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[Alain Colcer]

Unlike the Elder Fleet, which was an unknown, a wild card, we are a known value for CONCORD and the Big 4. Specifically, they maintain a massive monitoring and control network over us, straight up to what weapons we can use. Capsuleers still overwhelmingly use empire research and manufacturing lines, we buy our BPOs, BPCs, and some unique items from empire sources, and we happily pay billions in taxes to them because we have no other choice.

This is my gripe with 'the empires are loosing control' - no, they aren't. Capsuleers may wield extraordinarily powerful weapons on a colossal scale, but they're the equivalent of a gun that jams if we point it in the wrong direction.

Which brings me to the economic end of things. One of the few ways we do have power is that we are incredibly, incredibly rich; we can each of us employ hundreds of thousands (incidentally, this is one of the reasons I find most valid for why the empires would even train us in the first place). One of the recent news articles pointed out that capsuleers are now forming a significant fraction of production capacity in the cluster. I have my own gripes with this, but I find it rather more believable than "oh noes, capsuleers could invade any second now!"

this!

[Lyn Farel]

To add to Vic's point, current game mechanics mean that supplying distant regions is a complete joke.  With jump freighters and jump bridges getting incredible amounts of supplies across multiple regions is an exercise in patience and not difficulty, and not that much patience, either.   Null territories aren't like the strongholds of old where if the army left to go crusade for a year there was no one left to defend the border, it's like a castle with a fenced-off superhighway running through it, where the army can leave, attack something on the other side of the globe, and be home for dinner.


One of the main reasons for the current state of things in null is because of the ease of moving equipment and troops.  If moving your troops meant something and exposed a weakness, if getting supplies to and from was a difficult prospect, then things would have an entirely different flavor.

That.

Added to the fact that Eve's economy has evolved in a terrible way imo. When I started playing in late 2006 there were maybe at best a dozen of titans ingame. It was considered ludicrously expensive, and battleships required several months of farming for a noob before getting into one. High end tech 2 was extremely expensive, like cov ops cloaking devices that costed around 60-80M isk alone.

Ore was not more expensive, maybe cheaper (not that much though) since tritanium price was capped by the NPC shuttles reprocessing prices, as well as the tech 1 meta 0 loot in missions and alloys in rogue drone NPCs in nullsec. So everything was not terribly different in terms of prices, except a few things like T2 cov ops and the likes.

What was different was the magnitude and the scale of the value of the isk itself compared to the labour available in the universe. It is true that there was a lot less people in the cluster (30k players were records at peaks) so wealth was more sparse and less concentrated. But one isk in the past was ten if not hundred times more valuable to anyone, especially big alliances than today.

The problem is that inflation, while it might occur, is not really significant. I would almost be tempted to say that most prices tend to deflate over time in most MMOs, Eve included. I'm not economist, so I couldn't explain why exactly. But in any sane world, one would expect inflation. Because in comparison, what has been multiplied by thousands is the economic growth of the game. We now see thousands of titans and supercaps populating the cluster, big alliances for which money is not an issue anymore (more a matter of time and numbers now). So it becomes even harder to win through attrition like it was in the past. Losing a titan is not anymore a lethal blow. Everything cost the same than in the past (at an average), maybe a bit more since now only miners generate ore, but that's not a lot of inflation compared to how rich people can become now. With the introduction of high end content like incursions and wormholes, or ludicrously broken money fountains like FW, it's even worse.

So tldr I would say that while people can afford ten times more than in the past, prices mostly remained the same for years. Maybe i'm wrong, but that's how I feel about it.

[Gaven Lok ri]

To add to Vic's point, current game mechanics mean that supplying distant regions is a complete joke.  With jump freighters and jump bridges getting incredible amounts of supplies across multiple regions is an exercise in patience and not difficulty, and not that much patience, either.   Null territories aren't like the strongholds of old where if the army left to go crusade for a year there was no one left to defend the border, it's like a castle with a fenced-off superhighway running through it, where the army can leave, attack something on the other side of the globe, and be home for dinner.


One of the main reasons for the current state of things in null is because of the ease of moving equipment and troops.  If moving your troops meant something and exposed a weakness, if getting supplies to and from was a difficult prospect, then things would have an entirely different flavor.

That.

Added to the fact that Eve's economy has evolved in a terrible way imo. When I started playing in late 2006 there were maybe at best a dozen of titans ingame. It was considered ludicrously expensive, and battleships required several months of farming for a noob before getting into one. High end tech 2 was extremely expensive, like cov ops cloaking devices that costed around 60-80M isk alone.

Ore was not more expensive, maybe cheaper (not that much though) since tritanium price was capped by the NPC shuttles reprocessing prices, as well as the tech 1 meta 0 loot in missions and alloys in rogue drone NPCs in nullsec. So everything was not terribly different in terms of prices, except a few things like T2 cov ops and the likes.

What was different was the magnitude and the scale of the value of the isk itself compared to the labour available in the universe. It is true that there was a lot less people in the cluster (30k players were records at peaks) so wealth was more sparse and less concentrated. But one isk in the past was ten if not hundred times more valuable to anyone, especially big alliances than today.

The problem is that inflation, while it might occur, is not really significant. I would almost be tempted to say that most prices tend to deflate over time in most MMOs, Eve included. I'm not economist, so I couldn't explain why exactly. But in any sane world, one would expect inflation. Because in comparison, what has been multiplied by thousands is the economic growth of the game. We now see thousands of titans and supercaps populating the cluster, big alliances for which money is not an issue anymore (more a matter of time and numbers now). So it becomes even harder to win through attrition like it was in the past. Losing a titan is not anymore a lethal blow. Everything cost the same than in the past (at an average), maybe a bit more since now only miners generate ore, but that's not a lot of inflation compared to how rich people can become now. With the introduction of high end content like incursions and wormholes, or ludicrously broken money fountains like FW, it's even worse.

So tldr I would say that while people can afford ten times more than in the past, prices mostly remained the same for years. Maybe i'm wrong, but that's how I feel about it.

In early 2003 the "titans" were cruisers. It was  a big deal early in the PIE Oracle war when PIE lost a couple Mallers. By 2004, the "Titans" were battleships. In 2005, the "Titans" were dreadnaughts. Ect ect. To use that war for an example: Oracle figures out how to kill Mallers, PIE builds a battleship fleet that they can't beat. They then create an alliance of corps to match that battleship fleet. PIE allies up to match them, you get CVA. Dreadnaughts happen, then carriers, ect ect. Building ever more deadly numbers until CVA outright won (well after PIE left them) at 9UY. EVE as a whole is driven by those competitions, that is just the one I witnessed.

Its not a matter of inflation of currency but a matter of inflation of required force power to compete. It also has to do with military competition. Once one side creates a supercap fleet, the other side *has* to create a supercap fleet. That means they have to create the economic basis to support a supercap fleet. For most players a supercap is still an absurdly expensive investment, but if you are going to try to fight a battle with Goons, you have to match goons titan for titan, dread for dread.

If CCP follows a historical model of military inflation, the next step in how ship of the line inflation works is actually for supertitans (Maybe 3 doomsdays instead of one, or something like that) to be built so that one side could continue to outclass the other. I actually think the level of force inflation is one of the cooler things about EVE, rather than a problem.

Now jump frieghters are just stupid. They make logistics way too easy.

[Morwen Lagann]

Regarding inflation - there is inflation in EVE, but I would suggest that changes to loot tables have helped even out the effects.

Ships are ridiculously more expensive compared to when I started in late 2007. I was able to afford and fit a Dominix about 4-5 months after I created Morwen in June of 2008. I remember buying a Megathron around Christmas time that year as well. Mineral prices have gone up for a number of reasons (I'd pin part of it on drone changes, which while I understand the reasoning, I think the implementation was utter shit; they're even less of an attractive target than they used to be), but ISK generation methods have not increased accordingly in the same time period. Sure, we've got 'new' ISK-printing mechanisms like FW or Incursions, but the average income of a highsec mission-runner (at any level of mission) has not increased much with everything else.

Modules, on the other hand, particularly named ones, are generally cheaper than they used to be (named cruiser MWDs for a good example - they used to cost 7-10 mil each; now they're like 80k). What happened there was an increase in supply due to the increase in players generating them from wrecks. T2 modules obviously are still as expensive as ever.

As an experiment, I created a character away from RP stuff and tried to see how long it took to get them to be able to afford a battleship while keeping them completely isolated from everything but my knowledge of what skills to train and how the game worked. Casually running missions for a few hours a week took me more than a -year- before the character had enough ISK in their wallet to own a battleship: the increase in income going from L3s to L4s is substantial, and I didn't want to throw a battlecruiser I could barely afford to replace on that character into L4s. Eventually I ended up getting bored and trained exploration skills for a few hours and got a couple semi-decent drops over a couple days worth about 300m ISK.

I'm sure I was doing something wrong (i have to have been, since it took a whole year), but I can't really be sure of what. On the other hand, if I wasn't, that's kind of a scary image to show how much prices for ships have risen over the years.

Has anyone else tried something like that recently?

[Gaven Lok ri]

On the titans thing, the other "historical" route out of the current situation is for a cheap titan killer to develop. Historically that was the torpedo boat and then the torpedo bomber.

Which brings us to the new situation where we have supercarriers as the RL titans. (Until a supercarrier killer exists and changes the paradigm)

[Lyn Farel]

T1 tier 1 BSes cost like 80-90M now right ? Before tiericide I mean.

That's more or less double their prices a few years before. When I started they were around 60-70M. They dropped incredibly low, like 45-50M for a while, then the removal of the NPC shuttles, and the drone loot / T1 meta 0 loot from missions, made it skyrocket again.

This is inflation, but it is completely nothing compared to the economic power of big alliances compared to what they had at their disposal in the past. Players as individual entities do not see their consuming power increase that much, yes (though I have seen all noobs starting a lot quicker than I did myself in the past because they make much more at the beginning), but big entities sure do.

Its not a matter of inflation of currency but a matter of inflation of required force power to compete. It also has to do with military competition. Once one side creates a supercap fleet, the other side *has* to create a supercap fleet. That means they have to create the economic basis to support a supercap fleet. For most players a supercap is still an absurdly expensive investment, but if you are going to try to fight a battle with Goons, you have to match goons titan for titan, dread for dread.

If CCP follows a historical model of military inflation, the next step in how ship of the line inflation works is actually for supertitans (Maybe 3 doomsdays instead of one, or something like that) to be built so that one side could continue to outclass the other. I actually think the level of force inflation is one of the cooler things about EVE, rather than a problem.

Well I disagree then. I agree that it's still extremely hard to afford stuff like supercaps as players, but more and more do. Which was not the case before because the economy could just not sustain it, and allow it.

I think you are trying to put the cart before the horse.

[Morwen Lagann]

T1 tier 1 BSes cost like 80-90M now right ? Before tiericide I mean.

That's more or less double their prices a few years before. When I started they were around 60-70M. They dropped incredibly low, like 45-50M for a while, then the removal of the NPC shuttles, and the drone loot / T1 meta 0 loot from missions, made it skyrocket again.

I don't remember the exact price for what it would've been when I started, but it was what used to be one of the tier-2 BS, and cost about 120m for the hull alone when the character finally bought one. Fittings were close to another 80-100m, all for named/T2 stuff except rigs (T1 there). It's still a lot of money.

Of course, there is the bright side - it took so long to afford the ship that by the time the character could afford it they had the SP invested to use it effectively.

[Lyn Farel]

My first ships, BC, BS, were all cheap T1 fitted... Like most noobs I know. They can't use the T2 guns to begin with, and even the rest is generally too expensive for them to use, and also demands other skills.

[Gaven Lok ri]

No matter how expensive you make titans, they will proliferate as long as they are militarily required, is my point.

Its not that 200 bil is less than it was a long time ago and more that these alliances have had 5 years of being built up to soak 200 bil losses, with almost no mass losses until this week. The interesting question is what happens now that titan losses on this scale have started happening.

Their money making infrastructure is relatively inflated, but thats not the overall EVE economy. In EVE I think military drives economy more than the other way around.

[V. Gesakaarin]

On the titans thing, the other "historical" route out of the current situation is for a cheap titan killer to develop. Historically that was the torpedo boat and then the torpedo bomber.

Which brings us to the new situation where we have supercarriers as the RL titans. (Until a supercarrier killer exists and changes the paradigm)

Or a new capital-killer BC/BS class that's essentially just a stripped down doomsday device with engines and a warp drive. Have it completely useless for anything else but firing a death ray at Capitals.

[Lyn Farel]

It would be rather cool, but it would kill some capitals.

Dreads would remain useful for POS bashing, but nothing else. Carriers would remain useful for logistic purposes, but nothing else. Maybe this could be a good thing.

Titans for jump bridging, like in the old days.

Supercarriers would lose any interest.

[Silas Vitalia]

This is quickly heading into thread branch-off territory but in short:

The games that tend to be the most fun tactically tend to implement a rock/paper/scissors game design where things that are strong vs some things are weak vs others. This forces your fleet to be more 'swiss army knife' than 'blob wrecking ball' 

I'm sure you are all experienced with 'x' blanced RTS type of game where you have to have a mixture of strategies vs 'y' unbalanced RTS game where you can build one type of thing that kills everything and use that only.

Eve makes those sorts of tactical design ideas difficult because it's generally in a state of 'more numbers' generally trouncing anything, and for high end content entire classes of ships that are generally impervious to anything except mirror images of themselves.

It's a fundamental thing about eve's PVP: tactics can often be far less important than throwing bodies at something. 

[Lyn Farel]

nvm

[Vic Van Meter]

Actually, one of the things they can do to limit fleets and big fleet power is to introduce something in the environment that forces upkeep.  Maybe interstellar weather or part wear.  I think one of the reasons people can build Titan fleets so big is because, unlike IRL, it doesn't take any money to pay and feed the crew, or paint the hull, or overhaul the engine at 100,000 miles.

A lot of people get caught up in the cost of an American aircraft carrier (there's that line about how its construction money would feed some developing country for a year.  Lost in that discussion is how much they cost to maintain.  That's really where the drain on resources is.  We don't have that in EVE.  You can collect ships like baseball cards and they're always ready to go in prime condition.  You can fly them as long and as far as you like, but that capacitor will always recharge and shine like new.

I think the PF is that our vast capsuleer wealth pays for the routine stuff, but when you think about it, lots of ships (or even smaller numbers of big ships) should probably outstrip our ability to passively pay for gas.  That might be a way for CCP to control large fleet production, and probably make null a helluvalot more interesting place.  Force people to pay to keep their ships in good condition, especially when flying.  While that probably will amount to a pittance for your common frig pilot flying into FW or running missions in highsec, the upkeep on Titans must be astronomical.  Then, you won't be able to afford 100 titans; you'll only be able to afford what you can afford to keep running.

I don't think CCP even wants to make the game harder for the nullcorps, but man would that make it more interesting (imagine having to guess not just the size of a corp's fleet, but its actual condition, and how a temporary drop in money can mean a big fleet can suddenly find themselves having to mothball ships until they can get their economy working again).  At the very least, it would explain why nullsec power blocs wouldn't be able to destabilize the empires, Imperial upkeep programs due to their relatively high tax rates would be huge.  Hell, it might also make a titan what it was supposed to be again, a kind of monolith that shows up like a hot-dropping space station rather than a relatively disposable ship.  It might also spur nullsec corps to action, since the only way to build more ships would be to own more territory.

Just a random suggestion.  Thoughts?

[Arista Shahni]

Been reading this thread in bits off and on to Mirage, who for the record Gaven keeps nodding at everything you say.  (He was fighting in Providence allied with CVA 2005-2009) - especially on the jump freighter/jump bridges part.  To him they completely nullified tactics of fighting in null that didn't necessarily require military escalation to the scale it is needed now. No ragtag group can really cut off supply lines without it being a minor annoyance. 

Well, a major annoyance, as in a way it does involve people for example, being stuck staying awake till 4am IRL when they have to go to work in 3hrs, to move ships etc, but as the game goes, things are no longer "impossible" to avoid in the sense of blockades in a way that aren't solveable with time waiting for other people to go to sleep or log out.

Which.. could be touching on something there.  As games have been going in general in MMOland they have been trying to make it so that any time you spend online can be in some way productive and that you are not "pinned online".  EVE-O is still generally oldschool in the sense of neeeding to be online at certain times of the day (forcing the player to schedule their lives around the game, which got a lot of negative press when it came to MMOS, and wives stamping their feet yelling "that guild or me!" or people being fired from work for missing a day because of a raid, etc), but if it is purposely trying to back away from that hardcore mode into something where a player isn't setting an alarm on their phones or PC's etc *as often* as they used to, to match with other new games...