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Captain Boomer
People's Commissariat
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Posted - 2010.03.29 18:49:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Captain Boomer on 29/03/2010 19:04:13 Edited by: Captain Boomer on 29/03/2010 18:51:17 I've been thinking about the problem of mineral oversupply and how the situation might be improved. There is perhaps no single solution but below is one idea for one that could be developed further - have a read and then by all means shoot me down (hopefully constructively) or propose some alternatives:
Oversupply Causes: Macro-mining Wormholes Farming missions Insufficient 'mineral sinks'
Effects: Falling/unstable prices Persistently depressed markets for minerals Mining becomes an increasingly unattractive profession even in 0.0 and wormholes
Unpopular or improbable ways of fixing oversupply Macro-mining - This is adequately covered elsewhere and besides there is no real fix apparently, in fact I'm not so sure CCP actually want to fix it...blah blah blah I could digress for days about why this won't/can't actually be fixed...
Wormholes - More/tougher sleeper presence at the better mining sites?
Farming missions - trying to fix oversupply by adjusting reprocessing yields or loot tables downwards is not great either as it brings its own problems
Insuffient 'mineral' sinks - This is the best place to make a change. CCP no doubt do a lot of balancing and whilst its tempting to increase new build mineral cost by 'X'% across the board, I suspect that this would only cause a temporary drop in supply.
The Alternative Solution
Limit the 'lifetime' of minerals on the market or in a hangar - this idea is a variation on the mineral sink. A problem with station warehousing means that minerals become INERT and useless after a certain period (something like a short radioactive half-life). So something like Zydrine would need to be put into production within a comparatively short time or it becomes useless much quicker than say Tritanium.
The advantages of such a system are manifold - minerals that expire quickly will carry more risk to mine and consequently will be broadly more expensive for the limited period that they last on the market than minerals that last longer. On the otherhand whilst Tritanium will still be cheaper than Zydrine it will not last forever either, so Macroers can't stockpile it and wait until the market comes up again only to flood it - instead they would have to sell right away.
One Problem with this idea - how to distinguish day old Tritanium from 30 day old Tritanium, since Tritanium can be broken down to single units? A timer for each unit is an unworkable solution
Possible solution: Just as mining lasers mine ores in X amount per cycle - refinery output should produce minerals in 'Ingots' of five sizes Small (100 mineral units), Medium (1000) and Large (10000) and X-Large (100000) and XX-Large (1 million) each unit would have a timer that counts in whole days the remaining life of that Ingot. Ingots can be reprocessed and 'chopped' into smaller units for ease of transport, but only in multiples of 100, 1000, 10k, 100k. Similarly smaller units could be reprocessed and 'combined' to form a single big unit for ease of sale - but the whole Ingot would have the same lifetime as its lowest constituent piece.
If not used in a job within its lifeime, the Ingot becomes useless. Also the manufacturing process should not allow a job containing ingots that will expire before the end of the job. Consequently the newer the Ingot the more valuable to a bulk or capital manufacturer. People manufacturing a few ships would find their ability to use low-life time minerals would reduce their costs.
Conclusion Its definitely not perfect, but it might work given further thought. It would add a whole lot of interest to the trade in minerals as well as to the whole production side. It would make mining more lucrative whilst proportionately increasing the risk...since the expensive ores must be transported to market/used quickly for them to be worth a
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Thebriwan
LUX Uls Xystus
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Posted - 2010.03.29 20:00:00 -
[2]
To make my statement short: There is no oversupply.
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Midori Tsu
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Posted - 2010.03.29 20:32:00 -
[3]
Originally by: Thebriwan To make my statement short: There is no oversupply.
In way it is, although there never really was a supply problem, the prices have dropped. I believe the reason was the regeneration speed was shortened do to macrominers getting it all before people who don't use macro's had a chance. I think that should be fixed, make it harder to find minerals, though that does completely defeat the counter to macro-miners.
Captain Boomer, sorry to say none of your proposed "fixes" will do anything. I've heard that reprocessing mission loot for minerals is a problem though.
The only way i see mineral prices going up is to cut down the amount of asteroids.
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darius mclever
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Posted - 2010.03.29 20:35:00 -
[4]
counter proposal: just blow up more ships. hint: there is a big war coming up.
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Komi Toran
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Posted - 2010.03.29 21:24:00 -
[5]
Which won't have any effect as people will just store their minerals as ammo/mods/ships/whatever and reprocess them when they actually need the minerals to sell/build.
I've read a lot of discussion on adjusting loot tables, but have never run across those "problems" you make reference to. Care to enlighten me?
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DeODokktor
Caldari Dark Templars The Fonz Presidium
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Posted - 2010.03.30 01:00:00 -
[6]
Sadly "Over-Supply" is something that you cant get away from.. Due to some minerals now being really cheap constantly, other minerals can combine with them to give a end result that's profitable. Trit (for example) is the base material in most tech1 items.. Ships can currently be purchased for much less than insurance profit, so, trit cant drop in price (when it does, people will build ships and blow them up for profit)
As long as there's profit in something, supply will not fall.. I guess it's not fully ccp's fault that other minerals have fallen in price, but insurance (in some cases) can work to prop up markets. If the trend continues they will probably drop insurance payouts, because they dont like isk taps, and what you have now is roughly an isk tap (selling minerals to npc's)
----------- Never Forget the joy of finding a main to link to a scammer alt. N-y-p-h-u-r ! ! |
Di Mulle
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Posted - 2010.03.30 01:19:00 -
[7]
Edited by: Di Mulle on 30/03/2010 01:20:02 Edited by: Di Mulle on 30/03/2010 01:19:38
Originally by: Captain Boomer
The Alternative Solution
For this solution to work one must assume that there are ever increasing stockpiles of minerals and they, not the constant flow from mining into production, are the core problem. Proof or doesn't happen
Now, what about stuff, which requires only few units of mineral to produce ? Force to produce them in big batches, or effectively multiply their price ? Ever tried to imagine all the hassle managing mineral stock of any size ?
But this nothing comparing to a real underlying problem. Congratulations, you just threw current EVE database out of the window. For some example, try to imagine market window with ingots
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Zoltar Torzoid
Gallente Swag Co.
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Posted - 2010.03.30 01:28:00 -
[8]
How about a new mineral sink in the form of customized builds? Keep the standard build mineral cost as-is for a ship, but allow manufacturers to add minerals (with diminishing returns and/or drawbacks) to tweak the ships attributes. Gives us custom recipe's for certain variations on standard ships. Custom ships would be sold via the contract system, with full disclosure of stats so you don't bork the market database... Various recipe's that work really well are now secrets the corp can hang onto effectively giving us a limited branding system.
Just a thought.
-Zoltar
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Ravenmorte
Caldari Enigmatic Federation
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Posted - 2010.03.30 14:44:00 -
[9]
Edited by: Ravenmorte on 30/03/2010 14:48:14 ok, heres a sink for you Corporate customizable ships. Similarry than the naval vessels and tech 2 upgrades, allow people to research for corporation modifications, with integrated module technology. This means, ship has certain module as a standard subsystem.
Imagine that a ship has a mining laser as a module, or warp scrambling capability without CPU need (its allready calculated on ships base design.
So basicly, regular ships with ability to slipstream a module or weapon to it. In case of a missle launcher, it could have missle launcher bay for missle storage, but it would be small. It would also be slow.
Also, there could be a NPC mineral orders on such things as smelters and mints. Daily quota. This could also be tied to the secotry defences: More you supply military or corporations with raw minerals, more concords there will be on areas and military / tradeships in general to support players within region or trade ships that you can raid. "Theres a forklift in your mind" - B5 parody |
Dacryphile
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Posted - 2010.03.30 19:01:00 -
[10]
Simpler solution would be to reduce the reprocess rate of loot.
Originally by: Doc Robertson ...take a good look at this pic and tell us which one is you.
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Sonreir
Gallente Band of Builders Inc. Trinova
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Posted - 2010.03.30 19:16:00 -
[11]
Set max ME on a BPO to be 5 and you've not only increased the demand for minerals you've also solved the issue with there never being enough research slots in Empire.
Job done.
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darius mclever
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Posted - 2010.03.30 19:25:00 -
[12]
devblog about it
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