Why should the Rorqual get better in compression? Isn't the whole point of those changes that the minerals/ores/ice should be used localy rather then shipping _everything_ to jita?

Same with HS Ice belt, those are not there for **** of botters, the change is made so people in 0.0 start mining it more for their local demand.

Why should the Rorqual get better in compression? Isn't the whole point of those changes that the minerals/ores/ice should be used localy rather then shipping _everything_ to jita?

Why should the Rorqual get better in compression? Isn't the whole point of those changes that the minerals/ores/ice should be used localy rather then shipping _everything_ to jita?

Same with HS Ice belt, those are not there to **** of botters, the change is made so people in 0.0 start mining it more for their local demand.

Well, the Rorqual can surely compress the leftover ice in the 4 h downtime, can-¦t it?

While those sentiments are romantic in the eyes of CCP, the realities of the game do not support those ideals.

• Highsec only contains racial ice, which contains 300 racial isotopes, 50 heavy water, 25 ozone, and 1 strontium. Heavy water is not used in much besides construction of fuel blocks for towers or rorqual siege cycles. The construction of these fuel blocks requires an equal amount of ozone to match the heavy water. Since the racial ice contains 2:1 HW:ozone this creates a large imbalance that demands the import of ozone from nullsec. Dark Glitter produces 1000 ozone and 500 HW per block, vs the 25 and 50 per block in highsec. In this way the nullsec ices are the only thing that provides enough ozone to highsec to function properly. Thus it's mandatory for nullsec ices to be shipped to highsec.

The only way to effectively ship the nullsec blocks to empire is via compression. Therefore the rorqual ice compression speed needs to be increased to enable this mandatory activity. If they want nullsec ice miners, this needs to happen.


• Selling locally is also a nice idea, but utterly fails in practice. Nullsec ice fields only contain a single type of racial ice, yielding only a single type of faction isotope. This isotope could be sold locally, but fuel for the other 3 races still have to be imported by necessity. Thus, even at best you're still left importing 75% of your isotopes from highsec.


• My point about the highsec ice belts was that the proposed changes are catering to the botting community more so, by making it impossible for real players to find the leftover scraps during their primetime thanks to the bots having cleared everything out. The bots are quite happy mining during all other hours after the players ragequit in frustration.


• Local consumption of minerals is completely valid. My only gripes are with the ice changes right now.

For these reasons it's completely impossible to break the ties between highsec and nullsec. The changes to the game should understand and support these realities

While those sentiments are romantic in the eyes of CCP, the realities of the game do not support those ideals.

• Highsec only contains racial ice, which contains 300 racial isotopes, 50 heavy water, 25 ozone, and 1 strontium. Heavy water is not used in much besides construction of fuel blocks for towers or rorqual siege cycles. The construction of these fuel blocks requires an equal amount of ozone to match the heavy water. Since the racial ice contains 2:1 HW:ozone this creates a large imbalance that demands the import of ozone from nullsec. Dark Glitter produces 1000 ozone and 500 HW per block, vs the 25 and 50 per block in highsec. In this way the nullsec ices are the only thing that provides enough ozone to highsec to function properly. Thus it's mandatory for nullsec ices to be shipped to highsec.

The only way to effectively ship the nullsec blocks to empire is via compression. Therefore the rorqual ice compression speed needs to be increased to enable this mandatory activity. If they want nullsec ice miners, this needs to happen.


• Selling locally is also a nice idea, but utterly fails in practice. Nullsec ice fields only contain a single type of racial ice, yielding only a single type of faction isotope. This isotope could be sold locally, but fuel for the other 3 races still have to be imported by necessity. Thus, even at best you're still left importing 75% of your isotopes from highsec.


• My point about the highsec ice belts was that the proposed changes are catering to the botting community more so, by making it impossible for real players to find the leftover scraps during their primetime thanks to the bots having cleared everything out. The bots are quite happy mining during all other hours after the players ragequit in frustration.


• Local consumption of minerals is completely valid. My only gripes are with the ice changes right now.

For these reasons it's completely impossible to break the ties between highsec and nullsec. The changes to the game should understand and support these realities

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you assuming that there would only be one ice anom active at a time per system?

In null it is not uncommon to have multiple grav sites in a single system. In sov it is possible for an upgraded system to have many respawning anoms simultaneously.

Do we know that each system will have only one respawning ice anom? They could just as easily have two or three, no?

The prices of high sec obtainable minerals are currently falling and the price of ice products are increasing. These are both both correct statements but as your analysis states miners want to mine whatever makes the best ISK. Most miners mine to make ISK so nul sec miners will continue to target rocks heavy with Morphite, Megacyte, Zydrine, & Nocxium. The Spod will still be last on their list if mined at all. Once the changes come in on June 4th high sec miners will look to mine ice only as much as possible as the prices for ice products will have risen further by then. As a result of all of this the prices for high sec obtainable minerals will rise back up and maybe even go above the previous higher price levels.

Read the forums and dont make silly assumptions

The new ice changes have the effect of turning a relaxing night of mining into frustrating repeated 4hr downtimes - which means players will log out and go play other games. "The high sec anoms contain 2500 units of their racial isotope ice." The estimated time to completion of these belts was given to be around 45 mins for 30 highsec miners. This means for the timezones that people play they'll be able to mine for less than 16% of the time. Friendly group mining with corpmates will become competitively inhibitive and discourage the formation of player industry operations.

...but real players with busy schedules will no longer be able to mine at all when they get home. In short, the 4hr respawn timer on ice belts is not a good idea.

Right now a perfect low/nullsec ice miner pulls in 90 blocks/hr. After Odyssey the ice mining yield will double up to 180 blocks/hr. A necessity of low/nullsec ice mining is compressing the ice so you can ship it to empire for sale. Right now the rorqual can compress ore fast enough to keep up with 20 perfect ore miners. But right now it can only compress ice fast enough to keep up with 4 ice miners. After Odyssey the rorqual will ONLY BE ABLE TO KEEP UP WITH 2 ICE MINERS. This is highly detrimental to the goals of shifting ice mining into low/nullsec.

My worry is that folks who have racial towers in null that do not line up with the area's racial isotope will incur a cost astronomically higher.

Right now a perfect low/nullsec ice miner pulls in 90 blocks/hr. After Odyssey the ice mining yield will double up to 180 blocks/hr. A necessity of low/nullsec ice mining is compressing the ice so you can ship it to empire for sale. Right now the rorqual can compress ore fast enough to keep up with 20 perfect ore miners. But right now it can only compress ice fast enough to keep up with 4 ice miners. After Odyssey the rorqual will ONLY BE ABLE TO KEEP UP WITH 2 ICE MINERS. This is highly detrimental to the goals of shifting ice mining into low/nullsec.

Comparing the new ice anomalies to the nullsec ore belts. In terms of manhours needed to complete each belt we can see a startling difference in size. Even if CCP upholds the small 2500 ice fields in empire, the nullsec ice fields need to be expanded in size by at least a factor of 4x-8x to remain on par with other nullsec mining activities. An increase in nullsec ice field size would also go a long ways to moving that desired 20% ice mining out to low/nullsec. Likewise, the 4hr respawn timer for low/nullsec ice fields makes little sense because the location you're attempting to throttle is highsec only.

The nullsec ore belts actually do have massive timezone imbalance issues because fresh belts will only spawn during downtime. Which means that the euro players are able to consume all the valuable ores long before any other timezone even wakes up. During the question answer session at fanfest it was stated that the new nullsec ice anoms will maintain their current variety of ice types. The demo from the presentation showed an ice anom as "Pristine White Glaze field" rather than a more generic "Medium Ice Field" which implied a homogeneous assortment of ice inside. But many quotes since indicate that each ice anom will contain many mixed types of ice ("The best ice anoms found in the lowest truesec in all areas of space will contain all three non-racial ice types.")

There are also concerns that nullsec miners will be forced to mine terrible "highsec ice" rather than the nullsec variants, just to force a respawn of that ice belt into something worth more.

It seems that the intention is to force nullsec miners into mining the racial variants of ice by placing it as an obstacle to harvesting the ice of true value. This will vastly hurt the profitability of nullsec ice miners and discourage them from mining at this greatly increased risk, when they could just mine safely in highsec for the same profit.

stuff

That means that post-patch, at today's prices, the racial ices will be in the 32-38m/hr range and the dark glitter will be worth 72m/hr.

How come you don't have a CSM tag yet? Hurry up & sign that NDA

EDIT: HA I just realized I got more likes then a CSM member

It'll be interesting to see how fast these NULL SEC ice fields deplete versus HI SEC fields.
Do NULL SEC ICE bears ISBOX like you see in HI SEC with 20 odd ships?

You assume 30 ice miners will be at each highsec belt, and that group mining with corpmates will die out and discourage player industry ops. However, a counter-argument could be made that player cooperation will become only more important, as corpmates scout out different ice belts and then summon aid to mine the ice before other corps can do it. You could even see more wardecs as people try to protect "their turf" from other corps, leading to increased player interaction and cooperation beteween pvp and industry players -- prelude to a corp ready to move to low/nullsec. These are good things. And, of course, your statement that ice belts won't be around when people get home is too strong. In reality, there will be a distribution of outcomes on that front and people may need to interact with friends to find out where the ice is when they get home. What kind of gameplay is it to have a static objective which never changes, never depletes -- can never really be accomplished? Bots aside, this is a great gameplay change.

I hear we're comparing like totals in this thread now so I came running.

What is beyond me is why the current ice mining mechanic is being kept in place. AFK ice mining in high sec might have been tolerable (I wouldn't know as I don't mine), but mining in null sec can't be done AFK on a large scale. So basically you press a button and stare at local for 15 minutes, and repeat this cycle as long as you can endure. Hardly engaging PVE gameplay worthy of a 2013 MMO. Why anyone would put up with that instead of spending time on the more interesting parts of Eve is beyond me. Ratting, while still being boring, at least have some variety.

you say that like ice mining uses a unique mechanic that no other activity uses. shame that isn't true.

also mining as a mechanic is perfectly fine. it's also fine that you don't want to do it, plenty of others do.

IIRC ice has no +5% or plus +10%. This should be added and like ore, is effected by truesec.

How come you don't have a CSM tag yet? Hurry up & sign that NDA

EDIT: HA I just realized I got more likes then a CSM member

They do appear to have something similiar

Blue Ice vs Thick Blue Ice is almost +50%

I hear we're comparing like totals in this thread now so I came running.

Now that the ice belts are anomalies I vote for them to be redone into comets. So you warp to these comets with the long tail and everything. Comets have been shown to be 10-30km. Or at least an added feature to scan down with probes in all systems for rare ice in these comets, enough for a solo pilot.

It's nowhere near 50%, and it's the low/null version of the highsec ore

it's about 1/6th better

Here at goonswarm we try to make hi-sec tears as much as possible. I fear ccp fozzie has bested us this time though.

Tears of joy that is

...In any event, the amount of ice in high sec can only support about 35% of the ice miners that are currently operating there. The ice just will not spawn fast enough to support more...

Ignoring the mining aspect (which the OP did and excellent job covering), I'd like to turn the discussion to logistics and politics.

At some point, the demand of ice products is going to outstrip supply. Combining that with ganks, wardecs, null wars, cloakers, and so on means that the day of reckoning will arrive that much sooner.

So what will happen? Will the 0.0 groups go to war with each other over precious ice resources? Will the big blue donut get even bigger as groups band together to share? Will 0.0 bears come to high sec and 'take over' the high sec ice belts (after all, what's easier, structure grinding or knocking over a bunch of carebeary sand castles?)

We could be looking at a case of not enough fields, and too many farms.

Tears of joy that is

I also have some similar concerns around the ice changes. I currently mine Dark Glitter exclusively, otherwise there is no point in ice mining in null. If I were to mine the other ice types I would just do it in high sec with less risk.

I'm happy to wait and see, but if I end up having to spend all my time mining high sec ice in null sec, then I might as well move back to high sec, or switch to ore mining.

In the end it all depends on the composition of the null sec ice anoms. Would be nice to have more information on that.

My two cents anyway.

What is beyond me is why the current ice mining mechanic is being kept in place. AFK ice mining in high sec might have been tolerable (I wouldn't know as I don't mine), but mining in null sec can't be done AFK on a large scale. So basically you press a button and stare at local for 15 minutes, and repeat this cycle as long as you can endure. Hardly engaging PVE gameplay worthy of a 2013 MMO. Why anyone would put up with that instead of spending time on the more interesting parts of Eve is beyond me. Ratting, while still being boring, at least have some variety.

Now that the ice belts are anomalies I vote for them to be redone into comets. So you warp to these comets with the long tail and everything. Comets have been shown to be 10-30km. Or at least an added feature to scan down with probes in all systems for rare ice in these comets, enough for a solo pilot.

You guys need to get away from compression, and exporting to jita. This system is not made for that. The new changes are to encourage local markets independent of highsec trade hubs. Ice isn't supposed to be compressed . It's supposed to be used to manufacture things like fuel blocks to be sold to your alliance and alles in your area.

So you're on board the "You've buffed my overall income considerably but since I'd have to average dark glitter with enhanced highsec ice instead of mining nothing but DG I'll just go to highsec instead" bandwagon too, huh?

e: Let's make sure that what you are saying is put into proper context here. I'm going to rewrite your post for you, using today's prices as a reference point.



There. Fixed your post for you.

We should instead be rebalancing the refined product yield for each type of ice. If the supply of highsec isotopes is too high then the rebalance should reflect this by lowering the refined supply slightly

You make an excellent point about the non-racial ices Jita, and it's something we're keeping in mind as we work on the composition of the 0.0 ice belts.

One quick note I want to respond to however:

The oversupply of ice is so significant that to bring supplies into some kind of balance through reduced refine yields we would need to make each block of ice yield less than 1/2 of a unit of isotopes.

like tying one wrist to the bedpost loosely with soft silk rope.

not enough to make a safeword necessary.

Ice prices are not currently affected at all by supply, because supply is so high it might as well be infinite.

that kind of thinking is going to get you in trouble one day...

Ice prices are not currently affected at all by supply, because supply is so high it might as well be infinite.

We're adjusting the supply to have a fairly mild (but noticeable) affect on prices.

Completely unnecessary analogy:

Currently since supply is practically infinite the ice market has no restrictions at all except people's desires to participate in the market.

After the patch we're giving the market some gentle supply restriction, like tying one wrist to the bedpost loosely with soft silk rope. Just enough to make things a bit more exciting for the market, not enough to make a safeword necessary.

New wormhole space with no moons is an idea I have liked for a while. And yes, if we do ever add more wormhole space we can re-evaluate the option of giving that new space ice.

New wormhole space with no moons is an idea I have liked for a while. And yes, if we do ever add more wormhole space we can re-evaluate the option of giving that new space ice.

How very vanilla.

After the patch we're giving the market some gentle supply restriction, like tying one wrist to the bedpost loosely with soft silk rope. Just enough to make things a bit more exciting for the market, not enough to make a safeword necessary.

I'm feel compelled to put a stop to the incorrect values being thrown around in here. In the months prior to fanfest Dark Glitter was earning 36mil/hr and the 10% racial ices earned 12.2mil/hr. That placed Dark Glitter at 3x better than the 10% racial ice. At current unstable market prices the speculators have generously pushed isotopes up from the 350 range to an astounding 760 range. A 20% reduction in highsec ice will not warrant a long-term 220% increase in isotope prices.

however, the mechanism for obtaining this valuable resource will be one of the most dull and unfun activities in game: waiting on timers.

"Wormhole systems" are just normal solar systems which we only connect to via wormholes, and the idea of a solar system without any moons seems very strange to me. If this was going to be done, I'd want some kind of artificial explanation of why there are no moons, or at least why we can't use them.

"Wormhole systems" are just normal solar systems which we only connect to via wormholes, and the idea of a solar system without any moons seems very strange to me. If this was going to be done, I'd want some kind of artificial explanation of why there are no moons, or at least why we can't use them.

"Wormhole systems" are just normal solar systems which we only connect to via wormholes, and the idea of a solar system without any moons seems very strange to me. If this was going to be done, I'd want some kind of artificial explanation of why there are no moons, or at least why we can't use them.

New wormhole space with no moons is an idea I have liked for a while. And yes, if we do ever add more wormhole space we can re-evaluate the option of giving that new space ice.

perhaps some type of cosmic anomaly, like a stellar nursery or a proto-solar system. to keep things somewhat realistic, it should probably lack planets as well.

The sleepers consumed them (and the planets) with giant mining machines in order to build their endless fleets.

Ice prices are not currently affected at all by supply, because supply is so high it might as well be infinite.

We're adjusting the supply to have a fairly mild (but noticeable) affect on prices.

Completely unnecessary analogy:

Currently since supply is practically infinite the ice market has no restrictions at all except people's desires to participate in the market.

After the patch we're giving the market some gentle supply restriction, like tying one wrist to the bedpost loosely with soft silk rope. Just enough to make things a bit more exciting for the market, not enough to make a safeword necessary.

The sleepers consumed them (and the planets) with giant mining machines in order to build their endless fleets.

Let's take a quick look at Caldari Ice after Odyssey hits.

Currently, Caldari highsec should contain 34 Systems with ice fields, with 40 ice fields in total. If the existing icefields are converted to the new ice anomalies, and we assume that these ice fields are cleared 4 times a day, Caldari highsec could produce 400,000 units of Caldari racial ice each day. This equals:

Racial Isotopes: 120,000,000
Heavy Water: 20,000,000
Liquid Ozone: 10,000,000

To produce 40 Caldari fuel blocks (4 small pos hours), one does need:

Racial Isotopes: 400
Heavy Water: 150
Liquid Ozone: 150

As one can easily see, the ratios between the produced ice products and the demand created by POS are quite off. How the market will react will probably depend on the demand of this particular fuel block. But for now I will work with a high estimate (both HW and LO are imported from elsewhere), a medium estimate (only LO is imported) and a low estimate (nothing is imported)

On high estimate, the Caldari highsec can produce 12,000,000 fuel blocks per day, equalling 500,000 days of small POS operation, while being required to import 25,000,000 units of Heavy Water (125% of daily production) and 35,000,000 units of Liquid Ozone (250% of daily production).

On medium estimate, Caldari highsec will produce 5,333,333 fuel blocks per day, equalling 222,222 days of small POS operation. 66,666,670 units of Racial Isotopes (55.5% of daily production) will be left over, while 10,000,000 units of LO (100% of daily production) would have to be imported from elsewhere.

On low estimate, Caldari highsec will produce 2,666,666 fuel blocks per day, equalling 111,111 days of small POS operation.
93,333,340 units of Racial Isotopes will be left over (77.8% of daily production) and 10,000,000 of Heavy Water (50% of daily production.

I see a LO bottleneck on the horizon.

Let's take a quick look at Caldari Ice after Odyssey hits.

Currently, Caldari highsec should contain 34 Systems with ice fields, with 40 ice fields in total. If the existing icefields are converted to the new ice anomalies, and we assume that these ice fields are cleared 4 times a day, Caldari highsec could produce 400,000 units of Caldari racial ice each day. This equals:

Racial Isotopes: 120,000,000
Heavy Water: 20,000,000
Liquid Ozone: 10,000,000

To produce 40 Caldari fuel blocks (4 small pos hours), one does need:

Racial Isotopes: 400
Heavy Water: 150
Liquid Ozone: 150

As one can easily see, the ratios between the produced ice products and the demand created by POS are quite off. How the market will react will probably depend on the demand of this particular fuel block. But for now I will work with a high estimate (both HW and LO are imported from elsewhere), a medium estimate (only LO is imported) and a low estimate (nothing is imported)

On high estimate, the Caldari highsec can produce 12,000,000 fuel blocks per day, equalling 500,000 days of small POS operation, while being required to import 25,000,000 units of Heavy Water (125% of daily production) and 35,000,000 units of Liquid Ozone (250% of daily production).

On medium estimate, Caldari highsec will produce 5,333,333 fuel blocks per day, equalling 222,222 days of small POS operation. 66,666,670 units of Racial Isotopes (55.5% of daily production) will be left over, while 10,000,000 units of LO (100% of daily production) would have to be imported from elsewhere.

On low estimate, Caldari highsec will produce 2,666,666 fuel blocks per day, equalling 111,111 days of small POS operation.
93,333,340 units of Racial Isotopes will be left over (77.8% of daily production) and 10,000,000 of Heavy Water (50% of daily production.

I see a LO bottleneck on the horizon.

Here at goonswarm we try to make hi-sec tears as much as possible. I fear ccp fozzie has bested us this time though.

This thread is more concerning ice mining but I think the moons issue should cause a bit of a hit on CFC in Delve... since new moons are being added get ready to expand your moon scanning efforts to find AFK replacements for TECH to keep your SRPs rolling as they are right now ( granted you must have an incredible warchet saved from 3+ years of TECH mana). So there's a bit of tears to go around.

I suspect since much of null is dependent on POS's you guys will also be scrambling to set up ICE mining fleets in the mid term too. Have fun with the AFK cloakies
Out of curiousity does DELVE have a good proportion of valuable ice fields like it did TECH moons?

The sleepers consumed them (and the planets) with giant mining machines in order to build their endless fleets.

Let's take a quick look at Caldari Ice after Odyssey hits.

Currently, Caldari highsec should contain 34 Systems with ice fields, with 40 ice fields in total. If the existing icefields are converted to the new ice anomalies, and we assume that these ice fields are cleared 4 times a day, Caldari highsec could produce 400,000 units of Caldari racial ice each day. This equals:

Racial Isotopes: 120,000,000
Heavy Water: 20,000,000
Liquid Ozone: 10,000,000

To produce 40 Caldari fuel blocks (4 small pos hours), one does need:

Racial Isotopes: 400
Heavy Water: 150
Liquid Ozone: 150

As one can easily see, the ratios between the produced ice products and the demand created by POS are quite off. How the market will react will probably depend on the demand of this particular fuel block. But for now I will work with a high estimate (both HW and LO are imported from elsewhere), a medium estimate (only LO is imported) and a low estimate (nothing is imported)

On high estimate, the Caldari highsec can produce 12,000,000 fuel blocks per day, equalling 500,000 days of small POS operation, while being required to import 25,000,000 units of Heavy Water (125% of daily production) and 35,000,000 units of Liquid Ozone (250% of daily production).

On medium estimate, Caldari highsec will produce 5,333,333 fuel blocks per day, equalling 222,222 days of small POS operation. 66,666,670 units of Racial Isotopes (55.5% of daily production) will be left over, while 10,000,000 units of LO (100% of daily production) would have to be imported from elsewhere.

On low estimate, Caldari highsec will produce 2,666,666 fuel blocks per day, equalling 111,111 days of small POS operation.
93,333,340 units of Racial Isotopes will be left over (77.8% of daily production) and 10,000,000 of Heavy Water (50% of daily production.

I see a LO bottleneck on the horizon.

Low and Nullsec is home to LO heavy ice variants, Gelidus, Glare Crust and Dark Glitter.

hmm, i only counted 25 systems yesterday with 30 ice fields in caldari hi-sec. this includes: the forge, the citadel, black rise and lonetrek. did i miss a region?

Well, true, but if there will really be an import of LO from 0.0 depends on a few factors.

And even if 0.0 starts to mine ice, there is the question of how much of the ice products will actually be exported to high sec. I certainly expect LO to rise in price.

the overwhelming majority of LO right now comes from low/null, and I do mean overwhelming majority

The sleepers consumed them (and the planets) with giant mining machines in order to build their endless fleets.

"Wormhole systems" are just normal solar systems which we only connect to via wormholes, and the idea of a solar system without any moons seems very strange to me. If this was going to be done, I'd want some kind of artificial explanation of why there are no moons, or at least why we can't use them.

New wormhole space with no moons is an idea I have liked for a while. And yes, if we do ever add more wormhole space we can re-evaluate the option of giving that new space ice.

The sleepers consumed them (and the planets) with giant mining machines in order to build their endless fleets.

The new ice changes have the effect of turning a relaxing night of mining into frustrating repeated 4hr downtimes - which means players will log out and go play other games.

High sec has to continue to work because that is where new players start. To bring them into part of the game that's basically broken would cause fewer of them to stay with the game.

A 20% reduction in highsec ice will not warrant a long-term 220% increase in isotope prices.

This assumption seems baseless.

First let's look at what ice gets used for. Jump Bridges, cap ship jumps, towers. The first two are highly inelastic - if jumps become more expensive people will just continue to jump and take the hit. Indeed, this may even increase with more ice being jump freightered out of null sec and back. Tower numbers will actually go up because of the 227 new R64 moons. Some marginal reactions and harvesters may stop but not necessarily enough to compensate for the mostly large towers on the new money moons.

With demand almost completely inelastic price will go up until enough players decide they'd be crazy not to participate. Everyone has a price. I make about 80m per hour ratting but would switch to mining if it paid more. So that's my price. Even frikkin Shadoo would ice mine if it was a trillion isk per hour. (Probably).

So what this is testing is the price at which null sec players will switch to mining ice. And that sits on a see saw with T2 use. If ice becomes very expensive T2 prices go up and more people will decide to use meta or T1 instead. Now that's not actually a bad thing. T2 modules are pretty much the default for pvp which is a sign they're too cheap.

So we can't possibly know precisely where ice will be because it functions within a complex system.

Oh and another thing. Most miners in null have access to multiple racial ice types. In Test I can mine in Fountain (Gallente ice) or Delve (Amarr ice) or elsewhere in the vast HBC empire. Vast majority of people in sov null are in coaltions that spread across multiple regions.

To build their endless fleets, or maybe to build themselves a Ringworld or 20.

Guess I'm lucky I shopped a 2 years supply of fuel blocks at this years low for my large tower. I'll mine some ice leisurely now and then to prolong this period and watch the show.

2 years for CCP to sort out the mess .

Why wouldn't anyone mining simply switch to another barge and mine ore until the next ice belt spawns?

Why 20 of those when you could have one of these? Dyson Sphere

Let's take a quick look at Caldari Ice after Odyssey hits.

Currently, Caldari highsec should contain 34 Systems with ice fields, with 40 ice fields in total. If the existing icefields are converted to the new ice anomalies, and we assume that these ice fields are cleared 4 times a day, Caldari highsec could produce 400,000 units of Caldari racial ice each day. This equals:

Racial Isotopes: 120,000,000
Heavy Water: 20,000,000
Liquid Ozone: 10,000,000

To produce 40 Caldari fuel blocks (4 small pos hours), one does need:

Racial Isotopes: 400
Heavy Water: 150
Liquid Ozone: 150

As one can easily see, the ratios between the produced ice products and the demand created by POS are quite off. How the market will react will probably depend on the demand of this particular fuel block. But for now I will work with a high estimate (both HW and LO are imported from elsewhere), a medium estimate (only LO is imported) and a low estimate (nothing is imported)

On high estimate, the Caldari highsec can produce 12,000,000 fuel blocks per day, equalling 500,000 days of small POS operation, while being required to import 25,000,000 units of Heavy Water (125% of daily production) and 35,000,000 units of Liquid Ozone (250% of daily production).

On medium estimate, Caldari highsec will produce 5,333,333 fuel blocks per day, equalling 222,222 days of small POS operation. 66,666,670 units of Racial Isotopes (55.5% of daily production) will be left over, while 10,000,000 units of LO (100% of daily production) would have to be imported from elsewhere.

On low estimate, Caldari highsec will produce 2,666,666 fuel blocks per day, equalling 111,111 days of small POS operation.
93,333,340 units of Racial Isotopes will be left over (77.8% of daily production) and 10,000,000 of Heavy Water (50% of daily production.

I see a LO bottleneck on the horizon.

i can't understand a thing. WHY null-sec corps don't recruit 20-30 dedicated miners for them

because it's less man hours to just import everything form high sec, and those man hours can then be spent on more lucrative (and taxable) activities.

My question is will we ever see a random racial isotope ice field added into the indsutrial index system along side the small-giant gravsites, say at indy level 4 a random racial icefield spawns in system?

I'm sorry but i'll ask something that's REALLY bugging me out about this whole thing, and not only ice.


While i'm not trying to start a flamewar, i can't understand a thing. WHY null-sec corps don't recruit 20-30 dedicated miners for them, just for having all the supply they need, be it ice or ore, and pay em' a nice amount of iskies? They don't even need protection sometimes in the Blue donut sea, and it's hell easy to do. Instead of having to deal with logistics and freighters, just grab 20-30 "High-sec" carebears, and bring them to null. Don't make them go to war, don't make them be in comms all the time, just let them mine and sell the minerals to YOU (And ONLY you, no shipping to Jita at ALL) and there you go, your own personal supply.

Oh! And make them mine ice too if needed (It can be the corp tax) for your fuel needs. I've seen a LOT of corps searching for miners but they ask them to pvp too......Hell, i would even move this alt to 0.0 to mine for ANYONE if i didn't have to deal with the CTA's and the drama, i've even set up an industry at totally fair prices, a FULL null-sec industry.


But no, the word "PvP" always appears, the sp requirements always appears (When you can mine with as low as 1.2m sp). Why bother with all the logistics when now you have a real chance of doing it all in your home.

With this change, i expected a flood of "Miners" recruitment from 0.0 alliances, but i saw none, or too little (Just being curious). So what's the problem ? Do you think that a pilot who mines for your corp/alliance only is not worth it? That is just a carebear ?

I'm sorry to make this analogy, but for example, jets must be made for RL war, do you think that the enginner or the people that assemble them are not worth the same as the soldier who pilot them, that they are not important?....


Sometimes i really don't understand 0.0 people in this game.


Note: This ended being a rant...i'm sorry, but it's something that troubles me deeply...why indy pilots are denied a place in 0.0 warfare and relegated to the "Alt" role......

Note II: No....i'm not an indy pilot xD

I've made this argument before, and it fell on deaf ears. So good luck.

It also sounds like you dealt with some fantastically ****** corps in the past. CTA? Seriously?

To answer both of you.

1.) The vast majority of people in 0.0 don't mine because it's horrible isk/hr compared to other things they could be doing. Why make 2-5x the work for yourself?
2.) Most corps do have a couple dudes who multibox mining setups like that. Then the minerals get shipped off to jita and sold.

"Sometimes i really don't understand 0.0 people in this game."
It's more that you don't understand 0.0 logistics/game mechanics. It also sounds like you dealt with some fantastically ****** corps in the past. CTA? Seriously?

e: Not to mention that there just isn't currently enough low-ends to do any meaningful production in 0.0 without importing tons. This is getting helped along quite a bit with the next big patch.

The oversupply of ice is so significant that to bring supplies into some kind of balance through reduced refine yields we would need to make each block of ice yield less than 1/2 of a unit of isotopes.

Odyssey is on sisi now, i just checked the ice anomaly in null, and it looks same amount as in high. 4 hour respawns, then cloacky campers, who will mine ice in null. http://i.imgur.com/22G88Ao.jpg

Odyssey is on sisi now, i just checked the ice anomaly in null, and it looks same amount as in high. 4 hour respawns, then cloacky campers, who will mine ice in null. http://i.imgur.com/22G88Ao.jpg

Eyeballing it it seems to be that in null sec ice belts there is approx 3000 units of ice vs approx 2500 units in empire ice anomaly.

who will mine ice in null? any one with half a brain.

well, anyone with half a brain who doesn't live in a region blackops is hotdropping anything that moves in

When there are too many ice miners the price of isotopes drops, and then people stop mining because the hourly rate is so low. I never saw this as a problem because the problem was self-correcting.

So I'm considering this desire to change the ice system as a desire to push ice miners into low/nullsec. Since the highsec situation wasn't broken,...

*shrug* retrievers are cheap.

why would you ever want to mine in that

1) Because you stop the logistics/intel nigthmare. These pilots making 7-10m isk/h in high sec could be doing 30/40m isk/h in 0.0 with close to 0 risk asuming that they are inside the blue donut field (Cloacky ***** are always a problem....but you could deal with that...)

2) And that's the problem


I understand the 0.0 logistics....they are 10 times easier than deep Wh's actually, and not a biggie, but a waste when you could potentially make a nice production now in 0.0 (WITH NEXT PATCH, that's what i'm talking about)

About CTA, i can't really argue with you since i don't know how big blobs manage that, so, maybe you are right. I was in a ****** corp probably, but i've been there, done that for almost a year....so yeah...at least SOME little 0.0 experience i do have.


What i can't understand about "0.0 people" like i said, it's how you don't want to totally cut off the high sec link, trully live in 0.0, make it your home, your life, your space, and forget about high sec.

because i'm lazy, poor, and no fucks are given if they get turned in to wrecks.

next question?

Bad yield that makes a low-income activity even lower. If you don't have the skills (or isk) for an exhumer then fly a covetor at least, jesus.

30-40m/hr is actually terrible for a solo pilot. You do realize that, right? The waste would be for everyone to suddenly decide they want to put in twice the man-hours into getting anything done.

e: I forgot to mention something about how awful POS are, and how ****** stations can be(patch is fixing this). So here you go.

i'm too lazy to even point out the parts of that which are just incorrect.

Retrievers mine faster than covetors and hulks? I wasn't aware they changed that in the new patch~

e:


If this was directed towards what Masumi and I were talking about then I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say I don't think many hulls are made out of ice.

But that is more or less the reason I'm taking up mining.

Ice prices are not currently affected at all by supply, because supply is so high it might as well be infinite.

We're adjusting the supply to have a fairly mild (but noticeable) affect on prices.

Completely unnecessary analogy:

Currently since supply is practically infinite the ice market has no restrictions at all except people's desires to participate in the market.

After the patch we're giving the market some gentle supply restriction, like tying one wrist to the bedpost loosely with soft silk rope. Just enough to make things a bit more exciting for the market, not enough to make a safeword necessary.

And, of course, your statement that ice belts won't be around when people get home is too strong.

You also discussed in various places the effort that people will have to go through to mine out fields and get them to respawn, like this quote: "an obstacle to harvesting the ice of true value. This will vastly hurt the profitability of nullsec ice miners and discourage them from mining." Yet, we do not know where prices will settle. Given supply (constrained) and demand (growing), it may be likely that the nullsec miners will be happy mining ice of any variant, because over a period of X days their expected value for the aggregate activity may be high. Kinda like ratting and finding faction/officer spawns. Not everything can be a faction spawn.

Bad yield that makes a low-income activity even lower. If you don't have the skills (or isk) for an exhumer then fly a covetor at least, jesus.

e: Not to mention that there just isn't currently enough low-ends to do any meaningful production in 0.0 without importing tons. This is getting helped along quite a bit with the next big patch.

Why would anyone fly a Covetor or Hulk when a Mackinaw has a far better tank and a huge ore bay meaning fewer trips back to station (with or without an Orca booster in the belt)?

Do you even harvest ice?

i like the concept of depleting ice spawns, but hate the idea of locust swarms in empire. though i spend most of my time in NPC null, having access to hi-sec ice belts helps offset the cost of running my towers. i'd be much more partial to some type of random spawn of the ice belts in hi-sec, so we actually had to explore for them in various systems. this would be much more in line with the theme of exploration as opposed to showing up at the know system and waiting for a timer.

the mechanism for obtaining this valuable resource will be one of the most dull and unfun activities in game: waiting on timers. instead we should try to make the ice miners do something besides just mine ice. make them look for it or pay someone else to find it for them, as opposed to just waiting around in system for ice to spawn.

people probably fly a covetor or a hulk because if they are in a fleet then tank and cargo are both as relevant as a fruit cake is to a venus fly trap plant.

There's also the point pmchem made. As CCP does more and more to de-emphasize top down (eg moon) income as a source of alliance income in the future, bottom up income, including mining taxes, will be more and more important. Right now buffing the Rorqual would be a means to evading those taxes more easily, thanks to how taxation works. Now if we want to discuss changing how mining taxes are collected (say, automatically at point of collection; I'm sure we can come up with a reasonable lore based explanation), then I'd be happy to talk about and advocate for compression buffs.

As to the respawn timer, there should be about 650 nullsec anomalies by my count, compared to the ~100 that will exist in highsec. Those ~100 will supply 80% of the game's ice, which means nullsec would be capable of supplying about 500% of the game's ice, even if those belts are only 2500 block belts. That number goes higher, of course, if the block count climbs. So, I don't really see the need for them to respawn instantly.

The timezone imbalance in the ore sites is a good point here.

The oversupply of ice is so significant that to bring supplies into some kind of balance through reduced refine yields we would need to make each block of ice yield less than 1/2 of a unit of isotopes.

great analysis. i only have a couple of questions regarding your assumptions. can you elaborate on two factors that might mitigate the need for rorqual compression altogether? 1) the use of station refining in null and 2) the use of POS refining in null. I'm really interested in 2. since my understanding is that POSs can refine ice at 100% with the proper chars and equipment. thanks.

POS refineries are capped at 75% regardless of skills and implants. They also take 3 hours to refine 200,000m3 (i.e.: 67k m3/hr, compared to 45k m3/hr from a single strip miner module), and can only handle one type of ore at a time. Oh, and with a POS refinery oniine, you pretty much have to take everything else at the POS offline.

Fixing POS refineries would go some way to helping build the "farms and fields" that certain nullsec folks were talking about during CSM6.

Even a hulk has a 14s align time. So either you're flying aligned to a celestial and retargeting ice as you move past the previous block, or you get ganked.

Try it sometime before Odyssey. Head out to an ice field with a max-yield Hulk fitted with Ice Harvester IIs

You make an excellent point about the non-racial ices Jita, and it's something we're keeping in mind as we work on the composition of the 0.0 ice belts.

One quick note I want to respond to however:

The oversupply of ice is so significant that to bring supplies into some kind of balance through reduced refine yields we would need to make each block of ice yield less than 1/2 of a unit of isotopes.

hmm, i only counted 25 systems yesterday with 30 ice fields in caldari hi-sec. this includes: the forge, the citadel, black rise and lonetrek. did i miss a region?

SELECT MR.regionName, md.itemName, md.[security] AS TrueSec,
CASE
WHEN md.[security] <=0.0 THEN 'NullSec'
WHEN md.[security] <0.5 THEN 'LowSec'
ELSE 'HighSec'
END AS SystemLevel, CF.factionName
FROM mapDenormalize AS md
INNER JOIN invTypes AS it ON md.typeID=it.typeID
INNER JOIN mapRegions AS MR on MR.regionID = md.regionID
LEFT JOIN chrFactions AS CF ON MR.factionID = CF.factionID
WHERE it.typeID = 17774 -- This is Ice Field
AND factionName = 'Caldari State'
AND md.[security] >=0.5
ORDER BY regionName,itemName

WITH Cumulative AS (
SELECT md.itemName,
CASE
WHEN md.[security] <=0.0 THEN 'Null'
WHEN md.[security] <=0.5 THEN 'Low'
ELSE 'High'
END AS SystemLevel
FROM mapDenormalize AS md
INNER JOIN invTypes AS it ON md.typeID=it.typeID
WHERE it.typeID = 17774 -- This is Ice Field
)

SELECT SystemLevel, COUNT(itemName) AS NumberOfIceBelts FROM Cumulative
GROUP BY SystemLevel

Firstly, the various ores are going to refine into a different set of minerals than they currently do (the details can be found here). The goal of this was to provide more low-end minerals (tritanium, pyerite, and mexallon) to nullsec to help with local manufacturing. Right now all major nullsec manufacturing jobs have to import these low-end minerals from empire using compression techniques (425mm railguns, 800mm artillery, etc).

Even a hulk has a 14s align time. So either you're flying aligned to a celestial and retargeting ice as you move past the previous block, or you get ganked.

Try it sometime before Odyssey. Head out to an ice field with a max-yield Hulk fitted with Ice Harvester IIs

Here at goonswarm we try to make hi-sec tears as much as possible. I fear ccp fozzie has bested us this time though.

A max yield HULK can still have well over 20k ehp. A MAX dps Talos can only do 16,000 damage before CONCORD shows up. A MAX damage Catayst can do at best about 8,000 damage before CONCORD shows up.

Before the mining ship buff you could gank a max yield hulk with a single catayst, now you need 3-4 catalysts or 2 talos. Ganking miners costs much more than it used to.

I find it quite hard to believe that ice miners are mining 600 times more ice than the game needs.

Even a hulk has a 14s align time. So either you're flying aligned to a celestial and retargeting ice as you move past the previous block, or you get ganked.

Try it sometime before Odyssey. Head out to an ice field with a max-yield Hulk fitted with Ice Harvester IIs

This illustrates my biggest issue. Why are these low end minerals such a shortage in null sec? Null sec static belts have all the low end ores, in much larger rocks than any high sec system. There is an abundance of massive Veldspar rocks in Null sec. Some will argue that nobody wants to mine the low end ores while high end ores are available. And this is true to an extent, but mining these low end ores would still be more efficient that compression minerals in high sec and jumping them out.

I believe based on over 2 years of living in null sec as a miner, that the real reason is the static belts are just to dangerous to mine in. Any passing hostile or neutral can warp into the belt and kill you before you have time to react. The hidden belts however take a little longer to find, this gives the miners time to GTFO.

With the odyssey expansion the hidden belts are now no more secure than the static belts. As I have said dozens of times, this WILL be a problem.

A max yield HULK can still have well over 20k ehp. A MAX dps Talos can only do 16,000 damage before CONCORD shows up. A MAX damage Catayst can do at best about 8,000 damage before CONCORD shows up.

The composition of these anomalies will be as follows:

Highsec

2500 units of standard racial ice.

Lowsec

3000 units of standard racial ice.
400 units of Glare Crust.

Nullsec with weak truesec (0.0 to -0.5)

3000 units of improved racial ice.
400 units of Glare Crust.
500 units of Dak Glitter.
200 units of Gelidus.

Nullsec with strong truesec (-0.5 to -1.0)

3500 units of improved racial ice.
400 units of Glare Crust.
200 units of Gelidus.
250 units of Krystallos

Has anyone else read the patch notes with a raised eyebrow?


I hope the lack of Dark Glitter in strong truesec belts is an oversight. Previous notes indicated 1000 blocks/beltspawn.

a talos puts out over 1.5k dps, at ~20 seconds concord response time in 0.5 that's 30k of damage. that'll melt your 20k ehp hulk before concord is even there.

And we can build these giant mining machines with sleeper materials ... when exactly ??? :D

Well, the Rorqual can surely compress the leftover ice in the 4 h downtime, can-¦t it?

"CCP Fozzie" wrote:
When Odyssey is released, the current static ice belts spread throughout space will be removed from the game, and replaced by a series of Ore Anomalies that will spawn and respawn only in systems that previously contained the aforementioned static ice belts. These belts will respawn in exactly the same system four hours after they are completed, to ensure that players from all time zones will be able to partake.

Would it be too much to suggest maybe a timer in system to let you know when the next anomoly may appear so i could at least gauge when i should come back to try. Or maybe leave the anomoly in space, and have message updates on it, a bit like the wormhole anomoly information messages we get already.

I have a very specific time schedule alotted for when i can log on and off every day. I am what you may call a casual gamer, but i still get to have 3 hours a day online. In the area of space where i "live" there are 5 such Ice Belt anomolies apparently which are within a 23 jump circular route i can take. I say apparently because since the update i haven't seen one. I understand that players form all "time zones" should be able to partake, but obviously not all "players" can.

Would it be too much to suggest maybe a timer in system to let you know when the next anomoly may appear so i could at least gauge when i should come back to try. Or maybe leave the anomoly in space, and have message updates on it, a bit like the wormhole anomoly information messages we get already.

Well some sort of timer like "new ice will form in approximately an hour" with lets say 30min +/- deviation? Sounds fair :>

Dave Stark Wrote:
take some of your game time and use garpa or dotlan and do some research. there's the same amount of belts in a 2 jumps in the forge.

alternatively, ice isn't the only thing you can mine in a barge. treat ice as what it is, a nice boost for miners when there's an anomaly up.

I hear what your saying Dave, but i was hoping to not have to explain why moving would be a bit of an imposition as it just starts to sound too much like whining. Lets just say i mined for myself so i could run a POS, i only ever mined enough to keep it running per month, as i dual boxed between watching my miner on one screen and playing with friends on the other screen. Moving location would entail a butt load of work for me on gaining rep in system again or if i actually had the cash spare (which i dont) paying someone to get rep up just so i can mount a POS in system.

I fully agree about researching where you live, its why i live where i do. I liked to have my one guy mine on one screen so i could watch his hold get full and warp him back to station and back, plus be able to join in with my mates on the other, but now i have to pay attention to both screens while i hunt down Anomolies to mine. A timer would just be more informative for me, so once in system i can take a quick look and then carry on.

This is stated to be a means of throttling the supply of highsec ice into the game, but is believed to be an anti-bot measure. The new system is making mining operations miserable for everyone in order to mildly inconvenience mining bots. Bots don't care about mining during off-hours, but real players with busy schedules will no longer be able to mine at all when they get home. In short, the 4hr respawn timer on ice belts is not a good idea.

This is so true. I can't mine anymore and I just finished a miner toon completely trained up with ice processing. It is my only miner. I sit there on the undock waiting to for my scanner to pick up a re-spawned ice belt. It is horrid. Then anytime I do find it spawn -- I see 25 Mackinaws (a botter) eating it all up in about 30 min I kid you not. I can't get a cycle finished.

You should let him bot your account, since he can apparently mine 200 ice block/hour.

I'm sorry, but i have no patience for drama.

I do want you to feel sorry for me. I just thought I'd throw that in...

Slip of the tongue ? I'll stop giving you attention, fed you enough.

25 Mackinaws (a botter)