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Thursday, March 27, 2014

A Possible Way The Refining Changes Could Affect Me

While I'm a low sec carebear, I'm not a hard core industrialist so I can't say all the effects the upcoming refining/reprocessing changes will have on low sec.  I hear that the change to reprocessing as first published is a nerf to alchemy, which I guess would benefit those who hold onto the good R32/R64 moons.  I also hear that the changes will negatively affect low sec capital construction.  I didn't quite follow the argument, but I think the maximum refining difference between a low sec POS (78.1%) and a null sec station (86.8%) has something to do with the calculation.  But as I've never done either, I don't know.

What I do know is how the change could affect the way I mine in low sec.  Wait, how is refining going to change the way I mine?  A lot of people tell me that mining and refining ore are two completely different things.  Maybe from a manufacturers point of view.  A manufacturer gets his minerals, either as minerals off the market, ore which he refines, or as items that he reprocesses.  But I will guess that currently he doesn't try to move the ore around as is.

Have these people ever tried moving ore around in low sec?  Let me give you an example using something I've mined a lot of lately, condensed scordite.

One Procurer can hold 80,000 units of condensed scordite.  That's 12,000 m3.  Prorators and Viators can carry that much, but they have to swap out their warp speed rigs for cargo rigs and use cargo containers to do so.  With the current refining rules in place, I can refine that down to 104,984 pyerite and 210,210 tritanium, which is 3,151.9 m3.  I can carry over 2.5 Procurer ore holds worth of minerals even in my Prowler when I use cargo containers.  Double that for the Prorator and Viator.  Big difference in the ease of transport, right?

What about just setting up a POS and compressing the ore, which is what the big industrialists will want us to do?  Sure.  That's assuming a gang won't see your POS and decide to have some fun.  Also, relying on a POS kind of anchors a minor to that system or adjoining system.  Currently, I'll take a Prowler and carry around a Procurer in a cargo container, find a quiet system with a nice ore site and a station I have perfect refine in, and start mining.  I then refine the ore and massively reduce the amount of trips back to my home system I need to make.  I roam several constellations doing this.

Thankfully, I'm not a dedicated miner and what I mine is for my own personal manufacturing use.  If I mined for sale on the markets, I would have to switch over to either a deep space transport or a tech 1 industrial hauler to keep the travel costs the same.  That option, while good for PvPers kill boards, introduces unintended waste in the whole process.  But for those miners who brave the perils of low sec to mine intending to sell their product on the market, life's about to get a little more costly, either in time, losses, or payments to Black Frog.

6 comments:

  1. I used to run an ice refining business in hisec (before the ice anom or warp speed changes): the biggest time cost, by a long way, was moving the ice to stations I had tax-free (or nearly) refining in. Switching the Charon for a Fenrir saved me so much time, but even then, I did have to make decisions about when it was better to lose 5% to taxation or an entire evening to shuttling goods around.

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  2. In essence this splits refining out from mining. Previously everyone was doing what you were doing with some slight variation. Now any miner without the 4% implant and maxed skills is getting less that 100% of the total he could get unless setting up a POS. Anyone with the mining skills but not the refining skills is now going to sell ore instead of minerals which throws the extra time and effort onto the manufacturer instead of the resource gatherer. Since you are both it doesn't really change your activity -- since you probably don't have all the refining skills maxed or the 4% implant you will have to mine longer for the minerals you use. How much depends on your personal mix.

    All the talk about how a POS can now give you added refining yield are missing one big point --- The cost of the POS is a non-trivial expense for anyone not doing extremely high volumes. The only people it makes sense for to anchor a POS in high or low would be those whose gain from volume exceed the additional POS cost. The modules to refine in a POS will be adders to existing structures only --- you can't make the economics work putting up a POS just for mining either in low or highsec. As you note POSes become a "grief me" sign and limit your mobility.

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  3. This is how low sec construction is impacted by the changes:

    https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Mineral_compression

    I'm pretty unhappy with the changes since it was easier to convert a manufactured good into something else if you have perfect refining (which is not hard). I had made a bunch of T1 armor hardeners, and discovered they didn't sell. It was easy to melt them down and make them into something that did sell. So now I have to do market research (which might not even be valid) instead of throwing a speculative order up and see how it sells because I can't get as much out of the modules as I put in.

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  4. Anyone who thinks that moving ore is a trivial thing does not play this game.Further, any low sec miner already knows that there are virtually no major trade hubs in low, that miner will now have to move vast volumes to high sec.

    Yes Nosy, you are definitely being screwed, just to different degrees than the high sec miner and looters everywhere.

    And for those assholes that don't think that gun mining is not a big part of the mineral production in the game, they should look at the graph Jester has up. Yes, it was 3 high mission loot nerfs ago, but even after those, gun mining is a HUGE part of the game. Mission runners got killed, high sec miners got killed, low sec miners got killed. Null sec industrialists and miners make out like bandits.

    But that is no surprise, when you have null sec cartels dictating changes to their dev lackeys.

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  5. The good news is, Low Sec has something of value to sov nullsec alliances.

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  6. So go to null sec already. Empire space is not where CCP wants us to be. The writting is on the wall. Go populate the sov space and enjoy the games best indy habitat.

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