Bottlenecks

I wrote yesterday about the expected market equilibrium for minerals and how it relates to the current prices. At present, Pyerite, Nocxium and Isogen are showing significant elevation above what we expect while Zydrine and Megacyte are a bit lower (Zydrine is very nearly worth LESS than Nocxium right now). This is an expecially interesting turn of events because it means that at the current prices, Hedbergite, Hemorphite and Jaspet are the three most valuable ores to mine. While these ores do appear in low-sec (or very, very rarely in hi-sec grav anomalies), they're predominantly mined in null-sec. they represent good sources of both Nocxium and two of them throw off substantial Isogen as well.

So Arkonor and Bistot are now low on the curve. Does that mean something's broken? No, not really. It simply means that there's Arkonor and Bistot (and Crokite) in greater abundance than the current demand side of the equation (there's another possible explanation but we'll get to that). So how does one determine the market demand?

Well, it is fairly difficult even for CCP. One reasonably solid measure would be to aggregate the monthly destruction of minerals that leave the game (through ships being destroyed, reprocessing loss, etc) and add it all up. That would give an amount of minerals that the mining community needs to supply to stay ahead of attrition. We lack that level of database access so we're left with a more difficult task. For us, the easiest thing to do is to aggregate ship hulls, presumably the highest consumer of raw materials, and provide an estimate. Developing this "market basket" is difficult but the currently accepted method is to use a Drake. Caldari ships tend to use all 7 minerals in roughly even fashion. On the other hand, we could get a little more sophisticated and develop a pool of common ships and aggregate by some method. The old EVE economics posts used to provide really good information about this but they, alas, are a relic of the past. I'm going to create the following ship basket based on what I've read and experienced.

2x Drake
4x Zealot (just the T1 minerals)
4x Omen (to power the zealots)
10x Rifter
7x Incursus
3x Ishkur
3x Incursus
5x Kestrel
3x Tristan
2x Nemesis
2x Tristan
5x Iteron V
2x Viator
2x Iteron I
1x Dominix
1x Raven
1x Apocalypse
1x Hurricane
1x Tornado
10x Merlin
2x Vexor
2x Hulk
2x Covetor

this probably shows my bias towards Gallente but since Gallente ships tend to be reasonably diverse in mineral costs like Caldari, I think it should be similar. Either way, we can compare it to the standard 1x Drake method and see if it is too far off.

My basket generates ratios of (Tritanium / Pyerite / Mexallon / Isogen / Nocxium / Zydrine / Megacyte)
3394 / 900 / 203 / 47.7 / 10.2 / 3.16 / 1
the Drake gets
2913 / 729 / 201 / 20.8 / 14.7 / 4.29 / 1

The most glaring difference is the Isogen used. My basket uses Isogen at a rate 135% faster than the Drake does. Given the Drake's numbers putting Isogen and nocxium in such close proximity, this isn't entirely unexpected as it appears the Isogen usage there was just off. I'm also a bit lighter on Nocxium and Zydrine. Of course, all these numbers are based on ratio to Megacyte. It's just as valid to normalize to something else and Tritanium is the most logical one (in keeping with yesterday's equilibrium post). So the Tritanium normalized numbers are:
1 / .26 / .06 / .014 / . 003 / .0009 / .00029
vs.
1 / .25 / .069 / .007 / .005 / .0015 / .00034

So the Drake uses a bit more on the high end side and substantially less on the Isogen side with Tritanium , Pyerite and Mexallon being in roughly equal quantities.


That's interesting. What's also interesting is that mining out a completely random null-sec gravsite yields numbers not even remotely resembling these
336 / 85.2 / 33 / 15 / 6.6 / 3.06 / 1 (normalized to Mega) or
1 / .24 / .09 / . 04 / .018 / .0086 / .0028

so null-sec can quite comfortably supply their needs for Megacyte and Zydrine. If they're Goons building Drakes, they can even begin to approach their Isogen needs (another interesting coincidence). But they're going to fall well, well short of their Tritanium, Pyerite and Mexallon needs.

Hi-sec on the other hand has no ability to supply Zydrine and Megacyte and only the most cursory of capacity to supply Nocxium. But a typical hi-sec strip mining operation supplies roughly
1 / .232 / .059 / 0.00 / .11 / 0 / 0 (in Pyrox space)
or
1 / .256 / .076 / .0155 / 0.0 / 0 / 0 (in Kernite space)

So pyerite is somewhat thin but Nocx gets supplied VERY well (in fact, at double the rate which is good because it's only available in half the galaxy) but isogen is supplied at about half the quantity needed but only in half the galaxy due to kernite abundancy. We're beginning to see the story for why Isogen has spiked so high while also seeing why Pyerite is a bit squeezed. We're NOT seeing why Nocxium has increased, however and that particular mystery still has me baffled. One last test might be in order.

Let's assume an alliance wanted to build a Titan. Let's further assume they had a huge null-sec mining op and a huge hi-sec mining op running 24/7 (well, 23/7 in EVE). What would they need to build their Titan (let's say an Erebus for the heck of it)?

The numbers are, to say the least, staggering:
Tritanium: 3,425,101,200
Pyerite: 833,045,700
Mexallon: 285,320,400
Isogen: 50,209,300
Nocxium: 14,030,100
Zydrine: 2,504,000
Megacyte: 1,245,800
and that all assumes perfect capital BPOs which no one actually owns (they take about 170 years to research to perfection)... so there's probably a hair more Megacyte and a LOT more Tritanium that goes into a Titan. So let's look at what they had when they finally stopped mining. Pyerite would be the last thing they'd have enough of and they'd find themselves with the following excess materials:
Tritanium: 129,140,640 (about 753m isk at today's prices)
Pyerite: 0
Mexallon: 32,668,493 (2bil)
Isogen: 49,788,988 (5.6bil)
Nocxium: 22,867,401 (14.2bil)
Zydrine: 13,170,295 (8.7bil)
Megacyte: 3,866,478 (7.7bil)

Pyerite is the bottleneck in minerals no matter how you slice it. Nocxium, if anything, should be produced in excess. so why is the market going bonkers right now? Maybe my far too long post tomorrow will help. (How's that for a teaser?)