Change is scary, isn't it?

Why is lowsec ice getting hit as hard as it is?

because when you consider the half harvester cycle times, you're still getting a buff. also, looking at the isk/hr of each type of anom they are perfectly balanced.

Why is lowsec ice getting hit as hard as it is?

But the estimates of the highsec ice belts being completely mined out 5x a day is unrealistic due to timezone constraints of player activities. The actual mined out amount will probably be closer to 3x/day, bringing highsec ice block production down from the "perfect supply of 80%" down to 48%.

This is what I envision the timezone ice mining coverage to be like in highsec after the expansion.

One could even argue that lowsec is far more dangerous than nullsec (due to easy accessibility, npc stations that let your enemies accumulate, higher traffic, etc), and thus the risk/reward should be greater than that of nullsec.

Such claims are highly speculative and unfounded.

94% of all ice is mined in empire right now. Leaving 6% for low/nullsec. CCP wants to lower the ice mined in empire to about 80% and have nullsec mine the rest. [...]

Funny, I just bought a bunch of ICE Miners in the Bazaar, thinking I could do a little Semi-AFK Ice Mining while at the computer repair shop.... oops!

Looks like I'll be unsubscribing those extra Multi-box accounts after the update.

Anyone need an ICE miner, after the update evemail me, I'll have 8 for sale.

Going to harvest until then....... go go gadget harvesters.... I think that ICE Prices are going through the roof soon... maybe I'll breakeven.

:'(

Yes, my lip is out..

what'll irk you most is probably the 4 hour respawn and/or competition for anoms. although ice is still perfectly afkable.

first the exhumer cargo nerf now this, keep em coming

Not as bad as I expected, back of envelope numbers tell me that even low end null belts can supply 10 large towers per spawn.

edit: Fozzie, can you confirm the new cycle times for ice lasers

I've wanted that for a while, but to do it right we'd need to allow faster cycling ice miners that create smaller blocks. And I have no idea how we would go about implementing that.

We will not have enough ice in nullsec to support our alliance. Our jump bridges, moon mining, capital jumps, rorq compression, etc will all come to a screeeching halt.

You are most likely correct.
I have made my own spreadsheet calculating only isotopes and guessing at how many starbases exist and are running in tiers of sec status: http://qr.net/eveicecalc

As you can see, highsec will lose 75% of it's starbases, lowsec will lose 45% of it's starbases, and null will lose the most of all.

This is enough ice to make 122500 fuel blocks; which is enough to fuel 4.25 large POSs for 1 month. Basically, we can fuel 21 POSs for 1 month, per day, if we are mining 23/7.

so what you're saying is; one ice anomaly can fuel 630 poses, if it's mined out 5x per day every day?

Yes, if you mine for an entire month, 23/7. Right now, we have a mining op once a month. After the patch, the mining op becomes a whole month. :)

Actually, it is a huge lack of ice. The anoms will be mined out immediately every time they spawn. We will not be able to have a mining op for one day on the weekend and get all of the ice we need for one month - it won't be there. Instead, we will have to mine a little bit at a time, every day, and probably move to other systems to find ice that hasn't been mined out.

The main issue I see is the total amount of ice available in the whole Eve universe. It is not enough to fuel all of the POSs and capitals in the game at the moment. Imagine the huge effect on the economy and movements in nullsec, if there simply is not enough fuel for everything, regardless of price.