Taurin Herock
   |
Posted - 2010.04.03 21:15:00 -
[1]
This is blog is interesting for several reasons. Thinking through the implications of these changes to mission loot, tag drops and insurance I see a variety of changes that are probably going to be way bigger than the effect of DUSK514.
There will certainly be a price shock for minerals, and gradually miners will fill in the needed supply to meet demand. But the new supply won't come online immediately. It will take some weeks to months while people train up the hulks and develop the trade routes to the industrial centers. So you can see that there's going to be a hulk price spike to get those miners online. Also while the minerals spike happens, ships, ammo, drones and mods will spike in price.
Indirectly I see the drop in loot minerals causing an increase in salvage prices and drop in the prices of faction mods purchased with LP. Consider that with lower value loot, more mission runners will simply blitz missions for bounties and LP. Decreasing supply of salvage and increasing supply of LP items.
The extra pirate faction tags have the potential to tank the tags market, depending on how CCP uses their NPC buy orders. So the exchange of minerals for tags has the potential to be a meager offering for a major ISK loss from minerals.
The modified insurance is more interesting and probably more powerfull on a macro-economic perspective. This will change how corps wage war. It will change how people pvp.
Take the example of the high sec gank of a freighter. With current platinum insurance and a carefully chosen fit, the gang can loose less than 10mill isk for each gankatron used. Get 20 of these and you can pop a freighter and it only needs 200mill in cargo drop to be worthwhile to do this. That's an easy target to find. However if payouts come down to equal the amount of a new ship at best, then each gank you're on the hook for the cost of fitting and the insurance premium. That instantly brings the cost of a gankatron into the range of 50mill or so assuming 100% reimbursement. Now you're looking at freighters with an expected loot drop of a billion isk minimum to break even and cover the ISK lost let alone the sec status lost. So what happens is the number of viable targets goes way down. Now consider the not insignificant difficulty of getting 20 gankatrons going in one group and finding a higher value target. You're rapidly looking at the point of limiting returns where players don't have a critical mass of targets to make it worth their while to try and gank freighters.
Similarly the lower insurance payouts will make corp wars more painful for the victims. The noob carebears with fully insures L4 mission abaddon's will not get as much payout. Sure the decreased payout will effect the aggressors also, but to be honest pvp combat is highly asymmetric. The aggressors rarely aggress unless they are confident they will win.
To be honest, the changes discussed in this blog is mostly a smackdown to high sec mission runners, and a hand out to griefers and miners. Griefers are awarded the option to hurt more when they attack, since insurance doesn't cover nearly as much. And miners earn more from their minerals. While mission runners get less loot, devalued tags, devalued LP items and decreased insurance payouts from pve mistakes or pvp traps all the while paying more for their ships mods and ammo.
Apparently all those people who moan and complain about high sec mission runners making too much ISK have gotten what they wanted. A heavy nerf to mission running. Congrats.
|