Let the market sort it all out. Just because the ABC ores are not worth the most doesn't mean there is anything wrong. The changes to refining means mineral value is not the best indication of value.

Current changes have shaken the market a fair bit, once it settles the balance may be fine. However, I do not believe this is the case. I see several significant factors, that add up to a major change in supply of ores. Supply of low ends over all has dropped over all, while supply of high ends has remained steady, or even increased. Why?

-- Mining barges recently received a nerf. CC saw that Retrievers and Mackinaws were significantly more popular than the other mining ships. they were just to good for semi AFK mining. the large ore hold was enough of an advantage that the small increase in yield over the Coventor and HULK was not worth the drop in ore hold capacity, at least not for the majority of high sec miners. So CCP nerfed the yield of the mining ships creating a larger gap. Even if after this nerf, we had the exact same number of miners out mining for the exact same amounts of time, we would still see a significant drop in supply based only on the reduction of the mining yield of those ships. Once you factor in some quitting due to a drop in profitability, we have a notable drop in supply from high sec miners.

-- We have a change in null sec politics, there has been a significant increase in rental systems, as several null sec entities take advantage of rental income they never bothered with before. It is a fact that Null sec miners do not bother with low end ores, so with the increase in rental systems out in null. We have many former high sec miners, moving out to null, switching from mining low ends in high sec, to mining high ends in null sec. This not only causes a reduction in the supply of low end minerals, but increases the supply of high end minerals.

--We also have an impact from the reprocessing changes, and nerf to mineral compression. It is now more profitable to compress low end ores, and ship them out to null sec for reprocessing. This has further reduced the supply of low end minerals in high sec.

These factors on there own do not have a significant impact, but with them all happening at the same time , it has added up to a fairly significant shift. So what can be done to offset this shift in balance between high end and low end ores?

If anything I would say give the low end mineral content of the high end ores another little bump.

Adding significant low end minerals to A,B,C, ores rather than the trace amounts they had before, helped a lot, but maybe, with additional recent changes, it is now not enough. bumping it up a little more could be the right solution. I believe it would accomplish two things.

First of all, it will mean that whenever the price of low end minerals spikes, the high end ores will benefit from that spike as well keeping them on top, value wise.

Secondly, adding even more low end minerals to the high end ores will slightly increase the supply of low end minerals in null sec from the locally mined A,B,C,s reducing demand for low end minerals being imported from high sec by a small amount. The more the low end mineral content is increased, the more it will shift the balance.

For some time now I have seen low sec ores having the highest value, and I believe it should stay that way. After all, mining in low sec is far more dangerous than mining is sov null where most of the the A,B,C,s are found. however, we should not see the value of low end, high sec ores, exceed that of the high end, A,B,C, ores. This is a sign that the balance needs some tweeking.