fantasy MMO sandbox

I envision a game that is truly epic in feel. I'd like players to have high flexibility in what their characters do (perhaps with a FEW more limits than EVE). I like the "hybrid" classes in WoW (like the Druid/Monk/Paladin) that can be Tank or Healer or DPS. But not all at once. That kind of flexibility is pretty neat. I think it might be best to limit it a little more but not much.

I envision a world built off the traditional D&D cosmology. A material plan that has the seeded NPC towns and hamlets (not many) with plenty of room for the players to expand to and build their own towns. These material plane towns PROBABLY become trade hubs but that's far from guaranteed. The outer planes are home to the gods and other mythological creations. The Inner planes are the elemental planes. Connecting them are the Ethereal (goes from Material to Inner planes), the Astral (connects the Material to the outer planes), and Shadow (connects inner to outer and is VERY dangerous). This reinforces the idea that the material is "in the middle" but it doesn't have to be if the players don't want it to be.

Each of the other realms is procedurally generated by players as they wander. Each player creates a "grid" around them (reminiscent of EVE) that is procedurally generated content. However, their relative positions are tracked and if they wander close to each other (either on purpose or by accident) then they share grid content. The procedurally generated terrain is based off of grid location so it's stable for any given version of the game but as game content gets updated, it will randomize again. In this way, an area may feel fairly stable for a short period of time but will definitely change over time. Player's can create cities almost anywhere. By doing this, the area around the city gets "locked in" for characteristics. This means that the natural resources, terrain, wildlife, etc gets fixed at this point (although the wildlife is fairly dynamic so that's not that big a deal). Cities in the Ethereal, Astral and Shadow are incredibly expensive and difficult to maintain. Particularly because the natural resources in those areas aren't very common. Should a guild wish to create an isolated outpost, they can go to one of the more dangerous outer planes and carry their town charter out as far as they can walk. They're going to have problems getting the building materials there to make it a big town, but if they can tackle that problem, having a hard to find, isolated outpost deep in the wilds of the Obsidian plane would be a really cool thing.

Speaking of wildlife, I envision a very basic life cycle of creatures. Resource spawns (both minerals and plants) are static and local to specific areas. Those resource spawns attract "prey" animals. Gatherers of various sorts (could be gnomes for minerals or cows for plants, etc). Each resource type has a "family" of prey animals that it might attract. Those "prey" animals then attract a further tier of "predator" animals. This way, you may find yourself farming for certain things. For example, you know your city has a copper vein on the east. You know that copper can attract gnomes, goblins or dark dwarves. The gnomes and goblins don't really attract anything useful from a predator stand point. But the dark dwarves can sometimes attract mindflayers and they have a rare drop of a spell gem. So you keep farming the gnomes and goblins as often as possible until you get dark dwarves. Then you start killing the mindflayers that show up. You have to also kill the other predator animals because they'll eat your dark dwarves. And you have to periodically cull the dark dwarves because if they get too numerous, they'll mine out the copper and leave forcing you to start the whole cycle all over again. So your city's economy begins to revolve around this "ecological" interaction and trying to keep the balance. The player driven economy needs to be INCREDIBLY complex so that the above then results in decisions for my craftsmen in town on what to build. Perhaps there's an herb that grows elsewhere near my town that combines with the spell gems and "essence of fire" to create a really powerful potion. So now my town needs to create and maintain a portal to the fire plane so that periodically people can mine for that essence of fire. Or they could start recruiting wizards that can do one shot portals for mining expeditions.

This forces the town's leaders to go negotiate with some cities on the plane of fire. The hope is to find one that will not ask for money to create the portal because they'll have some other kind of economic incentive. This also creates HEAVY regionalization of resources. No more will any town or even any region have access to everything. Towns on the plane of fire will have lots of fire gems and other fire related resources (rubies, etc). But they

And oh, by the way, the town is still farming the dark dwarves and mindflayers with the help of player created quests. Players earn the right to create types of quests by collecting papers seeded and dropped in the world. So by killing a few hundred dark dwarves myself, I earned the right to create quests involving dark dwarves. By finishing a small mini-dungeon (randomly generated), I earned the right to create "kill x for y gold" quests. Putting those two together, I can now throw up quests on the town's quest board. I could have found other types of quests that I could have combined differently. Quests that trade killing for items. Quests that involve protecting. Quests that involve finding. Any of these are possibilities and I'll build up a library of quest creation options as I level (they come on papers so if I find a duplicate, I can sell it).

The class system is critical. Mage-tanks have plagued other MMOs and should be fought vigorously against. On the other hand, I like how EVE encourages you to emotionally invest in a single character. My thought is that there are a number of combat roles in game that are critical (tank, heal, single target dps, aoe dps, crowd control, buff/debuff, etc) as well as non-combat roles (trader, many varieties of craftsmen, spy, etc). A system that allowed any given character to access many but not all of these roles would allow for players to have a lot of variety in their game play without having 15 alts. You can further differentiate things by making different classes geared to specific encounter types. So maybe the "Chaos Knight" has a core ability that makes him a better magic tank than anyone while the Monk is a better tank against physical attacks in hand to hand and the Warder is a tank for ranged attacks. Balance is a tricky thing but if people always have multiple roles they can play then no one should ever feel too gimp.

One of the things that I felt was really cool about Shadowbane was that there was a "profession" system overlaid onto the more combat oriented "class" system. The professions were unlocked by runes carried around by special mobs scattered throughout the world. Those mobs were one of the few resources worth fighting over in the game world. So you'd see cities pop up next to the spawn point for a particularly good rune. That KIND of thing is really cool.

The ecosystem itself would be the biggest time sink from a development standpoint. One of the best ways to accomplish the goal is to create creature "frameworks" and then overlay "templates". So maybe you have a wolf base creature with "frost", "fire", "storm" templates that modify it giving it resistances and new damage types and maybe even new abilities. Certain places have a preponderance for certain templates "fire" and "lava" wolves on the "magma" plane for instance. The game would simulate an ebb and flow of these based on the eco-systems cultivated by the various cities. So if I am farming some kind of low level animals in my city, I'll make my city pretty noobie friendly with only slightly higher monsters around it. On the other hand, if I'm farming vampire minotaurs then the surrounding area is likely to be very dangerous.

I picture PVP as being "impactful" without being "ragequit inducing". When you die, you lose 1% of your gold (half of which goes to your killer be it mob or player) and your corpse is lootable for one item of equipment and all inventory while one item of inventory is also destroyed. After a set period of time (or perhaps after casting a special spell), the remaining items come back to you (or you can retrieve them earlier). If you haven't been looted, one item is chosen at random to drop from your corpse when you do that (so unless you recover your own corpse quickly, you're GOING to lose two items). But, I think one item slot would be devoted to modifying game play on these lines. One item slot would be a PVP/PVE/Crafting modifier token. So you could put a "coin purse" in that slot that reduced your gold loss. Or a "red herring" that made that item the only lootable item. Instead, maybe you're geared for PvE so this is a "rabbit's foot" that increases the chance of gold dropping from a mob or a "spell book" that improves your chance of spell discovery when crafting. This token slot you would frequently switch in and out based on what you were doing.

I think it's time for currency arbitrage to make it's way into a game. I picture 13 currencies in the game (that may be too many). One for each "wing" of each plane. So you'd have a fire, water, earth, air, positive, negative, lawful, chaotic, good, evil, primal, abstract currency... plus gold. The ONLY currency faucets in the game would be those created from core towns (the starter hamlets or the small NPC hubs in the planes) and from boss mobs. By allowing noobies and veterans to have access to faucets, you guarantee that the economy doesn't stagnate. For sinks, you have player death as a big one and if that's not sufficient, town charters can easily provide a dynamic one that auto-scales with the faucets.

So player run economy, player run quests, player created content and in many very real ways, player created world. What a game that would be!

Designing an MMO

I'm far from a game designer by training but I'd really like to do it. I'm sure every computer gaming nerd feels the same way. We've all sat around the table and said, "Wouldn't it be cool if..." or "I could build a better game." I've been playing a lot of Eve lately but I cut my teeth on EQ, WoW and some of the other more "traditional" fantasy genre games. I'd like to see a fantasy MMO that has the following design principals.

1) Single Shard: Ideally, this is truly single shard but should the game reach a certain critical mass of players, you could see a need to break it apart for language reasons if nothing else. Still, the single shard concept is an amazing one and one that I hope finds its home in the next generation of games.

2) Player content and economics are king: One of my earliest "MMO" experiences was playing a MUD called "Shadowdale". It was free to play and generally had around 50-150 people on at any given time (and, judging by the people that talked, a user base that couldn't have exceeded 1000). There was no "crafting" economy but I learned very early on that area knowledge was important. This was 1996 so there weren't massive internet resources at the time. Even now, a game that size wouldn't have had an encyclopedic index of locations. Exploring in that game was dangerous as there were death traps in certain places and you had to read the scrolling text for context clues. I discovered a quick way to a zone that I'm not sure anyone knew was a zone in the game. People would portal to specific MOBs that they knew had good loot but they'd portal between places that, in some cases, were two rooms away from where they just came from. So I made a tidy little living running through that zone once every hour killing everything there and selling it all for ~500,000 gold per run. It didn't make me rich, but it let me buy anything I really needed. I say all that because I think the player run economy and player created content is critical for a game to have lasting success. I'd love to see a game where EVERYTHING was player crafted. To have this be compelling, however, you have to create a world where the drops for the crafting are "vaguely predictable" but also "rare". I have an idea for this so read below.

3) Dynamically created environments: I'm having a big love affair with procedural content generation. I think it's the wave of the future in gaming. We're quickly hitting a point where content creation is the limiting factor. The game company/genre/inventor that figures out a way to create reasonably compelling procedurally generated environments / content will make a tidy profit.

4) Death matters: In EQ, if you died, you had to recover your corpse (and you lost xp). Now if you were grouped with friends, this was reasonably easy (although it often involved a naked run back to the group that was scary). In WoW, there are 5 classes that can instantly rez you. Your items are bound to you and not your corpse and the repair costs are often, literally, a few minutes worth of work in gold. So dying is a delayed inconvenience of a few minutes and if you have a semi-successful night logged in then it doesn't matter. Death in PVP is even less costly because it doesn't really cost you anything. I'd like to see a game with something in between (I have some ideas here too).

5) HUGE world: This ties into the single shard. But it's more than that. Does anyone remember playing EQ1 and doing the Dwarven Warhammer quest? It involved going from the Dwarven city to West Qeynos and back. That's a trip that spanned nearly the entirety of the game world at that time. It was a trip that probably took you a couple hours and took you through zones that you were not equipped to handle (including a chasm full of minotaurs). Because death mattered, you couldn't just sprint through it all. It was hair raising. It was intimidating. And it was representative of an absolutely MASSIVE world. I'd like to recapture that scope. There should be ways to fast travel between areas but they should be limited and expensive. Limited travel also creates a better economy. So double win.

6) PVP: I think the beauty of EVE is that PVP is always an undercurrent to the game. We can argue about the balance. Maybe hi-sec is too dangerous. Maybe hi-sec should be smaller. Should all the major hubs be connected by hi-sec routes? Etc. But the fact that you're never COMPLETELY safe creates interesting tension in everything.

7) Players should be able to build epic things: Did anyone play Shadowbane? That was a game that was soooooooo close to being epic and failed so miserably. It suffered from a few key, critical, design elements but in many ways it's the game I'd like to recreate. You could build CITIES in the wilderness. Whole castles with shops and everything. I imagine that the folks at CCP must have played it because it feels very similar to EVE. A game should be seeded with basic infrastructure and then let the players go nuts. That infrastructure should be destroyable too... More for the players to fight over.

So what would this hypothetical game look like. I actually have a design document that I've worked on over the years. It's more of an intellectual exercise at this point. Unless I win the lotto or someone invents a game designer AI that works off of natural language, it'll never see creation. Nevertheless, I enjoy tinkering with it. I'll post more in the next post.

How to stop Freighter Ganking the right way!

You probably read this article (as well as another article entitled "Should Freighter Ganking be Nerfed") a few days ago, I'd like to offer one critique and a couple techniques for how to reduce your hi-sec ganking risk. None of these are foolproof but they are techniques that you can / should try in your attempt to get your ships home to their destination. Let me say, some of these are a little "wonky" in terms of game mechanics and one of my gripes with CCP is that the counters for certain strategies are sometimes buried in an esoteric understanding of multiple game mechanics.

Various Strategies for minimizing ganking risk:

1) Transparency when you're traveling with cheap stuff. Obscurity when traveling with expensive stuff: Double wrapped secure containers can't be scanned for content. You want to make the potential gankers have EASY decisions when you're not worth ganking and HARD decisions when you are worth ganking. So don't double wrap your containers if you're just carrying a truck load of Tritanium or T1 ships around. On the other hand, make the stuff as hard to scan as possible when you're carrying a freighter load of implants (although, I'd question why you're not using an insta-warping interceptor for such an expensive transfer). Granted, if everyone did this, it would actually make the ganker's decisions fairly easy (gank the guy with the double wrapped, let everyone else go) but I doubt there will ever come a time when everyone will do this relatively simple step (sad little carebears ;)

2) Bait ships: Industrial ships can be ganked fairly easily. I'm seriously considering sending a T1 tanked Iteron back and forth through Uedama just to see what might happen. Buy some secure containers, tank it with some shield extenders and put overdrives and nano's in the low slots. Double wrap the stuff with names like "implants", "tech", "officer mods" etc and see if you can get someone to pop your ship. You lose about $4mil in isk. They lose a couple $100mil in isk. It'd be nice if hi-sec carebears could finally inflict some tears of their own.

For the next three, it's important to understand how the ganking occurs. The gank squad does not bring overwhelming firepower because if they did, every ship that engaged would die horribly to Concord thus driving up costs. The hypothetical "perfect" gank is where your last ship with it's last shot pops the freighter mere moments before getting blasted by Concord. Now in practice, there's a desire to have a little bit of leeway and they probably have a couple extra DPS ships that they can "add in" to the gank should they get close but fail to pop the freighter. But the broad point to keep in mind is that they don't just have infinite DPS to do infinite damage with.

3) Remote Repping: Having a ship follow behind and rep you can completely throw off the math of the potential gankers. A logistics ship can single handedly rep a freighter outside of most profitable gank ranges. Sure, if they've got an extra 20 people, they notice the logistic ship, AND the freighter is sufficiently valuabel, they might still win. But that's a lot of "ifs".

4) Fleet Boosters: A wingman in a T3 booster cruiser or command ship can likewise throw the math way off. Reduced signature size isn't worth it because you are gonna get hit for max damage by whatever they've got. But the tanking skills (both shield and armor) can significantly throw off their math. This is a nice one because they're unlikely to see it coming. T3 cruisers run through hi-sec all the time. No one knows their shapes by heart and even if they did, they wouldn't necessarily think you're with the freighter.

5) Instawebbing: This is one that requires an understanding of the system bordering on the insane. For a ship to warp, there are two necessary components. It's velocity must be 75% of its max and it must be in the direction (with some tolerance for "close enough") of the target. By packing 2-3 webbers on a ship and instawebbing a freighter, you can actually make their warp QUICKER because they'll more quickly hit that magic 75%. Do it right, and you can very nearly instawarp after de-cloaking and getting the lock. This may mean that they don't have their full-time on target or it may mean they don't even get a chance to START ganking you.

So there are numerous ways to reduce your risk in hi-sec. People just need to do them and sites like this need to spread them. The gankers will find a new way to pop the freighters, and the freighters will respond.

One Gripe: Now I get to my one gripe about current ganking. I don't like bumping. There was a time when bumping was needed as it was the only way to tackle a Titan and thus the only way to actually kill a Titan. Now, however, bumping serves no legitimate game play purpose other than to make ganking of non-afk freighters possible (afk freighters can fairly easily be taken out in the 12.5km before they hit the gate). But that's not the reason to eliminate it. The reason to eliminate it is that it's a purely grief mechanic. It's the very definition of a grief mechanic. It has absolutely ZERO repercussions for the bumper and there's virtually NOTHING that the bumpee can do about it. What are your options if you're getting bumped by someone? Your short term options are limited to shooting him. That solution stinks. To stop a bumper, I have to incur the wrath of Concord, I'll probably fail to kill him before Concord kills me, and, even if I kill the bumper, I am likely to lose a heckuvalot more in isk than the bumper does.

On the other hand, your long-term options are very nearly as bad. The bumper is probably in an NPC corp but even if he's not, war-deccing to kill a single player is expensive, slow and easily avoided by the target just dropping out of the corp. I suppose I could also try to use the ridiculously bad bounty system in place but that's badly exploitable by the target (this MIGHT get better with the upcoming changes but somehow I doubt it).

I would think gankers of all people would understand the concept that actions with no repercussions are bad and that no one should be safe in hi-sec. Flying a factory issue stabber and ramming things is something that you could probably do from now until the servers shut down without ever getting popped.

So bumping is something that needs to be looked at. But let me say, I think it should be replaced not removed. There's still something needed for slowing down hi-sec freighters. It just should be something that results in a Concord response. A hi-sec, small interdiction sphere perhaps? Hi-Sec freighter ganking is fine (and I'd argue healthy). Fly smart.

Book Review: Wards of Faerie

I've been a fan of Terry Brooks for a long time. Elfstones was one of the first books I ever read that I truly loved and it probably started my love of fantasy ever since. I've been generally very happy with Mr. Brooks's Shannara series. There are moments when it begins to feel a bit formulaic and I'm the first to acknowledge that but the world he's created is fascinating and the way he tells the story is fantastic. So it was with great interest I picked up the newest book of his, Wards of Faerie. For those of you unfamiliar with his world, let me give a brief history.

The original trilogy: Sword of Shannara, Elfstones of Shannara and Wishsong of Shannara are a multi-generational set of books following the Ohmsford family and the Druid Allanon. The fantasy world he created is what I would describe as "low-magic". A magical sword is a treasure the likes of which no one has ever seen. Allanon is the only druid left in the world. There are demons and other things that go bump in the night but they're generally rare and stick to their own little corner of the world while magic is slowly dying off.

Since that original trilogy, he has published a prequel to the original set, 4 more trilogies, one 4 book series, and one 2 book series all set in the same world. Two of the trilogies actually preceded the original with one set on modern day earth. He'd dropped hints off and on about the world of Shannara actually being our earth but post-apocalyptic and he confirmed this with these connecting books. So now he's going back and forth, alternating between series that will further the Ohmsford legacy and series that will fill in the blanks and connect the two worlds in more substantial ways.

Wards of Faerie is the former. A book set after the events of the Ilse Wytch trilogy. It takes place about 130 years later and focuses on the dwindling Druid council left behind by Grianne Ohmsford. I found the characters to be engaging. It was nice to finally see an assortment of good Druids with different personalities. We've only ever really been exposed to three druids, Allanon, Walker Boh and Grianne Ohmsford. So it was with some interest that I began to read about the various Druids of the current council. A couple of them we didn't get to learn much about, I hope that in the next book/s we learn more. The story is told primarily from the point of view of two of the Druids as well as from the primary antagonist's point of view. It focused shockingly little on the Ohmsfords despite their alleged importance and their (somewhat predictable) possession of the gift of the wishsong.

There were some story telling failings in a couple points. I've read a lot of Terry Brooks and so some of his stuff has become predictable to me. That wouldn't bother me if he just told me the story. But the fact is that he's clearly trying to "surprise" you with the story telling technique. There were four or five elements of the story that clearly were trying to surprise the reader and fell a bit flat. As a result, there was decidedly little tension in parts of the book that should have had tension. Some things go unexplained as well. In the opening chapter of the book, the primary Druid character we are following, Aphen, finds a book in the Elven archives. She's been their searching for nearly a year at this point. We are very pointedly told that she puts the book in her bag (while alone) and then leaves for the night, intentionally not departing from her normal routine. She's attacked later that night. Now this coincidence could have a lot of explanations. I don't want to get into spoilers but suffice it to say that all of the (many) logical explanations I could come up with failed to materialize. It was as if someone "just knew" she'd discovered something that very night.

On the plus side, the action was fantastic, the characters believable (more so, frankly, then in the past where you had good and bad and nothing really in between). Brooks is absolutely at his best when he's inventing and exploring new creatures/magics etc. A scene late in the book introduces us briefly to "proks". These are one of the most innovative, clever monsters that I've seen in a fantasy book. I don't expect them to make an additional appearance but their brief cameo in this book gave the world a life that was very refreshing. The whole point of the book is a quest for the missing 4 elfstone sets (not a spoiler, you get this in the beginning of the book) and that has the promise for real invention on the part of Mr. Brooks. There are a couple intriguing characters whisked away at the end but clues dropped in the book virtually guaranty that they'll be back (or at least one of them). All in all, I enjoyed the book. It's not nearly as compelling as his two masterpieces, Elfstones and Druid but I enjoyed it nevertheless. I very much hope that Aphen grows into the kind of Allanon / Walker Boh type druid that we've had in past books. Druids should, in my opinion, be enigmatic magical experts with a tendency to obfuscate while simultaneously doing what they unilaterally think is best. Right now, Aphen is plagued by the self-doubt of youth but my expectation is that by the end of the third book, we'll see that begin to melt away.

Away from the World

I don't buy a lot of albums but Dave Matthews Band stuff has always been my weakest. I think I have all of their major albums released as well as a couple live albums. I admit to being a bit disappointed by GrooGrux King but the circumstances surrounding that album and having lost a band member leave a heckuva lot of room for forgiveness. This newest album is a fantastic return to form from a Band that has always put out really amazing songs with unique sounds. I've been listening to it a lot right now (as well as the all DMB XM station they've setup to hype it... which is an awesome idea!). The album clocks in at a beefy 14 songs, 3 of which are live versions of songs elsewhere on the album. The songs, with one exception, are also universally longer than your typical "rock" fare. The overall album is a bit ballad heavy but the instrumentation on those ballads is so beautiful that it's an easily forgiven trait even if you're looking for something a little peppier.

1) Broken Things: Sets the tone for much of the album. It's a beautiful song with a really interesting message. It's a fairly upbeat ballad, however, and gives Boyd Tinsley (violin) a chance to do some fairly "classical" sounding violin work.

2) Belly Belly Nice: This song was originally called just "Belly Belly" when I downloaded the album. Subsequently, the Band renamed it and Amazon's cloud system pushed an update to me that updated the name. Dave indicated this was largely due to most of his friends, "especially women", liking the Belly Belly Nice pun more. Interesting. This song is very upbeat, uptempo and reminiscent of songs from Crash which is a good thing. This one has a very "ska" feel that reminded me in parts of Reel Big Fish, largely due to the prominent trumpet work used. That's something to listen for throughout the whole album is the subtle change in sound as a result of having a trumpet player on the roster (for the first time?). It's a very good song and a lot of fun to listen to. My favorite line, "Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown 'cause he was messin' with the preacher's daughter."

3) Mercy: In my opinion, this is the most beautiful song on the album. A really amazing ballad with a great sound, great lyrics. The message from this song has an undercurrent in many of the songs in this album which is a new thing for DMB (GrooGrux notwithstanding). Everything done in it is subtle with an artist's touch. "Love is not a whisper or a weakness. Love is strong."

4) Gaucho: Okay, I'm going to say some negative things here and I want to preface them by saying first that this is a good song. If heard in isolation, I might have even said great song. Unfortunately, it suffers from a number of items both logistically and artistically that detracted from that greatness. First, message, tempo and lyrically, it's VERY similar to Mercy which immediately preceded it. They are very much "sister" songs in that regard and you always compare sisters to each other and Mercy comes out pretty clearly on top. Second, the factor that was supposed to differentiate it (alluded to in the title) is that it was intended to have a bit of a Latin flair. While the intro definitely had some of that with some very delicate, beautiful guitar work, it quickly shifted away from that and leaves you going, "Wait. What?" All that said, still a good song. I just hope when they perform it live they emphasize the latin elements of the song a bit better. It is a much more uptempo song than Mercy so if that's your thing you might prefer this one, I suppose.

5) Sweet: Another ballad. This one more of a love song rather than Mercy which was more social commentary. This one is king of a song ABOUT love rather than TO a specific lover. Dave shows he can exercise vocal restraint and that he has a pretty controlled falsetto (which he employs nearly the whole song). For the vast majority of the song, his only accompaniment is an acoustic guitar (the drum comes in a bit at the end and opens ).

6) The Riff: This was one I didn't warm to as quickly as others though I like it now. It's a weird song, very interesting instrumentation and some odd, introspective lyrics. I'm not certain whether it's a ballad or not. My favorite line, "I don't know the man that's livin' in my head if I don't know the woman sleeping in my bed."

7) Belly Full: Clearly a love song written to a person. Feels very personal, like it's been written to a specific person. Dave's voice is beautiful and is accompanied by a simple acoustic guitar and a (very!) subtle bit of Steffan Lessard on the Bass.

8) If Only: One of the more "fun" and carefree songs on the album. It feels like a throwback to something from the early 90's (Freedie Johnston maybe?) but I haven't been able to quite place it. I particularly like some of the up/down vocal gymnastics he does on this one. Another song where he spends much of his time in Falsetto with little back and forths that are nice. Very mellow.

9) Rooftop: Dave described this on on the radio as "Ballsy". I like the song but the chorus was a bit jarring (perhaps intentionally?) and felt a bit abrupt. It's probably the most "Rock and Roll" song on the album with some very 80's feeling to it and builds nicely to a crescendo in the end that's pretty fun.

10) Snow Outside: A great song that I totally didn't appreciate at first. The guitar work is perfect and the lyrics are lovely. I would probably describe it as haunting or perhaps hauntingly beautiful. The violin work is especially nifty in parts but it actually does a good job of showcasing everyone at some point with even the trumpet making some subtle appearances. It also has a tiny bit of cowbell.

11) Drunken Soldiers: DMB has a habit of putting at least one song on each album that is long and heavy on instrumental work. This is that song. This is NOT as good as Satellite although it does have good components. On the other hand, it clocks in at 9 minutes and the good pieces are kind of buried in the rest. I generally skip this song if the controls are at my fingertips although I don't bother if it's trouble to do it.

12-14) Three live songs: Gaucho, Mercy, Sweet. The fact that he selected these three songs to be on here as the live versions reinforces the idea that this is kind of a ballady-love focused album. As with all DMB songs, they're better live than the "radio" version. These songs haven't been in their rotation to get the full "live" treatment so they're very, very similar to the standard version. I think I would have preferred some live versions of older songs or even some of their covers (I caught a fan-frickin-tastic version of "Sweet Caroline" that they did as well as a version of the "Peanuts theme song" that was very fun). They're still good (Mercy is great). Sweet in particular was better live.

A quick note

This bothers me a lot and it has since I was a kid. Affirmative action has always struck me as the wrong tool (in my lifetime). Absolutely, it had a place 50-60 years ago where it was implemented to battle discrimination. But in this day and age, we've moved past that point in two very critical ways. 1) Both passive and active racism are significantly reduced over what they were 60 years ago (partly BECAUSE of affirmative action having changed attitudes) and 2) Computerized applications provide a level of anonymity and objectivity that should not be discounted.

Some of the proponents of Affirmative Action state that they can't achieve racial diversity (which is a good goal) without race based admissions standards. I say that's hogwash. You could very easily, and constitutionally, replace race based adjustments with class based adjustments based on parent's tax returns and/or home value. To the degree that Blacks and Hispanics are still battling the affects of hundreds of years of oppression, this will help them immensely. There are actually some people that say this approach does not work. I haven't read any of the briefs filed (I don't have the kind of time) but I'm hard pressed to see how that's possible. And IF that is the case, well, it points to only two possible explanations, all of which are scary:

1) There's still a high level of racism in the admissions process.
2) You believe that, controlling for all other factors, Blacks and Hispanics still perform worse academically than Whites and Asians

Let me address number 2 first because it's absolutely NOT what I believe but it seems to be what some people are implying. If you're out there saying, "When we adjust for socio-economic factors, we fail to achieve a diverse student body," then what you're really saying is, "Once we control for all of the socio-economic factors in a person's life, I still find that minorities are underrepresented." That's a shocking, shocking statement. It smacks of either a failure to control your institution (#1) or a racist belief every bit as negative as those people you claim to combat (#2).

I'm voting for Romney... but really??

Sometimes guilt by association is a powerful thing. This guy makes me want to reconsider my vote (that's hyperbole). In particular, I like the line that he had to stop building his dream house. The "dream house" in question is a 90,000 sqft mansion in Florida. When Obama came into office, the Florida real estate market was just starting to tank. The fact that it hasn't recovered fast enough has very, very little to do with Obama. Instead, it has everything to do with an incredibly volatile tourism and retirement bolstered Florida real estate economy. When the stock market crashes (pre-Obama) and the economy crashes (pre-Obama) then retirement and tourism crash as well. Throw in a Bank crisis and a general sense that we ALL need to delever (heck, if it wasn't so wonky, "Deleverage" would be the slogan for the Republicans this election year) and you've got a baked in recipe for real estate disaster. Historically low rates on homes have kept the market from being completely moribund.

I get that he's freaked out over Obamacare (although, that probably means he's not covering employees health insurance right now) but the ultimate solution to THAT problem is to pay people less and pay for their health care. Look, "You made $30,000 last year. I'm going to have to pay you $25,000 so I can divert $400 / month to this health care. If you don't like it, call your Senator."

As for penalizing the productive... Taxes are at an all time low as a percent of both corporate profits and GDP. So we're not exactly punishing the productive very badly. Yes, Obama wants to (idiotically, IMO) raise the tax rates on the wealthiest people. But that raise is very, very small. We're not going back to the 1800's and 80% effective tax rates. If he wants to "take his ball and go home" then so be it. But ultimately its his profits that are going to keep him here and profits are pre-tax. If he can't get his company back to profitable, the tax rate is irrelevant.

Price of Plex

Over on the mittani, there's a new article up regarding the price of Plex and it's rapid increase. The author did an adequate job of explaining the issues but failed on a couple fundamental points in identifying the root cause. EVE's economy functions just like any other economy. Consumer will try to maximize something ("fun" in this case) and will seek ways to do that. There are a number of side objectives that go into that (minimizing costs... both in game and real life for example) but the fundamental equation is one of "fun" maximization. The in game currency (ISK) will get spent efficiently to maximize said "fun". And here's where the recent economy changes come in. Faction Warfare has brought in vast swaths of loot over the past few months. While it is not an ISK faucet (in fact, it's a minor sink), per se, it is a material faucet and those materials are valuable. Additionally, with the end of Hulkageddon, mining (both ore and ice) has been helped dramatically. This is also a minor ISK sink for the broad economy as people who would otherwise be ratting / missioning (and thus collecting bounties / mission rewards) are now mining. But, again, it brings in vast quantities of minerals that have value.

Implants and Plex are two pretty good examples of luxury goods. Neither is required to play the game. While the Implants at a certain level are HEAVILY incentivized to own, having the highest level ones certainly is not. So if a player has a budget that looks something like this:

900,000,000 isk / month (real world equivalent of revenue)

250,000,000 isk / month in variable costs (real world equivalent of Cost of Goods Sold... I.e. the expenses needed to get that revenue... in this case, ships, ammo, drones, fittings, etc)
650,000,000 isk / month profit

500,000,000 isk / month PLEX
120,000,000 isk / month 1 implant upgrade per month
30,000,000 isk / month 1 skillbook / BPO / random faction frigate to play with per month

If the cost of the implants tics down a bit, the amount they have available to spend on PLEX goes up. These goods are linked in this way (not quite supplementary as that has a precise economics meaning indicating they replace each other).

The economy has, in a very real sense, found a way to work "more efficiently". As a group of 500,000 players, we are getting more implants out of the system than we've ever gotten before. And the reward for doing that is that we have more money to spend on things like Plex.

The comparison isn't perfect but it fits in this situation and addresses what is occuring. Whether it will last will depend largely on what they do with FW in the next update.

S.H.I.E.L.D.

Announced last week was that Joss Whedon is working on a TV show S.H.I.E.L.D. and that they were opening up casting. There's a whole lot of interesting things going on here. The roles being cast appear to be built specifically for a couple Whedon alums. With the description of Grant seemingly tailor made for Adam Baldwin and the two nerdy agents conjuring images of Felicia Day and Fran Kranz. It's at a very early stage but the concept and the people involved are bound to make people pretty happy. It's fun to play casting agent a bit and Whedon certainly has a habit of recasting people in various roles. In fact, the Joss Whedon wikipedia page, has a whole table devoted to repeat castings (side note, Clark Gregg probably will never hurt for a job again having been involved in Aaron Sorkin AND Joss Whedon projects thereby locking him in to two of the biggest serial casters in the business).

Here's my thoughts on who should play what role

Skye: The key here is "confident" and "wit and charm". Those two items don't come across without good chemistry between writer and actor. Eliza Dushku sometimes pulls this off but for various reasons, I think she's unlikely. Ditto Sarah Michelle Gellar. I'd expect someone who Whedon knows from recent projects but hasn't played a starring role in anything "Whedon" yet. He's also been pulling in people related to his various circles (HIMYM brought him Cobie Smulders and Neil Patrick Harris, for instance). Who this might be is anyone's guess because I think it'll be very difficult to predict (by design). Yvonne Strahovski is getting some buzz online but I actually think Sarah Lancaster (also from Chuck) would be better here. She exudes much more confidence and charm then Yvonne does. Kristen Bell would be interesting here but doesn't feel quite right. For something truly off the wall, what about Emma Watson? Can we get Kate Beckinsale to do TV?

Grant: While I'm okay with Adam Baldwin, it might be better to go a little outside the box. Tom Welling might work but he might be more good natured than the roll calls for. I also thought of Thomas Everett Scott from that thing you do was someone I thought of as well. "quiet with a temper" and "botches interpersonal relations" along with "physical specimen" provide for a narrow range. A really interesting choice, though far fetched, I fear, would be Jason Statham. Tahmoh Penikett would seem like a distinct possibility. Given Felicia Day's involvement in Eureka, I would think that any of the main men from Eureka could fit this (Colin Ferguson, Niall Matter or even Ed Quinn) depending on whether he's envisioning dangerous (Ed Quinn), humorous (Colin Ferguson) or younger and a bit of both (Niall Matter). What about Jack Coleman (Horned Rimmed Glasses from Heroes)? This one wasn't clear what the age envisioned was so it's a bit difficult to narrow it down without knowing more. David Hasselhoff? Just kidding ;)

Althea: "crazy skills when it comes to weapons" but "quiet and a little damaged". This is hard to predict because alot of it depends on the vision that's in Whedon's head. The buzz on the various websites seems to point towards someone like Amy Acker but it's hard for me to see her as having "crazy weapons skills". And is "quiet" code for shy? Or is code for laconic? Summer Glau is getting a lot of mention because she played a very similar role in Firefly. But, again, while Whedon recasts people, he tends to do it in different ways. Dichen Lachman seems like something of a possibility though. For someone a bit off the beaten path, I like Rena Sofer here too. Whoever it is will have to be able to credibly pull of a fight scene so they better polish up their kickboxing resume.

Leo: The male nerd (weapons tech). Needs to have chemistry with Jemma. I instantly thought of Neil Grayston but if the goal is for them to also be credible field agents, this one falls apart. Fran Kranz would be very good in this role, I think. Either Masi Oka or Greg Grunberg (both from Heroes) could pull this roll of depending on the vision. As could Zacharcy Levi (unlikely) or Joshua Gomez, both from Chuck. If Fringe ends, as everyone expects, Joshua Jackson would be interesting here.

Jemma: Felicia Day is the obvious choice here. But I think she's better supporting a cast and not as a main-line member. Kristen Bell probably goes the other way and needs to be more central. Michelle Trachtenberg has a Whedon tie-in and seems possible. Ashley Johnson as well. If you want "classic" then what about Danica McKellar? Olivia Munn maybe? There wasn't a lot actually spelled out with either Jemma or Leo but their chemistry together was emphasized. I guess that means joint auditions? Not sure how that's typically done in Hollywood (maybe an initial wide net casting and then a call-back to test for chemistry).

Maria Hill: Not on the casting list because she's already locked up by Cobie Smulders. How I Met Your Mother is likely to end this season so this would be a fantastic role for her to slide in to. It would allow a touch point to the movies without requiring Samuel L Jackson to show up 10+ times a season plus voice appearances.

An interesting thought about mineral sinks

I've been focusing on ships as the primary mineral sinks and I think that has been somewhat short-sighted. While those are large drivers of sinks in the economy, I was forgetting a very important one. Ammo. Ammunition of various flavors tends to have odd ratios. A heavy Scourge missile for example costs 738 Tritanium + 2 Nocxium per 100. A Juggernaut Torpedo costs 1688 Tritanium, 5 Zydrine and 2 Megactye per 100. It's very difficult, if you don't have a CCP in front of your name, to even begin to guess what the ratio of ammos used is but we can make some guesses.

Most of the T2 ammo (except missiles) are fairly frequently used. T1 ammo is used primarily by missioners. If you're doing PvP, you're either using faction ammo or T2 ammo depending on fitting requirements.

A "guess" at a basket might look something like this
5x Scourge Heavies (the most frequently used T1 missile thanks to Drakes).
2x EMP L
1x Carbonized Lead L
2x EMP M
2x Antimatter Charge L
1x Iron Charge L
2x Antimatter M
1x Mjolnir Torpedo

If that's the typical ammo used in a fleet, you'll notice that NONE of them use Zydrine. In fact, looking at my database, Zydrine is shockingly absent from all of the T1 ammos. The only thing that uses a lot of Zydrine is Cruise Missiles. It does find heavy use with the T2 ammos, but my gut is that the faction ammos are generally preferred over the T2 ammos due to various fitting constraints. As a result, Zydrine has no regular mineral sink in "standard" warfare or even in mission warfare (the cruise missiles that do have Zydrine are typically 2 per hundred). Even Scourge Fury Heavies only require 18 Zydrine for 5000 (as compared to 45 Megacyte).

It's an interesting thought, I'd like to get my hands on some ammo usage data from a big fight but that would be very difficult to do (I suppose you could count up the rounds you left with and the rounds you came back with and the difference is what was lost due to destruction or usage).

Nocxium: 694 - Zydrine: 619... the sky is falling!

The unthinkable happened this weekend (although anyone who's been reading this knows it's been heading this way for awhile), Nocxium is now a good clip more valuable than Zydrine. The result is that both Bistot and Crokite are now worth less than Veldspar and, in fact, Crokite is fast approaching Omber in value. Yes, the red-headed step child of Eve miners is close to having the same value (per m3) as a legendary ABC ore. Interestingly, all of the other big 7 minerals fell in value on the weekend. Nocxium is now, officially, the bottleneck mineral. This makes a certain degree of sense, however. Megacyte and Zydrine should always have been the mineral export of choice (along with Morphite of course). They're much easier to carry and you could have a very valuable load in a interdiction proof T3 cruiser if you really wanted to (about 20million isk of Zydrine or 60million of Megacyte or 90million of covert cynosular field generators which is the best combined megacyte/zydrine compressor I could find). A blockade runner with no cargohold expanders or anything can fit about 5 times those numbers and while not IMPOSSIBLE to destroy (I speak from experience on this) is still a pretty tough nut to pop.

So it only makes sense that the abundance of Zydrine in null-sec would finally start coming in to hi-sec. I've explored the Nocxium component though I still don't think I have a satisfactory theory for why it's the bottleneck. Everything i see is that it should be Isogen or Pyerite instead. The only thing i can conclude is that the mining community A) hasn't fully shifted towards Hedbergite/Hemorphite/Jaspet mining and B) there's significant distortion coming from the dropped modules from mission runners. My experiment for this week is to run a BUNCH of lvl 3-4 combat missions and then reprocess everything at once (everything I don't sell, that is) and see what the mix is. If I do 15-20 missions, that should represent a good approximation of the mix being supplied into the economy. If it's in a Nocxium poor mixture, we'll have our culprit.

If anyone's reading this and would like to mirror this experiment, just post a note with the mix of minerals and roughly how many missions that was. I'd love to see it.

Nocxium: 633 - Zydrine: 648 / The inexorable march continues

Noxcium continues to rise at a precipitously high rate. Mineral markets are notoriously hard to manipulate for any extended length of time and it seems unlikely, at this point, that the numbers are being pushed by market manipulation. In Jita alone, there's about 120 Billion isk in market orders on each side of the buy/sell divide. Again, not impossible to manipulate but certainly difficult. But, perhaps more interesting, is the comparison to Zydrine. There is more Zydrine being sold in EVERY MAJOR MARKET, then Nocxium. Meaning that there's just an absolute GLUT of product on the market. What's causing this?

I think it's two things:

1) We hit a Nocxium bottleneck because the drone minerals are finally sufficiently worked out of the system. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem. Pyrox actually provides more than enough Nocxium, relative to Tritanium, to fuel ship production ratios needed (about 1.3% vs. a need of about 0.3%) but Nocxium isn't the only thing needing to be supplied. Hi-sec must supply Isogen and Pyerite. Let's say that you wanted to build one of each battleship in the game right now (the mainline T1 versions... not faction variants). You'd have to mine Kernite 22.2% of the time, Pyrox 39.3% of the time, Scordite 30.5% and Veldspar 7.9%. You wouldn't actually touch Plagioclase and you'd still end up with 1.4million extra Mexallon. Those are, needless to say, not consistent numbers with the supply of roids in hi-sec. Certainly Pyrox doesn't begin to even approach 40% of roids in space even in 0.5 and 0.6 space. And it represents NONE of the roids in 0.9 and 1.0 space. (note: just for completeness, if you're Goons and building just drakes, Pyrox needs to be 52% of your ore intake to make it work... ouch!).

2) So null-sec needs to step in and help supply the Nocx and some of the Iso. And here we get the other half of the problem. A random mixture of ABCs produces far more Zydrine then is needed. ABCs have, in aggregate, a composition of approximately 75.6% Zydrine and 24.4% Megacyte. The same battleship basket as identified above has a composition of about 69.7% Zydrine and 30.3% Megacyte. Now consider also, as Nocxium has risen in value, Hedbergite, Hemorphite and Jaspet have all become stellar mining options. These three also produce a fair amount of Zydrine (Jaspet not so much... but still a small amount). That further pushes Zydrine into the surplus category.

Now I suspect mexallon hasn't fallen because our mineral basket isn't quite right (Drake building, in fact, comes very close to evening out the mexallon count... though it still has a surprlus). But the real market crash will continue to be in Zydrine until Crokite gets far enough down that it drops out of the mining basket. Null-sec miners need to start viewing Crokite like Spodumain... so crappy then in all but the most aggressive strip mining operations, we're skipping it. Once that happens, you should see the prices on Zydrine normalize. At present, Crokite isn't there yet. In fact, it's still a respectable 91% of the value of Tritanium (Bistot is 97.5% and Arkonor 106.1%). The other thing that needs to occur is the null-sec miners need to start mining Hedbergite, Hemorphite and Jaspet like they used to mine ABCs. Those ores are proving to be critical in the post-drone world.

Finally, I suspect that some of the professional refiners need to adjust their spreadsheets. The spike in Nocx and Isogen has to have changed the equation significantly on what you can pay for which modules to just reprocess for money. There is a significant database hurdle to fully understanding that market and I suspect that tweaking it for signficant mineral price shifts is non-trivial. That may begin to alleviate some of the Nocx price pressure (while simultaneously, reducing the flow of Zydrine into the economy).

--
It is better to be silent and thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt
-Abraham Lincoln

The problem with Internet quotes is that you can never be certain of their accuracy
-Abraham Lincoln

Another non-Eve post... this one about Comic Books

So I've discovered the joy of comics on the iPad. Growing up as a kid, I gravitated strongly towards the Marvel comics. I had an affinity for the Avengers and X-Men over the always perfect Justice League. I also felt like the DC continuity problems were becoming untenable from a reader standpoint (and just bonkers from an IP standpoint). And this coming from a guy who loves parallel universes and the like. I felt like they'd gotten out of hand and were actively creating and reinforcing a barrier to entry for new readers.

So the "New 52" reboot seemed the perfect time to jump into a new world of comic books. And boy was I right. They've wiped the slate clean in a reasonably clever way. Some of the big events have definitely still happened. But they've kept the references vague. So while SOME version of Blackest Night did indeed occur, it's far from clear what the specifics were. Batman's history is largely the same, Superman's history is "similar" but vague in details, etc. So these characters are characters you can step into and you understand MOST of the things about them. They tend to act similar to how you'd expect but they can still surprise you and they can still provide interesting backstories that contain new revelations and plot elements.

On a whim, I even checked out some of the other titles. I'm particularly interested to see how they wrap in the Dakota Universe and Impact comics (W.I.L.D.C.A.T.s, Grifter, etc). They moved Martian Manhunter (temporarily?) over to Stormwatch but they seem to be doing little to tie them together as of yet. I hope this changes. They've also kept their best artists for their marquee titles so Justice League and Teen Titans are drawn with verve and dynamism that is incredible while Stormwatch looks like something that any 20 year old art student could have done.

I also wanted to see the much maligned Red Hood title which reboots Roy Harper (here as a bitter, betrayed Arsenal), Jason Todd (as a reasonably well-adjusted Red Hood) and Starfire (as a memory impaired, alien princess, sex pot). Now let me say a couple things here. She's absolutely over the top in the first episode. Starfire's costume has always been, what would charitably be described as, skimpy. But here new costume takes it to a new height. And then there's the scene in which she's wearing the world's tiniest bikini and casually asks Roy Harper if he wants to have sex. It's a bit ridiculous even for someone like me. But they tone that down after the first issue (maybe due to pressure, maybe for other reasons) and move on. What gets me, however, is how the issue (at least the first 4) are entirely focused on Roy and Jason and treat her like an after thought. So far, there's absolutely no reason to believe she would stick with these two. Her presence in the issues appears to be one of hyperactive, teenage boy's dream fantasy. "My buddy and I are super heroes who do whatever we want, fight the bad guys and have the beautiful super-heroine as our loyal sex-buddy."

I take issue with it on many levels but the fundamental one that DC should be aware of is that it's bad writing. It's something that any 14 year old boy could have come up with. It could only be a more blatant male fantasy if she wore a cheerleader costume while fighting crime (Roy Harper and Jason Todd are also geniuses).

But that complaint aside, the writing has been tight and well done in most cases. DC has always been bad about introducing new characters, however. And the new 52 is not different. Bunker and Skitter in Teen Titans are great examples. They're just not interesting. It's not the fault of the "characters" per se. The writers just didn't put anything into them. Their personalities don't shine through and they haven't been explored sufficiently for us to like them. Heck, Bunker and Skitter feel very much like token minorities (Bunker is both hispanic AND gay... a two for one). Comic writers should know and understand that new characters are tough. If you want them to stick, you need to give them a great look, a great story and a great power and make it obvious right off the bat. So far, they've failed to do that.

I am enjoying reading the stories, however.

Nocxium and Zydrine

I know I was going to post about something else but the Nocxium / Zydrine break is too interesting to be silent on. As of this morning, Nocxium has risen and Zydrine has fallen to the point where the two minerals are essentially equivalent in value (645 vs. 663). In fact, you could argue that the sheer weight of market perception is what's keeping them apart at this point because momentum certainly appears to be on the side of an inversion. It's also worth noting that, unlike a few weeks ago, Mercoxit is now back to the top of the leader board with a bullet. What's causing all this? I think a couple things are at play.

1) Null-Sec mining is not well prioritized. It tends to be strip mining operations designed to despawn a grav-site and force a respawn for additional mining. This almost certainly leads to things like Omber and Spodumain being mined in null-sec.

2) Targeted mining, when done, has the weight of history on its side: When you do undock to do targeted mining, you're likely going to your local belt (rather than a grav site) and mindlessly farming whatever ABC your system spits out. You know, with complete certainty, that the ABCs are the most valuable. It's the null-sec equivalent of the mining noob that doesn't bother to mine Veldspar because everyone "knows" it's worth the least.

3) Null-sec Logistics make bringing Zydrine and Megacyte to market far more attractive then Isogen and Nocxium. Especially if you use clever, inocuous, compression items. A Radio L has almost its entire value mixed up in the 33 megacyte it requires (as opposed to the 12 Tritanium). Heavy Energy Neutralizers also yield a fairly substantial chest of Zydrine and Megacyte. Nocxium, on the other hand, doesn't really have a good vessel. ECM Multispectral Jammers look good, but actually are compression negative (meaning they expand during construction, not shrink). Other items either are awkward to produce or don't really have a high nocx content. And, if I'm going to trouble of taking product to market, it's probably more efficient for me to deliver mega/zydrine items and bring BACK nocx and other low-ends.

All that explains why Zydrine / Megacyte are so cheap (particularly Zydrine). But it doesn't really explain why Nocx is so expensive (and Isogen to a lesser degree). Nocx especially should be easily supplied by what's mined in null-sec. Jaspet, Hemorphite and Hedbergite produce an ample supply. There are a couple of possibilities that I lack sufficient knowledge / information to guess between:

1) Grav sites don't spawn those three as much. In an effort to give null-sec people what they thought they wanted rather than what they really needed, CCP gave them grav-sites weighted towards Veldspar, Scordite, ABCs and Mercoxit. While the others spawn, they do so in lesser degrees.

2) Null-sec miners haven't trained for all the T2 crystals. I can totally see how you would train for ABCs, and Veldspar and Scordite and just not get around to training for the others. That 12.5% yield hit could be hitting here.

3) The ACTUAL mineral basket (rather than the proxy I guesstimated last week) uses alot more Nocx than people realize. Given that mission drops still get salvaged, this is only really possible if SHIPS produced (which never drop) take a fair clip of Nocxium while Modules dropped actual reprocess to very little. This would be an interesting determination.

4) The drone minerals are still working their way out of the system and this is just shocking the market.

All of these are possible. The only one that I feel on solid footing about is number 4. I know that previous data released by CCP indicated that most of the Isogen (I think like 75% at one point) was supplied by Drones and that a good bit of the Nocxium was as well. It's possible that we're finally hitting the end of that limited supply and the market will whip saw back.