Anhenka
Burning Napalm Northern Coalition.
3
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Posted - 2012.07.10 17:30:00 -
[1] - Quote
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It is a play on the RL Oil cartel OPEC.
It is a cartel of all tech producing corps/alliances that control every known tech moon in the game. Last I heard, they are forbidden to sell tech for anything less than 200k/unit. By keeping a control on the price of tech, buyers of the item (IE, T2 manufacturers) pay an artificially higher price than they might have otherwise paid if everyone who controlled tech was on their own and trying to undercut each other. Because T2 ships/modules are so important to so many players, the inelastic demand ensures that consumers will still pay the higher prices for T2 goods, despite the inflated price for Tech.
The updates to alchemy/ring mining are supposed to allow anyone who can produce more common moon minerals to refine them up into tech, thus breaking the absolute control over the market in the same way they did with invention to counter the cartels that T2 BPOs formed.
While it is true that the Goons do not personally control all the tech in the game, there is a perception that they are the leaders of the OTEC cartel and that other corps/alliances must play by their rules if they are 'allowed' to own their tech moons. How true this perception is, I do not know as I have no contacts or intel on the Goons or other tech-owning entities that isn't publicly available.
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To the best of my not very informed knowledge, there is no real price fixing going currently. No need to tbh. Tech is still a bottleneck, and with Delvewar and the Solar Vs NCdot+bros in Geminate, Demand for t2 ships is high enough to keep prices high (160k/unit atm) without stockpiling and price fixing.
I dont know about the other OTEC alliances, but there is no lost bropact between most of NCdot and Goons. An agreement not to shoot each others tech moons is to our mutual benefit, but the type of close collaboration required to price fix tech seems unlikely. Goon "enforcement" of an OTEC style treaty is impossible atm anyway. If NCdot sold tech under a preset price, and Goons tried to take our tech moons in reply, it would likely result in NCdot aligning with the SoCo faction, both throwing our not inconsiderable force to them and freeing up the 500 man solar/gypsy/INK /fleets that have been stuck in Geminate fighting us and Ev0ke/Ew0ks.
You could expect Soco fleet sizes to double overnight. |
Anhenka
Burning Napalm Northern Coalition.
3
|
Posted - 2012.07.10 18:42:00 -
[2] - Quote
Kyle Ward wrote:Derath Ellecon wrote:The Spice must flow.
Oh wait, wrong universe. Man I wish they'd buff boosters to the point where everyone wanted to use them. Then we could have powerful drug cartels and smugglers and all kinds of seedy and cool space-crime...
If more people knew what they were like more people would use them. 3 mil for a 20% increase in capacitor?
or 5 mil for a 20% boost in armor/shield boost?
Surprises me that every active repping carrier in EVE doesn't have a mindflood/exile/blue pill booster in their holds.
Also, <3 Dune.
Edit: just ran 1.5 billion worth of boosters through 40 jumps of highsec without so much as a ticket.
There's a secret to it, but you don't know it. :P |