Blackomen wrote:Most of this has already been addressed. However I will agree the 3 inner island courier mission circle jerk is FAR too profitable for the effort/time/ep cost, by COMPARISON to other inner island activities.
I don't think the emphasis is entirely fair. I can do about 1.6-1.7m per hour solo ratting on inner alpha islands, and I'm certain I could do more if properly fitted for it. It's not quite as much as transports, but it's not a massive gap. As far as mining and harvesting goes, if the market won't bear price increases on raw materials due to the opportunity cost of not running transports, more people need to make the rational decision, and run transports.
Personally I suspect that the market will bear price increases. Looking at the cost of commodities for a kain vs the cost of a kain, I see an 80-100% markup. I understand that CTs won't always be 100+%, and that producing the CT in the first place is an extra cost, but those alone can't account for such a discrepancy unless people are consistently running mech CTs all the way down to the minimum material ratio. If mechs are selling at the listed price (and I suspect they are, since there isn't much movement in said price), manufacturers are making a killing due to the low price of materials*.
Since raw material demand is fairly consistent (only so many robots get blown up and need replacing each day), if prices are low, the problem is actually an oversupply of raw materials. Too many people gathering instead of running transports, shooting themselves in the foot.
The only issue here is how much currency the devs want in the market. Do they want to devalue insurance payouts relative to the cost of a robot, encouraging cautious play, or do they want to bring insurance payments closer to the cost of replacing the lost robot, encouraging more beta activity? If they want more beta activity, they need to reduce inflation caused by assignment payments, if they want less, they need to increase assignment payouts.
I think that reducing assignment rewards is fairly dangerous at this stage, since the market price for materials for a mech is actually very close to the insurance payout if it gets blown up. If you're producing robots right now, you're really only risking your insurance deposit and whatever modules you have fitted when you deploy one. As more NIC enters the market though, that gap will grow to the point where you are actually risking some part of the value of your robot too. Of course you also need to consider that as people move out of the newbie stage and begin to pvp more, demand for robots and thus the materials required to build them will increase. At some point I would expect to see them lower assignment rewards, but right now it doesn't seem like a good idea.
Summary - If someone is not making enough money mining, they should do something else. Irrational behaviour is the problem, not assignment rewards.
*Come to think of it, I haven't seen much movement in raw material prices, but t4 small mags doubled in price over the course of two days, so perhaps the problem is actually a lack of competition in manufacturing, rather than a commodity glut. Not enough purchasers for materials, too many purchasers for finished goods.