Also: Is there a realistic summary/equation that sums up the net results of ship losses in EVE?

I agree with you on the technical application of the words 'sink' and 'faucet'. Value loss is a good term for ship loss. My point is though, isn't value loss essentially the same thing? And doesn't it have the same leveling effect on macro economics?

Also: Add pod loss to my previous list. Implants = value loss in the same way.

I think Value Loss, especially uninsured items, mods, implants, etc. can be treated the same as any other sink.

3 - whether the playerbase is trending towards fielding assets that require more resources (and thus more cash to denominate the value of such and/or act as reserve for replacements).

Confrontation fuels any economy.

CCP should do more to fuel confrontation... I have said this for years now - give the people something to shoot at that will either..

1. Ruin someones day or
2. cause the owner to defend it.

I would like to see an Incursion type areana but with perhaps CCP running these so called live events.

Or perhaps more tounament based areana.... just something to make people want to spend isk.

I have about 5bil in the bank, anything i earn goes into a PVP ship. I personally hate grinding but find incursions a good and enjoyable pass time. I don't think incursions are the reason for increase in PLEX. Its quite possible due to the effect of moon mining. (dont get confused i am talking about moon mining and not the act of reacting).

Role eve back 5 years at a time when small roaming groups were frequent - thats eve at its best and i think the nano nerf stopped a lot of roaming gangs.

Now i use t1 cruisers and destroyers becuase they are cheap and good fun, and with the act of being blobbed its makes taking a more expensive ship out roaming hard to justify.

Perhaps what we need is a different types of fuel for all types of ships and not just capitals..that is an item managed by CCP and not a player based thing or, certain items in game will contain a VAT payment.

You can make a lot of accounts to real life. people will spend money on new items so we need new items - however this may not be as simple as it seems since adding new items means so many different other paths need to be walked.

I'm not an expert at economics, so please correct me if I am wrong.

The inflation of the price of final products leads to an increase in the price of raw goods used to make the ships, modules, etc being blown up due to more conflict. The increase of price in raw goods leads to more people harvesting those raw goods (miners, PI, etc) creating downward pressure on the price of raw goods. Those raw goods are then turned into more ships, modules, etc, decreasing the price of those final products.

So in the end, an increase in conflict/consumption mainly increases the rate at which isk exchanges hands, but may not necessarily increase the price of goods in the long run as people adjust to the new demand?

"Appropriate growth" isn't something I can really give a firm answer to because there's a lot of information I'm missing. You do want some level of growth in the isk supply though, as the player supply is always growing. A fixed or even shrinking amount of isk for an ever-increasing (or so we hope) number of players is a bad thing.

I'd note that the two previous suggestions I made would have a greater effect than that. Rewards and time bonuses removes a 5t/mo faucet, replacing them with LP at a 1000:1 ratio means that another 5T/mo (give or take, the ratio for LP redemption isn't always 1000:1) is removed to redeem it. Then there's the estimated 3-6T on top of that.

Eliminating bluebooks would require further iteration on wormholes to add value to replace it...at least some of it. Wormholes aren't my forte and I'm not really sure how much of their income is from the bluebooks vs other items, but an outright and complete removal is probably inadvisable. Partial replacement might be a welcome change from the wormhole crowd, but it's not something I've thought too much about as far as concrete ideas. ;)

When a player purchases a hulk they are basically converting their isk into potential isk.

You can sell the hulk for 200 million isk potentially.

If you lose a hulk you lose the potential for 200 million isk. It doesn't remove isk from the market, but it does remove the potential isk of the player who owned the ship.

Potential isk is just as important as actual isk. I mean if everyone had 10 hulks and 1 million isk. The hulk wouldn't be worth 1 million since everyone had a hulk.

Had a good chuckle at this. I thought the economics majors would have been less uppity after 2008. At least when a mechanical engineer stuffs up all that collapses is a bridge...

Me trying to explain why to him, was you guys trying to explain complex economics to me (isk sinks lol)