Its a popular misconception driven by the top corps in the game that NIC is useless and they dont need it. In fact all of these corps rely on NIC and generally use either higher tier tech sales or the selling of epriton to facilitate the buying of minerals so that they cut down the amount of time it takes them to produce.

Yes a small corp of 20 can be self sufficient if they work at it, but two men producing for a corp of 50 can be self sufficient with the right tech base and access to epriton.

Plasma takes ratting and ratting is a waste of time and effort

Firstly, pretty much anything can be bought with NIC, so NIC is definitely powerful.

Secondly, self-sufficient corps who do never interact with the market will always suffer from low efficiency. That is not saying they can't do a lot of stuff, but they could always do even more stuff if they leveraged what they had more.

+1

I think the big misconception to the larger corps is that they can make more nic an hour therfor the worth is less. I hate to use that other game as an example but when I had tens of billions of is, it really became less of value to me al ost worthless as I squandered my fortune pvping. Very similar in perpetuum I've heard reports of twenty million nic an hour, I think that may be a bit far fetched but even half that is a *** ton of pvping assaults and ewar bots. Three hprs and I am now just pvping for a week unless your really that unlucky to run into a lot of camps and lose them.

If the price is right, any item will eventually sell or be bought, for NIC.

This is the crux of the issue.  NIC is a resource with both infinite supply and infinite demand.  Unfortunatly the former outstrips the latter; this leads inexorably to an inflation spiral. 

How can the 'demand' for NIC be imaginativly and acceptably increased?

EDIT: yes I'm aware of the planned buildings.  What else can be done?

As an economist, I really can't make sense of this.

Inflation can easily be fought through NIC sinks, and so far we have not experienced that much inflation in-game.

True, I'm all in for you guys blowing up more stuff!

But to clarify, I don't at all agree with the infinite demand-supply of NIC idea. Rather inflation is managed through inflows and outflows of NIC to the economy, something which can easily be changed if inflation at some point becomes a real problem.

Its too bad your corps political doctrine is diametrically opposed to the promotion of more pvp. Having massive numbers of allies and far more EP than the majority of those you oppose. If you beat your head against a wall sooner or later this grows old. The same goes for being blobbed by large numbers of enemies. If a group comes out in 10-15 Assaults, you meet them with 15+ light/heavy Mechs supported with Ewars. Fighting and losing is one thing, having NO chance what so ever is a horse of another color.

Wrong.

The NIC you use to buy new pewpew stuff will just be transfared from you to your producer. Just a very small amount will be "destroyed" by NPC production cost.

A small amount will be destroyed by paying for repairing modules by the victors, a small amount will be destroyed by buying new stuff (market fees, production fees, etc). Also, bear in mind its a 4-stage production for T4 modules so the actual production cost goes up quite a bit.

What it does is generate more movement on the market, which in turn encourages producers to buy more ore to satisfy a rising demand, which encourages miners to offer more ore for sale to satisfy rising producer demand, which encourages PVPers to roam and try to kill miners, which encourages PVPers to protect their miners, which leads us straight back to PVP encouraging producers to cater to a rising demand for modules.

That is just for "PVP", this would also encourage PVE as producers and prototypers would have more need for decoders, kernels, fragments etc.

The insurance injects a "certain" amount of NIC, essentially narrowing the amount needing to be grinded before someone is re-equipped for PVP.

Best thing? This "NIC sink" is already implemented in-game. Instead of trying to invent warm water, all the Devs need to do is stimulate PVP.