Just keep in mind that you're not going to have "settled prices" until probably July/August as it will take that long before things start to settle down. Making any decisions about further adjustments before mid-July (at the earliest) would be premature.

And most of the "expected" price levels are already priced into the market within the past few days. Things probably won't go up much more long-term then they are now, otherwise ore ends up worth too much on an ISK/m3 basis. That puts hi-sec ore at around 150-200 ISK/m3 and null-sec ABCs in the 500-600 range (and Morphite at around 13-15k).

But there will definitely be some short-term price shocks between Apr 24th and May/June.

Have you considered not doing this, because I don't believe anyone missioning likes metal scraps - they're useless clutter and it would be easier to loot if you simply dropped nothing.

then i would say that Angel Mineral Acquisition Outpost and Serpentis Logistical Outpost are the missing 6/10 plexes. If thats the case they should drop cruiser sized A-Type loot instead of bs sized C-Type. Plus i am not sure if both do spawn in nullsec as regular 6/10s do ??

Belts in the drone regions are no different from belts elsewhere. The big problem, and one that has been pointed out repeatedly elsewhere is that there are no good sources of low-end minerals in null. That is, the only time folk will mine low ends is so that they can roll and respawn a hidden belt for additional high-ends, and that is done only by big multi-player operations or by players who run a half-dozen max-skilled Hulks for hours at a time. What CCP should have done was introduce the miner equivalent of Plush compound, which is a huge source of tritanium and also accounts for half the value of a Drone Patrol or Horde. Or something similar.

As always: I don't have anything against buffing mining or removing drone alloys, so long as it's not done in isolation.

Began reading the devblog hoping it was about showing some love for hisec, then quickly realized it just was about some random nullsec crap.

Don't mislead readers, CCP Guard, just call it "giving more to uberalliances #8,457" and save us a couple minutes, thank you.

What will happen to the Rogue Drone alloys sat in peoples hangers? will they turn into Minerals on patch day? Just dissapear? or turn into rare items like some of those things out there you don't see often anymore?

So CCP you get called out on this BS of a nerf called an "Iteration" And predictable you retreat into no posting mode.

Ill repeat in case you forgot. Where is the fixes on Mothership spawn time? Where is the fixes on mothership loot theft by scripts?

Where are the fixes for going AFK while cloaked for nullsec?

Where are the Structure HP buffs for mining vessels?

Why is this crap going in while badly needed fixes I noted above go on the backburner?

There are no competitively profitable sources of low-ends in nullsec, at least at current prices. Veldspar alone makes up 40-60% of nullsec ore by units available, it's just that people would rather be mining ABCs. That's an entirely different issue to there not being "enough" low-ends out there, and the situation is complicated by the fact that any boost to low-end acquisition in nullsec is a nerf to hisec mining more-or-less by default.

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the impact on low-end mineral prices.

Yup, these are the sites in question and they also function in the same way. We're looking into whether or not they should be clearer about being DED-rated sites.

Thank you for the follow up :D

Thank you for the follow up :D

If we had an easy way of removing the Meta 0 and not adding metal scraps we'd have done that, it's just that the system isn't set up in a way that makes that a particularly easy task, and we had other work we wanted to get done this release as well (Incursion balance, drone balance etc).

As a general point, these Drone changes are the first steps towards getting us to a place where we can actually balance the existing content and fill in the gaps. The reliance on mineral drops has always made them really difficult to work with, and now that we've changed that dynamic we've got more options WRT general balance. No timescales or promises, but this has at least opened a few doors for us.

Began reading the devblog hoping it was about showing some love for hisec, then quickly realized it just was about some random nullsec crap.

(...)



I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the impact on low-end mineral prices.

Nothing will happen to them

Houm... so miners now spend 300 million ISK to set up a Hulk and earn 6 million an hour, and that should change for spending 400 million in a Hulk to earn 8 million an hour.

Affinity can you confirm or deny if the trigger changes affect incursions only or every anomaly?

CCP Affinity Thanks for keeping an eye on this thread. The changes are generally good but can you please comment on few issues?

1. Drone region was unique not just for its NPCs but also for way of living in there. The removal of minerals from drones was neede. But it also made drone regions very similar to other null-sec. You mentioned that CCP might plan to add something unique to drones again. Is there any time frame on this yet?
2. Balancing incursion is a step in right direction. But as some people above me said: Having predictable spawn trigger removes a lot of challenge. With proposed system the situation will evolve to "warp to site -> kill every red cross in the order of known priority -GǦ get new bunch of red crosses -> repeat until no red crosses spawn". With random spawn trigger the challenge will be much higher because you can get overrunned very fast if not paying attention. Is the spawn mechanism already set in stone or is there still a room for change?

EDIT: Seems like CCP Greyscale already answered #1

Houm... so miners now spend 300 million ISK to set up a Hulk and earn 6 million an hour, and that should change for spending 400 million in a Hulk to earn 8 million an hour.

There are no competitively profitable sources of low-ends in nullsec, at least at current prices. Veldspar alone makes up 40-60% of nullsec ore by units available, it's just that people would rather be mining ABCs. That's an entirely different issue to there not being "enough" low-ends out there, and the situation is complicated by the fact that any boost to low-end acquisition in nullsec is a nerf to hisec mining more-or-less by default.