Gentlemen-

Begging pardon if I violate any traditions or what not with this post. First time poster, new to the game, and I'm a tad short on time to peruse the entire forum at home, since it's blocked at work. (Them bastages!)

I'd like to offer up this point for consideration:

Courier Missions, as they stand at the moment, are absolutely wrecking the economy. Before you call me an alarmist, allow me to explain. (Then call me an alarmist if you want.)

My friends and I started playing at the same time; roughly 20 of us all within a 48 hour period. We represent a pretty large cross-section of players - some raw killing types, some industrialists, some miners, some market players, etc. We're a lot of former-heads-of-sections in an EVE corp, so we're all pretty experienced in our lot.

What we quickly found was that, bar none and far away, the guys willing to run courier missions between the Alphas above anything else, were wildly and crazily outstripping everyone else in cash. We're not talking margins of 20-30%, which would be icky, or even portions of 50-80%, which would be alarming. I wish I was being melodramatic when I said the margin is closer to 1000%.

A courier runner right now is pulling in approximately 1.5m an hour. A miner might pull in 800 or so if they found a sizable Liquizit deposit or chased plants around. A killer is pulling in - at most - 250k. New players realistically can't grab major scanning sites, and if they did, they'd have to work in sufficient numbers to ensure safety, cutting the profit margins back down. Result?

The killers aren't pew-pewing, for the most part, once they figure out the Courier Triumverate - the laps between the three alphas. Some still kill because, let's face it, they love the adrenaline. The bigger problem, though, are the miners: Miners tend to have time to surf forums, to talk to people, and to quickly find out about the Courier Triumverate, and as soon as they do, they leave mining and don't come back.

Now one might fairly say that "Well, they'll come back to mining eventually." And they may - but the problem is that this game is populated with lots of younger players, and younger players serve a very large function in the economy:

They're your low-end mineral people. It's absolutely economically idiotic to mine titan ore unless you're doing it for a mission... and why would you be doing THOSE missions anyhow? Drive out to a spot where titan's green, fiddle with it for five minutes, drive back. your buddy in the courier's just completed four missions.

Until the legs are kicked out from under the courier missions, low-end killing is going to be deflated. I'd imagine - I don't know for sure, as I'm not the master industrialist my friends are - that there are vital components in the low end materials. (I do know about kernels, but any need for those is finite, since you can eventually master the material.) Low-end minerals aren't going to be mind practically at all, as there's just no need. This translates to over-expensive markets and too few producers, since industrialists have to choose between buying overexpensive materials or mining it themselves. Most items that we've examined - weapon tunings being the obvious exception - tend to be vastly overpriced to their manufacture cost. (I'm all for making a profit, but there are items going for 400-500% of cost out there. That is NOT healthy for the market.)

So quick post before I leave for work, and to close, some disclosures:

One of my characters IS a miner. The other is a former killer who stopped and switched to couriers because the financial difference was jaw-dropping.

In order for the economy to become self-supporting, we have to have players injecting material into the economy. The only thing the couriers inject is cash, and that cash has no value to industry, and so inflation is/will be a major factor. It's great that mining missions tell you to keep your ore and sell it, but the financial benefits still aren't there - neither for killing  and looting, nor for mining and selling.

Until the average independent player is urged away from running the Courier Triangle between the three alpha players for the first two weeks of playing the game (maybe more, for all I know) the market will remain sparse. Perpetuum needs materials from the little guy - the big corps are insular and take care of themselves. Until we give the little guy a recent to kick in materials, the market - and anything but courier running for noobs - is going to be nearly deserted.

Thanks for the time and consideration of the post.