Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Mining report of 2014

CCP Quant shared the mining data of 2014 on Reddit. His post also included downloadable CSV. I downloaded and analyzed it, postponing the January ratting data a bit back.

At first, let's look at the total mining volumes without ice, mercoxit and gas. Since the "trillion m3" is a pretty meaningless number, I choose the "3x cargo expanded max-skilled Charon" as volume unit. As you can see, the miners of New Eden were pretty busy:
The miners of New Eden filled more than one million max-cargo Charons with ores in 2014. More than 3/4 of the mining was done in highsec. CODE has lot of work to do I guess. The busiest places are Amarr regions, probably because caldari rats ECM. Not surprisingly, most ores were highsec ores, with veldspar leading the way. Of course it's the cheapest, giving another proof that the miners aren't the brightest minds of New Eden. Contrary to my expectations, Goons and their minions aren't busy mining ore. WH mining is minimal, lowsec mining is practically non-existent.

The mining distribution of the highsec ores is similar to the total mining (numbers are % of total):

The ores that can't be found in highsec belts have a more interesting distribution:
Providence has pretty high position, matching the usually high ratting numbers of Providence. The people living there are indeed living there. The other top regions are typical renter lands. In highsec, Metropolis provided the most nullsec ore. We'll get to that soon, after evaluating the ice and gas numbers:
Ice mining is mostly highsec activity, but 1/4 was done in nullsec, with very little lowsec mining. The top regions are in highsec, but Providence and Deklein got to the toplist. The gas mining is more interesting. It's dominated by WH space and it's the only form of mining where lowsec isn't ignored.

The busiest normal space region for gas mining is Metropolis highsec. What the hell happens there? Mining missions in Hodrold! The ore missions send you to mine flavors of nullsec ores, while the best missions (the ones that aren't rejected after you have faction standing) are sending you to mine gas. Every mission gas has 4250 m3 volume, boosting the numbers of the region.

The timeline of mining shows serious decrease of activity in highsec while nullsec has returned to the 2014 January values after a temporary increase:

Finally, a very interesting graph. You know that in highsec people rat 20% more in weekends than weekdays, following the free time schedule of people. In nullsec there isn't such pattern, showing that null ratters are bots or nolifers. In mining the two zones provide similar numbers, showing that null miners are humans. Maybe they are multiboxers, but they are people with work or school and not nolifers and bots:
This result shatters the excuses made for the ratting difference. Nullsec liars claimed that people do PvP in weekends and rat in boring weekdays. But then why do the miners mine instead of joining the "PvP"? The solution is that if you bot, you should bot ratting and not mining, since ratting provides higher ISK/hour. Mining is preferable to humans due to its higher ISK/click. While you could run a missioning bot in highsec, that's dangerous due to humans reporting you. No one reports nullsec ratting bots since the alliance rules forbid that.


PS: these kind of idiots will never go out of fashion.
Blinged ratters detto.

12 comments:

Easy Esky said...

The adjacent hi-systems around Hodrold will have scannable gas anoms. It is an anomaly within the game mechanics that gas normally reserved for low-sec occurs here. However, harvesting it is next to useless - because boosters can only be manufactured low-sec anyway. (anchoring restriction). The gas can be sold on the market, but the return is so much better for veldspar and other ores.

It might be interesting if CCP ever re-visits boosters for more viable game play to attract low-sec content.

Anonymous said...

or it means that Miners are more carebears and not going for pvp, then ratters. miner is a freaking activity. i also now some in our powerblock and they dont enjoy pvp at all.
ratters do

and you also see that provi is a house of carebears.

bluto said...

What would be interesting, would be to compare barge losses per region and discover where risk is actually highest. Would be funny if the drop in price of the high ends were the result of mining in high being more dangerous (m^3 of ore per barge lost) than in null.

Also, miners need to know value of ore per meter (since the cheap ores are small and expensive ones are big, but all mining tools harvest the same volume of ores no matter the size.

Anonymous said...

Veldspar? VELDSPAR? What the hell?

I would have expected Plagiclase and Pyroxmeres to be on top, with Kernite close third (Only because it's Amarr only. Who goes there?)

Who the hell is mining Veldspar? Where I mine, no one touches the Veldspar or the Scordite.

The only conclusion that I can make from this is the majority of miners never stray from the very highest sec level... where there is nothing but Veldspar and Scordite.

Anonymous said...

"What would be interesting, would be to compare barge losses per region and discover where risk is actually highest. Would be funny if the drop in price of the high ends were the result of mining in high being more dangerous (m^3 of ore per barge lost) than in null."

I would completely expect high to be more dangerous for miners than null in total. Sure, going to low or null to mine by yourself is a death sentence, but in null, once you join an alliance, you are defended by the "If it's red, it's dead" policy. Whereas in high, anyone can just walk up to you without challenge.

The big difference for me between high and null for me is freedom. In high, I can do what I want except for a few line items CONCORD seems to care about. But they're hard coded and consistent about those few thing. I don't have to be in a "group" and engage in mindless banter while mining in high sec.

Ryanis said...

Mining fleets mining entire belts one after another would explain that veldspar is on top list.

Anonymous said...

"Veldspar? VELDSPAR? What the hell?

I would have expected Plagiclase and Pyroxmeres to be on top, with Kernite close third (Only because it's Amarr only. Who goes there?)

Who the hell is mining Veldspar? Where I mine, no one touches the Veldspar or the Scordite."

i've been botting since 2011. there are some nice systems with lots of belts, and high sec...0.8-0.9
its always veldspar

check Unpas for example
its 0.9, noob space, the "only" competition is a bunch of Ventures
2 exhumers and 1 Orca (x3), perfect mining and boost skills, implants, perfect refinery and standing both for Spacelane and Jita
and yes, i can buy the PLEX's just fine
why? cuz Veldspar :)

mordis mydaddy said...

"Who the hell is mining Veldspar? Where I mine, no one touches the Veldspar or the Scordite."

A mining fleet takes the entire belt with hisec belts containing those ores highest on the list. Even a 0.5 system has more Veld and Scord than anything else. It's too much work to cherry pick certain ores.

Anonymous said...

"A mining fleet takes the entire belt with hisec belts containing those ores highest on the list. Even a 0.5 system has more Veld and Scord than anything else. It's too much work to cherry pick certain ores."

"Mining fleets" in high sec are one of those "Gee, that sounds like a good idea!" that fail miserably. Unless you're botting, of course.

Aside from that, every "mining fleet" I've ever seen in high sec has been a collection of noobs in a carebear "Help the noobs" experiment that is destined to fail horrifically with some combination of war decs and awoxxing.

"Cherry picking" the ore you want is trivially simple. You just survey scan the belt, then work down the list.

anon357 said...

The beautiful thing about EVE, though, is that one thing can often lead to another. Mining fleets may be a bad idea where ISK/hr is concerned, but I started out founding a small mining corp, learned a lot of valuable lessons, bonded, made friends. We got involved in more stuff, made new friends. Before you knew it, my "mining corp" was out in null as a contributing part of a nonminor PvP alliance. All because we wanted to get together in a mining fleet, which "always fails miserably".

I still miss it a little, just hanging out talking, sharing stories and shooting rocks. It was relaxing and pleasant in a way nullsec life isn't. It's definitely not the optimal way to make money (even in highsec), but that doesn't mean it's a terrible activity.

Won't argue against the "carebear help the noobs experiment" point though, that's legitimately what we were, in a classic case of the blind leading the blind. But again, we were noobs going in, but we were a bit less noob coming out, and every journey starts somewhere.

As for awoxing and war decs, there are ways around both. We learned them. Occasionally from the wisdom of other players, mostly from failing horrifically and getting back up again.

Anonymous said...

I'm no expert, but I think the reason people focus on low ends is because they make up 80% of the mineral value of most built items.

You can quadruple the price of megacyte and it will still only increase the cost of a built ship by ~1%. It both a buyers' market and a rounding error.

Anonymous said...

I do love the shout out to the Goonswarm alliance address that openly states that bots are welcome in the CFC, contrary to very strict CCP policy. Here I thought most other null alliances were still cracking down on them, I guess we don't all learn from the past. Might be time to do some flythroughs and keep tabs of who is on just a little too often.