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Friday, April 30, 2010

Isk Sink

Planetary Interaction

It's second hand but I think I'm slowly getting a feel for how Planetary Interaction (PI) is going to work out. It looks like as I suspected there IS an isk sink that will establish a floor value on all the products that are extracted and processed using PI. From the comments on mechanics and whines on the various threads, it looks like the deposits you plunk an extractor down on are limited and once they run out they run out and you need to de-commission the extractor and plunk a new one down.

This implies that extractors will be an ongoing expense for your PI operations. So the "cost" of the raw materials will be the volume of the resource you were able to extract from the specific site divided by the cost of the extractor. Plus any pro-rated portion of the rest of your operation. Plus the hassle of moving the end product to market.

The interesting thing is whether the population density in high sec will cut the potential RATE of resource extraction or the total VOLUME available to extract (so if 6 guys go after the same concentration, then they each get 1/6 of the available material.

I'm also assuming that concentrations will change over time, so areas that have resources will deplete, then other areas without will increase and then over time old areas will get "good" again. This leads us to possible long term strategies: leave the extractor "fallow" for a while and it will eventually start producing again or keep recycling the extractors always going for the best concentration. The first technique will eventually get you very "cheap" materials, the second qill get you larger quantities in shorter periods of time, but much more expensive materials. Not to mention much more micromanagement.

As much as the whiny pirates are going to whine about how this does not help low sec, IT DOES. Look it's simple: The guys in high sec are going to discover that their extraction costs per material are probably going to be higher than low sec or 0.0 (which includes w-space in this case). CCP has stated that the concentrations of materials is going to go up as you go down in sec status. So High sec will have the "worse" planets and 0.0 the "best" with low sec somewhere in between. Then there is the "population concentration" issue. 75% of pilots (as I recall) log off in high sec. There are what about 1000 systems in high sec vs 4000 for low and 0.0? Something like that (rough estimate) Not to mention the systems in w-space. It is entirely possible that the "extraction cost" will get prohibitive in high sec. This means people wanting to get MORE isk out of PI will want to go to riskier space. And when you want to get the stuff you need to fly TO the planets. This means more haulers and what not in low sec. And the less frequented the system, the more likely that PI guys will want to setup in there.

It will be interesting to see what strategies evolve. But I can definitely see that we're going to have the "patient but low cost" vs the "impatient but expensive" playing out here. Then there are the people who are speculating with NPC goods atm in preparation for the supply shutting down and the players taking up the slack. The situation price wise should be in flux for the next few months as both the PI supply stabilizes (people get into it then move out of it as they find it "boring").

Also it looks like CCP is going to shuffle the planets on May 18th. This means that people trying to stake out systems before the 18th may end up with crap instead of the gold mine they were expecting. I will be laughing my ass off if this turns out to be the case. Expect more conflict starting the 18th if the planets get shuffled.

Plans

Based on the timing and the incoming 3 new skills I've decided to change up my plans a little. Once I finish Energy Management V I'm going to do Shield Management 5 (which will give me tech 2 shield boost amplifiers finally). This should finish right up around the 18th, so I'll be perfectly placed to skill up the incoming 3 new skills, then once they are in a "usable" state it'll be off to re-spec and into the massive T2 BS weapons plan (250days+)... What fun...

10 comments:

Rixx Javix said...

It all seems very similar to roid mining, the best roids are in low and null, so I don't think it'll be much different in the final analysis. But no doubt it is gonna shake things up a bit and I will be extremely curious to see just how many people jump on it.

Tom Hoffman said...

I for one will be quite happy to see at least one sector of EVE resource extraction working more like the real world -- harvest too many resources and they go away! That process is always what should have driven people to 0.0, so spread out and actually use the rest of the cluster.

Arrhidaeus said...

What pirates whined about this?! I agree, an influx of people trying to sneak into low-sec to make some easy ISK is always a good thing, although I would have made low-sec planets even more valuable than null (which is just giving even more money to alliances with massive amounts of sovereignty).

Stabs said...

I think it's a mistake to see this simply as an isk sink because it's a replacement of one isk sink with another.

Currently NPC goods are bought from NPCs which is a direct and straightforward isk sink. It's also a cartel, fixing the prices of those goods.

This will be replaced for certain goods by player driven operations where players put isk in and take goods out that they then sell on the Market.

In the short term, because loads of people will want a look at it, the prices of the NPC goods will crash.

Once the tourists move on the prices will be low still while people gradually sell off stockpiles caused by the tourist factor.

During this phase a lot less isk will be removed from the game if 1) the prices are cheaper than they used to be when set by the NPC cartel and 2) players who do this require a profit.

Eg instead of antibiotics costing 328 isk per unit from a NPC, eliminating 328 isk each time one is sold, they will cost around 200 isk per unit and will only be produced where a player would eliminate (spend) < 200 isk per unit.

The net effect should be less isk eliminated from the game.

As for high sec and low sec I think low sec planets will have more stuff in addition to lower density. Eg where near Jita you might get 1/20th of 2,000 ore in low sec you might get 100% of 10,000 ore.

It's fantastic for pirates. Lots of noobs trying to fly haulers sneakily into low sec. Maybe with a few of their noob mates.

Also piracy can be quite dull if you're camping one system. It's something to do in that system while you're waiting for victims.

Toldain said...

Your views are pretty much in concordance with mine. I speculate that the isk/hour will be not big enough to interest people in 0.0 all that much, to the advantage of lowsec.

In general, PI offers lots of interesting tradeoffs and is very engaging intellectually. However, it remains to be seen whether the time one spends on it could ever be as valuable as mining in a Hulk.

By the way, there are in fact currently 5 (five) skills associated with PI. Two of them allow you to get better CCs and more planets. The other three deal with your ability to scan planets, and operate your planets remotely. They are under the science tab. Remote Sensing, Planetary Scanning and Advanced Planetary Scanning.

Most of the people on the boards seem to have overlooked that fact.

Letrange said...

@stabs, there were some people who were assuming that when someone says "low entrance barrier" this translates into "free materials for no cost".

@toldain, actually I think people in 0.0 will be doing quite a bit of it, since the work is the same as in high sec but the costs are lower. Not to mention the greatest demand is probably in 0.0 - there are a ton of towers in 0.0 Not to mention manufacturing sov structures is now part of this.

Anonymous said...

It sounds more and more like we'll be hearing:
"Need more Vespene Gas"

Stabs said...

@Letrange Ah I see.

I suspect the opposite may be true, that quite quickly it will cost you more isk to mine this than you make.

I think it's distinctly possible that so many people will try it, there's no insurance scam floor for these products and the overall demand for things like Nanite Paste is pretty low.

Of course after a while people will decide it sucks and leave the market so eventually it will find a place.

And of course DUSK514 and future expansions will almost certainly create a demand for these materials.

OkamiKurai said...

This will fit in perfectly with my Industrialist toon's plans. The more I think about this, the more I am looking forward to it.

Maybe not so much in the very beginning, but an expansion or two later (and especially after Dust).

After things have been really gone through and fine tuned, this could ACTUALLY be fun.

Kinda ^_^

Broklyndatroll said...

Just an observation, but the last patch on SiSi did include a planet shuffle, so I suspect it is likely we will see the same on Tranquility.