISK/hr ratio as it's something that can easily be done while blitzing missions in your pimped Machariel).

So yeah. Too much LP isn't the proximal cause. Incursion LP most certainly isn't. Tags are. So here's a hint for the enterprising: bulk tags come from FW and L5s. If you want to make a killing, look there. You won't have nearly as much trouble converting your LP and you'll have extras to throw at the greedy L4 masses.

(Disclaimer: this is based on math that I haven't updated in several months, but I can't imagine it's shifted much. Managing tag orders while blitzing missions just isn't my idea of fun at this point and so the whole thing has dropped off of my radar in favor of figuring out how to take advantage of having deadspace mods on market....)

If incursions have hurt the LP conversion rate it's by reducing the number of people farming the tags, if anything..

That said, I can still convert a small number of LP at about 2.5k per. (Give or take a couple hundred, which you can argue are actually trade profits from getting the tags cheaper.) No, I won't tell you where because I doubt that market would hold up if a few people got in.

I'd argue though that what you need to do is figure out which missions drop the best tags and try to farm those. I see some tags like the CN Vice Admiral are pushing 7-8m a pop. (No one wants to be cut off from Jita apparently.) I can see how it would be hard to convert Gallente LPs with tag prices like that.