Originally by: Matthew

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Edited by: Matthew on 25/04/2005 09:16:24
The current campaign of terror against empire miners, whilst amusing and entertaining to some, is actually counter-productive to it's stated goal of forcing miners out of empire space. You may force the miners out of their barges, true, but you won't force them out of empire space.

By culling miners, you are reducing the supply of minerals, which will push up the price of minerals. Higher mineral prices will actually encourage more mining, the opposite of what you are trying to achieve. All that will happen is that you'll push the miners away from the barges, back into the osprey and the apoc, which they'll then tank heavily to fend off suicide attacks. Ironically, the increased mineral prices from lower supply could well mean that they still make as much isk, even though they're mining less.

The best way to force miners out of empire space, is to make mining less profitable for them. You're trying to do that by blowing them up, but with the current market conditions for minerals, that is unlikely to work. This is really a situation where you need to beat them by joining them. Become empire miners yourselves - mobilise your supporters and mine the roids right out from under the empire miners. Flood the market with trit and pyer.

Do that, and you force low-end mineral prices down. With low prices for trit and pyer, jaspet etc starts to look attractive to mine again, and a campaign of terror would then stand more chance of moving people out there.

Right now you're trying to force people from mining for X money with the risk of a sucicide gank, to mining for X money with the risk of random free-for-all ganks. No amount of push-factor is going to make them take that option. Force down low-end mineral prices to create an income difference between the two choices, and you stand a fair chance of succeeding.

Of course, as soon as miners start to move out to low-sec, the supply of low-ends in empire drops, prices rise again, stopping further migration. You'll never get rid of empire mining completely.

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