Gevlon was right
-The Mittani, Imperium Fireside May 4, 2019
I previously mentioned the ongoing conflict in Perimeter over control of trading citadels. Last year the Imperium and Legacy Coalition began to assail the trading citadels set up by Pandemic Horde. Those were blown up and replaced by citadels run by TEST alliance, including a Keepstar.
Shop at the sign of the middle management dino
Why Perimeter? Well, it is one of the eight systems that connect directly to Jita.
Jita and Perimeter
More importantly, it is one of the five neighboring system in The Forge, the same region as Jita, so if you are in Jita and searching for something to buy, goods in Perimeter will show up in your results as well. As to why Perimeter won out over the other four, my guess is that being on the direct route to Amarr, the second trade hub of New Eden, probably tips the scales. People try to set up in the other systems, but the listings there are even more meager.
Anyway, since the swap over to Legacy Coalition holding the trade stations in Perimeter a low scale conflict has carried on to try and wrest control away or at least make life annoying. I had not heard much about that conflict of late. As it turns out that was likely due to negotiations going on over the whole thing.
At yesterday’s fireside The Mittani announced that a deal had been reached and that going forward the Imperium, Legacy Coalition, and Pandemic Horde would all work together to defend the structures of the Tranquility Trading Corporation, consisting of the Keepstar, two Sotiyos, and one Tatara in Perimeter.
Instead of fighting, each of the three groups will now share in the profits from the trading complex.
This is where Gevlon comes in. Somebody sent the link to one of Gevlon’s posts where he predicted something like this would come to pass to The Mittani, and Mittens had to admit that Gevlon was right on that particular point. Some null sec powers did come together to hold a trading citadel together rather than fighting over it.
Of course, Gevlon was wrong on just about everything else in that post. It is debatable as to whether or not the Imperium, led by Goonswarm Federation, Legacy Coalition, led by TEST, and Pandemic Horde add up to being “everyone significant” when it comes to null sec powers. It most certainly does not mean peace between the three powers. Even as I was writing this I got a ping to log in and shoot Pandemic Horde and expect to continue with the campaign against them and NCDot in TKE and The Spire, striking straight at their rental income. These are not staged “gud fites” but an actual campaign meant to hurt them.
And then there is the effect on Jita. While some trade is going through Perimeter, it seems to be mostly focused on some high price density items, things like PLEX, skill injectors, and the like. Trade at the station at Jita 4-4 carries on pretty much as before, three years after the Citadel expansion brought this player run trade center option to the game.
Whether people keep trading in Jita out of habit, ignorance, or mis-trust or player run citadels… some of those trade citadels have been blown up after all… doesn’t matter, people still do most of their buying and selling in Jita.
This means that Gevlon’s assumptions and ISK estimates are all completely bogus. If his prediction had come to pass we should have seen some sort of drop in the Broker’s Fees collects on the ISK sink side of the chart in the MER. However, compared to his numbers from the February 2016 MER, the broker’s fees collected were actually up in the March 2019 MER.
As for how much the owners of the trade citadels have to discount their fees in order to attract business… well, he was way off once more.
Fee comparison
In Perimeter they had to cut the broker’s fee to the bone to get the business they have, and that hasn’t moved very much out of the much more expensive Jita. Even if they got the level of business he predicted, the net profit would be nowhere near his cataclysmic outlook.
And Gevlon said he left EVE Online because of this, because of his grim predictions of what was to come with player run markets in citadels. I guess he could have stuck around. The null sec empires are still getting rich, but it doesn’t have much to do with markets in Perimeter.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
His post is titled ‘Eternal Peace’, yet you know the second one of those alliances gets weak-enough, they are getting cut out of the deal. Any should another alliance gets strong-enough, either they get cut in, or fighting returns.
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@SynCaine – Part of his proof were previous economic agreements like OTEC. Had he actually looked into the events around them he would have seen that they did not bring peace at all but simply defined where the battlefield would be. But it was not unusual for him to reach conclusions not supported by the evidence he supplied.
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It took me a lot longer than I would want to admit to read that last screenshot. I sat there for a solid 30 seconds, then went back to read the rest of the text, then took another moment to realize that the green number wasn’t cost… I thought “why would anyone go away from Jita and pay *more* than now?!”.
Haven’t played EVE in so long that I forgot green numbers intuitively mean profit to anybody actively playing the game, I guess.
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@Flosch – I probably should have underlined the “Broker’s Fee” line for both locations to further emphasize what I was focused on. Still, you got the backside of what I was getting at, which is that people would get more money for their sales if the listed in Perimeter, and yet the do not.
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