Vissios Altacras Presents

When we look at the people who play Eve, we have two major groups, the PvPers and the PvEers.  When the major feature of Tyrannis, Planetary Interaction, was announced, it seemed that this was primarily designed to aid the second group, those carebear PvEers.  Then CCP decided to drop a major bomb, announcing insurance rate changes, a factor which will affect PvPers, and also PvEers.  What does this mean for Eve? Only time will tell, but in this blog post I’ll outline what I’ll think will happen, and the effects that Tyrannis will have on the entire Eve player base.

When a pilot decides they want to get involved in the industrial aspects of Eve they normally have two possible routes they can take.  They can be the miner, shredding asteroids for minerals or they can be the builder, making ships, modules and whatever else they can sell at a profit.  One of the major highlights of being an industrialist in Eve is that you could always be both the miner and the builder, as mining was an active activity, where as production was passive, all you had to do was queue up whatever you wanted and come back in a few hours to see your minerals changed into something else (and hopefully profit).  The interesting part of planetary interaction is that it is a passive activity as well, allowing the pilot to just come around every once and a while and make sure everything is working, and collect whatever stuff was produced.  This will hopefully be a major boon to the producers, as now they will no longer be dependant on miners and haulers to supply the minerals they need, however, this could have a drastic effect on mining.

Most mining today happens in the security of hisec space, where miners in their relatively fragile ships know that they are pretty much safe, as long as there isn’t a goonswarm jihad going on.   Many things that will hopefully appear in Tyrranis look as if they are going to change this, and how miners play the game entirely.  Planetary Interaction looks as if it is going to put a lot of base minerals on the market (be it if people decide to reprocess what they produce), and with the new insurance rates coming a price floor will be removed from beneath many of these minerals, making it very hard for a miner to be profitable in hisec (where the minerals aren’t as good/plentiful).  CCP has said that they are considering rebalancing the minerals in lowsec/nullsec, to make the risk have greater reward (it currently doesn’t) and to push the miners out of their comfort zone.  Obviously hisec mining will have to remain profitable to an extent; hopefully it becomes the equivalent of level 1 missions, a way for newbies to learn the ropes before moving on to bigger and better things.

I think the other major question is the role planetary interaction will play in nullsec, especially in regards to alliance income.  Currently the single biggest chunk of alliance income comes from R64s and R32s, those moons that provide special goo used in tech 2 production.  Currently moon mining has many similarities and differences from the proposed Planetary Interaction is passive, like moon mining, but it doesn’t take place from a POS, unlike moon mining.  The biggest advantage of moon mining was that it requires relatively few modules, so if your POS is in an unsecure system you could simply anchor a large tower and load up on defensive and offensive modules, to have a quasi-deathstar that spelt doom for anything but a large and well-organized force.  There’s currently no mention of planetary defense systems, so that brings forward the question of the extent of planetary interaction in nullsec/lowsec, where capital ships abound.

A few major topics floating around on various alliance forums are if Planetary Interaction will provide the additional income to make conquerable nullsec as valuable as it was pre-dominion, and if it will provide the materials to make nullsec self sufficient (no need to have empire runs for fuel).  If nullsec space is to become self sufficient it could have a drastic effect on prices throughout empire, with significantly less demand leading to price reductions.

Tyrranis also looks as if it could be a major boon to PvPers, who frequently lose ships.  The tech 2 insurance changes will (hopefully) make it more affordable than ever to field HAC gangs, and if tech 1 ships become even cheaper it will be a boon to newer players without the massive cashflow of veterans.  The one big advantage/disadvantage of the tech 2 insurance changes is that they would drive up the price of all tech 2 ships (limited supply of BPOs), making moon mining insanely profitable one again.

Vissios Altacras