@Arga,

The reward can be cash and standing. Please keep in mind that most characters do not have high refining and high standing, most would be taking a loss refining with low skills compared to selling the ores directly. However, it expands the number of different skills used from the industrial tree -- IMO a good thing.

Also, if you take the shortcut of buying the ores and refining them just for doing the mission, you would be taking a loss particularly in level 1 facility.

@Annihilator,

Harvesting and then transporting 1M of triandlus is quite painless. Harvesting and then transporting 1M of helioptris is literally nearly 3x harder. For instance, when I harvest I usually use 3-4 gargoyles in an area, then run 1-2 sequers at a time to collect the field cans. Doing so with helioptris creates a situation wherein even with two sequers I can't catch up.

Now I understand that your concern is primarily with the manufacturing costs, and from that perspective gathering a smaller amount of helio for direct use is no big deal. My concern is with the "marketability" of helio. To compare: I not only can get a better price for triandlus on average, but I can do so with far less effort.
Thus, given the current volume of helio, and a price range historically on a par or less than triandlus, I can't imagine ever gathering it for sale to the market.

The volume on helioptris is bad for the game economy. It takes an important raw resource and makes it fundamentally problematic to the market. This is my complaint. At the moment, this is my complaint because I am primarily a "gathering" type set of characters while slowly working on expanding the prototype techbase...

@Arga,

Thanks for the information on the history of helio ;-). I understand the background of why it was done, but my complaint stands as outlined above: the volume of helio is not reasonable. Its lower demand per creation of key commodities (i.e., previous posts outlining it) coupled with its volume create a situation where it never makes sense to sell the raw plants to the market. When you create a situation where it "makes no sense" to sell something to the market, by definition it is not balanced in terms of the game economy.

My recommended solution is to simply change the volume to make it equivalent to triandlus. Other options exist, but definitely do not prefer them. :-)

Not sure I get the connection.. :-)

@Hugh.

Understood ;-). My issue with helio is solely its volume. I find it intensely annoying. ;-)

@Hugh and Annihi:
The process for gathering any material in this game seems to include at least two processes (three for noralgis)... mine or harvest, then transport it. With noralgis there is a host of other problems, so setting that aside.

Given the similarities, lets just compare triandlus and helioptris. Given the volume disparity, it seems that a gathering-focused character would never in his right mind gather heliop for sale to the market -- because of the logistical problems.

Translating this into multi-role characters (or multi-account obsessed fanatics like myself ;-) ) it produces a dynamic wherein it never makes sense to sell helioptris on the market; I need it for my stuff and my Corp's stuff. Because I am certain I am not the only gathering/miner who has made this calculation, there is seldom much helio on the market at the scale needed for producing say... Lithus robots.

Demand-side is one factor of the pricing equation, the other is supply-side (what I feel it would be fair to sell at given my time/work/effort in gathering the material....). I would argue that given its volume it makes no sense to sell it at any of the price ranges I've seen. Adjusting its volume to make it comparable to triandlus would help enourmously IMO.

My $0.02. :-)