Monday, May 24, 2010

Economic Impact of Tyrannis Update

Reading about Eve and attempting to chart your course in its world is almost as much fun as actually flying internet spaceships and killing things. Reviewing the Tyrannis patch notes and the supporting Developer blogs, I realized there my actually be an opening for beginning industrialists.

A change highlighted in the devblog "The circle of life" shows that the drop rate of Tech 0 items will be lowered and replacing them with non-recyclable materials. This will greatly reduce the number of Tech 0 ship modules for sale on the market. This change should allow newer industrialist the ability to enter the slim-margin market of these items for two reasons. First, newer players are still going to want them as they will be the cheap alternative for players to fit their ships. Second, invention for Tech 2 items will reduce the "named" alternatives further leaving "standard" Tech 0 items available to be fitted. Additionally, there will still be industrialist that sell their items for below the recycle value of the item they just produced

Another change is the addition of additional minerals to lowsec and some nullsec ores. In my opinion, CCP noticed that it was more profitable to stay in highsec system and mine Kernite and Scordite than it was to move into lowsec or nullsec and mine ores like Jaspet and Hedbridite. This is in direct conflict with their current paradigm of increasing reward due to increased risk of lowsec and nullsec. Depending on the level of minerals added the ores in lowsec may be work corp mining operations...at the very least miners will move to lowsec for the increased profit, and will probably be shot down by pirates. I believe that we'll actually see fewer minerals on the market than we do now, which will drive up prices across the board. Without a constant and large highsec mineral influx the entire economic system of Eve will not be able to handle the stress of EVERYTHING costing more. I liken this to the start of the economic downturn here in the United States. What people forget is the trigger that started the issue was the rapid increase in gas prices to over triple their starting cost that summer. That increased all the costs in the manufacturing supply chain from raw materials to transportation to the final product. When all those new shinnies the PvPers want are double and triple the price because of the shortage of minerals, it will truly be a time to break out the Hulk and mine for anything.

No comments:

Post a Comment