The fact that you can be much more rich in highsec than in the competitive areas of EVE (low, null, WH) is one of my main messages. It can be proved by the fact that low/null people has highsec alts for ISK making while there isn't a single one who calls himself highsec player yet earns money in competitive areas. My main addition was the magnitude: a single highsec player can literally make 6% of the income of a 10K member nullsec alliance (average guy earns 100%/10K = 0.01%).
I wrote several suggestions how to "fix it", how to decrease highsec income and increase the income in competitive areas and so did others. Some of them were implemented in the past years of EVE development, none of them worked. The reason is that none of them addressed the fundamental economic problem of EVE.
To understand the fundamental economic problem, let's see how much a Raven Navy Issue, a popular highsec ship costs. No, I didn't mean 350M, as you can't create a Raven Navy for 350M, you can buy it from someone who did. Someone must create it to be sold. To create it, you first need a normal Raven battleship, 600K LP and a nexus chip that you can get for 8K LP. All the mentioned LP can be farmed in highsec doing missions. Ravens can be manufactured by players from the following materials (I don't have perfect skills, don't bother, the ratios matter):
- Isogen 130K 16.2M ISK
- Megacyte 2.5K 4.8M ISK
- Mexallon 522K 31.8M ISK
- Nocxium 32.5K 20.1M ISK
- Pyerite 2084K 26.3M ISK
- Tritanium: 8335K 50.0M ISK
- Zydrine: 7.8K 5.1M ISK
Megacyte and Zydrine are mined in competitive zones. You have to pay 9.9M for these. You have to pay 146.4M for the other materials that can be mined in highsec. Only this 10M worth of materials need to come from competitive areas. The rest of the 340M (97%) can be farmed in the safety of highsec. To make it worse, the highsec people don't lose their Raven Navies (unless idiots), so they pay 10M in their whole life to the nullsec people. After they paid this, they will never-ever need them. Ships need fittings, but the entry level fittings and the top-level faction fittings are all farmable in highsec (only an idiot fits deadspace/officer on a subcap), only the (not too expensive) T2 fitting needs nullsec people to farm.
On the other hand the nullsec people often lose ships. They often use Drakes, let's use it for example:
- Isogen 19.2K 2.4M ISK
- Megacyte 0.9K 1.7M ISK
- Mexallon 185.5K 11.2M ISK
- Nocxium 13.6K 8.8M ISK
- Pyerite 673.3K 8.5M ISK
- Tritanium: 2689K 16.2M ISK
- Zydrine: 4.0K 2.6M
4.3M nullsec materials and 47.1M highsec materials. 92% of the Drake comes from highsec!
T1 and faction ammunition comes from highsec too, only T2 ammo is from nullsec. So people living in competitive areas are needing lot of highsec materials and they need it constantly as they lose ships, while highsec people need very little amount of nullsec materials and they need it once in their life. At this point the earning power (ISK/hour) of nullsec vs highsec becomes totally irrelevant. The people living in competitive areas has nothing to offer to the highsec residents. It doesn't matter how much Arkonor you mine or how much Tc your moons yield, you can only sell it to your fellow nullsec residents, the highsec people don't need your stuff. On the other hand you need lot of stuff from highsec and you need it again and again. So the balance of trade between the "country of highsec" and the "country of low-null-wh" is totally off, corrected by gifts given from highsec to the competitive areas. These gifts are either between alts of the same player, or between a buyer and a seller of a PLEX.
Jester just found that mining the various minerals give the same ISK/m3 that generates 19-26M/hour income. Yes, AFK mining veldspar in a 1.0 system gives almost as much as mining arkonor in the worst pirate and ganker-ridden systems. Why? Because highsec people don't need your arkonor and for fellow null people mining arkonor has the same difficulty as mining veldspar so they have no reason paying more for arkonor.
The nerfs of highsec don't change this. If you'd nerf highsec income into oblivion, it would be a depopulated zone, avoided by everyone but newbies. Such gigantic nerfs would force nullsec alts out of higsec (and probably out of the game as one can rat on his main), and it would remove highsec players too as they don't want to PvP. The remaining highsec residents would still have no reason to buy nullsec wares, they would simply be poor.
The fundamental problem can only be solved if highsec people would constantly need anything that low, null and wh offers. Simply moving all minerals except veldspar to low/null wouldn't help as the highsec people would still just buy one ship and use it for the rest of their lives. To make such re-balance useful, the highsec people would need to replace ships. It doesn't necessarily mean losing them, CCP could introduce ship durability that decrease over time and need to be topped up by using maintenance blocks that costs the same kind of materials as building the ship. Same for modules.
Another "item" that could be created in null is ISK itself. The ISK bounties could be removed from mission rats, mission rewards (replaced by LP) and trivialized in highsec complexes, making sanctum ratting and sleeper NPC buy orders be the only reasonable way of creating ISK. Since players need ISK to repair ships and buy skillbooks, this would give something to the nullsec people to trade for highsec materials.
Both of the ideas (and similar ones) would be shocking nerfs to highsec, therefore probably not possible considering the amount of highsec players being pissed by them. So let me offer a non-intrusive way of fixing the export-import imbalance: creating achievements into the game. These - just like their WoW counterparts - should have no gameplay effect, but should be pure vanity. They could offer vanity rewards like minipets in the captain quarters or idiotic costumes or whatever. Completing these achievements would need the player to get things that can only be created in competitive areas. This way newbies would not be affected, while achievement hunters would buy low/null/wh items like crazy. For example consider the achievement "True Sansha" that would need to have a Nightmare battleship fitted with True Sansha large turrets, True Sansha hardeners and True Sansha heat sinks. The achievement would not need one to undock the ship, so the achievement hunters could avoid taking risks, but it would need them to hold on to the ship, losing or selling it would remove the achievement. Or think about the achievement "Sleep tight" that replaces the captain quarters bed with a Sleeper holo-projector if you have the item in your hangar. Creating it would of course need lot of wormhole stuff. And of course the masterpiece: "Full Epic": a T3 fitted with purple items.
Maybe other solutions could work too. But the point is that until highsec barely imports anything from competitive areas while exporting awful lot of stuff, the economy will remain unbalanced and the wealth will be in highsec. The balanced system would mean two economically different, but heavily trading zones: in highsec you can farm cheap items safely, in null you can farm expensive items with risks.
For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Saturday morning report: 162.9B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 163.7B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 165.8B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
I wrote several suggestions how to "fix it", how to decrease highsec income and increase the income in competitive areas and so did others. Some of them were implemented in the past years of EVE development, none of them worked. The reason is that none of them addressed the fundamental economic problem of EVE.
To understand the fundamental economic problem, let's see how much a Raven Navy Issue, a popular highsec ship costs. No, I didn't mean 350M, as you can't create a Raven Navy for 350M, you can buy it from someone who did. Someone must create it to be sold. To create it, you first need a normal Raven battleship, 600K LP and a nexus chip that you can get for 8K LP. All the mentioned LP can be farmed in highsec doing missions. Ravens can be manufactured by players from the following materials (I don't have perfect skills, don't bother, the ratios matter):
- Isogen 130K 16.2M ISK
- Megacyte 2.5K 4.8M ISK
- Mexallon 522K 31.8M ISK
- Nocxium 32.5K 20.1M ISK
- Pyerite 2084K 26.3M ISK
- Tritanium: 8335K 50.0M ISK
- Zydrine: 7.8K 5.1M ISK
Megacyte and Zydrine are mined in competitive zones. You have to pay 9.9M for these. You have to pay 146.4M for the other materials that can be mined in highsec. Only this 10M worth of materials need to come from competitive areas. The rest of the 340M (97%) can be farmed in the safety of highsec. To make it worse, the highsec people don't lose their Raven Navies (unless idiots), so they pay 10M in their whole life to the nullsec people. After they paid this, they will never-ever need them. Ships need fittings, but the entry level fittings and the top-level faction fittings are all farmable in highsec (only an idiot fits deadspace/officer on a subcap), only the (not too expensive) T2 fitting needs nullsec people to farm.
On the other hand the nullsec people often lose ships. They often use Drakes, let's use it for example:
- Isogen 19.2K 2.4M ISK
- Megacyte 0.9K 1.7M ISK
- Mexallon 185.5K 11.2M ISK
- Nocxium 13.6K 8.8M ISK
- Pyerite 673.3K 8.5M ISK
- Tritanium: 2689K 16.2M ISK
- Zydrine: 4.0K 2.6M
4.3M nullsec materials and 47.1M highsec materials. 92% of the Drake comes from highsec!
T1 and faction ammunition comes from highsec too, only T2 ammo is from nullsec. So people living in competitive areas are needing lot of highsec materials and they need it constantly as they lose ships, while highsec people need very little amount of nullsec materials and they need it once in their life. At this point the earning power (ISK/hour) of nullsec vs highsec becomes totally irrelevant. The people living in competitive areas has nothing to offer to the highsec residents. It doesn't matter how much Arkonor you mine or how much Tc your moons yield, you can only sell it to your fellow nullsec residents, the highsec people don't need your stuff. On the other hand you need lot of stuff from highsec and you need it again and again. So the balance of trade between the "country of highsec" and the "country of low-null-wh" is totally off, corrected by gifts given from highsec to the competitive areas. These gifts are either between alts of the same player, or between a buyer and a seller of a PLEX.
Jester just found that mining the various minerals give the same ISK/m3 that generates 19-26M/hour income. Yes, AFK mining veldspar in a 1.0 system gives almost as much as mining arkonor in the worst pirate and ganker-ridden systems. Why? Because highsec people don't need your arkonor and for fellow null people mining arkonor has the same difficulty as mining veldspar so they have no reason paying more for arkonor.
The nerfs of highsec don't change this. If you'd nerf highsec income into oblivion, it would be a depopulated zone, avoided by everyone but newbies. Such gigantic nerfs would force nullsec alts out of higsec (and probably out of the game as one can rat on his main), and it would remove highsec players too as they don't want to PvP. The remaining highsec residents would still have no reason to buy nullsec wares, they would simply be poor.
The fundamental problem can only be solved if highsec people would constantly need anything that low, null and wh offers. Simply moving all minerals except veldspar to low/null wouldn't help as the highsec people would still just buy one ship and use it for the rest of their lives. To make such re-balance useful, the highsec people would need to replace ships. It doesn't necessarily mean losing them, CCP could introduce ship durability that decrease over time and need to be topped up by using maintenance blocks that costs the same kind of materials as building the ship. Same for modules.
Another "item" that could be created in null is ISK itself. The ISK bounties could be removed from mission rats, mission rewards (replaced by LP) and trivialized in highsec complexes, making sanctum ratting and sleeper NPC buy orders be the only reasonable way of creating ISK. Since players need ISK to repair ships and buy skillbooks, this would give something to the nullsec people to trade for highsec materials.
Both of the ideas (and similar ones) would be shocking nerfs to highsec, therefore probably not possible considering the amount of highsec players being pissed by them. So let me offer a non-intrusive way of fixing the export-import imbalance: creating achievements into the game. These - just like their WoW counterparts - should have no gameplay effect, but should be pure vanity. They could offer vanity rewards like minipets in the captain quarters or idiotic costumes or whatever. Completing these achievements would need the player to get things that can only be created in competitive areas. This way newbies would not be affected, while achievement hunters would buy low/null/wh items like crazy. For example consider the achievement "True Sansha" that would need to have a Nightmare battleship fitted with True Sansha large turrets, True Sansha hardeners and True Sansha heat sinks. The achievement would not need one to undock the ship, so the achievement hunters could avoid taking risks, but it would need them to hold on to the ship, losing or selling it would remove the achievement. Or think about the achievement "Sleep tight" that replaces the captain quarters bed with a Sleeper holo-projector if you have the item in your hangar. Creating it would of course need lot of wormhole stuff. And of course the masterpiece: "Full Epic": a T3 fitted with purple items.
Maybe other solutions could work too. But the point is that until highsec barely imports anything from competitive areas while exporting awful lot of stuff, the economy will remain unbalanced and the wealth will be in highsec. The balanced system would mean two economically different, but heavily trading zones: in highsec you can farm cheap items safely, in null you can farm expensive items with risks.
For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec but don't know how, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Saturday morning report: 162.9B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 163.7B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 165.8B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)
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